Life Delusion Chapter 11: Chapter XI: The Core of the World

Read chapter 11 of Life Delusion by The_lite on NovelPedia.

Aqua stood in the chamber. The Advisor’s robes rustled in the silence. “Tell me what happened to Rose.” A pause. “Her soul shattered. The fragments returned to the Core.” The Advisor’s voice was flat, rehearsed. “There’s no way to—” Aqua was already walking. He didn’t remember deciding to go to Mount Orastia. One morning he woke up on a road he recognized, the mountain’s shadow stretching across the valley. He’d lived in a village near here, fifteen years back. Rose used to collect herbs on the lower slopes. She’d always come back with her sleeves stained green and smelling like mint and dirt. Once she’d brought home a beetle with iridescent wings. She kept it in a jar by the window for three days before letting it go. The climb took three days. His water ran out on the second. On the third night, something followed him through the pines—he heard it breathing, circling. He kept a fire burning until dawn. In the morning, he found tracks. Too big for a wolf. Five-toed. Human-shaped, almost. There was dried blood on a nearby stone, dark and already attracting flies. The wards appeared around midday. They didn’t announce themselves. He just started feeling wrong—pressure in his chest, a taste like old coins and burnt hair. His vision blurred at the edges. Old magic, the kind that made mortals turn back without knowing why. His left knee buckled twice. He caught himself both times. He sat down for an hour. Ate the last of his bread—stale, crumbling between his fingers. A piece of Rose’s scarf was tied around his wrist, the fabric faded from blue to almost grey. He could still see the edge of an embroidered flower. Her stitches were always uneven. Then he stood up and kept climbing. By the time the gates appeared, he couldn’t feel his fingers. The Palace of Astros sat at the summit like a crown of white stone. Abandoned, according to the stories. Sacred ground where the First Pact was signed. Bird nests clustered in the eaves. The walls were streaked with green where rain had run down for decades. He touched the gate. It fell apart—not with a crash, but a sigh. Dust and rust and wood that had rotted from the inside. A spider crawled out from the debris and disappeared into the grass. Inside, the gods were waiting. Not twelve thrones. Eleven. One sat empty, its cushion still holding the shape of whoever had last sat there. There was a name carved into the armrest, but someone had tried to scratch it out. Only the first two letters remained: Ma . The God of Wisdom stood first. He was shorter than Aqua expected, with ink stains on his fingers and a smudge of it across his left cheek. His glasses sat crooked on his nose. “You’ve made a category error. Grief is a phenomenological state, not an ontological—” Aqua hit him. The god stumbled backward, mouth open, one hand clutching a scroll he’d been holding. The scroll tore. For three seconds nothing happened. Then his edges started to blur, like watercolor in rain, and he came apart. His robes collapsed in a heap. The torn scroll rolled across the floor. Empty. A pair of broken glasses lay beside it. Someone screamed. The Goddess of Fortune, maybe. Her chair had fallen over. She was staring at the pile of robes, one hand pressed to her mouth. The God of Death moved next—not toward Aqua, but sideways, circling. Shadows pooled at his feet, crawling up the walls. The room got colder. Aqua could see his breath now, misting in the air that smelled suddenly of turned earth. “Stop.” The god’s voice was soft, almost apologetic. “Please. You don’t understand what you’re doing. She’s not gone, not completely. There are rituals—old ones, forgotten, but I know them. If you give me time—” The shadows wrapped around Aqua’s legs. Cold. Heavy. They had weight, somehow. He took a step and they tightened, pulling him down. His right knee hit the floor. Pain shot up his thigh. “I’m trying to help you,” the god said, and he sounded desperate. “I don’t want to do this.” Aqua grabbed the shadows. They writhed i