Re:Calibration / Framework

"[…]" "[…1jn…]" "[…1jnckj…!]" My eyes fluttered open as the cruel sunlight hit my eyes full force. A soft grunt escapes my mouth as I rub my closed eyelids. "[1jnckj], finally, you're awake! Huff, why are you always so hard to wake up?"

"Hmmm…" I let out a yawn as I got out of bed. "Sorry, habits die hard." I spoke as she held my hand and led me downstairs. "Breakfast was prepared an hour ago, and I've been trying to wake you up since then."

I sat down in my seat and picked up the fork and spoon. But before I started eating, I spared a glance towards my older sister. Bright blonde hair, emerald-green eyes, perfect face… and a couple more bruises.

"…Did, he hit you again?" My eyebrows furrowed. "[1jnckj], it's alright. Don't make a fuss about it this early in the morning…" I slammed my spoon lightly on the table. "It's not alright! Why does that monster always have to hurt us-"

"[1jnckj], stop it." Her normal cheery voice gone, replaced with a solemn tone. "No matter what, he is still our father." I grit my teeth as I began eating silently, and this continued for the entirety of breakfast: utter silence.

I jotted down notes as fast as I could while I put my focus on what the teacher was saying and internalizing it. "…William Ernest Henley once wrote on his poem Invictus: I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."

I abruptly stopped writing notes as I stared at the teacher intently. "The title of the poem is 'Invictus'. An Invictus means 'Invincible', 'Unconquerable', 'Undefeated'." The teacher spoke, as I just sat there.

"The poem contains invaluable advice to those who blame God for their failures. It is not only about God, but the mindset that makes one surrender while faced with challenges." The teacher added, as I wrote down.

"Challenges make one stronger but mentally submitting oneself to those impediments extinguishes the inner light that one carries inside the heart from infancy. The winner strives to win, but the loser never wins."

Another morning, the same thing happened. My sister smiles, I put on a scowl. My sister suffers, and I study. My sister… for years, a new injury a day. Yet she always manages to smile despite the inhuman treatment.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The river is flooding, and the sky is crying. "She finally gave up huh?" Water streamed from my face. Not because of rain, but because of tears. My trembling hands stretched forward.

The wind was howling, threatening to push me from the railings of the bridge. To where my sister had jumped off, moments ago. "Why…" I muttered. "Why… why… why! Why now!!" I bellowed out in frustration and anger.

I slammed my hand on the steel railings, though knowing the pain I would receive from the action. I tightly gripped the railings as I looked towards the river in utter anguish and devastation.

"Why now that I finally… finally…" I sobbed in the rain, the loud torrential sound drowning out my cries of misery and regret. I clenched my left fist that had held the job contract to a famous locally famous company.

My chest felt empty as my legs felt weak. "Why now that I had finally found an escape to the suffering we had endured?" I slumped down to my knees as I stared at the flooding river before me. "…This was supposed to be where you could finally, truly smile."

I kept it a secret, all my hard work. I studied and studied, burning countless midnight oil just that I could improve myself, just so that the two of us could survive without the 'monster' she calls 'father', whom I despise.

"What do I do now?" I cried out unto the storm. "What do I do now that you aren't here?!" I screamed. My older sister was my spiritual pillar, she was there when I cried, when I laughed, when I felt utterly sad.

All my plans were centered around her. Without her, they lay in shambles. I couldn't imagine a future where she does not exist. I cannot imagine a future where I am just a husk, a sane-less person.

I stood to she previously stood as I stretched my hand, only to catch the empty air. And I stood there utterly frozen and devastated. The rain and savage winds only served to remind me of the world's cruelty.

Everything was trying to make me give up and I found myself indulging the thought. What followed next was the feeling of drowning.

I stumbled down unto my knees as my body remembered the sensation and began to unconsciously choke, showing how much it hurt. The feeling of beeing tossed around helplessly, unable to do anything at all; the feeling of opression.

That was until a pair of hands held me from behind. I instantly felt warm, heat enveloping my enire being, and I started to stop choking. Though hiccups were present, it was still better and I had calmed down and stopped crying from the pain as I tried to rein it in.

"Poor child... it's okay, cry out your bitterness. I am here as your crying shoulder." A heavenly voice resounded from the person who held me in their arms, giving me seemingly endless warmth.

In my entire lifetime, I had onlyy experienced this type of warmth from only one person, my older sister... who left me alone. And so I cried, it was so hard holding it back at this point.

