Suiming

  Suiming’s body twitched as his clothes were soaked in the amber sea. His tears mixed into the gold as it bubbled upward.

  The bubbles popped. Golden liquid flushed him as he saw shapes moving in it. The grotesque, the foul, the rotten yet fresh smell of something being created, then destroyed. It was a smell he could smell in a perfume shop opened in a street stenched with excrement and rubbish. He did not dare to stare into the eye. It was filled with infinitely repeating shapes, each going deeper and deeper, shapes he couldn’t comprehend with his mind spread over in its pupil and iris. Every second of its presence strained his mind; he was filled with gnosis he couldn’t understand. There was no running for him as he drowned. A vibration came through his body, a low hum, resonating with his heart. Suiming relaxed his body; there was nothing he could do against that being, no escape, no rebellion. As he let the golden liquid fill his lungs while his body attempted to cough it out, the vibration intensified. The liquid-filled lung bubbled as the vibration turned into an understandable sentence.

  “Search.”

  What? Suiming thought. His head was strained by the madness. The vibration was only mimicking the human language, but it carried information too vast for his mind.

  “This is a prison.”

  I know, but why? Is it because I’m this fun to be around? Or I am so annoying that an Unknown Existence wanted me dead. Suiming answered, piecing his words together.

  “I was not the one who weaved this dream, the one who lives between drama and mundanity did…But, I have a question for you,” the voice said. As its voice echoed in Suiming’s mind, with every syllable, he felt his mind detached from his body, slowly losing agency over his movement and thoughts. The shapes he had only seen for a fraction of a second now played endlessly in his mind. Every tiny spike, every pattern that spoke and whispered to him now seemed so clear. He couldn’t put the things he was seeing in words, nor in thoughts, in any way he could understand.

  “Why did you embark on this journey?”

  Because I live in a world where it is too small to walk and too big to find a place to call home.

  …Can we end this conversation? I feel like I’m dying.

  “You won’t. I shall reforge your body endlessly, much like-” a silence stopped the sentence. With his barely hanging sanity, Suiming waited for it to end.

  Right, I’ll be reborn in ways I couldn’t even recognize myself, then.

  “Suiming, you are the creation of my masterpiece.”

  …I have one question.

  Why did Yel fall?

  The voice was silent for a while. As Suiming was able to rest his mind while suffocating, he found the golden abyss stopped flowing, as if the Unknown Existence itself was contemplating. The absence of sound felt eerily similar to the Realm of Gaps for Suiming. Same emptiness, same loneliness.

  “The Court of Everend shall not be reached.”

  The words imploded in Suiming’s head. His head was now filled with bubbles and puddles of hidden knowledge that he could only see rather than understand. That voice turned back to the vibration as the humming became visible. The scenes and concepts mocked him; no, it simply existed, yet its mere being made him seem so laughable. As he descended into the gold, his mind saw the lines coming from the horizon, lines moving by the frequency of the hum. From the nothingness, he saw the lines warp as he fell near them; they seemed near, yet so unreachable. The lines stretched beyond the sight and his sense of Realm-art. While his body fell, he saw the spikes emerging from the primal absence, spirals endlessly deep and intertwined, becoming greater than the sky before him, and in the spiral, Suiming could see beings appearing from nothingness as others dilute and fade in the same golden ocean. His nose was drowning in the scent of ash, yet he saw nothing burning.

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  Right as he was absorbed in the spirals, Suiming saw the incoming ridges, which were the same pattern, the same spirals that led to the madness. He no longer attempted to understand; he felt his sanity evaporating away, into the spirals he was falling into.

  As Suiming passed one of the molten beings that emerged from the spiral, it reached out to him with appendages akin to tiny worms. Its body shifted shapes constantly, flowing and changing like an animate cloud. The limb came closer and closer until it touched his eye. The pain seemed minuscule compared to this infinitely vast nightmare. Its shape changed again and again, one moment it was living, next it was mechanical, covered in screws and metal, in another second the tentacles became a key. It pushed into his iris.

  Then, the key turned.

  Black fluid rushed out of his iris as it flowed into the impossible shapes and spirals, forming something of odd shapes. Screeches of some kind of abysmal and deformed creature beat his ears. The screeching continued for what seemed like infinity, then Suiming realized he was the one screaming. His throat was sore, and he felt like his vocal cords were falling out of him.

  As his voice reached its limit, Suiming fell into the spiral, passing through the shape of the black liquid. And as his vision left the strange trance, in the corner of his eye,

  Suiming saw the anchor. It was still intact, just like how Ferr’s sketch of it looked. He tried to reach it, but he couldn’t; the distance between him and the anchor stretched as his trembling hand grasped for it. I am not dead yet. Suiming thought. That means I still have a chance

  He twisted his body against the agony, the black liquid splashing onto his eye as it obscured his vision. But he could feel that the thing was within his reach.

  Just a little more…

  Four thousand years…I won’t run away this time

  Against the chaotic feeling that surged in his body, his fingers felt freezing cold. Then the contours came through his overstimulated nerves as he grappled with it. Sharp, rectangular handle, carvings of runes that his fingers touched. Suiming held it hard and closed his eyes.

  If he had to die, then he’d die guarding a promise.

  Suiming couldn’t remember how long it had been. But his mind was becoming clearer; still, it was painful, and the things he saw could never be forgotten, forever etched into his mind. After still lying on his stomach for another few minutes, Suiming stood up.

  He searched his pockets for his belongings; most of the things he carried were still there, only the quill pen and Seren’s sword were missing. As he scanned his surroundings, a crushing pain came from his stomach and chest. Suiming felt something was stuck in his windpipe as he coughed. With the pain pulsing, he curled down, coughing out the black liquid, then he felt a rod coming out of his throat. As his lungs felt torn apart, he coughed that thing out.

  Suiming didn’t feel any scent of Existence on it. With his weak and tired hand, he picked it up and cleaned the black goo.

  It was a key, made out of a white, dense material, with intricate carvings of flowers and stars decorating it. As he held the key up to the sky, he laughed as he felt pain coming from his throat. His laughter bounced off the ruin’s walls and back into his ears as he laughed even louder. Suiming laughed hysterically as he started to cough uncontrollably again. He was alive, even better, he had a new mystery to toy with.

  After putting the key into his pocket, Suiming pulled up his shirt to inspect any wounds. To his surprise, his abdomen and chest were healed, with not even a scratch on his body. Suiming tried his best not to think about the encounter and looked up at the sky. It was the sky he knew, white clouds and a blue dome; he was still in the same ruin as he was before. Judging by the sun, it had been a few hours since he entered the rift.

  “Whose dream are you dying for this time?” Fosfor asked as her body emerged from Suiming’s shadow.

  “Who told you it was a dream?”

  “…Right, whose ideal are you dying for this time?”

  “Thesis, alright, Sage has to graduate,” Suiming answered, grabbing the anchor from the ground as he walked back toward Rinstadt. The distant city seemed so welcoming, even if he knew that his stay would be fleeting.

  “Why, though? It’s not like Auderheimian universities are pricey or something, stay a few more years at school, enjoy a little more youth.”

  “If she doesn’t complete her research, we’ll be missing big time….and I don’t want the Faustus to win.”

  “That’s the smartass I knew.”

  “Fosfor, before you light yourself up,” Suiming said as he looked at Fosfor.

  “There are six Barricades, and one of them is Treisaulian,” he continued.

  “I remember you told me Yel had six…criteria for humanity-”

  “Death, homeland, morality, language, history, writing,” Fosfor interrupted, her eyes closed as she said the words. As she said the words, her body burned in a violent, rapid fire.