Chapter 16D: Array of Infinite Emptiness

I saw the stains of shoeprints in the smoldering sand leading toward shore. Any older footstep would have been buried by the ashes of this city of lost souls, so only a survivor could set a series of footsteps in the cinders. I followed the footprints so that I could hunt down Claire as it stood to reason that she was the only other survivor. But as I raced toward the silhouette at the end of this trail, I saw them crouched beside a small inlet with a second body in their arms. For a moment, I could not help but feel like I had somehow seen myself from the outside. Just as I had stood in the shallows with the body of my lover locked in my arms, he too clenched her with an unparalleled heartbreak. Small waves washed ashore beside him and shimmered in the light of faraway lava. He rocked her body in his arms and shed starlit tears upon the sand. I slowly stepped closer until the distant light revealed Donovan’s face. The steam had forced his short hair to cling to his skin.

When I took another step closer, I saw that his two children scattered the ground at his feet. He had survived the disaster only because of my warning, but he never had the time to find his family in the crowd. They died at the night of the gathering by the sea as a direct consequence of my own avarice. I realized in that moment that if he truly were my past life, then he had lost his Anna not by the stars but by our own hands. He had his cycle cut short by his own future life. I couldn’t help but wonder if the man who had killed Aeliana in slow-motion from a distance was also another incarnation.

Perhaps all along we were an ouroboros destined to devour ourselves, conceiving the same misery which we all blamed upon the stars. Perhaps I had set sail to my own destruction. But regardless of the reality, it made no difference in the end. I would not have undone my action even if I knew that I would inflict this pain upon myself. I said before that I would die for Aeliana if that is what it takes, and that truth is not bound to this one incarnation. I would kill all my past lives and pilfer their happiness for myself. If I thought for a moment that it would bring her back, I would torture every incarnation of myself and inflict upon them a misery so severe that even the stars would shudder with shock.

I said just a short distance from the place where he stood, “I know you understand in a way that no one else could. To save Aeliana, I would pay any cost. That is the reason all these lives have been lost.”

As he clenched the love of his life in his arms, Donovan stood upright and turned to face me. Tears stained his skin and shimmered in the starlight. His green eyes burned into me with a hatred which pierced by bones and poisoned my soul. He took a single step forward and positioned his heel just past the small arm of his fallen daughter. Ashes stained his arms and lips. His right fist trembled at his side even as he held Anna in his arms.

“I can’t pretend I have the power to kill you; even Bellaina herself couldn’t do that. Even with everyone in this city searching for you just to save themselves, you still managed to kill every last one of them. No force in this world has a fraction of your power, and I won’t pretend that rage is enough to change that. At least not now. But I will dedicate all that I have left to this crusade. I swear to you now that I will kill you at the end of all things. Even if I must scour the shadows for centuries just searching for the strength, I promise that I will avenge my family. I will give to them the vengeance they deserve, because you and I are alike in that way. We can focus on only one thing, and then all this world just fades away. All my life, it was my love for Anna. Nothing else mattered. But because of your crime, you are all I have left. Nothing else matters. And so what if I have to sacrifice myself? That warm, loving man that once defined me? I’ll place his lost love on top of the shelf. I’m a slave to one thought; I’ll never be free. My heart has become a bottomless hole. My gnarled, black heart has twisted my soul.”

I could feel his tragic agony dripping with every word he spoke, but I shook my head and turned away. Even in knowing that I had committed the crime that caused his collapse, I could not bear to see him for a moment longer.

I said to Donovan as I turned to walk away, “You may live as long as you stay out of my way. I have a mind meant for math but not memory. I can infinitely extrapolate the asymptote solved by subconscious but only at a glance. The day will come that I forget everyone who died upon this shore. If I cannot save her, then the day will come that I forget Aeliana’s face and her voice. The day will come that I eventually forget you. I will forget that you and I are one and the same, and when that day comes, I will have nothing to hold me back. That will be the day you die.”

But Donovan said as he held Anna in his arms, “This hole in my heart can never be filled. I will not rest until the day you are killed.”