100 | delusions; to wake up

Make a wish that would break the boundary of the End's Delusion.

Lucas turned on his heel, the ragged trails of his clothing fluttering at the edges behind him, a rekindled fire heating his pure white gaze.

A single step above the rubble, a single step closer to the Throne.

The sword, long and heavy, dragged behind him with the weight of all the lives loss, the burden of all wishes left unfulfilled.

Nora watched him, feeling a burn flare in her chest, tears threatening to flow. She couldn't explain it, the overwhelming surge of emotion. This was it. This was the ending she'd been fighting to reach.

Wasn't it?

Wren walked to her side, glancing down at the curled fingers before taking it into her own hands. Nora lifted her head, glossy tears brimming at the rims of her stare, and Wren smiled lightly.

She squeezed the other woman's hand with a rare show of gentleness. "Save the tears for after, yeah? This is only the beginning of the end."

Nora laughed, a faint and airy laugh. "I think I might have enough for the beginning and the end."

Wren grinned cheekily. "Well then, nothing holding you back. Let the waterworks flow." Nora slumped, her legs suddenly losing energy, and Wren cradled her close.

She stiffened in surprise as Nora rested her head on her shoulder, a dampness soaking through her shirt. "I'm so tired, Wren." said Nora quietly, her hands shaking from the weight of killing she'd experienced. "Let me close my eyes for a moment."

Wren's hands hovered over the woman's back a little awkwardly, before she lowered them into an embrace.

"Yeah. Rest all you want. Time is the one thing I won't let the Delusion take from you again, Nora."

"Wren, what if, what if returning to reality won't save us? What if we would be happier trapped in this Delusion?"

Wren blanched in surprise. "What are you talking about?"

Nora shook her head helplessly. "It's nothing."

Elias had approached at some point, his chin lifted to the throne. Wren eyed him warily. "Are you looking for a fight, bastard?"

"I've already lost." replied the man, though his voice didn't sound like one of a losing man, but instead a person who was about to achieve victory. "Now, the only thing we can do it wait."

"Ha? Sounding so mature now, aren't you?"

"When compared to you, anybody could be mature."

"...." Wren resisted the urge to pick a fight in that instant, knowing she'd probably lose, and also considering that holding Nora was far more important than dealing with a bastard like Elias.

Elias cocked a brow. "What? No reply?"

"Oh shut up and watch. You don't really want to fight either."

"Don't I?"

"You're really talking?" Wren sneered as Nora squeezed her hand to calm her down. "Look, you're not even looking at me!"

"Isn't that simply because you're not attractive enough for me to look?"

"And he is?"

"Of course."

"......"

Tending to Kane's wounds, Adelaide and Julian watched the solemn back of Lucas, stepping further into the fog and darkness that ghosted around his image.

Kane clutched his stomach, entire body in pain, but his mind in an even worse state. He was tempted to call out, to stop Lucas and take his place, but that wasn't his right. He could do nothing, except watch his brother move further away.

"I can tell what you're thinking, and you are very wrong, Doctor." Adelaide's calm voice interrupted his panic, and he tiredly moved to look at her.

The girl's hands were steady as she bandaged his wounds, minor and less severe compared to others, but still terrible to look at. "He's not walking away from you right now. He's walking to you—this all, who do you think it was for?"

"What do you mean?"

"I haven't known him for long, and his character in texts were always brief. But if you're the hero he wrote, then he admired you very much. In the indifference of living, he sought out your figure."

"Oh I understand!" Julian said loudly, before lowering his voice with embarrassment. "He's always so strong, I really admire him. I'm scared, of fighting, of dying. I'm terrified about hurting somebody, horrified at the idea of killing. That stupidity would've gotten me killed, but I admired him. I wanted to be like him."

The large youth scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "I'm not really succeeding, but I was worse before. I could barely be anything, even if it was for protecting others. Anyway, if you're a person that he admires, you must be very incredible."

Lucas, who was always proud and calm, living to the beat of his own drum. Very few could be held in high esteem, but at the top, it had always been Kane Silvius.

Kane winced, and he wasn't sure if it was from the bandages tightly pulled around his arm, or the pain of knowing. Just how much his little brother loved him, just how much he was willing to sacrifice.

"He is the only family I have left."

"Then look ahead, Doctor." said Adelaide, eyes bright and watching the Throne. "Lucas Silvius saved my life with his words. That day, when he upload that first chapter, he gave life to a new world. And for me, he gave me back the life I had lost."

