Chapter Sixteen – Array of Infinite Emptiness

          The Emblem of the Star-Crossed Lovers (Interitus 1: Book X)

         Chapter Sixteen – Array of Infinite Emptiness

 

It was a mistake that haunts every memory that inhabits my hopeless mind. The mere invocation of that mistake has the power to transform a daydream into a nightmare. If only I asked her to freeze time in the moment Hayatama took the stand, then perhaps we could have completed our campaign as it was always intended. We could have finished the inscription in seconds and spent the rest of our vacation from time splashing in the shallows, dancing beside the shore which would witness the death of an entire city. We would have danced hand-in-hand on a future cemetery.

But because the thought had not crossed my mind, because my tunnel-vision had driven me to complete the Array, I became blinded to the world around me. I became blinded to the obvious solution to a more important problem. That mistake was mine. I’ve mentioned before that I know enough about math to understand the infinite eventuality of my own mind. My memories will fade one-by-one as I walk into eternity, but I believe the memory of that mistake will be the last that I lose. It is tattooed in my brain as a portraiture of my own self-hatred.

The next mistake was hers, though I can hardly blame her on any level. If she had simply chosen to not use her power, I could have protected our path with parapets made of rock. We could have listened to the clamor of blades clashing pointlessly upon palisades produced by my power while we finished forging our Array. She wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. She could have simply bled slowly into the sand while I devoured everyone in a burst of black fire. And then with the stolen power to heal, I could save her from her injury and also her sickness. I could even save myself from the perilous plague that now pervades my veins.

But the unfortunate truth is that it takes time for black fire to break a soul into fuel, so now that we were locked in this timeless space, we were locked away from our only salvation. Only she and I were unfrozen in time, so she poured blood upon the beach without any recourse.

“Please tell me that you can cancel your power. It is only when we unfreeze that I can devour. I can save you as soon as I steal the power to heal,” I said as if I were giving my final appeal.

But Aeliana simply shook her head and said, “I’m afraid I am already practically dead. I wasn’t willing to risk your survival just for the off-chance that I could somehow save myself. This injury will kill me in this timeless space, but at the very least I can save your life.”

Despite the state of her body, she broke free from my hold and stumbled toward the only opening in the Array of Black Fire. I could see her struggle to survive beneath her hazel eyes, but a valiant spark spurred her to complete the inscription. She reached for her paintbrush with her trembling hands, but they were too frail to grab ahold. She winced as she dropped the brush onto the beach. I scurried to complete the Array with her brush, but it did not circulate its energy or ignite with black fire. Even its power was frozen in time, set to awaken only when the world resumed its course.

Aeliana explained to me as she winced from the pain, “Your heart yearns for a freedom that’s enchained by your brain. You waste no time and sprint through your tunnel toward the light, so I stopped the clock beside you so that the timing is right. I heard a theory that our powers have significance. I know for a fact that my power’s no coincidence. I may be in pain, but you’ve been hurting yourself since the start. It’s because of your brain and the way it imprisons your heart. You focus on forging a future at the cost of the present; you rejected a reality where we all are evanescent. We contrast each other like a beautiful mosaic, one made by someone both heartfelt and formulaic. My power eliminates both the future and the past, so at least for now we can pretend that this will last. You can hold me now as if this is not our end, as if we have nothing left to destroy or defend.”

I realized then that I had lived life like a rusted railroad running past a paradise. Perhaps she and I could have ignored the underworld and lived a simple life in our humble home. Perhaps we could have spent our days toiling away like everyone else, and then we would come together in the evening like ordinary people. Perhaps I had focused too much on rewriting a reality I rejected too quickly. But at the same time, I knew that we could never have the same peace achieved by others in this city. We were bound by a love that cycled across time and space, conscripted by fate and cursed by the stars as a threat to their supremacy. We were star-crossed since our wayward souls first converged in a long-lost life. They feared the power we possessed and condemned us to dance in an endless spiral as twin flames, knowing that a double helix can never conjoin in the end. It was once a warm welcome where we were promised eternity, but it is an eternity in which we are forced to be apart. We were caught in a crisscross cursed to confront this same separation until the end of time.

