Chapter ?: The Eye Beyond All Things?

Chapter ?: The Eye Beyond All Things?

The moment my essence reconnected with the mortal shell—the long-abandoned husk that once bore my name—I anticipated a seamless convergence, a meeting of past and present across the spectral divide. There would be no drama, I thought, only the hum of resonance and the sigh of memory reuniting with vessel. But the universe, ever fond of irony, had prepared something else.

It began with a subtle stillness, not the kind that precedes a storm, but one that feels scripted—as though reality had paused its breath. The chamber around me, woven with runes older than nations, seemed to shift. The air, dense with layered glyphs and stabilizing wards, grew heavier, not from power, but from awareness. As if some unseen observer had turned its gaze inward.

The fracture appeared without warning. A hairline split stretched across the atmosphere like a whisper of unbeing, elegant in its precision and absolute in its intent. There was no sound, no shatter of glass, only the sensation that a rule had been broken. A fundamental truth had faltered.

The light in the chamber did not dim in brightness, but in meaning. It was as though illumination had chosen to withhold its purpose, retreating from its role without extinguishing itself. And there, nested in the heart of that elegant crack, something looked back.

Not a creature, not a god, not even a force in the traditional sense. What emerged—or perhaps had always been watching—was an eye. Not constructed of matter, nor of light, but of perception itself. It stared, not to see, but to reveal. To observe everything without limit, and in doing so, unravel the things it watched.

''ዘመኑ አልተመረጠም፤ አሳት ነው።''

I stood still. Not paralyzed. Not afraid. Simply... intrigued.

"Curious," I uttered, the word escaping like a breath from a room with no air.

What was it? Certainly not divine. I had encountered gods, bartered with them, broken them. And yet none had inspired this sense of detachment, of cold omnipresence. A cosmic entity? No, too reactive. Too personal. This thing—this Eye—was pure awareness, stripped of desire or design.

It did not blink. It did not shift. But with its presence alone, time itself seemed to tremble, as if unsure whether it still flowed.

Then came the thought—not planted, not intrusive, but inevitable:

What if this being hails not from beyond our world, but from beyond the absence of all worlds?

The Void is a concept I have long since made peace with. But this... this was not the Void. This was beyond even that final silence. A place where things that are not even allowed to not exist dwell.

Behind me, Raizel moved.

He had been there the entire time, of course. He always was. The guardian of moments, the observer of truths best left unearthed. And yet, his movement now carried weight.

I turned slowly, though I didn't need to. His expression had shifted—not in fear or awe, but in recognition. And something else... resignation.

"You knew," I said, more a confirmation than an accusation.

He did not deny it.

"I suspected."

That was all.

And then the Eye blinked.

The fracture in the chamber widened—not with violence, but with intention. Like a wound opening willingly to reveal what festered beneath. Through it, a hand emerged—if such a thing could be called a hand.

It was white, yes. But not pale or drained or ghostly. It was the absence of anything. A shape born of conceptual necessity, without veins, without texture, without meaning.

It raised two fingers, and the moment paused—perhaps for my sake. Then, it snapped.

There was no sound. No rush of air. No pressure wave.

Only consequence.

My body—arcane, reinforced, perfected beyond mortality—detonated inwardly, not with heat or destruction, but with the precision of something correcting an equation. My senses didn't register pain. They registered revision. As if I had never been meant to persist past this moment.

I collapsed. Not in agony. In analysis.

Raizel appeared beside me, not in haste, not to aid, but to bear witness.

He looked down upon my dissolving form and spoke with cold honesty.

"Not everything can be prepared for."

I smiled, lips already fading, bones turning to thought.

"Then perhaps this was never meant to be prevented."

And still, I thought.

Because that is what I am.

A thinker.

Even as I ceased to be.

...

There was no sensation of falling, no visceral drop into the abyss, nor the familiar drag of spatial displacement one might feel during forced teleportation or planar collapse. What came instead was something far subtler—far crueler in its elegance. It was as if continuity itself had been severed, the thread of my existence simply snipped with silent precision, leaving me adrift not in space, not in time, but in the hollowed absence of both.

I existed, and yet I did not.

Not because my soul was destroyed, nor because I had passed into some afterlife or spiritual plane—I was far beyond such limited metaphysical destinations. I simply was… displaced. Removed from the equation not by force, but by decree.

