CHAPTER 94: TO YOU, WHO IS WAITING FOR ME, AN ILLUSION

The boat drifted across the water like a silent verdict waiting to be cast.

Oizys narrowed her eyes. Her stance never wavered on the rippling surface, yet her voice struck with the force of an anchored spear.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The cloaked figure lifted her head slightly. The golden glint beneath the hood caught the distant horizon’s fractured shimmer, and the row halted as if time itself recognized the gravity of the moment.

Laughter, soft and splintered at the edges, spilled from under the veil. A rhyme followed, archaic in rhythm, bladed in content.

"An end to the rise, a cleft to the tide—she asks for the fire, yet spurns the light. Thou seek’st to silence the crown of the skies, yet ignore the bloom born from divine rite."

The ferrywoman cocked her head with that same brittle mirth, as though Oizys’ confusion was the punchline of a joke etched into the bones of the world.

"You want the Apotheosis to unravel, child of ruin. But tell me—have you once considered what is lost when the divine is stripped from its flame? When the self evolves beyond entropy, what returns is not the person who once held mortality in hand, but the embodiment of truths beyond simple flesh."

Oizys blinked once. Her grip on her weapon remained still, her tone utterly flat.

"You’re annoying."

And then, with a single arc, her scythe carved through the air.

It cleaved the ferrywoman cleanly in two, scattering her body into petals of muted ink.

A gust rippled across the realm.

"Simple manifestation that is easy to gaslight or nothing," Oizys muttered, wiping the edge of her weapon clean with a flick of divine aura. "I’m not wasting time chatting with cryptic ferry ghosts."

The waters buckled. The light folded into itself. Reality unraveled around her form like a curtain drawn back too quickly.

She stepped forward.

The world reformed.

Crimson banners fluttered from grand ivory pillars. The scent of lacquered wood and divine incense permeated the chamber. Intricate stained-glass depictions of celestial beasts crowned the golden ceiling above, their glow pulsating like trapped starlight.

A throne stood atop the highest dais.

There, the new manifestation of Kivas rested—regal, composed, radiant. A gleaming circlet adorned her brow, and her royal apparel shimmered with threads of law-bound divinity. Her gaze bore the weight of kingdoms.

She lifted a jeweled hand.

"You may speak."

Oizys didn’t kneel. Her voice reached the throne like thunder on a quiet mountain.

"You’re not a king. You’re a reflection. A puppet twisted to please the expectations of power."

The queen’s lips curled into a restrained smile.

"A king is not defined by those who crown her, but by her capacity to end what others cannot—unity. Order. War. Cities, faiths, dynasties—crushed by her word or mended at her whim. That is no puppet’s privilege, jester."

Oizys approached the first step of the dais. "What you call power is inherited delusion. You only rule because the system told you you could. Break the structure and you’re just a body on a throne, all of your merit came from your lineage and past."

"The past means nothing," the king answered without a hint of hesitation. "Only the present matters. The present decides the future. Quite an obvious way of thought, no?"

Samael appeared without heraldry behind the throne, her aura low and restrained.

In a flick of her wrist, her blade passed through the queen’s spine.

The royal blood dissolved into light.

"Too proud to hear sense," Samael muttered, fading once more into the flickering shadows between manifestations. "I might start to become crazy if I attempt to convince this one manifestation for another minute."

Oizys exhaled.

The throne cracked. The chamber folded into fragments.

Again, the world shifted.

This time, mountains of corpses stretched as far as vision allowed. The wind dragged ash across severed banners and shattered helmets.

Atop the hill of carnage stood the next version of Kivas, clad in barbed armor, leaning on a monstrous blade whose hilt was wrapped in names of those long fallen.

The tyrant surveyed the field with the quiet gaze of someone who had seen too many ends.

Oizys walked up the hill, her steps steady across blood-stained stone.

"Killing everyone won’t solve anything."

The tyrant didn’t turn immediately. Her voice, when it came, was low. Hollow.

"And yet here we are. Talking over a kingdom of bodies. Strange place to deliver moral lectures, vagabond."

Oizys shrugged. "This entire mess is meaningless."

"That’s the truth, sadly," the tyrant said, her eyes closing briefly. "And that’s why this is a tragedy."

