Chapter 16 - Seraphim

(1st Saga - Greater Magius, The Balance | Synoria Outlook Defense Arc)

‘Her’ eyes widened in shock as ‘she’ took a step back.

“For how long have you known?”

“Something wasn’t quite right from the start. Your mannerisms seemed mostly plausible, but you messed up when I asked you if Seraphim could have regrets.”

“Hah… I shouldn’t have put it past you to put the pieces together so soon.”

“But you’re not here to fight, are you? After all, you’re not the same one from back then.”

“You’re right about that.”

With his identity revealed, the image of Yukiko’s body suddenly flickered before returning to normal. Only now, the irises had been dyed a crimson red.

“If you want to talk, that comes second. First, answer this: What have you done with the real Yukiko?”

“She’s currently between the first and second layers, or as we called them before, the real world and the in-between. Don’t worry, I can assure you she gave me permission to communicate to you through her image.”

“I see.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me to prove it?”

“There’s no need. I can sense her will through our connection in the mindscape, and although I may not understand her motives, I can tell this interaction is something she wants to happen.”

“Thank you for believing me– No, I should say ‘us.’”

I still couldn’t believe I was having a ‘civil’ discussion with a corrupted being capable of so much destruction. Yet, there had to be some reason behind the split of Seraphim’s three identities, and finding the answer to that would likely lead to Synoria Outlook’s safety.

For that reason, I myself was willing to hear Seraphim out.

“I… don’t know where to begin, honestly. If I must fill you in, I’ll start with my own story.”

“Go ahead.”

The scenarios previously conjured vanished into the darkness as the void around us began to spin faster and faster.

In that spiral, I felt as if I were falling into a bottomless abyss.

“I was once… human… like you are now.”

‘My’ eyes opened beneath the shade of a tree atop a sunny hill, overlooking a massive city whose scale far surpassed anything I had ever witnessed and could’ve imagined.

“Our world was beautiful. It wasn’t the same as this ‘World Zero,’ as this world’s inhabitants call it, and I’m not quite sure where it is now…”

I quickly realized I was witnessing one of Seraphim’s memories, just as I had done with Yukiko’s before. 

“In this life, I was a believer, not in some metaphorical sense, but literally.”

The scene switched and I was now standing before a grandiose building whose angled roofs towered high into the sky. The architecture could only be described as majestic, creating a sense of inner beauty as I beheld the detailed scenes portrayed on the colored glass windows.

“I led our people in our worship of the gods, many of whom I’m sure you’re still aware of in your legends and stories.”

As I walked through the massive doors and down the hall lined with paintings, I glimpsed several artistic renditions of these aforementioned gods.

“You should recognize some of them. We have Zeus as that sculpture over there, Hermes in that painting, Aeolus in the one beside that… all of whom are the same gods beyond the Divine Layer of your world.”

As Seraphim continued to mention each of the depictions we came across, I couldn’t help but notice that his world’s take on Aeolus’s appearance wasn’t quite accurate to the one I had seen in my own mindscape.

“It was a peaceful, slow, yet fulfilling life… but of course, seeing how I’ve turned out, you can probably guess it didn’t stay perfect for long.”

The scene suddenly changed again and we were back outside on the same hill from which this memory began.

Only this time, the sky’s color had been dyed a writhing pitch black intermingled with fleeting bolts of white that blinded my eyes with each flash.

“Our world was free of the ‘corruption’ that taints yours… it was something else far too incomprehensible that stole our peace.”

I, or rather, Seraphim in this memory, was now running down the hill as fast as he could towards that same house of worship he had shown me before.

“Such a phenomenon had never landed upon our world. We didn’t know how to fight it off or how to counter it. We had never even heard of such a calamity. At this moment, I only had one final hope.”

Seraphim burst through the doors and bolted to the central hall, huffing and panting like a decrepit old man by the time he stopped.

Before him stood three people: one woman, one little girl, and one teen boy.

“They were my wife, my daughter, and my son…”

They seemed to have been waiting for Seraphim’s arrival.

