Chapter 255
Amid Theo's Resolve, Will, Intent, and Ambition, his old suffering became irrelevant, like a sad tale written in a language no longer understood by the surrounding reality.
In the outside world, before Theo who was still holding his hand, Aldraya's trembling physical body began to fade.
It did not vanish in an explosion or a flash of light, but rather like a shadow touched by the morning sun, thinning and dissolving without leaving a trace.
That absence felt final within the room.
Yet within Theo, in the depths of his consciousness that had now become a new throne, another presence emerged.
The essence of Aldraya now resided there, whole in its essence yet still terribly fragile, like a delicate crystal newly placed upon an altar, waiting to be empowered by a new current of life from the system that had accepted it.
Shoooooohhh!!
'I see everything about you, except yourself.
There is no past. There is no trace of you as a human.
There are only the results—worlds born from you.'
Fhuuuuuuuh!
'You never existed. And because of that, everything can exist.'
In a space without coordinates, without up or down, Aldraya's consciousness crystallized once more.
She was cast into a half-existing state, as fragile as dew at the tip of a leaf, yet with one certainty echoing through her entire essence.
She survived.
The essence of her nearly extinguished existence began to pulse, slow and irregular at first, then suddenly finding a rhythm.
Without command, without full awareness, she began to absorb.
She drew in energy from her surroundings—energy that felt alien yet perfect—with a wild, primitive hunger, like a land creature taking its first breath of air after nearly drowning.
The flowing energy felt neither warmly enveloping nor coldly piercing.
It felt right.
Like a key finding its lock, it filled every gap, every crack, every part eroded by doubt and hatred, without overflowing or causing harm.
Complete with astonishing precision.
Theo's warning echoed in her mind, becoming the only anchor in this vast ocean of transformation.
Aldraya obeyed.
Her eyes remained tightly shut, even as her other senses opened wide to grasp the new reality around her.
She did not dare to look.
She did not dare to interpret or question the nature of the power now permeating her.
She only absorbed, passive yet receptive.
She felt unwavering Resolve stabilizing every panicked vibration within her.
She felt a strong yet directed Will uniting the scattered fragments of her memories.
She felt clear Intent calming the wild currents of energy, channeling them into safe paths.
And she felt Ambition—always Ambition—cruel and uncompromising, pressing her not to waver, not to collapse again, urging her to remain and to become part of this greater system.
Yet, in the midst of that nearly perfect process of absorption and stabilization, a whisper slipped in.
Not from outside, but from deep within, so close and intimate that it felt like Aldraya's own thought, a truth that had always existed but had never been acknowledged.
The urge was too strong.
Her instinct to understand, her natural trait as an Administrator ever-starving for logic and origins, overcame the warning.
Aldraya turned—a movement of pure consciousness.
And at that moment, unintentionally, her eyes opened.
What she witnessed was not a terrifying panorama.
RWIA was not threatening darkness nor blinding light.
It was a state of absolute neutrality, a complete absence of fear, a foundation of existence so solid that it required no emotion to affirm it.
What stole the breath from her awareness was not RWIA's form itself, but the identity behind it.
As her gaze pierced through layers of concept, she saw Theo Vkytor.
Not as a human figure, but as a principle, a point of origin.
When Aldraya looked up—a metaphysical effort to comprehend—the entirety of Theo's "life" unfolded before her.
Yet this was not a coherent biography.
What she saw were fragments of works, traces of thought, narrative decisions that shaped worlds and characters, including herself.
What was completely absent were memories of Theo's existence as a human.
There were no records of childhood, no reflection of a face in the real world, no memories of any physical space he had ever occupied.
There were only results.
There were only creations.
This unveiled paradox struck Aldraya harder than any blade, more painfully than any existential wound she had ever endured.
Theo Vkytor, the Author, the Creator of this myth, had never truly "existed" in the conventional sense.
He was a productive absence, a void from which everything radiated.
Precisely because he was not bound to any particular form or worldly memory, precisely because of that "nonexistence," all creations could exist freely through him.
That understanding crashed over her like a tidal wave.
Without fear, without panic, Aldraya closed her eyes again.
Not to flee, but because she finally understood.
RWIA was not an enemy or a prison.
It was a vessel, a magnificent structure that contained something that had never demanded to exist in a conventional way.
And within that paradoxical vessel, in the midst of a nothingness that gave birth to everything, Aldraya found her salvation.
She was not saved to return as a dogmatic Supreme Angel, nor to become the broken Silvia.
She was saved as a fractional remnant, a shard of existence permitted to be, to breathe, and to pulse within the vast consciousness of an entity that, in the end, existed fully only through its works.
She existed because the Creator chose not to exist, in the most literal and most miraculous way.
First Arc, mid–tenth episode.
"The world can wait."
In the depths of a silent dawn, when the world was still suspended between dream and reality, a room bore witness to the most primal rhythm of existence.
There, upon a bed that became a small island in a sea of darkness, a body lay helpless.
Its steady, deep breaths formed a gentle pattern, turning into a soft snore that broke the room's silence.
The sound was not a roar, but a murmur of the earth at rest, the calm hiss of the machinery of life undergoing deep maintenance.
The first rays of light slipping through the curtain's gap fell like golden dust, softly sweeping across the contours of a face buried in a pillow.
That face was a map of a long war, a barren field where exhaustion had claimed absolute victory.
Long, tangled, and wild hair spread around him like tree roots searching for purchase in the soil of dreams, while the dark shadows beneath his eyes formed deep valleys that spoke of countless sleepless nights.
Theo Vkytor, a name held in silence, was the architect of worlds thunderous within his mind, yet now he was experiencing a fragile ceasefire.
His body, long a vessel of steel Resolve, raging Will, unwavering Intent, and blazing Ambition, had now completely weakened, dissolving and yielding to the power of the subconscious.
Every tense muscle had loosened, every turbulent thought had been silenced.
In moments like these, the creator became his simplest creation.
Merely a creature in need of sleep.
The room, with all its chaos hidden beneath a blanket of darkness, became a time capsule.
Here, 05:49 was not a number on a clock, but a liminal territory, where the remnants of night had not fully evaporated and the light of day had not yet dared to claim its victory.
To be continued…