What was it called?
The feeling of having grasped something, yet not being aware of anything.
He had no words for it.
But Ryuk knew he had grasped onto something.
Eventually, he woke up from the dream, finding that the melody had stopped.
At exactly what time it happened, he couldn’t really tell.
But when he woke up, back to that familiar garden of red roses, the first thing he did was look at the tree branch where that pink-haired figure previously sat.
Alas, he had disappeared.
The only thing left of him was the Violin that had fallen onto the ground by Ryuk’s feet, and the sight of it left his heart pounding hard.
The place where the Violin had fallen, the distance it had from its bow,
It was exactly like the dream he had, when the Violin dropped onto the ground from the woman’s grasp.
That same Violin had dropped, and now...it was waiting.
Waiting for someone to pick it up.
Waiting for...him?
"Is this the end purpose of the system?" Ryuk muttered, standing to his feet.
"To find an heir to the Violin."
"To continue the play, just like the past?"
The woman had played the Violin and eventually dispersed, only for it to be picked up by the boy.
And now, the boy had also dispersed, and here was Ryuk, with the fallen Violin just a few meters away from him.
Unconsciously, he stepped forward towards the Violin, bending to the ground, and he reached towards it with his right hand.
But just a few inches from succeeding, his hands paused, having been gripped at the elbow by his left hand, forcing it to a halt.
"No...No."
He muttered out loud, withdrawing his hands as he took steps away from the Violin.
"This... This isn’t like the past."
The past he was shown in the dream.
There was a garden of two colors.
Red roses and blue lilies.
But when Ryuk looked around him, there were only red roses. Not a single speck of blue lilies could be found.
The past he was shown had various draconic creatures swooning around.
But there was no draconic creature in this garden at all, only the golden orbs, which were their remnant spirit before they were all dispersed.
The boy had taken after the mother’s past, but he never recreated that same glory into the realm.
His play didn’t birth the blue lilies, and the creatures in the garden never returned.
The past was repeated with the same play, but...it was never complete.
If he grabbed the Violin now...
No.
He needed to understand why.
Why did the dragons never return?
Why did the blue lilies never grow?
What was the boy missing?
He had grasped onto something but...exactly what?
With the understanding that something wasn’t quite right, Ryuk’s outstretched hand was returned, and instead, he turned to look at the hanging orbs of light.
They all were still gathered around, now even in larger numbers as if they were waiting for him to pick up the Violin and restart the melody.
The orbs were what was left after the draconic creatures faded.
’Is the Orb their soul?’
’Or their corpse?’
He gained an interest in these shining golden bulbs and he moved out towards one of them.
When he got closer, they didn’t move back away from him, remaining in the same place, and Ryuk’s hands moved out, grabbing one of them.
It felt incredibly heavy, so he moved his other hand.
With both hands wrapped around that orb, he brought it closer to look at it.
It was heavy...too heavy.
So he sat on the ground instead, and tried to look deeper into the orb.
What he found was a realm within the orb.
A realm where snow fell and the howling of cold storms brushed all around.
In this realm of white, something caught his eye: the silhouette of a lone mountain right at the center of the realm.
On top of this mountain, there was a creature.
A draconic creature covered in scales of white, with two gigantic wings piercing high above it, its head raised in the motion of delivering a powerful roar to the sky.
But it wasn’t moving.
It appeared...frozen, in this fiery state of it.
"A frost dragon..."
"This ought to be Isha’s last evolutionary state..." Ryuk muttered to himself as he slowly took his gaze away from the orb, only for something to arrest his attention.
He felt light flickering around him, and as he turned, his breath caught in surprise.
In a small radius of about a meter where he sat, there were blooming blue lilies all around him, mixed in with the red roses.
"The blue lilies grew!?"
He muttered, perplexed and at the same time confused.
They were the blue lilies he remembered from the dream, but they bore a clear difference.
The blue lilies in the dream had bloomed, their petals having spread, but these around his feet were yet to bloom.
"Was it by looking at an orb that the lilies return?" he thought, looking at the orb in his hands.
He rose back to his feet, putting the orb where he took it from, before his hands reached for another orb.
He sat on the ground and looked into it.
This time, the scene was different.
The realm was a single massive mountain, the ground around it cracked and filled with molten red.
Looking into the mountain itself, it was bubbling with thick lava, and within was the submerged body of a pitch-red scaled dragon, the only thing revealed being its head, whose maws were wide open.
"A Flame Dragon."
It held the same stance as the Frost Dragon, roaring furiously to the sky, while also stuck in its motion.
FLICCCKKKERRR
Ryuk turned away from the orb, noticing another flicker of light, and that was when he saw that in an area of 3 meters, blue lilies had grown once more mixed in with red.
He didn’t immediately head to another orb, instead sitting down to rethink and after a few hours passed by in silent contemplation, he exhaled deeply
"I understand now,"