Dying world (I)

[3rd Person POV]

Standing atop a large mountain of corpses was a man carrying naught but the weapons that told a long story, one that was filled with joy, despair, hope, and desperation. It was a story fraught with fond memories and a history of bloodshed as shown by the previously sharp blade that had dulled after days of ceaseless fighting, the man had already fulfilled his mission thus there was no reason for him to continue wielding his blade and yet he continues to do so as if it meant the world for him.

"Forgive me Kal'tsit... Dokutah... it seems as though the two of you will have to continue this journey without me..." He whispered while staring into the cloud-filled sky as if he was hoping for a reply to come before he slowly went down the mountain of his own making. Each step was accompanied by light grunts of effort and pain caused by the many wounds he'd have to endure under the continued barrage of the seaborn, the corruption was just another layer of pain he'd have to live through for the next few hours until he dies.

Small drops of rain began pouring from the dark sky which grew heavier by the second, giving the man something to feel thankful for as the cold rain acted similarly to an ice-cold shower that one would enjoy after a day of headaches and work. His reason for fighting was already fulfilled, the people he'd chosen to stay behind so that they could escape had already done so, leaving the man to his lonesome self if he were to disregard the monsters that continued to disturb him.

He reaches the muddy dirt beneath the mountain of corpses and continues to wander aimlessly under the rain's barrage before stopping in front of a puddle formed by rainwater, its reflective surface showing him a glimpse of what he had become. Days of ceaseless fighting had drained him of the energy to allocate for caring how much pain he felt which included the feeling in his arms, or rather arm since all that extended out of his left sleeve was a tentacle similar to what the seaborn had.

He notices that his horns were mere stomps now before turning his gaze to his face which lacked the usual smile he'd sport in front of the people he cared for and cherished, all that remained was the blank stare of one normal eye and one with a light blue dot surrounded by what appeared to be black goop. Irene had been with him just a few days ago but now her blood too was on the sword's dull blade, it was the only thing the man could do for her to ease the suffering she'd been enduring alongside him as she began to lose herself to the corruption's influence.

Thorns on the other hand was somewhere else fighting, the man had no idea where he was nor did he have any plan to seek his aid since he'd rather not force a friend to carry the weight of killing someone they knew as he did with Irene. The man had been pushing the voice urging him to fall and accompany her deep beneath the sea to the back of his mind but the incessant voice had risen in volume and broke any sort of ignorance he could muster.

"You are not Skadi." The man said to the reflection of the woman's face that appeared in the puddle, her beautifully pale skin and blood-red eyes that shone like ruby gems served as nothing but a reminder of the fact that the woman he'd once loved was gone. He didn't care if the woman was really there overlooking him from behind his shoulder nor did he have the strength or care to bother looking behind him just to check.

All that mattered to him now was fighting more of her kind and looking for a hole or corner to die on so that no one could see his badly damaged corpse, he didn't want to become like them and he didn't want to try looking for someone else to kill him. No, he was going to do the act himself, cutting the small thin line that connected what remained of his true self to the world of the living with the very same sword that had accompanied him through all those years.

Hopefully, Mostima and the others he loved were somewhere safe with Dokutah and Kal'tsit though he pitied how the others would react to the news of his death after waking up from the sleeping agent that he'd injected into them before staying behind. He had no need to use it on Kal'tsit and the Dokutah since they understood what needed to be done and he couldn't and wouldn't ever try to kill them so all he could do was make sure that they wouldn't die alongside him, after all, why should losing his life matter if it meant their safety and protection?

He had already failed Skadi anyway and he'd be failing the others too so he might as well go out fighting under the pretext of managing to at least give Rhodes Island and Elysium, his organization, more time to prepare for the seaborn threat. False Skadi had already promised to leave Terra to its fate as long as he surrendered himself to her but her words weren't ones he could trust since even though it had the same voice as her, it still lacked the same identity to it as the original.

Seconds pass of just him staring at the puddle's reflection before he went back to stumbling across the wet wasteland, sometimes tripping over the corpses of both turned and unturned alike before standing back up and going inside one of the abandoned houses. The house barely had anything to take note of as every cabinet and drawer was left empty of anything which meant that the house was either looted or the house's previous inhabitants had idiotically tried to preserve their material gains by bringing every single object with them which would only weigh them down in their escape.

He shook his head at the thought of it before pushing the door to one of the many rooms open, presenting him with the miserable sight of a torn cabinet door lying on the cold ground as hangers meant for clothing lay empty of the clothes it once housed or held up. Oddly enough, the bed was in mint condition if one were to ignore the small trace of black goop that had dried on one of the pillows but who was he to be choosy in where he'd die? The man had done everything he could, he'd fought and stood in front of the seaborns' relentless charge and given his friends and people enough time to at least escape for now and prepare for the defense of the last city so he can finally give up and rest now, right?