"Do you want to rest?"

The tyrant’s fingers wrapped tighter around her blade.

"If you want the honor to grant me peace, earn it." The tyrant slightly grinned as she pointed her blade forward. "Show me your truth in battle."

They clashed.

Three days and three nights passed within the accelerated heartbeat of the realm. Stars turned. Rivers ran dry. The sky broke open and healed again. Blade met claw. Will met pain. Bones cracked. Breath stuttered—the wind didn’t interfere.

When it ended, Oizys stood.

Her knees buckled. Blood clung to her lips. Her hand trembled around the broken haft of her weapon.

The tyrant knelt before her, breathing raggedly.

"You really thought you could convince me to stand down?" she asked, chuckling with a bitterness that could not be erased. "To believe something that is just not true?"

"I tried," Oizys coughed, wiping her mouth with the back of her gauntlet. "But you’re too strong. Too certain. Too damn stubborn."

"Then stop trying to fulfill a goal," the tyrant whispered, her voice dimming like dusk slipping into the horizon. "Speak like someone who wants to be heard. Speak with the heart..."

She dissolved into dust.

The field collapsed.

The realm restructured.

"This will take a while."

And thus, Oizys went on a crusade to put an error into Fathomi’s calculation, trying to find the right manifestation of Kivas that could be convinced of a false reality, something that would crack the source of expectation that erupted all of these possible manifestations.

But there seemed to be a dry pattern so far. Oizys tried to convince a new manifestation of Kivas, she found the version of manifested Kivas too hard to gaslight, and then she kill that Kivas to find a brand new manifestation.

At some variation, there were Kivas who showcased a unique gimmick and pattern of thoughts that could be utilized for Oizys’ goal, but also granting an entirely new type of challenger altogether.

Regardless, Oizys didn’t give up, so she repeated the patter again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each iteration molded from the marrow of Kivas’ soul.

A librarian protecting a sanctum of forbidden lore.

A child sculpting time with a wooden hammer.

A blind prophet walking a frozen wasteland.

A winged judge erasing names from a tome of sins.

A weaver threading strands of fate through a dying sun.

Each rejected the paradox.

Each unraveled beneath the pressure.

Seven hundred and seventy-six worlds were born. Seven hundred and seventy-six arguments were made.

Each one failed.

Oizys stepped through another veil. Her limbs barely held form now.

Divine feedback echoed in her bones like the ticking of a broken clock, and it started to corrode her psyche in one way or another.

"This is... harder than I thought..."

Her soul strained with every passing iteration.

But the portal before her didn’t feel like the rest. It didn’t shimmer with recycled light or echo with prefabricated emotion.

It breathed.

It pulsed like a wound in the shape of possibility.

This one was different.

The seven hundred and seventy-seventh manifestations lie ahead.

And as she stepped forward, the world unfolded like a paper crane that was broken apart by a childish hand.

That was what appeared before Oizys, a childish and young manifestation of Kivas in a field of flowers, wearing a stained white dress and a crown of thorn.

Blood was eternally dripping from the wounds made from the torn, soaking into the fabric of the formerly pure dress, and the flower around her.

Yet despite the pain and corruption she spread, this manifestation of Kivas was smiling, giggling, wearing a happy mask of purity that no evil could soil.

The flowers rustled with the breath of a wind that did not exist. Petals shifted in colors neither natural nor imagined—soft hues corrupted by something sacred gone awry.

Oizys stepped lightly onto the field, her soles crushing blossoms that bled white.

The childlike Kivas spun once, arms open, strands of hair catching sunlight that didn’t come from any sun.

Her smile was bright, but the blood that painted her shoulders and stomach told a story of enduring agony masked by innocence.

"You made it," she said in a voice so light it almost crumbled in the air. "I was beginning to think I’d be the only one who ever lived here."

Oizys halted. The wind tugged at her coat, brushing the sweat and divine feedback caked across her skin. This place was clean in its deception.

Purity wrapped in something sinister, or maybe just misunderstood.

"What are you supposed to be?" Oizys asked.

The girl tilted her head. "Me. I’m just... the part of Kivas that never wanted to grow up."