Only after so long was I able to release my grief and anguish from crying. I never had done so, it woud only increase the pain me and my older sister would attract from our abusive parents.

After what I could describe to be an eternity, I had finally calmed down and stopped crying, finding enough rationality to observe my surroundings. To which I had found to be extremely strange.

A pain of white, void of everything. The person who hugged me from behind moved to my front as she wiped my tears away, I was finally able to see her face, she was uttely beautiful.

Donned in robes of pure white, skin that of perfect complexion, perfectly symmetrical face, and pure white hair that compliment her eyes of emerald green. "You must have many questions,"

She spoke as she helped me up on my feet. "But before that, let us first have a seat." As she spoke, a table and two chairs facing each other appeared out of nowhere as we had a chair each.

I looked at her curiously. "Firstly, can I ask who you are?" I spoke with a polite tone. "Of course!" She excitedly responded. "I am someone with many names. But my most famous names are the Lord of Chance, the Lord of Mastery, and my most famous name; THE Lord of Flames and Order."

And as she said all of those, she pointed her index finger at me. "But you, you may call me Seraphina." She beamed a smile at me. "Alright?" I responded, hesistantly.

"As you can tell from what people call me, I am extremely powerful. Although it may seem that my powers are actually limited. I will let you know." She spoke, and snapped her fingers.

Instantly, the place where we were instantly changed places, currently outer space. But before I could say anything else, the place changed again, and again.... until I realised, we weren't just simply changing places.

We were changing places all throughout the entire multiverse. It would be unexplainable otherwise with the variety of places changing every millisecond ticking. "I am omnipresent,"

Her voice resounded, as the scene changed to an utter black place, without Seraphina closing her eyes and putting a lantern on the table, I wouldn't be able to see anything in the first place and only feel.

But suddenly, a loud rumbling occured of what I assume to be kilometers behind me. I turned around, and out of the darkness appeared an eldritch monstrosity, making me flinch out of fear.

From what I could tell, it's eyes alone were the size of the moon, that speaks volumes, considering the rest of it's body. It's were glowing in an ominous red, probably from rage or anger.

I stood up from my seat and began backing away just to stumble and ended up where Seraphina was.

It raised it's hands as I started to sweat buckets. And just as it was about to bring it down, Seraphina raised her hand and snapped her fingers, time seemingly stopped as Seraphina opened her eyes.

She lifted her left hand and made a gun-like form with it, the next second, she made a shooting gesture. "Bang." She spoke as the eldritch horror simply disappeared. Without any trace.

Without any sound or flashy effects, it just.... vanished. I turned my head back towards Seraphina as she just smiled at me and I found myself back in my seat, like I didn't stand up at all.

We were back to the place of plain white from earlier. "I am omnipotent," She spoke as she intertwined her fingers and placed her hands on the table while realxing in her seat.

"And I don't think I need to tell you the other one." I simply relaxed in my seat because I didn't know what else I could do about this situation.

"Moving on, I can tell your next question, we are in a newly created dimension which I made specifically to meet you. Following that, the reason why is because I 'randomly' managed to stumble upon your severe misfortune, and decided to give you another chance you could enjoy. Not too boring, not too hard."

"And yes, you actually died. Yikes, drowning, I know how that feels. You'll be given four wishes you could fulfil before you actually reincarnate. You could either use it on yourself, or for someone else."

The way she had explained things was quite rapid... but I did manage to get the gist of what was happening. 'Reincarnation, huh?' I thought. "Um, Seraphina? Can I ask what kind of world I'd be sent to?"

"Hmmm..." She hummed as her fingers wrote down letters on the table. "Seraphina?" I called out again and she finally snapped out of her daze. "Ah, yes. You have the basic right to know, I'm not like some certain sadistic bastards." She rolled her eyes.

"The world you're going to be sent to is in a post apocalyptic world, where in a type of energy called "Exsia" was discovered by accident when some scientists hundreds of years before the current timeline tried to cause a space-time distortion by collision."

"Unfortunately for them, the energy generated by the collision space-time shigama-shig-shig experiment had unfortunately, acted like a virus, and as like what a virus acts like, it infected things."

"This energy was capable not only infecting biological beings and kill them inside an hour, but also infect technology and hijack machinery. And as at that time, the world was what you could kinda considered technologically advanced.... the human population was kinda cooked."