And it did not; heat meant nothing. The Eternal Darkness consumed it all, a silent watchful hunger, watching from the void. But Heliterna did not know, shivering slightly on the cold 'floor',
"Must be my old age," he concluded, voice stiff, breath visible.
Struggling to get back in the wheelchair, he just put on its wheels. Grunting, muscles straining, he tried to put his frail body in it, but his arms did not work with him.
"Heli, come on," he muttered, a dry chuckle escaping his cracked lips, You could throw a black hole, but not your own body?" He mocked himself; he knew the Chaos of dear old Crawling Chaos disrupted his system. A lingering wrongness in his body.
So he gave up and just sat on the paradoxical floor, next to his trusted transport. He sighed, a long and tired sound, and looked around; the 'air' was indeed cold, unnatural, and even his honed body started to shiver.
How he wished he could be at his home, next to the beach, the sound of waves, the smell of salt, a smile plastered on his face. "Yes... I could use that," crossed his mind, a fragile warmth in the mental image.
"Lets go-"
Denied. The thought simply died mid-flow.
Again. The intention itself, evaporated.
Denied.
The hand on his shoulder made him... feel... fading? A subtle draining sensation, like sand slipping through an hourglass upright.
He could not understand this feeling; he could not understand how this hand landed on him.
It hadn't moved; it simply was there. Did his luck fail? Never... only the absolutes could ever do that... A cold dread flared.
"Hello there, Heliterna." The voice was cold, devoid of anything, flat, and toneless.
The hand rested on his shoulder for a moment preceding time. Was it endless? An eternity compressed? Was it just a second? Who knows?
Yet this presence did fell familiar, this hand... The shape, the weight...
"E.K.?" Hope, desperate.
Heliterna turned his head, a slow movement, his neck cracking loudly in the silence. He could only see the legs of this being.
He smiled, a flicker of relief, that same old Khulain armor, the same crack on his left knee from the endless campaigns. A familiar scar on familiar metal.
"It really is you..." He looked up; he wanted to see the face of his brother in arms. As his eye moved to the torso... his smile faded... The purple fabric. Ytetra? These purple robes were hers. His sister's robes...
The scent of lavender and clay associated with her flew past.
He turned his head up, and saw Gonk's face. Heliterna was visibly confused, brows up on his face, then he realized it.
Ice flooded his veins. The description was perfect.
He warped his crippled body away. The familiar thrum of displacement started... then fell off into silence. More than a few meters ahead was simply denied.
Reality felt... glued shut.
Why? Why is he here?! The cold slowly moved to him. This illogical cold, was it cold? Heliterna could not comprehend it. It was the chill of negation.
It felt like his being was slowly fading away, dissolving like smoke.
Walker of the Lightless appeared in front of him. No motion, just presence.
"Why am I here?" it chuckled, a sound devoid of anything really, like something scraping stone.
"You killed one of my puppets... did you really think I wouldn't notice? The absence." It kneeled down, face level, his sister's face plastered on it, eyes empty windows.
Hiding behind those he loved, those he fought with. A vile mask over the void.
Heliterna felt a sense of 'letting go' in him, a profound seductive apathy, one of Walker's powers, a nudge, no force at this time.
But why? Why not? Walker could force him to let go, ceasing him from all there is, but why just a nudge? Why? The question a dying fire.
"I see you feel it..." The Walker observed, its borrowed head tilting slightly. "...that feeling of not wanting anymore, do you?" It sat down next to him. There was no movement, it just sat.
No immediate hostile intent, just analyzing Heliterna closely, a scientist observing decay. Heliterna was trying to desperately crawl away, fingers finding no real hold on the smooth non-floor.
Where did my essence go!? Panic... raw, cutting panic... he was not used to having no power, no luck. The bedrock of his existence was sand.
Walker tilted its head, Gonk's face, Ytetra's eyes. "Do you feel it?" it whispered. The 'sound' barely disturbing the 'air.' "The silence where your purpose lived? I collect these silences. They are... louder than screams." A vacuum where meaning once resonated.
Wait... what... essence? What luck? He could not remember... The concepts slipped through mental fingers like water.
"Why am I crawling?" He looked at his surroundings, blinking slowly; he saw a man sitting a few meters back. Just a figure. Unimportant. Yet...