'Mhm... I can sleep and dream now...' He thought to himself while settling down on the bed after picking up and throwing away the dirty pillow to the ground while using up what remained of his strength by tightening the grip around his sword's handle. He raises the sword and pulls it deep into his chest, piercing his heart as "blood" similar to that of the seaborn's seeps out and clots into his clothes before letting his arm effortlessly fall into the bed's comfortable mattress.

He reminisces every memory he held of the people he cared for, the day he tried to kill Kal'tsit, Reed's pledge of allegiance to him, the way he met Mostima, the time Texas almost killed him, and the time he found Skadi unconscious on the shore all surfaced. Yes, he'd already lived a long life, and he was somewhat satisfied with how it was going to end and so he closed his eyes with a calm smile as he allowed himself to drown in comfort as death hugged his torn body and broken mind.

[Daemon POV]

I opened my eyes to see nothing but white flooring that seemed to expand infinitely, a theory somewhat proven by the fact that my eyes couldn't see any sort of wall to signify this platform's end. I never really believed in any sort of afterlife but if this is what it looked like then I'd prefer to not have the ability to recognize it as death or retain the key to conscious thought.

"What exactly am I supposed to do here?" I asked no one in particular while observing my surroundings, the entire platform seemed to have been illuminated by white light coming from somewhere my eyes couldn't see since it failed to spot any sort of sun, or lightbulb that would serve as its source. I then turned my gaze to my body, gone were the marks of my dried blood that mixed with the enemy's as my clothing was back to its pristine condition.

'Ah, that's nice, I guess? At least my horns and tail are back' I thought to myself while wrapping one of my hands around one of my horns after turning my gaze to my thin tail, I had lost both during the fighting though I never really noticed since I was too preoccupied with fighting. It was while I was taking note of changes to my body that various voices began to assault me, each one having a distinct tone that joined into one as a headache-inducing symphony that caused me to cover up my ears.

"How embarrassing, I can't believe one of his shards would lose to mere fish." A pompous voice that manages to separate itself from the collective taunts, causing every other voice to lessen in volume while I looked around my surrounding for the source of the voice. "Don't bother, a mere shard wouldn't be able to endure the sight of seeing an untainted God like me, I have been watching your exploits and I must say, you bring shame to our kind Hyperion."

"Silence, Attor, we both know how Hyperion is incomplete thus I do not see how you can continue judging him as if he still retains the same level of Godhood as we." Another voice replies, this time with a feminine tone that accompanied each word with a sense of authority which causes the first voice to return to silence as two small balls of light appeared in front of me, one of which emanated pure light while the other was of a lighter shade of dark red which released a volatile aura of black. "Welcome home, Hyperion, though you may not remember me, you may still call me Alina as you did so in the ancient past when you were whole."

"Indeed... little brother, I understand that this may be a shock to you but know that we mean you no harm as for what name you can use when referring to me then I'll leave it to you instead though you used to call me Ziselaer." A new voice tells me, a tinge of hesitation appearing in his tone at the mention of the words "little brother" alongside a sense of finality in whatever he said. A sort of familiarity began to well in my chest though the reason completely eluded me as I held no memory of their names even though they acted as if we all knew each other.

"I... All three of you are... What?" I asked while fumbling over which word I wanted to use to state the thoughts whirling inside my head at the discovery of having three voices owned by strangers appear in this afterlife dreamscape. I was already aware of how unique I was after seeing how I was the only one of my race to have wings but I more or less thought it was a new dominant gene though Reed did say that her main reason behind pledging her allegiance to me alongside a sizable portion of Dublinn was that I was some "God".

I asked what she meant by that and she told me of how she and a few others had stumbled into an undiscovered ruin near the outskirts of Victoria, written on the walls were a few depictions of a great war that brought ruin to the world of Terra, it was also believed that Originium began to appear and spread both underground and above the surface of Terra by the end of it. This war supposedly caused devastation that was more than enough to destroy all chances of life in Terra to appear and develop but a few Primordial Gods, Feranmuts, and Behemoths chose to sacrifice their lives and give their life force to heal the dying planet.

It was successful, albeit, not to a degree they would've wanted considering how many lives were lost for this noble goal of theirs but it was done, many were dead and all that remained either hid in isolation, went to sleep deep beneath the sea, or discarded their physical bodies alongside most of their ability to interact with the physical world around them. Originium and catastrophes were the by-products of the devastation, corpses, and resentment all solidified into the very ore that continues to kill the planet's population though whether or not all of this was true remained to be unproven.

