You know, even as a child, I liked to climb to high places like trees or the roof of my home and look into space. Some of my favorite moments were when the moon was low and I could see the stars in the sky.
Space would light up, and the skies would be filled with the light of so many stars that I would think that I was looking at a river filled with pearls; however, when the stars shone so bright, it created a stark contrast with the portion of space that was dark.
As a child, I did not like looking at that darkness, because I knew that it represented emptiness, true emptiness like nothing I could ever imagine, and this was what I felt when I touched that which had destroyed the Gate Warden.
It was the cold and darkness between the light of the stars, the true between-places, and the Caelith hung in it as a seed dropped into an ocean with no floor, and the wardens were just a small obstacle between the Caelith and this thing that was coming for it.
I had never felt so small in my life, not even when the heavens themselves fell on me.
This thing that I was feeling was ingrained in the magic of the Gate Warden, and yet I did not see what it was. The Gate warden that had been killed by it had not seen it either, and this caused a chill in my spirit as this Sovereign-grade construct built specifically to watch the dark had not been able to see the thing that killed it, the way your own eye cannot see the blind spot at its centre.
A creature that had been built to guard a structure that would float forever in the darkness had not been able to see the thing in the darkness; there had only been the sense of something arriving, something that did not cross the distance so much as decide the distance did not matter.
In one instant of the Gate Warden registering a value it had no category for, there were two cuts, and the commotion that followed after that the Gate Warden could not fully categorize, and ten thousand years of holding a door when its purpose of existence had long been destroyed.
My consciousness erupted from the darkness, and I pulled my hands back, breathing hard. For several minutes, I was shivering, and the Hollow Avatar was quiet.
Once again, I had seen something that no mage was ever meant to see. The Caelith and whatever it contained was far beyond the scope of my world, and the first words spoken by the Narghul Sorcerer entered my mind, chewing into my sanity,
"Tell me, child, have you seen the face of God?"
A scream wanted to emerge from my mouth, but I gritted my teeth and held it back. The memory of the past would not break me. I pushed through the cold. There was nothing inside me to help me rise; there was no experience in my past or any advice that could give me the strength to rise beyond the cold. This was just me, and my sheer stubbornness not to be held down by the cold.
I don’t know how, but I did. I pushed past the cold, and my eyes widened when my status screen vibrated, and a notification pushed itself into my vision,
[Anima Depth: 70 → 76 (Adept)]
A sigh left me, our Anima Depth was a reflection of our souls, and the things I had seen in the magic of the Gate Warden had brought my soul an experience like nothing in this world would have done. It was not surprising that my soul had grown as a result.
"That," the Avatar said, eventually, "is the thing that brought the Caelith down to your world. I once believed something in this world may have attracted it, maybe the unknown thirty-second Caelith in the place of your birth, but this prison had been brought down long before it neared this world. We need to go on; the Jade Oracle still exists, else we would not get any warning when the seals are being broken."
I did not answer and sat with the knowledge I had gained and the slight pain in my chest as my Anima Depth expanded. Knowledge was actively changing my body, and the experience was... interesting.
Slowly coming to my feet, I turned towards the door and took a step forward, and the massive door rumbled, shifting back a fraction.
Ah, yes, my exploration of the magic of the Gate Warden was even more fruitful, because I had caught traces of its magic in my own, and this was enough to allow me access to this space behind this door.
Remember, one of the most important functions of the Soul Forge was to eat the world and feed the benefits to me, and it was not only Narghul Sorcerers I could consume; the magic of the Gate Warden was too much for me, but I could claim a small part.
I realized then that this must be the reason that cold presence had killed the Gate Warden in that manner; they must have harvested the magic inside them to open this door, and this realization brought another awful one to the forefront, that the impressive magic of the Gate Warden that was as vast as the ocean was just the smallest remnants of something far grander.
If that were not the case, then I would not even be able to glimpse the memory of the Warden nor take a small piece of its magic.
As I moved closer to the door, the thin red line around its edges began to widen, and a low grinding had started somewhere deep in the slab, the sound of something enormous and very old beginning, after ten thousand years, to move.
With the help of Soul Forge, I was about to access the core of a prison built to hold the worst things the heavens ever made, because some part of it recognised me as the kind of thing it had been built to keep.
"As you push deeper into rot and madness," the Third Gate had told me, "do not become what you have slain."
The door ground fully open, and red light spilled across the mirror floor, across the headless wardens, across me, and it was warmer than I had expected.
Beyond it, I could not yet see, but the Avatar had said I would find the Jade Oracle inside, the heart of a fallen prison that had been waiting ten thousand years for someone it recognised to come and stand in it.
I wanted to see... I always want to see. It is the worst thing about me, and it is the only reason I am still climbing.
I stepped through the door.