Enemies were everywhere. The curse had left him surrounded and weakened.
Identity had blessed the curse to affect any identity's follower.
For a split second, Aurelion saw his end when Kaelen picked up Valerius. But Kaelen was still far from being able to use that much power again.
"Aahh." Aurelion's face gained a clear tell of annoyance. The recently formed wrinkles, his reddened face, and the itching made it obvious. He despised showing emotions, or even feeling them, which made the situation worse.
Zephyr laughed, louder and louder by the second. His teeth were sharp, with saliva dripping out of them. "Giving up," he said, his voice splitting into new voices with every word, as if multiple throats spoke for him.
Aurelion looked at Zephyr. He wanted that look carved into his mind so he could remember how Zephyr used to look before dying. Somehow he managed to look around him. Seraphina's ceremony was still taking place.
The extraction couldn't continue without the identities.
Then Aurelion looked back at Zephyr. "I want his head." He ordered the thralls. The thralls surged forward, their unbreakable bodies slamming into the soldiers' shields.
Aurelion jumped between the soldiers toward Zephyr, his entire body winding up for a punch. He struck first as he fell to the ground. Zephyr cut Aurelion's fist with the black knife. The next second, the wound was gone.
"Wasting your time on a Stage Five?" Zephyr shouted, stepping out of the soldiers' formation.
Aurelion rushed in with a straight right. Zephyr slapped his hand with his left and countered immediately.
His movement was fast. Too fast.
"Your teeth, I saw them. Why would you sacrifice yourself? When you know I can't die." Aurelion shouted back at him.
"This was never about you. A man can only fight himself. And I won," he replied. His teeth were worse. He had gotten paler and thinner. It was getting worse.
Aurelion opened his palm and looked at it. Zephyr hesitated to enter Aurelion's range. Aurelion turned his palm toward Zephyr.
Thinner, paler. But the teeth were exactly as they should be. Aurelion had forced the curse to consume Zephyr faster.
Aurelion looked at him, body shaking, blood streaming from his mouth, reduced to a stick-like frame that couldn't withstand Aurelion's presence.
Zephyr fell to the ground, face toward the dirt.
"How does it feel to be overpowered by someone? Someone who was meant for greatness when you weren't?" Aurelion said as he lifted Zephyr's head.
Footsteps. Multiple synced footsteps came behind him.
Zephyr's eyes darted behind Aurelion. Zephyr smiled and let his head fall.
Aurelion looked behind him. Valerius had stood up. Seraphina was behind him. And the messengers, in their human forms, slowly marched toward him.
Suddenly Aurelion felt as if his powers had been taken down. Yet he smiled as he saw Kaelen behind all of them, standing up. Red and black strings of the unknown stretched out of him, constantly moving.
The room had turned darker. The gods had stopped communicating with their messengers. They really thought they had won.
They kept advancing until they heard footsteps behind them.
Kaelen had woken up.
A true god had taken birth inside that room.
Even with his powers diminished by his lack of control, his instincts didn't fail him.
Every one of them was sent flying into the wall.
But then Kaelen fell, his face hitting the ground.
Aurelion rushed to him. "Cover us." He ordered the guards. Aurelion knew there was only one escape: the void. He also knew that, under normal conditions, a human could never reach it, but with Kaelen and himself combined, there was only one way to find out.
The feeling of that place was fixed inside him, though he couldn't get there on his own. He pushed that feeling into Kaelen's mind until Kaelen's godly instinct caught it.
At first glance it blinded him for a moment. The structure was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. But the broken system holding it was pitiful. Nothing had bounds to protect the world. Not even resistance, if someone powerful wanted something, he would get it. No difficulty, no loss. Nothing was holding it together.
Even if Kaelen became the strongest, he couldn't change this. It had to end with sacrifices. This power, capable of fixing everything, was never once used that way.
But it all made sense: everything behind Aurelion's existence, his world. This was the world's origin, his true home. Everyone's true home.
A cluster of particles came near Kaelen and healed his wounds.
Aurelion looked at his feet. Particles around him took the shape of those he wished to forget. Those who had betrayed him were forgivable. Then he saw her, the girl he loved most, the girl he still couldn't leave. It hurt to see what he had done to her.
He wasn't in the mood for exploring after that. One by one, he traveled through voids assigned to different places, humans, and everything else.
Not long after, he saw something strange. Particles of the previous void were following him into other voids too. Then the world around him lightened. Particles packed every corner of the biggest void he had seen yet.
Aurelion reached out for it. An invisible wall met his hand. Something around him changed. He looked at Kaelen, still carried in his arms. Kaelen had evolved. The feeling he got from Kaelen before matched this one exactly: the feeling of a being beyond his own god.
Combined with Kaelen, he could see behind the particles. A human stood at the center. Not just in this void, this wasn't the only one, twelve more giant voids were packed alongside it, the same size. Thirteen of them could mean only one thing: gods, or those he'd once believed were gods. In truth, nothing more than humans pretending to be something they weren't. Nothing unusual.
It should have put him in a state of rage. But he felt nothing. After all, they still had the power. He'd always known about that possibility deep inside him, too long to be surprised now.
What did even make someone a god? He had no answers. Maybe it was better this way. So he left it for another time, until he met Identity again.
He thought about the void for a while: was this emptiness really better than the world he knew, or just another hell? Soon enough, he had to face the truth he'd been hiding from himself.
The world he lived in was nothing more than a battlefield where gods made their slaves fight. Endless wars that could never end, controlling the lives of everyone involved and not involved in their work. They destroyed the life of everyone.
Humans were born here, each with a void addressed to them, but the moment a void was created, its owner was sent to their world.
For a split second, though, they remained there.
This world was never meant to exist.
And no one would ever believe in Aurelion, or help him, unless Kaelen evolved and learned who he was.
He had planned to give Kaelen back the life he wanted, the life he deserved. But now I couldn't.