"Will — stop daydreaming. We're here." Yun's voice snaps me back.
The air sharpens the closer we get, but it isn't cold. There's no frost, no snow, no ice clinging to the rocks. My breath grows intense. My skin starts to shiver.
It doesn't feel like my body is losing warmth to the air around me. No, it's worse than that.
It's as if everything — my body, the air, the grass underfoot, even the wind itself — is being forced into stillness, into something colder than it should ever be.
Yun hugs his arms tight, shivering. "It sure is getting cold. I wish we had something warmer to wear." He bounces on his feet, trying to coax life back into his limbs. It looks almost comical, but the look in his eyes is far from playful.
"So what's your plan now?" he mutters. "It's not like we can get any closer anyway.".
Before I can answer, a shocking scene draws my eye. A bird flickers across the lake, wings beating fast. Then, slowly… slower… until each flap drags, like time itself has grown heavy. The bird falters, loses all rhythm, and falls. It strikes the water, and nothing happens. No splash. No ripples. No sound. Just silence, as if motion itself had been forbidden.
An ugly doubt crawls up my spine. Maybe Uriel sugarcoated the safety part.
Yun steps back. "You know, now that I see it up close, we should definitely turn around. I'd rather not freeze to death."
I shake my head. "No. Wait here."
I lower myself into the water. It slaps my skin like a sheet of knives.
Yun shouts, asking what the hell am I thinking. Whether I'm mad or a fool, almost begging me to come back.
I can't. If I trust Uriel's words, this is something I have to endure to ensure my survival in this world. To create the story we both want to see.
Pain shocks through my limbs. Each stroke of my arms takes more effort than the last, as though the water itself is dragging me down. Even my breath feels unnatural—like the air inside me doesn't want to stir.
Is this power—this magic. Is it the remnants of a god's power?
The air itself feels heavy to inhale. Each intake is a sharpened blade. Still, I move forward. Yun's voice becomes quieter every second. The last few meters stretch into forever. I can't even feel my limbs anymore and as I'm about to reach shore—my body betrays me as I sink like the bird.
My heart keeps trying to outrun my panic. I scream at my limbs to work. They don't. I'm drowning.
Is this how it ends? Doubt starts clawing at my mind. Did Uriel lie? Will I go back to Akasha the moment I die here? Will I forget Yun and this world? Will I vanish into this abyss and be forgotten?
Fear piles on fear and my lungs burn. I have to move. I can't let it end like this. I fight to kick upward — too slow, too weak.
Then Uriel's voice echoes in my mind. "Don't be afraid."
I latch onto the phrase like a rope.
Instead of trying to get back to the surface, my body drifts lower, deeper into the abyss. The darkness grows thicker—until, in the distance, I catch it. A faint shimmer.
An entrance. A cavern, yawning wide beneath the surface.
Desperation gives my legs a last violent push as I claw toward the hole.
I spill onto rough stone, coughing out the lake until my lungs burn with air again. My body trembles, still half-numb, but I manage to push myself onto my back.
And then I see it.
The cavern glows. Light dances across the walls, not from torches, but from clusters of luminous insects drifting like fireflies. Their glow spills across veins of crystal threaded through the rock, scattering colors that I can only describe as mesmerizing. Blues that bleed into violet, greens that hum faintly, silvers that feel sharper than steel.
It's beautiful. Otherworldly. And yet, my eyes are pulled to the center of the chamber.
There, lifted in the air, rests the thing Uriel spoke of.
The artifact of a god.
Its presence presses against me before I can even stand. A weight, not physical but absolute, fills the cavern. My breath hitches.
This is ridiculous. Of course it's here. Of course it's real.
My hands shake as I crawl toward it.
The air around it isn't right.
Some parts are utterly still—motionless, frozen in place. Dust hangs midair, suspended like tiny stars that forgot how to fall. Other parts are the opposite: vibrating violently, warping the light, the space itself trembling on the verge of collapse. Stillness and chaos, locked in an endless struggle around a single object.
The tome rests in the eye of it all, untouched. Waiting.
My throat tightens. I take a half-step back, every instinct warning me that nothing born of mortals could exist here. This isn't just an object. It's… a remnant.
The last breath of an age long buried. The last whisper of a god.
I reach out a hand, desperately trying to endure the weight of the void pressing me back. My fingers tremble.
And as the distance closes, I feel it—knowledge, raw and vast, clawing at the edge of my thoughts. Not words, not yet, but the promise of them. The promise of power.
My hand closes on the tome. The instant my skin touches it, the world fractures.
A stream of something—data, memory, consciousness—flows into me. Not language, not images, but raw information. My body locks. My head feels like it's splitting open as fragments pour in.
Symbols. Formulas. Concepts. A lattice of power I can't fully hold, not yet.
It feels like my memories—fragmented, broken, slipping through my grip even as I clutch at it.
Is this magic, this knowledge… is this how to wield a god's power?
The weight is unbearable. My vision whites out. Just when I think my skull will burst, the flow cuts off.
The tome burns in my hand.
"What—?" I hiss, yanking back. Heat blossoms in an instant, searing. I drop it.
The moment it touches the ground, it's already gone. Pages curl into black flakes before they even have time to ignite, the whole of it collapsing into ash. No fire, no smoke—just silence where something eternal had stood seconds before.
I stare at the remains, heart pounding. That's it? That's all that's left of a god?
No. Not all. The fragments still remain inside me, a storm of half-formed knowledge, waiting to be unraveled.
I rest, trying to muster the strength to go back to the surface. At the same time thinking, slowly trying to make order of the knowledge I had just gained.
After hours of tormenting sleep, I stagger back toward the water, legs still somewhat weak. The barrier that once protected this place is now gone.
When I finally break the surface, air rips into my lungs like fire.