"Maybe he can help." He thought as he turned around and crawled back. Why was he even crawling?
He could not remember, so he stood up, a grunt of effort, his legs shaking as he did.
This feeling... alien, disorienting... as if he had not done this in a long time washed over him.
He, no, everything had simply forgotten he had no legs, and there they were again, whole, unmarked, feeling the cold 'floor' beneath unfamiliar soles. As new, the phantom ache of lost limbs was gone, erased.
The Walker stared, utterly still, analyzing how its forgetness acts with someone like Heliterna. It had made not only Heliterna, but everything simply forget, every basic thing he and everything knew about himself.
Who he is, what he is, where he is, rendering it all back to nothing, washed clean from the fabric of all existence itself, as if those facts never existed in the first place.
He slowly, wobbly, like a newborn baby, walked to the man sitting on the paradoxical ground. "Hello, sir," he began, voice hesitant, uncertain, "could you tell me where we are?"
Walker of the Lightless smiled, a faint stretching of Gonk's features. "Yes, sir, we are in one of the infinite recursive universes." Heliterna's face was blank, devoid of recognition or comprehension.
"Fundus Universalis?" Walker said calmly, testing the resonance of the term.
Heliterna felt a sense of familiarity with that term, a faint distant ring; his eyes lit up, and he nodded slowly.
It felt weird, conflictingly so, as if his mind expected a crack or pop from his bones. He looked at his hands: pale, young, strange.
He did not recognize these. He touched his face; smooth skin, stubble, and unfamiliar contours. Same here, no recognition.
He looked back down at the man. "Excuse me, sir," He asked, polite but lost, "would you maybe know who I am?"
Walker shook its head. A slow, conscious movement.
"Fascinating. You ask questions your mind no longer understands. But, no, I have no idea."
His eyes never leaving Heliterna, piercing, absorbing, analyzing every single move, thought, feeling, everything.
Helitera scoffed, a sound without belief. "Hm... Okay." He paused, searching. "Well, what about you? What are you doing here?" A polite question to the stranger.
Walker did not expect this question. But that did not matter; it simply smiled as it watched Heliterna simply forget what questions even are, the concept dissolving like cotton candy in water.
Yet it parted its mouth, no sound, but the words formed directly in the 'air:' "Purpose is the foundational lie imposed by the Thrones..." Heliterna nodded, a meaningless bob of the head. But why did he?
No matter, the 'why' was already forgotten.
Walker stood up and looked Heliterna directly in the eyes, its gaze endless.
"Don't you see?" It asked, its stolen voice devoid of anything. "They call it hoping for something better, but that's just a delusion. It's not "hope." That does not exist. It's desperation, desperately running away from the all-consuming lightlessness, just to fail and see the light fade away."
Heliterna was visibly confused but nodded along to seem interested... No, what this strange entity said to him made sense. A hollow, unquestioning acceptance settled in.
It did make sense. He tried to recall moments where these words would fit, but there were none. The past was a featureless canvas.
Walker laid its hand on Heliterna's shoulder once more. The touch was light, final.
Heliterna now felt it completely, a profound, peaceful unraveling. His being forgetting itself, forgetting to be, forgetting that it is. A feeling... impending doom?
No, that's not it...
Sand slipping through your fingers? No. No.
Ah yes, that's it. It felt like letting go, a sigh of release, as if nothing matters anymore, not even being. It feels quite peaceful. A vast, welcoming silence.
Just. Nothing.
Heliterna stood there, utterly still, staring forward, nothing in sight, eyes unfocused, just to look forward and embrace this feeling, this peace. The last tension bled away from his posture.
With one final blink, slow, heavy eyelids closing,all there is, forgot. The knowledge, the memory, the very concept of 'Heliterna' ceased.
There never was a Heliterna.
There never was Ytetra's brother.
There never was a brother in arms of E.K.
There never was a wielder of infinite luck.
There never was a... man?
Only... apathy? The lack of... something. A faint chill where a soul has burned.
The space he occupied was simply... space.
Walker inhaled, a sound like wind over a tomb.
"Goodbye, Heliterna... May you live on forever... in my mind." With those words, Walker simply disappeared. For Illirim needed his attention.
Where Heliterna stood, only a question remained, echoing in a mind that no longer was.
'What did I forget?'
But existence had already answered, the silence absolute and profound:
Nothing.