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THE UNHINGED

A slope of light bent strangely over the rising staircase of light . Ella stood at the bottom, looking up with a perplexed expression . She was here before . A long, long time ago, before her eyes stirred open and her mind was cleansed . Well before Noterra was born into the world, before life sprung like flowers in the rain . Yet, her memories of those days were at best hazy; the flashing, blurred scenes that she could not fully connect .

She had expected to join Lino, yet was instead flung here -- somewhere beyond her scope of perception . No matter how far she strung out her Divine Sense, she could see nothing but the void . Slightly unsettled, she braved a deep breath and took a step forward, slowly climbing the stairs . It was strange; she couldn’t even feel them, as though they weren’t there, yet she didn’t fear to fall . Paradoxically, she felt as grounded as she ever did .

The stairs of light seemed to go into infinity above and beyond, surrounded by the trickling void . She, strangely, could not see a star in sight, could not even see a singular galaxy to say nothing else . The further up she climbed, the lither she found herself; more graceful, less consumed, unburdened . Her mind seemed to sharpen, the distant memories slowly beginning to recover .

The first to come to her in full was the day she landed on Noterra -- back then, the entire planet was nothing but a swirl of burning boulders and acid rain, rivers of magma and sulfur flowing ceaselessly . In the first Cycle, the entirety of the land was covered by an insanely deep ocean, before resurfacing back up during the second . She was asleep yet eerily aware; she could recall every single moment she spent, yet not the time she spent sitting cross-legged like a statue, ensconced in a golden shield of light .

The second memory to return was of her constructing her home -- The Hollow Isles . She remembered tinkering with the first signs of Qi, trying to call out to anyone who would hear . She constructed a sanctuary that was immune to all hail of death from the outside, surrounded in perpetual mist and shadow dusted in black . A simple, wooden house still stood there, she believed . A sloped roof, a chimney, a hearth made out of strange stone by now certainly extinct . . .

A strange sensation swelled in her chest as she came to a halt . The more she remembered, the more she wished to turn back . A grim premonition whispered inside her mind that, if she were to climb the top of these stairs, she would have to forgo all she loved in this world . Yet, an even greater yearning within her heart counteracted it . A clash, a silent one, resulted in her steps slowing, but the climb continuing . She convinced herself that she could turn around any time she wanted . Just a few more memories, is all .

The third memory to return to her was of the day she saw the first life besides herself inhabit Noterra -- it was a humanoid creature falling inside a steel construct that spat out fire from the bottom where nine, conical holes existed . He crashed onto a distant mountain, entirely unaware of her . She remembered his face clearly -- heavily bearded in black, his eyes like two, swirling portals to the abyss, body reaching nearly four meters in height, clothed in burned garbs that barely seemed to cover anything .

He stumbled out of the strange construct that blasted bolts of electricity within and without, his arms wrapped around another figure tightly snuggled inside a blanket . The memory completed, the covered figure’s face coming into focus; a pair of silver eyes coupled with silver hair that shimmered faintly gave her a particularly ethereal appearance . It was certainly a she -- as far as Ella could tell, anyway .

The man placed her down gently onto the soft earth, his emotionally-deprived eyes shedding a few tears as he caressed her cheeks . He mumbled something in a strange language that Ella couldn’t understand, but one word seemed to repeat time and again -- Alana, pronounced with a thick focus on the first syllable .

The man wept so for hours on end before his mood shifted all of a sudden, his expression turning grimly dark as he looked up toward the sky . A roar beyond anything Ella had heard, one defying even the formation of planetary systems, shook the world . The roar of anger, of grief, of agony, of pain, of regressive, unmatched turmoil . But, at the core, it was a cry of sadness . Ella could feel it in her bones . She had half a mind to walk over, yet held herself back in the end . He was a stranger, having arrived here in a strange way, looking twice as strange as anything else she’d seen . He was not hers .

As the man’s cry came to an end, black tendrils of smoke began rising from the edges of his body, slithering up and vanishing a few inches off of it . His eyes turned completely black, his muscles raging, veins pulsating fiercely and violently, as though ready to burst out from underneath his skin .

The earth beneath him turned blackish all of a sudden, as though the fire had burned there for weeks, leaving ashen soot behind . It spread and spread in a full circle around him, drowning out all other colors, until it shuddered and shook, exploding into a ghastly pillar constructed entirely of Spirits -- no, Ella shuddered in horror -- those weren’t Spirits . They were Souls of the dead . Billions . Hundreds of billions of them, a number beyond count .

"TAKE THEM!!!!" he suddenly spoke a tongue she could understand, Ella realized . It was not hers, but it wasn’t entirely alien either . She couldn’t quite explain it . "TAKE THEM ALL, I DON’T CARE!! JUST GIVE HER BACK TO ME!! I BEG YOU!! PLEASE!!"

" . . . " neither the heavens nor the earth replied to him, but the pillar itself shook slightly .

"PLEASE!! WHAT WORTH IS WHAT YOU GAVE ME IF I CAN’T EVEN SAVE MY ONLY BLOOD?!! PLEASE, PLEASE . . . please . . . " the man begged until his voice died out slowly, turning into a whimper . Broken . Completely broken .

" . . . should we?" a voice trickled into Ella’s mind, startling her . She quickly raised her hand and covered her lips, afraid the man might hear her . Quickly glancing around, she saw no one but the empty air . Did she imagine it? "Should we, Elanor?"