She, a bird in the cage of luxury and responsibility. It was only in the End's Delusion she found her freedom, the thing she wished for the most.

While she was fighting to survive, she had wondered.

Did she really want to return to the way things once were? Shackled by identity and family, by social expectations? Was this Delusion not a nightmare, but a twisted wish granted in its own way?

But now, she decided, even if she were to return to reality, she wouldn't be the same person. Adelaide Walker had long changed.

Lucas now stood before the ominous Throne, made of the deepest blacks.

For a second, he wondered, about what thoughts his companions were thinking as they watched his back. A mistake wouldn't cost only his life, but all theirs as well.

A long journey that ended in failure.

He could imagine it, the guilt if he survived as the sole survivor, shaped into a Teller with his own obscure Story to match him.

Fear festered in his bones, an ancient terror that made him hesitant to move.

All the possibilities, all the different things he could've done, things he could do. What was right and what was wrong?

He lost himself to the pulls of misery, the depths of despair. Elliot relished in those times, the madness and depravity a welcome act to his mundane life where he never fit in. The Yuki-Ona loved the power held within her grasps that locked away her fragility.

Elias made a wish, to bring back a young boy who was the closest thing he knew to family, but not once had he wished to return to reality.

To the before.

What was the delusion? What was the Story? And what was their reality?

What if the entire time, nothing had been real?

[Oh dreamer of dreamless dreams, the clown king who could achieve nothing but failure, what wish shall you make?]

He was certain nobody else could hear the voice that thrummed in his ears, a low comfort of something familiar, yet at the same time unknown.

"What are you? Who are you? Can I know when I'm about to walk to my death?"

[This is the universe's judgment.]

"What bull—"

[Life is an ongoing cycle, continuous in many realities. The universe is everything, it is space, matter and the time that revolves around. The world of yours is but a small collection of insignificant energy in a much large system. It is far beyond human comprehension.]

A vein ticked in his neck, slightly annoyed at being called stupid by some unknown and crazy force that was speaking to him. Tempted to turn back and hold up his middle finger, and say a 'screw you' to the apocalypse, he realized he couldn't go back.

His feet obeyed a command of moving forward, and regardless of whether he wanted to step back or not, he was refused escape.

[We have tested many, many worlds. Many have failed, and many have succeeded. You will become a static, less than a decimal point in the system.]

"You're very encouraging. I feel motivated to save the world." drawled Lucas sarcastically, the heavy sword behind him digging more deeply into the ground.

The voice, if knowing his sarcasm, said nothing about it.

[You are given a choice, Lucas Silvius of planet 489001. The apocalypse is a gift to you, a method of redemption for the sins committed. Here, there is death and destruction. Before, there was death and destruction. Is the reality you are trying to return to not more terrifying than the monsters we create?]

[Why do you choose to save reality? Why do you choose to live?]

"Why?" repeated Lucas, continuing to walk, past the corpses, and past the rubble. "We'll rebuilt and grow, and make the same foolish mistakes, and suffer again. It's an ongoing cycle of tragedy and despair. What a waste of living."

The voice sounded confused whether he was defending or attacking his own world.

[Is that the reality you are trying to protect?]

"In a way, the apocalypse might be beautiful." said Lucas honestly, thinking of everything he'd seen. The Stories that were built of imagination, shaping themselves into a vivid world before his eyes.

The Tellers, all with Stories that would've gone unknown and buried. The people he'd encountered that he wouldn't have taken a second glance at if he passed.

It was cruel and it was devastating, but he'd done more in the months of the world's ending, than he had done in a lifetime of peace. He'd been forced to reunite with his brother, one who he never intended to see again.

Nobody really thought about it while trying to supposedly save the world, to fix it and make it how it once was. Nobody thought about the after.

"Maybe it's like a dream. Maybe this destruction is less painful than reality."

Lucas knew the depths of sorrow now, what it meant and how it felt to lose people precious. He knew how to have people precious to him, to have companions that remained at his side.

The senseless killing, the deaths of innocent lives, he hated it all.

And yet, when he thought to the life where he wandered the streets like a ghost, where he was barely existing as he trudged through life, he had to wonder.

For him, didn't he have more worth in this apocalypse?

Perhaps there were some who never wanted this to end. A life that they've made, a meaning for themselves in this terror. Reality was boring and painful, people always craved to become the protagonist of a story, to escape the everyday.