It was in this unanchored state that I began to reflect—not out of desperation, nor out of fear, but with the cold, deliberate clarity of one who has outlived every system of thought and faith that ever tried to define him. I had felt pain before, had endured the unraveling of flesh and soul alike, but this… this was not suffering. This was detachment made manifest.

And even in that void—a place stripped of stimuli, stripped of shape or sequence—I could still observe. Not with eyes, but with presence. Not with thought, but with the echo of thought's memory.

"If this is erasure," I mused to no one, "then it is not total. Something still watches. Something still allows me to think."

Whether that "something" was myself, or some residual thread clinging to continuity like a moth to flame, I could not say. But it amused me. Even now—whatever now meant—my mind clung to analysis, to speculation, to the deep and endless hunger for understanding.

And then, without warning or transition, I opened my eyes.

The return to consciousness came not with a jolt or gasp, but with the quiet certainty of waking from a centuries-long meditation. The ceiling above me was white—almost offensively so—with a flatness and sterility that defied all magical texture. It was a man-made white, artificial and devoid of life, illuminated by soft buzzing lights that bore no trace of elemental source or arcane infusion.

I turned my head slowly, noting the materials of the room: polished wooden floors, a dresser with metallic handles, a desk cluttered with mundane books and paper. A clock blinked softly in the corner—digital, electrical—its red numbers flashing in monotonous defiance of the silence.

As I sat upright, I realized that my body responded not with ethereal grace or undead stability, but with the minor discomfort of mortal muscles adjusting after rest. My breath—a breath—escaped without my consent. The subtle weight in my chest, the warmth of blood… it was unmistakable.

I was... alive.

Not in the pseudo-sense of animated decay or preserved necromantic function. Not in the esoteric way a Lich "lives."

I was truly, organically, impossibly alive.

I rose without urgency, walked to the corner of the room where a full-length mirror awaited, and stared into it—not with shock, nor dread, but with quiet interest.

The reflection was mine. Or at least, it had once been. White hair, aged features, lines that spoke not of decay but of time honestly lived. I appeared perhaps fifty, though I knew the face well—it was how I had looked not long before the ritual that tore me from humanity and into something more… enduring.

My eyes, however, were different. They were not the glowing orbs of arcane power I had grown accustomed to—they were human. Calculating, steady, yes… but human nonetheless.

I stood there for some time, studying myself, as if waiting for the image to shift into something more familiar. It did not.

Eventually, I turned and took in the rest of the dwelling—there was little of note: a blinking modem, a desk chair with wheels, a computer in sleep mode humming faintly. Technology, yes, but not impossibly advanced. This was no world of magitek fusion or ancient-machine hybridization. This was modern… grounded.

Earth-like.

But no place I had ever called home.

I moved toward the desk and brushed my hand against the keyboard. The computer stirred in response. Primitive interface. A login screen. Password protected.

I smiled faintly, not because of what I saw, but because of what I didn't.

No wards. No barriers. No magical encryption. Only human limitations.

"Curious," I murmured, almost to myself, "not just when... but why?"

I turned again, looking out through the glass pane behind the desk. A city sprawled beyond the horizon. Familiar in structure—buildings, streets, silent cars—yet eerily still. No people. No motion. The world existed, but did not move.

A simulation? A trap? An echo of a timeline that no longer functioned?

The possibilities stretched endlessly, yet none quite fit.

I returned to the mirror once more, my reflection now standing as if waiting for my own acknowledgment. There was no flicker of magical illusion, no shimmer to betray a false identity. It was me. Human. Alive.

And then the thought struck, not like a revelation, but like an inevitability I had been trying not to accept:

"This… is before."

"Before the rituals. Before the transcendence. Before the world came to fear the name Zagor Mariell."

But that made no sense.

If this was time travel, then why retain my memories?

If this was a new world, why replicate my own body so precisely?

If this was punishment, it was far too gentle.

And if this was a second chance… why?

I stood in silence, watching the monitor blink, the world beyond the glass remaining still, and whispered—quietly, but with certainty:

"This is not reincarnation. This is not an accident."

"I have not gone back…"

"I have been placed back."

But by whom?

The Eye? Raizel? Or something beyond even their reach?

Perhaps that was the question I was meant to ask.

Or perhaps...

"I was never supposed to escape that erasure."

"And yet… I am here."

"That must mean something."

I placed one hand against the mirror, fingers steady.

My reflection met me with the same expression I wore before death was ever a memory: composed, calculating, and patient.

"Well then," I said, as the clock behind me continued to blink in steady rhythm, "let the next game begin."