Cost of sins

"What if I don't want to get recycled?" Aether asked, his gaze fixed on his feet. As he spoke, an unseen clock ticked slowly, marking the passage of time in this timeless place.

"You can't get out of here unless it's done."

Aether lifted his gaze upward, confusion evident in his voice. "Look, Ghost... it's been how long? For some reason, I can't count time."

Ghost's laughter rolled across the border between light and darkness, a sound both eerie and amused. "It's been a thousand years down there."

"What?!" Aether replied, his voice resounding like waves.

The laughter continued, growing in intensity. "Hahahhahahahaahahhaahahhaahahahahaahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaaahaah! The look on your face!"

He was just laughing, going on and on and on.

Aether, perplexed, reached up to touch his face. "What do you mean, face? It's—" His words cut off abruptly as his fingers made contact with something unexpected.

An eye. His eye. The realization struck him, and he tried to look around, his iris moving in all cardinal directions. But in this place, the very concept of sight seemed to operate differently.

"I can't see," Aether said, his single eye struggling miserably to catch even a shard of comprehensible vision.

Ghost sighed, a sound tinged with both amusement and exasperation. "Obviously, you can't. It isn't literal light. Isn't this the second time I'm telling you it's a concept?"

As Ghost spoke, the only two colors in a space of light and darkness made a difference embedded in Aether, betraying his form in this metaphysical space.

His missing arm glowed a soft green, while his newly formed eye, the only thing in his entire being that resembled a human, shimmered with an amber light.

These colors stood out starkly against the backdrop of swirling light and darkness.

Ghost's laughter subsided, and he spoke again, though no mouth was visible in this realm. "You aren't even that dead yet."

"What do you mean?" Aether asked, his amber eye now the only clearly discernible feature of his form, pure light touching the human iris in a way that defied natural law.

"I'm alive?!" Aether continued, his voice a mixture of disbelief and hope.

Ghost's form seemed to shift as if he were standing up slowly, though his exact shape remained indistinct. "Yeah, think of yourself on the brink of death. Proves why you weren't absorbed quickly by the light." There was a pause before Ghost added, "How did you even die? Again, I don't think I asked..."

"Uh." Aether hesitated, memories flooding back to him. He recalled running up a floor, getting hit in the hand by Adelaide's heat-sword weapon, and then getting burned after striking her arm.

Regret washed over him as he considered his choices. "I should have just run to that other door," he muttered. The thought expanded in his mind: "Or I should've run from Anna and Elara..."

Aloud, Aether explained flatly, "I was burned." He did not continue.

"Still, I don't know how you look," Ghost admitted with another sigh.

Is he getting more talkative?

Aether's thoughts raced, hope growing within him. "When will I go back?" he asked eagerly. "I mean, I'm alive, kinda, but I have a chance, right? Resurrection isn't on my list."

Ghost's response was measured. "It depends."

As they conversed, Aether's attention was drawn to something in the distance. "Is that a river?" he asked, his voice rising with awe. "Is this an island?" he exclaimed, his gaze fixed on the edge of the border where they stood.

Before them stretched a vast expanse of pure white, an ocean that seemed to extend to infinity. Aether squinted, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

"Then a similar darkness river should be that way?" he speculated, imagining the opposite side of this strange realm.

"Ocean, not river," Ghost corrected. The waves of light rose and fell in a mesmerizing pattern, their brilliance almost blinding.

"Ocean?" Aether repeated, watching the surreal sight before him. The waves of light moved with a rhythm that seemed both familiar and utterly alien.

Aether began to respond, "Look, Ghost, I ne—" but before he could finish his sentence, he vanished.

His white figure, which had been slowly becoming more defined, began to disperse like gas, fading into the surrounding space.

"I knew he wasn't dead," Ghost mused, bending down to sit on the cliff's edge, watching the ocean of light sway before him.

In the moments before Aether's departure, the realm around them had become more vivid, as if his impending return to the world of the living had briefly strengthened the connection between realms. The border on which they stood revealed itself as a precipice, a razor-thin edge between existence and non-existence.

The light ocean before them pulsed with Rasvian energy, each wave carrying whispers of countless lives and untold stories. On the opposite side, barely visible, the darkness mirrored the light, an abyss filled with the echoes of those long passed.

Aether's form, in those final moments, had taken on more definition. His amber eyes, slowly regaining their former light, reflected fear. The missing arm, glowing green, unlike his eyes, didn't seem to regain anything, but the green light slowly vanished.

He will soon reach the 21st realm.

Whispers of someone swirled around Ghost.

As Ghost sat watching the swaying ocean, the realm around him slowly settled back into its enigmatic state. The border between light and darkness solidified once more, a reminder of the delicate balance between life and death.

Ghost's thoughts turned to the nature of Aether's abilities. "A story skill that doesn't exist," he mused aloud, his words carried away by an unfelt wind. "I wonder when next he will appear."

Ghost's form shifted, taking on a more contemplative posture. "He'll be back," he said to no one in particular. "They always come back, one way or another. The question is, what will he do when he finds out he is always in the grasp of another thing..."

I no longer wish for you to abide me.

I wish for you to be by my side.