98 Sorrow, Waking Dreams

The pill flew down Yuri's mouth and landed in his center, and from his spiritual face, the first tears fell. As the pill of his most personal vice, they too were black. His golden body and eyes of white fire became stained with the mud of his self-hatred and pity, making murky trails along his once pristine cheeks. His arms fell weakly as they were outstretched and he limply floated amidst his own soul, steeped in the mires of negative reflection.

From his navel, a darkness broke from his skin as a dot of ink and slowly started to take more ground, causing Yuri to dimly look upon himself and lightly laugh. So this was the power his worst trait had gained as it fed on his illustrious soul. Thankfully, he had not started this process too late to succeed.

Yuri refocused himself after the initial shock and knew his decision was right to condense it all. A deluge of non-volatile thoughts that had gathered into a large mass were much easier to deal with as a single entity than, say, a string of wrathful and personal memories taken all at once. This was not trauma after trauma, but a personal identity that had slowly tried to put a veil over his thoughts, his actions, and his life. A screen that had succeeded, but one that he wouldn't lose to again.

In both the grayscale world and the blank and now oceanless space, his oldest flame repeatedly expanded across his chest, his abdomen, his legs, only to be forced back again and again as bursts of black smoke erupted from his back and knocked aside all forms of progress that the Sorrow had thought it had made.

Almost like a separate entity, it grew irrationally upset and lashed out. Chains broke from Yuri's stomach and circled back around his shoulders to cross more distance and act more tightly, more constricting.

"You tried that when I was 19, fool me once... you know the rest."

Yuri flexed his shoulders and the chains turned into more puffs of smoke, scattering outside to the real world.

Chains arose to tell him no one would miss him, just like last time, and he called them liars. Alera, Tonilia, Savos, Dremlaashon, Arvanak, his future sons, daughters, wives, and subjects, and even the whole College would mourn him if he were to make such a foolish decision once more.

Chains arose to cast doubts on the merits of his future, and once again they were liars. Questionable? Perhaps, but his purpose wasn't bound by the same societal notions and day-to-day necessities they once were. His was limitless, and hopefully full of a variety of the surprises he wished for, both good and bad.

Chains arose to call him faithless, to say that he looked upon nothing, leaned on nothing, grew attached to nothing. Chains arose to say that they would catch up once more eventually, that his life would once again grow colorless and bleak, that immortality was a lost cause and he would kill himself one last time.

Again and again, questions were cast aside by visions of his life's greatest heroes, the holders of his Sigil and the world he had shaped with his own hands, and by promises of a much more hopeful future. Much easier than last time. The words that his mind used to whisper to itself no longer had their real meaning and thus lost their weight. But that last question gave him pause.

'Immortality... That is what I am approaching, isn't it.' The dot of ink started to grow once more.

'I never did believe those stories even now, where the main characters gained immortality at the end and I was supposed to believe they lived happily ever after for the rest of their millions upon millions of years in eternity. But here is the thing.' He looked upon the ink and it halted in its path.

'Maybe Time is the true consumer of all things, maybe nothing lasts forever, but you certainly can't tell me the truth. I can find the answer to that question myself, I don't need you to fill in the dots.'

Further and further the ink had retreated into his stomach as the questions of his existence turned from an ear-splitting ring to a buzz of a fly. Outside, the grayscale had begun to gently recede as color and light were slowly reintroduced into the air while the pressure of hopelessness eased off the chests of every soul in High Rock. The mages seven were letting their lungs acclimate to a normal breathing pattern while using their elbows to sit up from the grass and regain their composure, looking at the sky above Ada-Mantia that was still a bit cloudy.

They exchanged glances between the lot of each other and had started to laugh lightly among each other, having lost the priority of investigating and merely glad to be alive. The Direnni nephew even slumped back down on the grass and laid down, not wanting to deal with anything else for the day.

When Yuri was no longer wary of the Sorrow and only annoyed, he knew it was time to finish up. He operated his body from within the Spirit Realm and stood up, his real eyes now alit with a fiery white glow. The shadow that lingered around him in the air evaporated and dispersed hurriedly, seeing no chance to come back home. Yuri smiled and tilted his head up to the now sunny skies before floating out from the Tower in full view of the mages.

"Dear Sithis, what is he doing now..."

Yuri puckered his lips and blew towards the sky like he was blowing out a candle, and from his mouth roared every color of the world.

With the sound of a river roaring eight miles wide, a stream of never-ending fireworks burst from him and ascended at an angle towards the sky and out of sight. Like a million ghosts of circuses past, they lit the sky in a blur of joyful chaos and cast the ground in sunlight tainted by its sheen. He had conquered every sin and regret, weighed and measured every virtue, and found peace with every memory, but he did not need to hold onto all of it for the rest of his eternity. From out of his mouth exited every unwanted emotion tied to a horrible memory, every grievance with himself that was undeserved or every grievance with another that he didn't need any longer, every thought of inadequacy and self-hatred, every doubt that weighed him. His raw emotions, of course, he could not cast aside, and his memories, which defined him, he kept.

"Please...don't ask what he is doing next. I fear he'll swallow the sun if he gets any more ideas."

The people below, still dazed, confused, and recovering, spoke not a word as the wonders above their heads transpired. Only books and rumors will truly encapsulate this moment for the thousands who bore witness.

After less than a minute, it was over and Yuri opened his spiritual eyes to look at the inside of his soul as the cleanest it had ever been. He was not expecting the view.

