The polished black doors of the crematorium slid open with a soft, sterile hiss. The air inside was cool and smelled faintly of antiseptic and wilting flowers.
The ceremony was a blur of muted colours and muffled sounds. Words were spoken in hollow emptiness.
An image flickered on the screen. Just like Ayla's. Except a bit sharper and younger.
His daughter, Nora.
Rhys felt his teeth grinding. The cold, empty universe inside him felt detached, almost foreign.
The first image of his daughter came to his mind. She was born fragile, left fragile. Without considering how fragile her father had become now.
Everything froze at his arrival. The gathered crowd parted for him, some even trying their best to avoid his gaze whenever it landed on them.
In the centre of the hall, a figure lay in the casket.
The explorer in her had disappeared completely. The mouth that always screamed 'Papa' was sealed shut. The smile that once bloomed at his presence now lay frozen, unmoving.
His daughter.
Rhys moved his large black hat slightly, shading the grieving face beneath. A peculiar mask covered his features, revealing only a pair of molten gold pupils.
They were empty, like the endless void had taken everything, leaving a hollow shell of once luminous gems.
Silence enveloped the surroundings. Even the women's sobs muted in the background.
"Huh... she liked white, for sure. But she preferred pink," he said to the air, staring at the white wedding gown his daughter wore.
The same gown Ayla took years to stitch.
Setting a rose atop his little girl, he uttered, "Nora, you've parted as well."
Casting a final glance at the old woman in the casket, he turned slowly to depart. He expected a few drops of tears from himself. But even those seemed frozen by time.
"Who is that man? He's so tall and young. Is he her grandson or something?" a young female voice whispered as he disappeared.
"What! Grandson? He is her father," an old woman reprimanded. "I still remember the day they came to my house with welcoming sweets. I was eight then, same as Nora."
"No way! How can someone stay that fit when they're old? Grandma, don't lie to me. Or did he wear the mask to hide his wrinkled face?"
"Shut up! He didn't age at all. He looks the same as I first saw him. Someone told me he might be an immortal goblin!" the old woman shivered as she spoke.
"Is he handsome?" the young girl asked curiously.
Gazing at her granddaughter, the old woman blushed slightly and replied, "Yes. Like a perfect creation melded by the gods themselves. But you see, he is a goblin."
Rhys moved away from the door. Even from a distance, he could hear their voices murmuring 'goblin.'
A solitary smile tugged at his lips beneath the mask.
When the ceremony was over, he returned to collect the ashes. He then took the ash he had stored under the bed and returned to the shore.
The sky was a bruised purple, the sun having bled out below the horizon. The wind was cold, whipping his coat around him and carrying the scent of salt and decay.
He stood on the damp sand, the place where he had first seen her, and looked out at the churning, grey water. This was where his universe had been born.
And this was where it died.
The despair he'd anticipated, the all-consuming grief that should have torn him asunder, failed to arrive. In its place was a terrifying void. A vacuum.
The loneliness he had known for millennia was returning, but this time it was worse.
Before Ayla, it had been a quiet, passive state of being. Now, it was an active, predatory force devouring the memory of warmth, erasing the ghost of her touch.
He was becoming what he had been before. But now, he knew exactly what he was losing.
He closed his eyes. The roar of the ocean was no longer a memory but a deafening reality.
The world, his universe, contracted to a single point of cold, dark nothingness inside his chest.
It was over.
His brief, beautiful holiday from eternity had ended.
And just as that final, crushing despair threatened to solidify into an unbreakable shell of ice around his soul, a voice sliced through the silence.
It was not a voice he heard with his ears, but one that resonated directly in the core of his consciousness. It was cold, devoid of inflection, and utterly mechanical.
[Host found...]
Rhys's eyes snapped open. The waves, the sky, the very sand beneath his feet—it all seemed to warp for a second, the fabric of reality thinning.
[Compatibility with the Primordial Law of Order: 99.99%. Perfect Candidate.]
[Lifespan Burning System initiating...]
A phantom sensation, like ice water and lightning, flooded his being. He felt a metaphysical pressure, as if his very concept of self was being wished, measured, and cataloged by an indifferent cosmic force.
[Comprehend anything under the heavens by burning your lifespan.]
A bitter, soundless laugh almost escaped him. Lifespan. The one currency he had in infinite abundance. The curse that had defined his existence was now being presented as a resource.
[Warning! The Primordial of Order deems you the perfect candidate for his heir.]
The pressure intensified a hundredfold. The world around him dissolved into a swirling vortex of light and shadow. The roar of the ocean was replaced by a sound like grinding galaxies.
[You are anchored to the title 'World Traveler.']
[Title Acquired: World Traveler]
[Description: As gods fall and the void consumes, the universe's eternal guardian awakens to reclaim order.]
He felt a violent, wrenching pull. Not on his body, but on his soul. The shore, the Earth, the entire solar system seemed to shrink away from him at an impossible speed.
A single hot tear, like a final ember, sparked against his cheek. Despite being whipped away by the cosmic wind, the sensation remained.
Almost like the day he met Ayla.
Then the world shattered, and Rhys, the immortal bystander, now stood before a mirror, locking eyes with the golden-eyed teenager in the reflection.
And unlike the man he had been, the eyes of the boy burned with something that had never lived in him until now.
Purpose.