"You directly refer to yourself as part of Kivas... not trying to claim as her..."

"Why would I?" The child giggled. "To become something I’m not, isn’t that what adulthood is?"

"After seven hundred and seventy-six of you," Oizys said, "I should’ve guessed it’d come to this. A child, untouched by reasoning, faith, or war... or maybe common sense."

Oizys said the last words at a very small volume.

"You’ve been through a lot," the child murmured, stepping forward and holding out her hand. Her fingers were coated in dried blood, but her grip trembled like someone unsure whether to offer peace or play.

Oizys didn’t reach back. "If this is another trick—"

"Then let it be the last one," the girl said. "Just rest with me, for a second."

The field stretched for miles, blanketed in stained petals.

Somewhere in the distance, there was laughter, birdsong, all fake and yet so heartbreakingly perfect.

Oizys walked forward and sat beside her, the air sighing in relief as if the realm had been waiting for her to lower her guard.

The girl watched a fluttering petal fall. "I think this is my favorite place," she said softly. "It’s where I used to imagine everything was okay. Even when it wasn’t. Especially when it wasn’t."

"You know why I’m here?"

"I do."

"And you’re not fighting back, even though I’m about to cut the Fateline, something that you are supposed to resist at all cost..."

"I’m tired." The answer came without hesitation. "I’ve been so many things. A tyrant. A queen. A prophet. A god. I just wanted to be happy... but every version of me got so tangled in what others needed from me, I forgot how to just be."

It appeared that all manifestations were related to one another.

Or maybe this was a brand new conscience born from repeated attempts at interacting with the Fateline.

Maybe, just maybe, this was the Fateline itself speaking in this manifestation of Kivas.

Oizys glanced over. "Then why do you resist the truth?"

"Because if I accept what you’re offering," the girl whispered, "it means this version of me—the simple, selfish little dreamer—never gets to exist again. You’re asking me to die, even if it saves everyone else."

Oizys said nothing for a while. She looked up at the sky, watched as thin clouds stitched themselves into the shape of wings and then unraveled again.

"I used to hate kids, like a long, long, long, long time ago," Oizys said quietly before she chuckled. "Too messy. Too honest. Too loud. But somewhere in all this... something’s changed. Maybe it’s because you reminded me of something I’m missing."

The child giggled, then leaned her head on Oizys’ shoulder. "Maybe you just need to reminisce a better moment in your life, other than the suffering you went through."

"You know this isn’t real."

"I do," the girl said. "But for just a moment, it feels like it could be. And maybe that’s enough."

Oizys closed her eyes. The tension in her chest, so long wrapped in layers of battle instinct and divine overload, began to ease.

"This place," she said. "It’s beautiful in a way that hurts."

"It’s what she wanted," the girl said. "A world untouched. A feeling that she was worth loving even without power, titles, or purpose. Just... Kivas. Just someone."

"She is someone."

"But she never believed that," the child replied.

The flowers began to hum.

Oizys opened her eyes and stared directly into the child’s. "Then let me lie to you."

The girl smiled, knowingly.

Oizys whispered, "Kivas has already moved on. You’re the last part left. But she’s waiting for you. She misses you. Without this piece of her, she’s never going to feel whole."

The girl blinked.

"I’m not lying," Oizys added quickly. "I’m just... creating a better truth, as false as it may be."

Silence passed between them.

The field darkened. The wind ceased.

And then the girl laughed—not giggles of ignorance, but laughter born of release.

"You finally figured it out," she said. "You stopped trying to win. You stopped trying to be clever. You just spoke to me like I mattered."

She stood, dusting her dress. The crown of thorns remained, but the blood faded from her skin. Her form shimmered, flickering between all her other selves—tyrant, queen, prophet, judge, weaver—until only one remained.

It was Kivas.

"I’ll believe your lie," she said. "Because I want it to be true."

The moment she said it, the sky fractured.

The realm groaned, like an old tree relieved of burden.

From the heavens above Vaingall, a new storm began—one not of ruin or wrath, but stained white flowers, fluttering like ash dipped in purity.

They fell with reverence, blanketing the land, as if some grand mercy had bled through the cracks in reality.

The Fateline snapped.

Oizys watched the world fade around her.