“I need you to know that I will find you again. It’s a matter not of if; it’s a matter of when. I swear that I will somehow find you in your next life. I’ll defeat the stars that crossed us and make you my wife. You asked if I could let the future go, but the truth is that I really don’t think so. I’ll burn this world to ashes and find you in the afterglow. But the blood on my hands will remind me that I have loved and lost. I will kill my conscience and the crowd in a crime I call a cost. Bones City will still fall tonight because by the stars we’re crossed. I will never forget the future for which we have both been fighting,” I said to her as I saw in my head two different worlds colliding.

There exists in mathematics a concept known as the complex plane. While most numbers are real and others are imaginary, some straddle a space with one foot on each side of the boundary. A complex number is partially real and partially imaginary, almost like the timeless world to which Aeliana and I are now temporarily bound. But in that same way, I could also see the tunnel in my head shuffle like the light of a kaleidoscope, dancing between imaginary futures and complex possibilities. Perhaps the twisting kaleidoscope reversed the universal script and showed to me a wave function’s collapse in slow motion.

Aeliana said as she strived to soothe my regret, “Your soul has been on fire since the moment we met. Please be careful what you wish for because it might just come true. You don’t have to destroy the world just so that I can have you. Even with my dying breath, I will whisper that I love you.”

As I held her in my arms in the space where I completed the Array too little too late, I could not help but feel as if I were witnessing the afterglow of an imitation. I had ardently raced toward an unreachable reality where we would break our cycle of heartbreak, but that destination was nothing more than a daydream. Reality had proven that Aeliana would not be the one to walk with me into eternity. But as a last-ditch effort to stop my tunnel-vision from collapsing and crashing down upon me, I rewrote the reverie and deferred the destination. By telling myself that I would claim infinity with her next incarnation, I extended my tunnel but retained its fading light.

But in that moment, an idea struck me like an asteroid upon a fragile planet. And in the calamitous impact which followed, I realized with a jolt that I still had everything I needed to save Aeliana. I could salvage our eternity with my savage hands at the small cost of only one more heartless kill. I had already conquered my conscience with the crimes I committed to keep her by my side. I had already accepted the reprehensible reality that Aeliana would bleed out in my arms and waste the little she had left of life on a front row seat to my breaking heart, but I could reverse and rewrite the reality even if I could not reject it. All I had to do was prioritize my failsafe and implement my backup plan. Aeliana danced now at the edge of death, and I could not stop her end. But if I could kill Claire and steal her power to bring back the dead, then I could recreate Aeliana in this open cemetery. Betrayal was a minuscule cost if it meant I could have her back. Distant lava would light the crashing waves which would witness my merciless murder.

I said to her as she struggled for each breath, “I swear I will save you from this unfair death.”

But Aeliana answered as she shook her head, “I need you to accept that I am already dead. I know that it hurts and I know it’s not fair; this tragic world has only ever given you despair. We will meet again one day in another time and space. When we meet again, I will wear a different face. I will speak to you then with a different voice, but the stars have left us with no other choice. But when you wander this empty city alone, please try to remember that this once was our home. It was on the shore of this city where we first fell in love, our feet in water which shimmered from the light above. The moment we met was a monumental occasion, and then somehow I became a factor in your equation. And all along I dreamed we could seize the future that we sought, but I should have known by our curse that that was all for naught. I should have held you in the shallows and never let you go, let the world burn around us and dance in the afterglow. Please don’t waste this last time we have trying to make something more. Please just hold me in your arms so we can dance upon this shore.”

I held her tightly in my arms as I stepped with one foot in the shallows and the other on the sand. Even as she struggled just to breathe, she poured herself like rain from a storm and crashed upon my shore as if giving the water of life to my sands of desolation. I danced with her there in the starlit shallows, holding her in my arms as the end approached. As heartbroken as I felt in that moment, I could not help but recall that moment of relief which manifests after waking from a nightmare, when you realize that the disaster which devoured you was only an illusion. It is the opposite for Aeliana. Instead of escaping from a nightmare into a tranquil reality, she had sailed away from the bloody shores of a merciless life. She had suffered from the moment she stepped foot into this worthless world. She stayed just long enough to lift me from the abyss of my self-inflicted misery, like a rainstorm descending upon a wayward wanderer lost in the desert.

