OLD-WORLD EXTRA

492  A Smile

***

'Where am I?'

The question came to me slowly, as if it had to fight through layers of thick fog.

My body felt heavy, weighed down, and I couldn't see anything in the pitch-black surrounding me.

This darkness, though—I knew it too well.

It was a familiar void, silent and vast, like some shadowy ocean.

I was floating in it, almost suspended, but a tugging feeling, like an unseen hand, pulled me forward.

Only now did I understand how, or rather, why I was here.

My purpose was to receive punishment.

After Amon's speech, I returned home, and as I talked with my family, my mind felt slow, incredibly so. It didn't take me long to realize why.

I needed sleep. True rest from all that happened.

My mind hadn't taken a break in so long, even when I reattached my hand yesterday, I was still awake, talking things over with my people. If they knew what I was going through they certainly would've forced me to rest, but thankfully Lyra had my back as she always did.

She was too quick in covering me that only Kiera spotted my injury, and well, that girl knew best not to tell me what to do.

So now, when I slept, my corruption played its hand, taking my ruin as its greatest purpose, attacking my soul directly.

This tug I felt was that very thing.

I needed to accept it, otherwise, I wasn't getting out of here.

And that was what I did, letting it pull me forward through this personal realm of mine.

Soon, I began to see color bleed into the darkness, creeping across the space like paint spilled on canvas.

Red, dark and heavy, stained everything, casting the whole place in a sickly, bloody hue.

Gray streaks followed, swirling and mixing until the void looked like a distorted memory of a battlefield.

21:33

Worn stones and broken rubble started to emerge from the emptiness around me, a seemingly new addition. That wasn't the only change.

Now, every part of this nightmare was sharper, more real.

That made complete sense, as the closer I got to the pinnacle, the more intertwined with my soul I'd be, and the more corruption could affect me.

It was the same the other way around, as the closer I was to the pinnacle, the more my corruption would get induced, affecting my soul even more. An ever-climbing cycle that would result in my death if not intercepted. My feet landed on the bloody ground and rain began to fall.

With each step, more details surfaced, growing around me like this place was reconstructing itself, brick by blood-soaked brick.

Then, in the distance, a twisted hand made of many stretched out under that red sky, above an endless sea of blood.

I kept walking, heading towards it, feeling the rubble grind under my feet as I moved, until I couldn't.

My feet had reached the edge and I fell, only to get caught amidst their suffocating embrace as they pulled me deeper and deeper until I experienced a very familiar slumber.

And then I found myself sitting.

Just sitting... though not in the void, but on the edge of a platform, next to a few destroyed trains.

'Metro's Heart.'

I didn't know why, but I felt like I had to say here, wait for something. So I waited.

Minutes slipped by, slow as sludge, with nothing but the quiet around me.

They turned into hours, and still, nothing moved. No one came.

I didn't know why I was waiting anymore, but I couldn't seem to stop.

Hours stretched to days, and the days blurred into months.

The colors faded, and the sky darkened as if the world was aging along with me.

I waited through the seasons, whatever of them remained, feeling my body grow tired, weaker, like each passing second drained me.

My skin felt thin, like paper, and my bones ached, but I stayed, fixed to that broken stone like I was bound to it.

The world continued to shift, decaying and crumbling around me.

Before I knew it, decades had passed, and I was nothing more than a shell, a skeleton wrapped in rusted scrap.

All that was left of me was bones, brittle, nearly powder.

And just as I felt the last threads of awareness slipping, I heard a voice cut through the silence.

"You left me."

I looked up, though I had no eyes to see, and there she was—Lyra.

The one who I was waiting for.

She stood just beyond the rubble, her red eyes filled with feelings of betrayal. "You abandoned me. Left me to rot in these ruins while you… you just moved on, didn't you?"

I wanted to respond, to shake my head, to say something, but my jaw wouldn't move.

My bones were silent and all I could do was listen as she stepped closer.

"You didn't even think about me."

Her voice grew louder, harsher, each word cutting deeper, not into me, but into herself.

"Not once did you think of coming back. Of saving me. I was nothing to you. Just a tool—a puppet, a piece of the plan. That's all I ever was to you."

She was trembling with anger that had clearly been festering in her for far too long.

"All your promises, all that talk about trust and loyalty—lies. All lies! You left me behind like I was disposable, like I didn't matter! I gave you everything, believed in you, and you didn't even blink when I was gone! Do you know what that feels like?!"

Her voice was shaking now, quietening down.

"...Do you know what it's like to trust someone completely, only to be discarded?"

She took a step closer and her words became a torrent, spilling out like a dam had broken.

"I stayed by your side through everything, sacrificed for you, defended you, all because I believed you cared. I believed you'd do the same for me. But you wouldn't, would you? When it came down to it, I didn't matter. The plan mattered more than I ever did."

She was so close now, her face an inch away from touching what remained of mine.

"And even now... even now, I bet you're just thinking about how you can use this. How you can twist this to your advantage. You think you're invincible, untouchable. But what kind of person..."

Her words got stuck in her throat for a moment, too heavy to let out.

"What kind of monster can be so heartless? You discarded me, your so-called backbone... m-me."

She cried.

"You betrayed me"

The words echoed, announcing her disappointment to the world, her broken faith in me.

Lyra's gaze bore into me, daring me to flinch, to show any sign of guilt, of regret.

But I didn't.

I showed no reaction, not to the world and not to her.

That made her even madder, if that was ever possible.

Yet before she could utter another word...

 "See you later."

I let a slow, quiet smile spread across my face. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The world froze.

I blinked awake.