Above him, it looked just like the Record, but he knew it belonged to him and would be filled with every Record that he gained from now on. A night sky took control of the upper stratosphere and made a blurry black dividing line with the exact 'equator' of his soul. Four bright stars, in Red, Blue, Green, and Gold they lit the sky while a smattering of ordinary white stars filled it in intervals of a wide distance. His 'universe' didn't seem constrained despite not taking his whole soul, appearing like a mere window to a wide multiverse beyond.

'But what is below?'

Yuri flipped over and looked directly down as he floated horizontally in this space, seeing only white.

'Wait, that can't be it.'

Yuri felt that it wasn't an empty blank space, so he dropped in a free fall, freakishly without air resistance, and just before hitting the white ground he stopped dead in his tracks and righted himself onto the ground.

It was...soft...with a lot of give. He kneeled down and touched it, feeling fine like soil yet not moist enough to indicate life or any material he was familiar with. It bordered between real and unreal, but for some reason, he couldn't get the notion that it was soil out of his head.

'What...the hell...'

He saw something in the distance, already growing from the ground, that really shouldn't be doing that if it was what he thought it was.

*Dum Dum*

The white ground beneath had started to give a light rapping to the bottom of his bare feet, in a very life-like and eerily familiar rhythm. The plant he grew closer to was extremely blue, and the roots beneath it stretched over 20ish feet to under the ground, lighting up the white earth blue with every beat.

'The ritual being in mostly Spirit language had more significance than I assumed it did.'

Yuri knelt down beside the plant that was beating in the same rhythm in the ground beside him as it did in his chest. With five lush green petals surrounding a giant orb-like and fleshy fruit, which held fast to a healthy stalk of the same color, the plant grew up to his ankle and beat furiously as it did every day since he changed it. His eternal heart was represented as a plant here, slowly turning his Spirit Aspect into Mana itself while eventually growing into a gorgeous tree.

'So that's how it works. I guess that is just as mystical as I wanted it to be.' Yuri looked to the sky above, then to the ground below. 'A Record to populate and a Garden to tend. Those stars are Alera, Tonilia, Dremlaashon, and Arvanak. I can probably use them to directly modify or see my connection to them with the Sigil and the Record.'

Yuri got up and habitually dusted himself off before deciding it was time to return to the real world for real, this time. He knew by now, everything had changed. Yuri left as easily as swiping his hand, only taking a second to leave. Or at least, he tried.

───※ ·❆· ※───

White space crept to the edges of his vision, forming a tunnel as an image rocked back and forth in his mind. No, it was shaking.

He felt like trembling, like his world was falling apart somehow and nothing could be done to save it. He felt cold, weak, small compared to his environment and the outlines of panicking people in the same situation as him.

The image panned up and he saw the vague outline of a person in the blinding and cracking sky as a terrible coldness was breaking through the cracks and threatening to take over everything.

The outline, the person, raised their hands skyward and fought off the calamity but it wasn't enough. The person needed to do it, and he hated that. It wasn't fair, and both of them knew it.

But the person in the sky had to be the adult. They turned around, their vague image pointing its gentle hand out in some kind of meaning to project that they were sorry, that it was going to be okay. He held his baby-sized and blurry hand to them and tried to pull them back, to stop it all, but he couldn't.

The person turned back around and vanished, then everything grew still. Everything else was fine, but he was not.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Yuri breathed in a gasp of real, fresh air and felt a real, crystalline blue tear streak down his face for a moment before frowning in confusion. The only thing stopping him from brushing off that very blurry and vague sequence as a hallucination was an equally blurry and vague personal attachment to it. But thinking about it would do no good yet, so he shook it off and wiped his face.

Yuri looked down at a world that was looking up at him in complete and total awe. In the following seconds after spewing every ounce of unwanted baggage, Yuri transformed and pressed against the world in a natural yet powerful way.

He raised his hands and found them to be a pure crystalline blue, his skin looked like a sea of crushed sapphire while the veins below flashed frequently and quickly with a bright and even bluer glow. His muscles and bones survived unscathed, he could feel them both get nourished with unbelievable power. His Lifeforce, which he assumed would grow weaker as a Spirit, was kept in incredible shape in those two parts of him while also being fed through the Eternal Heart. His nervous system, stomach, kidneys, and brain had fused to his soul and lost their organic form factor while performing the same positions on an elevated level as part of his soul. The rest were destroyed in the process. That's right, he didn't need to breathe anymore, but would probably do so for the rest of his life anyway.

His hair was merely a spiritual part of his identity and was no longer organic either, but currently it was bathed in a bluish silver luminescence and waved wildly above his head as kelp in a stormy ocean. The whites of his eyes were now as blue as the rest of him while his golden irises blazed as they never had before and his pupils consumed all light in the vicinity.

With a single thought, Yuri returned to his previous skin and hair tone while clothes manifested on his body from thin air. Arcane Spirits appear as whatever they wish.

His presence felt heavy, beyond just more powerful, like with a single intentional swing he could rip open the veil of Time and turn it into disorder for a very wide range of the land. Like a single word of his would change the climate and the reality of life below. As if he was a single step, a single glance away from uncovering the native universe's greatest epiphany. As if he had been granted a new outlook through this grand new authority, the weight he held threatening to tear through every veil he hesitated in doing so before.

Yuri turned around.