Regardless, people died every day and time proceeded to move forward. Humans ate, slept, worked and played. Then repeated. It went back to the question—

He reached the feet of the Throne, and even nearing it made the hairs on his skin stand at edge, his heart drumming against his chest.

—Why did he choose to live?

Why did anybody?

Lucas swallowed harshly, and turned around to stare at the chaos that remained around him, little windows through the fog revealing only death and ruins. He saw the faced of his companions, the quiet discussions, the waiting.

He closed his eyes and took a seat on the throne, feeling the cold press against his back, pulsing with the weight of living.

"I think I'll never find the answer."

[...Oh dreamer of dreamless dreams—]

Lucas' brow furrowed slightly. By the way, wasn't that the strange nickname bestowed by Elias? Did that man gossip about him for Tellers and whatever voice spoke, to know him by that Title?

[...The Title was bound to you after given by Elias, due to your survival by his powers. Despite the role your blood had to play in being given an opportunity to live again.]

"Are you listening to my thoughts? I didn't give permission."

Then, Lucas paused. The role his blood had to play? He understood something with clarity then, the puzzle pieces finally setting in place. Elias, while powerful, truly couldn't go against the End's Delusion by his power alone.

It had been the circumstance that allowed it, the moments before Kane's wish was granted to the ending of the world—the small time in between that changed everything.

Starting with Kane's wish, to Elias' interference.

Lucas licked his chapped lips and asked, "What wish did Kane Silvius make?"

[The human named Kane Silvius had only one wish. He wanted to meet the person he loved the most one more time.]

Lucas opened his eyes slowly, gazing at his brother who crouched on one knee, fiercely watching him as if he wanted to swap places.

Really... it seemed that it took an apocalypse for them to meet again.

How foolish they both were.

[...Can I continue?]

There was a tone of not wanting to be scolded again. Lucas pursed his lips, wanting to say a firm 'no' just to see what happened.

The voice read his thoughts and quickly spoke up. This time, the speed of their talking was no longer slowed and powerful, but slightly sped up to not get interrupted again.

[Oh dreamer of dreamless dreams, you have taken claim of the Forsaken Throne. You have unlimited power, power to rule, to destroy. To remake the world as it is. Think carefully of what you wish to request of the universe, for it will be your final answer. And with it, the End's Delusion will reach a finale.]

"What? You're speaking too fast, can you say it again?"

[.....] And whose faults was it that they had to speak faster? [Oh dreamer of dreamless—]

"Never mind, I don't want to hear it again. I get it."

[......]

The pale white eyes, once unseeing, opened into slits as they peered at the ruined world from their throne.

His next words would decide the fate of humanity.

He wondered why so many had failed before, but that was false, because he already knew. Why even his brother died, failing to reach a satisfactory judgment—why his wish to see Lucas had been a mistake, and also a blessing.

Then he wondered if he had the right to be sitting here, to mold and reshape the lives of so many by a mere thought, simple words uttered in a indifferent tone.

To bring an end, happy or tragic, to this apocalypse that was like a dream and a nightmare to each person.

What answer was worthy of living, of existing?

In the distance, Kane slumped against the stone, and still felt the urge to run ahead and save, and protect Lucas from whatever might come. But his eyes, to the brim, were filled with an endless pool of trust.

Nora, Wren. Adelaide, Julian. Sylvia who watched from the shadows. Rome and Elliot who waited with the other children.

Elias, who loved him.

They all gazed at him, none making a move to approach, to stop him. Their swords and bodies collided with those who flung themselves forward, desperate to prevent him from moving. He heard the clatter roar in his ears, from those who wanted to drag him back down, and those protecting him.

Every one of the—his companions— trusted whatever he chose to do, whether he met failure or success. In fact, trust was a burden that already scarred Lucas.

[Make your wish, dreamer of dreamless dreams.]

The question again echoed in his mind.

What answer was worthy of their lives, of their existence?

Honestly, he didn't give a damn. The man lifted his head—once again gazing at the destruction below, where he sits at the top of the world, brimming with power as it rushed through his veins.

The world bowed to him, resting at his feet in crumbles.

He could suddenly understand why some Tellers became corrupt in their powers, in their newfound strength that stripped them of humanity.

And yet, he closed his eyes.

"I wish to wake up."

And suddenly, as the ground roared, the story was falling to pieces—their reality, this reality, was falling to pieces—and he was being dragged into the abyss.