"Your partner, Reed, was correct though she forgot to mention how the Behemoths barely aided in the same noble sacrifice you had taken part in, citing that the sea would heal all by itself in time." Ziselaer tells me, indirectly letting me know that my thoughts were no longer left only to myself but that just raises the question. Does that mean that her words, which I had just ignored, were all true? That I was some kind of ancient God that lost his life after a long war and if so then why exactly would I do that?

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind losing my life if it meant killing someone I hated with all my heart or saving only the people I cared about but that's about it, I'd never willingly give my life for the safety of everyone, enemies and strangers included. I wasn't one of those heroes written in fantastical books or protagonists in the myths passed down by the oral tongue of the many cultures of Terra so telling me that I'd do such a thing seemed outlandish to me.

"Hold on, Attor said he'd been watching my exploits which means all three of you knew of what is happening in Terra. How... how are any of you able to continue calling yourselves the Gods of my race even though none of you did anything as my people were unjustly persecuted?" I asked while narrowing my gaze at another ball of light that had just appeared in front of me, its color being unable to stay the same for any longer than 3-5 seconds as it changed every time. "You do nothing as Terra falls under the Seaborn's continued assault and yet one of you had the gall to scold me as if any of you have done something beyond just watching and sitting on your asses!"

"Enough! How dare a mere shard act as if you're on the level of a Draconic God like me!" Attor scolds as his dark red orb of light somehow turned a shade darker while his volatile aura erratically spread in every direction while releasing a high-pitched ringing sound, causing immense pain not only in my eardrums but my left arm as well since it began to decay and turn back to that of the seaborn's tentacle appendages. The pain only stops when the dark red ball was suddenly encapsulated by a much bigger and transparent ball, causing the ringing sound to come to a halt as it was suddenly replaced by an angelic voice that seemed to come from Alina's ball of light.

"Cease your actions, Attor, Hyperion is still one of our kind, regardless of how little of his original self and power remains." Ziselaer scolds as Alina continues to heal my arm with the healing powers coming from her voice, only stopping once my arm went back to its draconic self instead of an appendage. "His anger is caused by our inaction which we cannot allow to continue any longer which is why he is here now with us."

Various images and videos began to appear in every single frame that circled me, each one showing the ruins of mobile cities that had already fallen to the seaborn though some did show videos of a desperate melee being fought between the corrupted and the unturned. The armies of nations like Ursus, Yan, Columbia, Bolivar, and Kazimierz were already showing signs of being overwhelmed but some seemed to have been able to hold out for much longer.

An example of this was how the Emperor's blades of Ursus were managing to hold the line against the seaborn with the support of long-range weapons though even they had to do a fighting retreat up to the point that they were already outside of the screen's effective range. The image suddenly turned to that of another location, one that seemed all too familiar since it was the very same house that I had taken my life in but what changed was the fact that my corpse was now using False Skadi's lap, a single tear slowly falling from her blood-red eyes as the somewhat unrecognizable corrupted Thorns' figure slowly walked out of the room while dragging his sword on the ground as hard black and yellow spikes jutted out of his body.

The screen turned to static and showed a new image, one that showed a gate slowly opening with Reed and Mostima going outside while being followed by the people of my organization as Kal'tsit and Dokutah just watched them leave with all four of them having dark bags of skin weighing down their eyes. I only noticed Dokutah's own eyes once she removed the mask covering her face as well as the hood of her jacket letting her long brown hair fall and hover against what was most likely a very weak but long-lasting breeze that turned her hair wavy.

"Hey! What are you all doing!? Don't leave the city damn it!" I shouted while slamming my two fists against the screen's pristine surface, not a single crack appearing on its flat surface even though I was using as much strength as I could muster. All of the screens suddenly disappeared within a single second leaving me and the three balls of light in uncomfortable silence.

"Hyperion... we had lost the right to interact with the mortal world but I believe we can help you by transporting your soul and experience back in time before all of this happened in the first place but I need you to choose first."

Would you choose to continue suffering against this world's cruel wrath or would you rather rest and enjoy your time here, a place where you can do anything as you please?" Ziselaer asks as Attor and Alina wordlessly watch, the bubble that encapsulated Attor's orb of light disappearing as a confident expression appeared on my face.

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AN: I might've made a few lore mistakes here and there since I don't play Arknights JP so forgive me if I do make any. If someone who knows a lot about Arknights' lore is reading this then contact me since I need an actual beta reader for this fic just to check for any lore inaccuracies.