“We’re going to stay with–” his wife began, but the Seraphim of the memory abruptly cut her off.

“None of you have officially undergone the ritual binding you to this house… It is my duty to stay here and protect the altar ‘til my last breath… not yours.”

“We’re not leaving you! Either you come with us or none of us are leaving!”

“You know I wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of my dreams leaving this life alongside me… please… go.”

The seconds felt as if they were passing by faster and faster.

Outside the window, an impassable wall of darkness seemed to be swallowing the world itself from as far as the eye could see. 

Yet, unlike the closing in of the Horizon as I saw in the memory with my mom, this energy was violent, threatening to tear the very fabric of reality apart as strained screams of both people and objects echoed from beyond sight.

“I will send you all off with a prayer… if the gods respond, we will have our salvation…”

His wife opened her mouth, but couldn’t manage to get any words out before Seraphim began shouting.

“Now, go! There’s no more time!”

His son, being the first to be able to overcome his emotions, grabbed the wrists of his mother and sister, tears streaking down his face. He turned, unable to say a coherent goodbye, running out the door with only part of his family in tow.

His daughter, her not quite matured brain unable to grasp the weight of their unspoken goodbyes, attempted to break free and run back, not wanting to be separated from her father.

His wife, now moving with just a shred of resolution beneath her sorrow, managed to catch her daughter and carry her out, kicking and screaming, but nonetheless with them.

As their silhouettes shrunk to specks beyond the open door, then to nothingness, Seraphim didn’t once look away.

Yet, his emotions in this memory weren’t quite what I had expected. Yes, there were layers of sorrow, of guilt, of hope, but beneath all that was a rising sea of emptiness whose origin I couldn’t quite determine.

At last, no longer able to see the family he left behind, he turned towards the altar with his hands clasped in prayer.

“O’ venerable gods…”

I didn’t get to hear the rest, as the Seraphim of the present began speaking up.

“But they didn’t respond… Of course they didn’t, after all, I was leading a lie… I sent my family off with a lie… The gods hadn’t responded in decades… our religion was a lie… but I thought that it was all worth it… to preserve our hopes…”

He paused.

“I had hopes… hopes that even in their seemingly never ending silence, they’d reply… just a speck of fortune… a single word even… but no.”

There was something broken in his tone of voice, not just his emotions, but something deep within the very core of who he was as a person.

I wanted to ask him if he knew why. I wanted to ask the gods directly why they had abandoned this world to be destroyed.

But in this memory, I had no voice.

“In that chaotic energy, I experienced the greatest agony beyond what the human mind could even comprehend. Then, I was given a choice.”

The scene was now a pitch black, endless landscape, just like my own mindscape, only with a barely noticeable red tint around its horizons.

“Do you wish to take revenge against the so-called divinity that forsook your world?”

It was a formless voice that asked this question, yet the one who asked the question indeed had a form. A being beyond the processing of the human mind, yet of no affiliation to the gods. A being that shouldn’t have existed, but did nevertheless.

I wasn’t quite sure whether it was my own perception or Seraphim’s from the memory, but hearing that voice, a series of words seared through my mind:

The First Anomaly - The Progenitor Of Corruption

An ‘anomaly?’ My mind was still recoiling from the intensity of those words to properly contemplate their implications.

“Whoever it was that asked me that question… offered me a choice. They presented to me the power of corruption, one unfamiliar to me in all my experiences– one that had the power to uproot everything the gods had created. One to avenge the years both I and my family had lost to their blind eye.”

He remained silent for sometime, the memory paused, frozen in time, as if he were carefully selecting what words to say next.

“‘I had already lost everything,’ I thought. I had nothing left but sorrow, regrets…”

Suddenly, the world shook.

I felt as if I were rocketed across miles of open air before that perceived momentum abruptly halted.

I was vividly standing in that void in Seraphim’s exact place, a memory in which I was the one remembering pasts that didn’t belong to me, faced with the same voice that posed Seraphim that question.

Against my own will, ‘my’ mouth spoke.

“I do.”