“I know because I’ve been here before…” I sang with my mind. Within the confines of the eternal nothingness, now I knew it wasn’t really true darkness, if the altar was trying to simulate the experience of a soul stuck within the spiritual realm – it did everything right.

  So I was bored, and a song replayed in my mind over and over again, and when I got tired of it, I played another and then another. Reality was that the Betrayer picked me because I was stubborn enough to stay within this soul-nothingness for eternity.

  That’s what I planned before it revealed itself. I begged, I cried, I screamed – and it was always met by silence. Because there was nothing to hear for my poor soul. For me. But when I was in the middle of reciting my memoir, the Betrayer appeared. The price for a new life was becoming a slave.

  I rejected. I could stand an eternity of nothing by myself. Being a slave? That was a joke. The Betrayer didn’t care. “You’ll do,” It said. It was a fool to pick me, or maybe it didn’t have a choice.

  “I can’t stand it, I know you planned it…” The worst thing was boredom and hopelessness. How long can a human stay with themselves and nothing else? I couldn’t count here, because if I tried, time would go slower.

  And all that mattered was time. I sang my songs, and sang them again and again. Perfect memory came in handy here; no longer did I spend time struggling to find the correct word for the lyric, I could freely remember.

  “Itzso Ai?se? Maeg?uz G?an?voll, or in English, I am called Magnus Glanzvoll, formerly known as Friedrich Spiez, it’s the second time I’m trying not to go insane, so hear the story of my life, in perfect detail this time…”

  It went on for a long while. Anything but the silence, anything but it. There was no throat for me to rest, no things too hard to recall. I remembered it all, second by second, day by day.

  The heavy desire to keep going and not dissolve into madness. It worked and for a long time, but there’s only so much you can do to be grounded in reality. So I started doing the favorite downtime of most people – making things up.

  “In the beginning, I started thinking. That’s the only proper beginning for me, got it, tribulation altar. I know you’re watching. I know you made this place. Or rather, my mind and my senses made this place…” The sophistry, I pondered on the meanings of all the interesting words, I did mental math to calculate made-up physics problems, I imagined stories of people unseen, I rhymed and wrote poems. The mental expanse was unlimited, truly.

  “If I spend enough time, I’ll unwind the design,

  Find sense in the sequence, each number aligned.

  No soul in the sum, just patterns that fit,

  A symmetry born from technician’s wit.

  From one plus one’s calm to the quantum’s remark,

  Each answer recursive, concise, and stark.

  No truth beyond proof, no chaos to mend,

  Just logic repeating itself to the end.”

  “Nope, this one is trash, I’ll just go back to thinking about forms. If only I could breathe, I miss that. Stupid, boring void. Hear this, altar? I’m making good use of my time! I’m getting stronger even here. You can’t prove anything…”

  I laughed sometimes, cried other times, thought in the voices of other people, and played with the identities as if it were a theater.

  “O, glory, glory, great hero, hast thou slain the demon?”

  “Alas, the demon turned out to be the world itself, wrapped in the form of a wonderful maiden. And thus I made her my bride.”

  “Wait, wait. Shut up, you both – did you notice this, altar? I wrote you as an anthropomorphized objectified caricature? That’s the point – you are a caricature. How many more stupid plays can you store in your memory? I’ll write ten thousand more! Alright, back on track.”

  “How could thou? A venomous beast, tamed by a hero, thou must be slain to rid the world of evil…”

  Insanity, that thing was made up. Inability to control your own mind, that’s true insanity. I do not experience hallucinations; I conjure them. And thus the great hero took the heat of the world and slew his enemies, but all was but the beginning, for his death would be more tragic to the universe than his life.

  “I-I live again?” The hero asked himself. The meaning of living again was lost, he died many times before, and such questions should be kept to himself – you understood, me? Keep it to yourself.

  Stoically, he stared into the expanse of space… Wait, I’m thinking which memory would fit best. Maybe something from Earth? What do you think, hero?

  “The dark skies that blinded you, great creator, the moment before the lightning struck the rod.”

  Good idea, hero…

  Life is like surfing. Sometimes you have high tides, turbulent in all of their experience, you feel sad, you feel happy, you drown, and you rise, and sometimes the waves are calm.

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  I was bored. Really bored. The mathematical and logical shenanigans made me want to stop existing, the smutty plays made me want to vomit, and forms without their results were just that - shapes in the wind, maybe even less.

  “That’s it, I’m talking about how bored I am. You won. I lose. Let me out, please? Who am I kidding that won’t work…”

  I thought I couldn’t really remember my time back in the void of death. I could… I just chose not to think of it. So long as thoughts were not given and emotions suppressed, the change was nothing.

  “Being a baby healed me from that trauma anyway, this… When I eventually leave, will I keep being myself? Will I regret stepping foot in here? Or maybe it’ll torture me until my mind goes blank?”

  Buzz resounded through my mind palace. That’s right, buzz. There were no background thoughts, no flowing ideas, just buzz. Pleasant, calming buzz. And these thoughts right here. I hated it, buzz.

  “Okay, altar, I can’t clear my mind. I admit it, I’m incapable of that. What else? Yeah, I’ll try this…”

  It all lost meaning. I tried everything I could think of. I filled a mental library with my mad ramblings and ingenious ideas. I measured how much I lived in both of my lives with every moment spent here. I got bored before I finished.