But she is not a rain which pours once and then simply drifts away. She is not a rain which simply delays the death of a weary wanderer. She is the hurricane which strikes the land and changes it forever; she has the power to transform everything she touches. She is the snowstorm which strikes the city and smothers it in ice. She is the whirlwind which warps the world in her wake. She is a sandstorm which strikes through space and time. She has left a mark upon my mind and a scar upon my heart which will stain me now and forever—I will never be the same. I could waste the rest of my life rejecting reality to relish in reveries of the time I had with her. And with every second that we danced together on that shore, I both feared that it would be the last and prayed that we would have another. Her blood dripped into the steaming sea and sent a scarlet cloud into the shallows.

Hope and fear danced in my mind like the seasons and the tides. I wanted more than anything to reverse her injury and hold her in my arms as the city perished around us, but she would not see the black inferno even if I brought her back with a stolen power. I would stand alone as the sole survivor of this smoldering shore, standing in the ashes of the desperate daydream that set this tragedy in motion. I kissed her gently as she struggled just to breathe. Her fingertips dug into my shoulders for support as her ankles splashed through frozen waves.

Aeliana held me close and weakly said, “I wish I could lock myself inside your head. We met as mourners who were lost lovers in our past lives, locked without the memories with which we could find each other. But I gambled on the cosmic dice against all odds and found my way to you. Now we stand at the end of all things, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever get to hold you again. I wish more than anything that we could find our forever in this embrace. I would do anything if I could force fate to let me stay. Asivario, my love, please kiss me slowly in these timeless shallows. Let me taste your lips one last time so that you’re all I see even with my eyes closed. I want to set sail to a soothing slumber and see your face as I fade.”

I said as I felt the last of her life fade away, “I swear that you and I will meet again one day. I know at your end you wish not to know of my pain, but I believe I am the ocean while you are the rain. But across life and death, our love will burn both red and blue; it will light the shadows of this world until the day that I find you. But until that day I’ll dance with guilt and sorrow, wasting away each day just to await tomorrow. From the day we first met to this last kiss we share, our love burned with a brightness that will reach everywhere. You are the girl for whom I would commit any crime, because I will love you from now until the end of time. Because I was too weak to keep you in my arms, I will grow strong enough to seize you back from the stars. You are the reason my heart beats inside my chest. You are the way that-”

It was in that moment that she collapsed in my arms. I could feel my heart race in agony as her death cast a cataclysmic transformation across this world. Her body became the source point from which time catapulted back into motion. The Array of Black Fire activated in the moment time resumed, igniting to unleash a scourge of black flames to descend upon the helpless people who congregated for their gathering by the sea. Most people watched with shock as black fire engulfed everyone they knew and loved. Some stood stunned and stared at the shining symbol in the sand. Mothers embraced their children as if they could in any way protect them. Lovers exchanged one final kiss so they could die the same way they lived. A heartbroken father sprinted through the burning crowd in search of his family until the forces of fire fed on his soul.

I noticed a few patrons of the underworld standing in the black inferno, balking at the irony that they themselves would die in the same way they killed so many others. Even Hayatama sprinted down the stairs to his stand and reached his bodyguard. This guard activated a power which summoned an incandescent sphere that then appeared to warp them out of existence. I felt nothing even as I watched this enemy escape with his life. I felt nothing even as I watched the Array devour everyone I had ever known. Every face I had ever passed in the street now contorted with sorrow and surrendered their soul to the scarlet scourge which scoured this shore. They all lived as vivacious individuals with their own hopes and dreams, each with their own heroes and lovers, but they died as a collection of cattle for the currency in their souls. I imagine some stared into the sky with their final breaths and lamented the wasted effort. Some surely searched their faith for any sign that this served as anything other than an object lesson in futility.

