"Am I... Dead?"
The thought came slowly, as if his mind was fading away, but Elias fought against this sensation of death and dying because, in many ways, this sort of thing was alien to him.
Even when his body began to decay and rot, his mind always remained sharp; it was the one thing that a broken body could never take away from him.
"No! I cannot fall... Not like this, not after I can finally hold my destiny in my hands. I refuse... I REFUSE!"
He could feel the darkness closing in on him, and it reminded him of the time not too long ago when he gained his Lumina and saw himself in that white void. Now, he knew that he had been about to die at that moment, but gaining his Status screen had saved him.
However, he could not reawaken twice, and the Status Screen could not save him again; he had to save himself.
The darkness descended faster, and it was almost swallowing his consciousness when he roared; he was not going to die quietly like a mouse. He said only one word, the only one he was capable of saying with his present state,
"No!"
The word was not loud, but with his convictions, it did not need to be.
It was spoken with the same absolute refusal that had carried him through every grave he had dug, every lie he had told, every piece of himself he had fed to the Passenger and the Swarm.... The darkness, death itself... hesitated.
With the last shred of Will he possessed, he forced his mind to move; he could not call upon his status screen, but he could feel a pressure that seemed distant, but he knew what it was... the Commander’s grace she had given him.
- Yseult’s Blood Fragment (Single-Use – Fate-erasing strike; restriction decay: 92%)
Elias’s body was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by his purple swarm, his short red hair framed his beautiful face, and it seemed as if he was a painting that would remain in this state forever.
Perhaps this might just be the case; he was in a Fragment of Divinity, and time lacked meaning in this place.
In the short time that he was here, Elias had accomplished miracles and broken barriers that had not been broken in who knows how long, but he still fell in the end, for what was the worth of a mortal’s will before the face of the divine?
Then his left hand jerked as if it had been electrocuted, before suddenly rising in the air and falling. Elias was dead, his body rapidly growing cold, but his will refused to perish.
His hand raised up again, and this time when it fell, it landed on his chest with a meaty thud. A few minutes passed, and the hand jerked wildly into the air and landed on his chest.
And so it continued, minutes would pass, and the hand would move, flailing wildly but always falling back to his chest. It was as if he were trying and failing to restart his heart. It was almost a comical sight, but after this continued for hours, then days, no one watching would be able to laugh... This was not just willpower; it was sheer madness that went beyond anything that could be considered normal.
The hand rose, and it fell...
It rose... and fell...
Rose... fell...
There was something incredibly sad about this, because despite the will that would not die, the body was decaying, growing stiff, and the might behind the blows was diminishing. It was proof that even if the will was still strong, it would be the flesh that gave way first.
Elias’s body was dead, and it could no longer heal, so his flesh on his fist and chest had slowly been exposed, as his muscles beneath his fist and chest were ground away by his relentless pounding over the last few days.
It was on the third day that something changed in Elias’s state. The injury on his chest had grown until it was possible to see a sliver of something glowing inside his chest like a small white sun.
- Yseult’s Blood Fragment (Single-Use – Fate-erasing strike; restriction decay: 100%)
On this day, his fist rose, and when it fell, it slammed directly into the crystal. This crystal had lost all of its restrictions, and only a small change was needed to trigger it. The soft impact from the falling fist was enough.
There was a soft cracking sound, and the crystal shattered. A sound like a soft gasp resounded, and the shattered crystal... detonated.
Elias’s corpse was surrounded by a white halo that began to char his flesh from his bones, almost as if he had been thrown inside an open flame. The halo flashed, and his body was unexpectedly surrounded by a terrible force that caused the ground to crumble around him accompanied by a growing humming sound.
This force increased, and with a loud crack, the entire ground shattered, revealing that there was another cavern underneath this one. Elias’s body was still surrounded by the halo of white, and he fell to the ground surrounded by falling stone, but it was as if his body was a missile as the ground detonated as he landed, causing him to fall through this level, tearing through tonnes of rock like a hot knife through snow.
What lay beneath this cave was a vast chasm that seemed to lead to the depths of the earth, and, like a star falling from the sky, Elias’s body continued its descent for minutes until it impacted the ground, and a massive flash of light bloomed from his body.
As spectacular as this explosion of power had been, it had been a mere fraction of its true might because when the crystal had exploded, the majority of its impact had been directed inward.
A supernova of silver light tore through his core, through every vein, through every nerve, through the very place where the woman’s cold hand gripped his heart.
Elias’s body was dying and not healing because surrounding his heart was the decaying hand of the goddess, and the Fate-erasing strike tore through the hand, and the scream that followed was not human.
It was the sound of something ancient being ripped apart.
Using the hand of the goddess as a medium, the Fate-erasing strike traveled deep into Elias, bypassing his flesh and entering the space that contained his Pools of Lumina.