  Time brings change. People don’t like that – I don’t like that. I hate it. I Hate It. It…

  There was a wall covered with paint. Slowly, the liquid solidified. The seconds were counted. The minutes were counted. The hours were counted. The count was reset. I wept.

  “I’m tired. I’m so tired of nothing. And I miss everything. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” The projection was easy – so easy. I missed living, whether on Earth, whether in Gray Path, or even in that damned illusion.

  And the things I missed. I missed connections. How much joy was there in reading books? It was a way of talking, a conversation that made a connection, even if one-sided. I wanted to talk. Ivaldie of my mind turned into an empty facsimile, her illusory behavior so predictable.

  All of my mind constructs were predictable. There was no conversation with the Other.

  There was no other. There was me. I was.

  I was lonely. So, so, so lonely.

  And then there was light. That earthy smell of metal and blood. Those cruel, indifferent gazes, those nearly identical faces. I saw them again.

  My muscles felt alien, my heartbeat felt alien. I lifted my hand and starpower flowed so, so ecstatically. I wanted it, it wanted me. I was the world no more.

  I took a deep breath. The air was alive. I was alive. “Hello world. I am back.” I couldn’t be angry at the altar for its ridiculousness. Admitting loneliness as a way to pass? I did that a thousand times before, and I couldn’t care less why it worked now.

  I took a step, the vibration passed through my bones, the sensation of my skin, my VITA was better than all the thousands of poems I imagined.

  A squeaky, grating voice wriggled in my ears. “Hello, Magnus?” Siege – a terrible monster.

  “Hello, professor.” My throat was there, it was filtering the air. “I’m happy to see you. Can I hug you?”

  “Why are you crying? What was your tribulation?”

  This unwieldy, weak, childish body took a step. I haven’t felt that happy… never. There wasn’t one memory like that.

  “C-can you stop hugging me?” Siege stuttered. I never imagined the mental Siege doing that. It was unexpected.

  “Of course.” Everything was ecstatic. “Hello, Louize. How long was I in there?”

  Her eyes blazed with fire, just like I imagined they would. “Three hours.” She said, her frown was twitching, so peculiar.

  I made force form with my toes and dashed into her. She let out a yelp. “Get off me, human!” It was more of a roar, but I couldn’t care.

  “I missed you so much.”

  She couldn’t break free of my hug. “This wicked technique will not work on me-”

  “Your arms are weak, yet you are 62 SE. Didn’t you train your strengthening form?”

  “Damn emotion surge…” Louize couldn’t look at me, and I was pretty sure she couldn’t breathe. “Stop crying!”

  I let her go and wiped my face. “I missed the wetness so much. You should be glad you are alive; others aren’t so lucky.”

  “Is that a threat? What did the altar do to you?” That surprise was amusing too. I haven’t felt these things in so long.

  “It made me die again.”

  “Stop with that smile… stop it.”

  “It’s called genuine happiness. You should try it sometimes.”

  Siege whispered something behind me, something curious. “I might have messed up on this one…”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said. “Thank you, Siege, for trying to push me. I will remember you forever, and you too, Louize.” My feet moved, and the movement itself was a pleasure. “I’ll see you soon, not tomorrow. I’m taking a break, got it?”

  “S-sure…” The Siege stuttered again.

  The tears just didn’t stop falling. I left the ELEVATE room and I ran. I didn’t care where, I didn’t care for what. My starpower blew like a torch in the bright night, and I dashed, and the force form dashed with me.

  I wasn’t alone anymore.

  Your SE has increased by 5. From 45 to 50.

  You have reached Adept: New Trait slot unlocked.

  Your Affinity has shifted! Onyx -4%; Ruby +4%;

  Kory, Steel, Simona, Varaxis, Vogelgesang, Gretchen, Mousei, Azzurra, and, of course, Ivaldie. I must visit all of them, I must talk, I must tell them of the world…

  My feet stopped. I didn’t run anymore. That was right – there were only fifteen years left until the invasion. And then it was back to the eternal mindscape… If I failed.

  The solution was one – never die, know all, converse as much as possible.

  Ivaldie will die, Kory will live. I will kill the invaders. I will kill the Betrayer. “It was always so simple… Ha-ha… I missed laughing.” And so I laughed; the eyes of the guards didn’t bother me. The finger pointing didn’t too.

  “Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die! Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die!”

  I marched towards my room, feeling everything. I conjured my techniques, I pinched my cheeks. And I was alive.

  In but a few moments, I fell asleep. And I dreamed again. And then I dreamt no more.

  “Fuck… My head.” The ecstasy of living was gone. I felt hungry and tired. The pleasure of living was gone… I was lonely again. The memories… They became muted, the same as those from my first death.

  Of course, they were muted; there was only one stream of consciousness, barely a quale. It was painful to recall. As in my head hurt. I lifted my body from the bed and embraced the existence.

  I just stayed there, doing nothing, breathing. My mind was empty. It was called disassociating. I needed help. I wanted to talk to someone, to anyone… And the regrets. They burned so deep.

  How many subjective days did I spend wallowing in them? How much time did I spend lamenting? A recalled the list of plans. Ways to apologize to everyone, how should I find them, a screenplay of what I should say. They looked so silly when I was without the veil of illusion.

  “Apologize to Mitzi? What kind of moron made this list?!” Heartfelt, idealistic talk… I didn’t think I could say those words.

  But I had to try at least. Or else the damn regrets might get me. With swift steps, I aimed towards the second-year floor. The elevator took me there too fast. The hunger was secondary; I was too afraid of chickening out.