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Small cave... dark figure... white hair... circle of rocks... pillars... respite... brothers... sisters... Greetings... teachings... learning to live... learning to love... learning to let go... learning that all things come undone... ...Illusion ...departed... then returned... What fate returned me to this path, I will never know. Sometimes catastrophe stalks us in the night like an apex predator, waiting in the shadows for the precise moment to strike, a devastation so absolutely full and complete that simply nothing remains. Having dealt many such fates, I should not be surprised. I washed up on the cosmic shore of these lands like a ghost after hundreds of Yuri. Distant memories flittered like fireflies in the dusklight, weighing heavily on my heart. Visions of the past tainted my periphery, faded grey eyes ever besieged by the storm. Endlessly do I see my brothers and sisters who have long since faded. Burden greater still is the memory of the joyous laughter of my pupil whose flame was snuffed out far before her time. I managed to make it back home... to Darkside... to master Charon... to faces old and new. For a long time, I was more than useless, but my strength slowly returned. After many agonizing failures, I managed to reform my Shade Blade. However, that magic has long since vanished from this world. What formed from deep within the heart of umbra was just an etiolated and distorted husk of what-once-was, fully visible to all. My Shade Cloak, once my aegis against all things, lie in equal ruin -- a shattered bygone relic. My Whisper Bracelets -- Light and Darkness -- fully ravaged by the weight of time. Having lost all ability as a Shadow, and having re-awakened as a Mage, I found solace in the ways of the Diviner. We always walked similar paths so there was a strong connection. My master, Garamond, did their best to train someone constantly living in two worlds. I made as much progress as I could under this duress. If I have any regrets, it is not fully completing this training. Regardless, I feel emphatic gratitude to Lady BatSheba and the Diviners for what short time I could spend there. Unfortunately, the storms deep within my heart grew too powerful and violent to contend with. I kept a dark secret from everyone beneath the all-knowing gaze of master Charon. He refused to give his blessing, reminding me what I already knew in my heart -- that the toll for forging a blade would be far greater than any could withstand. I thanked him deeply from the bottom of my heart, then I ignored his advice and did it anyway. In the blackest depths of the night, I sacrificed my life force to again wield the phantasmal wraith blade. What crept out from the desolation that night completely shattered my being. Despite my sacrifice, it was just a twisted and decayed nothingness. My demise was all but assured... yet even this grotesque abomination was tenebrous enough to stalk these lands again as the Illusion. Donning the hood of my Shade Cloak... finally again after aeons... I turned invisible and vanished into the shadows. I stalked like a black reaper of death upon the wind... for as long as I could... Hourglass... sands... all fallen... sight fully gone... life essence fully faded... I stumble into Shadow Haven... my grave already dug at the bottom right of the cemetery... ready to be with my fallen brethren... <Tears stream down his face, turning to ash as they hit the dry earth. Words can no longer form on his lips. His adumbral gray eyes close for the last time. Letting out one last exasperated ear-shattering scream, the death cry of a dying Shadow Revenant, he thrusts his Shade Blade deep into the ground all the way to the hilt. He immediately dissolves into umbra, fading back into the shadows from whence he came.> <In that moment, from the hilt of the fully decayed blade, a small green plant arises to greet the new dawn.> ...Illusion ...Departed 2025-02-08 | |