But in the end, I did not watch my victims as they died, though this was in no way a plot to quell a crying conscience. I had cast aside my conscience when I first stepped upon this path. Instead, I wasted the last of their lives looking into the eyes of the infinitely-ephemeral Aeliana. She had died in my arms, using her death to catalyze the reaction which would give to me the power to save myself—the power which should have saved us both. I could sense small sums of quintessence rain upon my soul as if quiet voices boarded rooms in that shadowed hallway locked in my mind. I received a power which would forge a web of energy, but I dismissed it and pressed my lips upon her forehead. I acquired a power which could completely drain the stamina from anyone I touch, but I had never felt so powerless. Tears surfaced in my eyes even as I gained the power to launch myself into motion at a very high speed. I dropped to my knees in the shallows with her body in my arms, even as I stole the power to levitate any object near me.

The searing flames silenced the screams which scattered the shore. One by one, they all fell silent, and I passively devoured additional souls. I heard bodies fall upon the beach like hail from the sky on a stormy night. The stars burned brighter than ever before as they watched me kneel at the edge of this dying world. The last power I received was that of the healer who could restore any condition with just his touch, almost as if fate itself stated as a consolation that nothing else could have saved Aeliana. I had lost her. Even if I used every drop of quintessence to heal her injury and the sickness inside her, it would not change a thing. Bones City had fallen silent, and countless corpses covered the coast. The lost cries and final screams echoed across the starlit sky.

As ethereal smoke lifted from the shore, I held Aeliana in the shallow waves and begged the sky for answers. My aching muscles and tired lungs burned as if I had run halfway around the world. I cried for Aeliana and struggled to say some final words of farewell, but my raspy voice cried out in the form of nonsense. I felt more afraid than ever before, even though I had already lost the only thing that meant anything to me. When I set her into the sea and stood upright, I saw the lava illuminate the horizon like a sunset in a faraway world. It cast shadows across the bodies and ashes of the city I had destroyed in vain. They burned as the cost for the future for which we fought and failed, so both their lives and our dream faded like a sandcastle carried away in pieces by the sea. I had nothing left but the silhouette she seared into my eyes by burning brighter than the stars in the sky.

I don’t know how much time I wasted standing in the shallows, staring at the simulated sunset beside a field of ashes. Seconds and minutes passed with each dancing wave. Even as my sickness sought to strike me down and steal my life, I found myself begging for time to reverse so that I could hold her just once more. I could kill everyone left in this hopeless world just to hear her whisper words of love one last time. A part of me wanted to ask fate if it intended all along to bring us together just to tear us apart, but I knew it would never answer. So I narrowed my eyes and turned my back to the sunset. I dismissed the bodies which littered the shore. I crouched again and held her hand in mine with tears in my eyes which distorted all the world except for her.

I held her in my arms and swore to her then that I love her beyond death, and since she died I swore to somehow see her again even if I had to shatter the glass between life and death. I told her to know more than anything that we would meet again; I would transcend space and time just to reach out my hand, but she said nothing in return except for a deafening silence. The conscience I conquered and the crimes I committed amounted to nothing in the end. I had nothing to show at the end of all things except for the body of my lover locked in my dying arms. It was all I could do to delude myself into believing I could somehow have her back.

I only had a single shot left to salvage her soul, but I had wasted too much time; it was at this point statistically similar to slinging a stone into space to strike a star in the sky. But since I still had a chance to find the one person with the power to save her, I could not permit the plague to paralyze my body any longer than I already had. I activated my stolen power and cured myself of the sickness which sought to suppress me. I stood upright without exhaustion or a painful twinge, and then I hoisted her body onto the ashes in case it was the vessel through which I could reclaim her soul.

I then activated a second power—a new one which simply strengthened my stamina so I could sprint across the smoldering sand. I threw myself to run across the open cemetery borne of my merciless avarice. And as I ran, I scoured the sand for signs or tracks of the only person who could have survived the black inferno. Even as endless voices echoed in my head, I listened closely for a sign of a survivor. My victims had nothing left to give me that I had not already taken.

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.”