Chapter 577: Shattering Beauty and Deathly Silence
The Realization.
It was like a chain that had managed to break something within him.
A sharp KA-CHA sound reverberated through the entirety of his soul, as he felt something stir in the outside world around him, but his gaze remained on the magnificent snowflakes.
Of its five edges, one of the edges had dulled, showing that he had truly succeeded in understanding its rules.
Therefore, he decided to move straight to the next one.
It was the one at the horizontal right, and when Ryuk magnified his gaze upon it—
It was like peering into a world, and within it, he found a scene beautiful to behold within these runes, and it was a solemn scene:
One of snowflakes raining down the sky.
But it was no ordinary flake. These were flakes covered in those runes, all gently falling to the icy snow-covered ground.
“They’re so beautiful… so magical,” he muttered as his hands reached forward, looking at the perfect symmetry as they descended toward his outstrecthed palms.
But mere inches before they touched him, they suddenly cracked out from the middle, falling onto his palms in two divisions.
His fingers twitched slightly at the bizarre scene before he took a couple more steps, his hands reaching for a bigger falling snowflake.
And as he stretched out his arms, watching as the snowflake landed, just before it did, it suddenly had a crack spiral out from its center before it landed onto Ryuk’s own palms.
“Why… Why do they crack?” he muttered, as his hands reached for another falling snowflake.
It cracked.
And then another.
It cracked.
And then another.
It cracked.
And he continued—ceaselessly, endlessly—snowflakes after snowflakes cracking and crumbling just before he could envelope their perfect form.
But after running endlessly, chasing left and right, he suddenly paused in his steps.
He stood rooted in the snow, the flakes coming downwards—and that was when he paused, as he looked at it from an outside view.
His gaze, which had endlessly magnified, zoomed back in.
He now observed the snow scene from a distance.
It was like a cube, where the snowflakes kept falling—but cracking—yet they continued to dance.
And that was when he realized it,
“I was attracted to it due to its beauty. Its motion of falling. Its ivory-white, noble aura.”
“But when it landed in my grasp and cracked, I tried to reach for a new one.”
“One that is perfect… one flake that never cracks. One never broken.”
“But whether the flakes crack or not… whether it is broken or perfect… It’s still what it is.”
“Beautiful. And it doesn’t need perfection to be beautiful.”
Ryuk whispered as his gaze deepened once more, and he felt the flakes come onto his hands as his eyes shimmered with a soft light, as he watched the flakes crack.
And now, he could see—it seemed even more beautiful, even when cracked.
“Frost is perfect… but fragile,” he muttered, looking at the cracked snowflakes.
“But then, it’s still beautiful… even when broken.”
“Cracks are part of its charm, not something that ruins it.”
“The Destruction is still part of its beauty,” he mused to himself, and then watched as the world of endlessly falling yet cracking snowflakes exhumed itself from the edge of the Frost flakes, and it appeared before Ryuk, who wrapped his palms around it as it faded into him.
His eyes opened once more, and from the unfathomable depth inside, it suddenly splittered—his irises glittering, broken, yet it became part of its charm as Ryuk murmured:
“The Second Concept of Frost is: Shattering Beauty.” He murmured to himself, rewrapping and solidifying his mind around the concept.
One doesn’t need to be perfect to wield frost. Being broken is part of its beauty.
With the comprehension of the second concept, it faded away.
Ryuk moved to the next, the horizontal left edge.
But when he appeared before it, he felt something pull him into something—
A world of white. A world of snow.
Deprived of all sound.
In here, the breeze didn’t blow.
The wind didn’t howl.
The snow fell on the ground but made no sound.
Even when he took a step forward, no sound was made.
He raised his hand and placed it on his face, but it made no noise.
At first, Ryuk didn’t understand. He waited for a while.
Perhaps the silence was a forboding of something louder—but he waited, and waited, and waited—and still, nothing came.
And that was when he decided not to wait.
He began walking.
And walking. And after walking for what seemed to be an eternity, he found nothing.
The world was still… and silent.
And eventually, as the world grew more silent and still, his heartbeat started to fade.
The world seemed to slowly halt, as eons seemed to pass, and slowly, his raging thoughts were lost in the silence.
His knees gave way from the walk, and he collapsed to the side, sending snowflakes splattering around—yet they made no sound.
And then came the fear.
True existential dread.
The one felt when silence encroached upon you so much that you felt you might fade.
You fear losing your voice, of never being heard, or to be forgotten.
Even though you live, the silence whispers to you of death.
But in this death… in this absence of thoughts and sound—
In this unending stillness… he found something.
Something hidden in the depths of the absence of all thoughts and sound, and the presence of stillness.
A peace gotten from the presence of death.
And that when he realized,
Death never really needs to be loud. In fact, Death is the creeping silence that follows life.
And Frost isn’t cruel. It shares an aspect with death—and that is its inevitability.
And in that inevitability lies peace… and power.
“Silence isn’t empty—it’s the world resting. And sometimes, in this silence, growth occurs… just from quietly listening.”
“And Frost? Frost is the hush of the world—not an end to the world, but a quietness of it.”
The realization hit Ryuk as he felt himself hold his thoughts, not letting them sway until he reined himself in, and enveloped himself in the death of thoughts.
He absorbed the silence of the world.
In that instant, his consciousness was pulled out from the frosty world, as he felt the rune once more magnify before him—and then, it snapped straight into his heart, leaving it still.
“The Third Concept of Frost is: The Silence of Death.”