At Hero's Bay

Iridescence

𝐌𝐲 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫

𓄹 𝐘/𝐍 𓄼

The Everworld or the Overworld—Y/N considered that she was dreaming of the world in between.

Perhaps after many lifetimes of bloodshed and chaos, Y/N's decrepit soul was finally sentenced to perpetual damnation—and if that was the case, then so be it. The walls of her black dream are nothing but a farce, a lie before she meets the end, or maybe this was all that there is and ever will be. Empty, cold, and alone—all the things she fears in this infinite and singular reality.

Y/N felt numb and helpless, being swallowed by a force she knows nothing of—hesitant of kindling that fighting spirit. Through the thick and thin ripples in the haze that clouds her consciousness, Y/N can imagine the faceless ghosts of her memories—friends, allies, enemies, and rivals—but what she could not picture, no matter how hard she tried, was her family. Those of which she yearned to see the most.

She's taken hundreds—thousands—of planets under the Skaraeith empire and had been introduced to countless characters who she seldom remembered on a whim. She has ripped through the garden of seeds that many families had once planted their legacies in, those of which that was not to be hers to sow. What more could their rule—no, her father want from her? How many more souls would she have to reap to fulfill his one vessel?

Anath Skaraeith, the primordial King of the Skaraeith Dynasty, the Mighty Rhos'soel who betrayed and destroyed the gods—what an absolute joke; he did not have the heart to glance at his son or any of his grandchildren, but only if they were finished killing something.

And unlike him, Y/N chose her family. She always chose her family. There was nothing left for her but them—her half-siblings. How she longed to see them again, but how disappointed would they be if they knew Gardenia managed to impale her with such a cheap move.

What would her siblings say? Or even her older predecessors—the gods? Gardenia meant nothing to her. She deserved nothing. She brought this upon herself, Y/N thinks as her subconscious sinks deeper into the haze, but then again, who was she to accuse of such atrocities and blame?

Soon enough, the silence turned into noise—indistinct and blaring portions of sounds that she could not discern—but regardless, Y/N deemed it as her only comfort. What gradually did turn this dream into an agonizing nightmare, however, was a blinding flash of light that pushed deeper into what looked to be Y/N's chest. She can hardly see over the inky darkness that soon obscures with red, but it did not matter anyway; for Y/N slammed her eyes shut and wailed at the blade ripping and tearing through her flesh, severing the nerves that surrounded her scapula until it found the surface of her heart.

She gasps and makes a shrill noise, completely incapable of breathing evenly to torpefy whatever she could not feel. What hadn't been scorched and withered by Gardenia's impure power gave Y/N the strength to determine what had just happened. She blocked the aortic arch, Y/N realized as the tang of iron rises at the back of her throat, she completely skewered my heart.

The ghosts are noisy again, arguing—fighting in ways that Y/N can just barely see as she slowly peels an eye open. The darkness before her is awash in fragments of color; she realizes that, slowly but surely, she was beginning to wake up. She sees a tuft of hair within her periphery, blond and somewhat damp, where the tips are flaked in snow.