"H-huh?! Who’s . . . who’s there . . . ?" Ella muttered in suspense, backing up a few steps, repeatedly glancing around .

"The rest are in-between the dead and the alive", the voice continued, as though it hadn’t heard her question . "Yet, there is a chance for her . His daughter . His last blood . Should we, Elanor? Should we grant his wish despite the fact he swore up to our Opposite?"

" . . . I . . . I don’t . . . I don’t know . . . "

"We shall," the voice said quickly, as though it was in a hurry . "So, one day in the distant future, you may return to us . Please . Come back home . . . "

The pillar died out . The man’s cries ceased . The voice vanished . Ella’s anxiety shuffled into a shock as she saw the girl open her eyes . They glistened and shimmered with unbound life, yet appeared dull, as though her mind was not there yet .

"Ha ha ha ha ha . . . " the man laughed all of a sudden; his laughter was full of unparalleled joy, of relief, of happiness that Ella couldn’t even put into words . "Thank you . . . thank you so much . . . I’ll do it . . . I’ll do anything you ask of me . . . I swear . . . thank you . . . thank you . . . thank you . . . "

Ella came to a sudden halt on the stairs, her mind stirred . She only now realized her body was shaking with emotion, her breathing turned into gasping . She shouldn’t have remembered . She shouldn’t have climbed the cursed stairs . She should have turned around and walked away, just like the last time . It was too late now, however; she knew too much for her to return as though nothing happened, and yet too little to do anything concrete with her knowledge . She had to climb . Further . Higher . Until the end, wherever it may lead her .

**

Lino quickly ripped open the membrane of the world, tearing open a tunnel toward Noterra . His worries allowed him not even a second of respite despite the fact that he desperately needed it . He had, by now, returned to his ordinary appearance, unable to even endure the Edge’s presence any longer, forced to withdraw it . He was gone too long . In his worries, he had even failed to notice that Ella was not with him -- that she never returned from wherever she was flung off to .

As the tunnel through spacetime ripened, he quickly burst through, speeding as much as he could without tearing away at his body . Though the journey was short, it felt like an eternity .

He appeared in the high-skies of the Empyrion, right where he left . His eyes veered down, yet he immediately regretted it . Desolation . Everywhere . Death beyond measure, beyond count . Hollowness filled him all of a sudden, his entire body freezing as he swept his Divine Sense through . How many? Ten thousand . . . twenty . . . fifty . . . a hundred thousand . . .

His heart turned to a frigid boulder as he came across Titus’ limp body lodged between two rigged rocks . The man had a tranquil expression on his face, his entire body covered in wounds . Dead .

Myveen was in much worse shape, her body spiked onto a sharp rock inside a mountain-dip . Yet, even she had a smile on her pallid face .

Cain was, perhaps, the worst off, his body bared nude and stuck to a cross, a single sword dipped through his skull, leaving through his chin . Though disfigured, Lino could still see the traces of a smile on that olden face .

Amadeel lay cold, draped in a muddied garb, buried underneath a mound of soldiers . Just as a faint flash of hope returned to Lino’s mind, having sensed a trace of life in him, it vanished . He drew his last breath . Bid the final farewell to the world .

Tyvole, Surmin, Eynor, Fillian . . . all the young Generals he had spoken to before . . . he saw each and every one of them lying dead with their squads . How many? Numbers ceased to matter . If the death of a single person is a tragedy, what is this? What was the death of so many? This . . . is what you wanted? A thought flashed through his mind for a moment as his eyes began to weep .

It was the silent sort of a cry, the ilk only the winds would ever know of . His black eyes turned bloodshot-red, his lips quivering as though in the cold . It did little to ease the pain he felt inside his heart . It felt turned upside down, ripped and patched together ruggedly, pierced and sliced, burned and frozen . He couldn’t block the memories, and with them came the flood of emotions he was unwilling to deal with . Yet, he had to .

His empty eyes soon veered over toward the west where he could feel countless battles ongoing . They were still being pushed further back in . How many dead would he see there? How many familiar faces would he have to witness being culled from this world?

" . . . you can feel nothing . . . " the offer was tempting . Too tempting . "Be free of all of this . "

" . . . at what cost?" he mumbled, seeming absentminded . "To be like you? Silently nestle and watch while someone butchers all of your children?"

" . . . inviting, no?"

" . . . hey . " a soft voice whispered gently into his ear as he felt warm fingers tangle with his own . Turning back, he saw Hannah floating right there, her eyes mirroring his own -- bloodied . Her crimson hair spilled over her shoulders like a waterfall, yet even it seemed to pale in comparison . How much had she cried? "You’re back . "

"As are you . " he replied in a cracking voice, tightening his grip as she replied the gesture .

"You’re a grown-ass man," she said, trying to force out a smile to no avail . "What business do you have crying like a little girl . Goddammit . . . " she added with a whimper, burying her head into his chest . Lino could feel her tears trickling down his bared chest . Warm . Unneeded .

" . . . let’s go help the rest first," he said, his expression mellowing into one of love and warmth as he reached over and caressed her hair gently . "There’ll be time to mourn and weep after . By god, there will be time . "

"Together?"

"As always . "

END OF VOLUME XX

END OF BOOK V