While the outside had vanished from his view, Ash found himself in a familiar space.
The void expanse that stretched in every direction.
It was featureless and infinite.
Being here usually meant one thingâmore memories. Yet as he looked around, there were no other incarnations present.
"Oh brother... whatâs going on now?" he muttered with a sigh, irritation already simmering. The job outside had still been done the way he intended, butâ
His poem was definitely not what he wanted to say.
"Why the hell didnât those bastards mention they could embody me?!" It was obvious that emotionless tone and aura hadnât been him at all.
As he stood there, the void rippledâlike water disturbed by a stone.
Then the memories began.
As always, he watched his incarnations as if they were films. Only on rare occasions was he pulled into one. But this time was different. It wasnât one life unfolding before him... but thousands.
Thousands upon thousands of lives played out around him in perfect simultaneityâyet each one was clear and vivid to him.
In one, he was a blacksmith in a sootâchoked village on a dying worldâhands calloused, back bent, forging swords for kings who never paid him.
A life that never saw beyond its own kingdom.
He died at thirtyâtwo, coughing blood from his lung, never knowing even a whisper of his origin.
Another showed him as a young boy born under a red sun in a desert of black sand. Homeless, abandoned before he even had a name. He died at seventeen, throat slit by raiders while clutching a stolen loaf of bread.
The memories didnât stop.
He watched them all with a clear mind, only wondering what the point of this was.
âI understand... these must be all the failed incarnations. But whatâs the point?
The nine rings in his golden eyes spun slowly.
He continued watching for what felt like five hundred thousand years.
Each lifeâwhether scholar, warlord crowned in molten iron, healer, poet, thiefâwas different.
Some suffered quietly, enduring hunger, betrayal, mortal disease.
Some were evil, wearing crowns soaked in the blood of their own kin. Some were benevolent, healing with their hands, soothing with their words, sacrificing themselves for others.
...And some were lustful, living only for endless nights with harems and broken hearts.
But one thing remained consistent...
They all died early.
Not one life he watched made it beyond the Lower Dimension. Some didnât even make it beyond their kingdoms... or their worlds.
It was a cascade of everything a being could experience. He lived lives that reached the peak of the Lower Dimension... and countless others mired in mediocrity or suffering.
When the memories finally ended, the void returned to its original stillness, leaving Ash alone once more.
Yet he didnât feel any different than before.
He had already suspected this long ago. When the Second told him only a few incarnations were special, he knew then that he had lived many lives that amounted to nothing.
"So, are you going to keep being all mysterious?" His voice echoed through the void.
He honestly had no idea which incarnation would appearâbut he knew he couldnât be kept here forever.
As if responding, a faint silhouette materialized before him.
A pure white eyeâhalfâlidded, unblinking.
There was no face.... nor body. Only the Eye, and a presence beyond vast, beyond emotionâ a silhouette of pure beginning and absolute end.
"Oh, the Eye of First Dawn again... huh?" Ash exhaled, finally understanding why this felt different from every other memory cycles. He had only encountered this Eye once beforeâback on Elaris.
Back then, he hadnât seen much... or so he thought.
But now he realized the truth.
"So, do you show everyone the creation of everything?"
Because thatâs what it had been. When the man vanished into nothing back thenâthat had been the cascade of creation itself.
The Eye didnât blink nor did it respond to him directly. It simply stared at him with immense, unsettling interest.
When it spoke, it used Ashâs exact voiceâjust stripped of all emotion.
"You are the last."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhereâresonating in his bones, in his thoughts, in the silence between heartbeats.
"All before you failed... too confined within their own creation."
Ash raised a brow but didnât interrupt. He simply listened.
"Failed architects who could not leave the house built for them. Seeds that refused to break the soil. They tasted powerâsome briefly, some for centuries, some for cyclesâ but never enough to step beyond the frame."
The silhouette did not move.
Yet it felt closer.
"The one before you... he came nearest. He walked the edge of escape. At one point he saw the door. He touched the frame many times... but then beauty found him. Bonds found him. And soon he too became a failureâunable to step beyond the complete frame."
A pause followedâlonger than time itself.
"You are the catalyst. The one who will burn the house down. Not to save it. Not to mourn it. Only because it is time for something new."
Ashâs golden eyes stayed fixed forwardânarrowed, unblinking.
The silhouette spoke again, voice unchanged.
"Begin."
The void rippled.
A new memory unfoldedâslower, heavier.
And this time...
Ash felt himself fall into it.
He was no longer watching like a film... but as the times when he witnessed his loversâ memories.
He was thereâtethered like a ghost.
For a long moment, there was only darkness. A darkness so complete it felt as though the void had never changed.
Thenâ
CRACK!
CRACK!
CRACK!
The sound of an egg splitting echoed through the endless black, and through the fractures, light finally seeped in.
When the shell broke fully, Ash found himself tethered to a child who looked no older than ten.
They floated in the skyâsurrounded by an endless field of multicolored grass stretching as far as sight could reach.
Above them, the sky wasnât blue.
It was a symphony of shifting colors, not flat like paint but more like a vast tunnelâan upward vacuum spiraling into infinity.
The farther the tunnel stretched, the more the colors faded from perception, as if slipping beyond the limits of sight itself.