86 | dreamer; to the last rebellion

Elias hadn't adapted to the trickery of the End's Delusion.

He woke, sitting on the Forsaken Throne with his head rolled to the side, posed like a slumbering lord draped in black. He flexed his fingers first, frowning deeply as he slowly turned his head.

It was a world, similar to his own. The same towering modern buildings, the same streets. He recognized them—but there was no way it was his own world.

He'd seen it shatter, crumble before his very eyes.

When he flexed his fingers again, tendrils of string ghosted from the tips, delicately spinning around him. Then his body hunched over and he let out a gutted groan of pain. It was an excruciating agony, penetrating the marrows of his bone, the depths of his soul.

The strings spun around him faster, cocooning him in their sharp edges.

It was hours before they dispersed, leaving behind the image of an exhausted, miserable man. He watched the strings again, grinding his teeth.

The strings that had belonged to the teenager.

A gift from the dead.

He didn't want it.

Lucas, still watching quietly, realized that something else had altered in Elias' beautiful blue gaze, darkening and polluting it. Information, he soon realized, after Elias shakily stood up, gazing at the chaos around him.

The aftermath of an earthquake—but this would only be the beginning. Trapped inside the cocoon, he'd realized several things.

What role he played in this world—the same as his past, the leader of a well-known gang. And then, what role he would play in the End's Delusion.

To the one who killed a Catalyst, he must then replace it.

Elias was quick to understand and process the information, understanding his position rapidly. He let out a bitter chuckle, and his eyes remained icy cold.

"Is this what he meant?" wondered the man. "I tried so long to survive, and now I'll become one of the ruins to another world."

His fingers curled into each other, digging against his palm, a slight tremour of anger. "A Catalyst, hm? I suppose others might become drunk with the power they have, and those who resist fighting are manipulated by other means."

Elias begun to make his way down the mountain of rubble in the silent world. All humans had entered their first Story.

"Allow me to guess. You would've used the corpse of that teenager, Tiger, to force me to obey. After all, for those who gave everything up including their souls to save somebody, they would love even the illusion of their lost ones."

His voice was bitter and dark, speaking to the air that was listening.

"Unfortunately for you, you've underestimated me as a human. Or a former one now, am I? But that teenager, now that he's dead, no longer means anything to me."

It was a lie.

A lie written in the tight atoms that made the defined lines of Elias' face, woven in between sentences too confidentially spoken to be deciphered. And Lucas saw it immediately.

Elias' emotions, or his lack of them, had always fascinating Lucas whose constant hobby was to observe the expressions on other's faces.

He'd seen worry when Elias saved him, confusion and dull affection. He'd seen genuine amusement too, but never this.

Never grief.

And Lucas suddenly couldn't look away.

But even the End's Delusion was fooled, attempting to break down his spirit further and further. Elias laughed at those who challenged him, fighting a casual battle that he never intended to win.

His power was stronger than the other Catalyst's, the sole reason to force him to use it, to kill and murder until all the bits of humanity finally faded.

Until he proved the End's Delusion cause—that no person was immune to illusion.

Here, he was more powerful than any other. He could roam the broken buildings, take whatever he wanted and not feel the slightest bit of fear. He could save anybody he chose, as if a god toying with lives.

Elias liked to rebel. He snuck into Stories, leaping inside the splintering pages of paper as he jumped through reality and into another Story.

He watched, at the sidelines, how humans were pitted against each other.

In every Story, he chose a particular person, of varying ages and appearances. A woman with red hair and freckles scattered across her cheeks, and then an old man who walked with a silver cane. A child who lost their mother, a gothic teenager who fought valiantly.

He protected the person from the sidelines, watching quietly. Lucas thought that while they all looked different, there was a certain quality to them.

All were part of a pair, siblings of two fighting to survive.

And every pair ended with tragedy, one eventually lost to the whims of apocalypse.

Elias floated like a ghost, disconnecting with the world more and more. He continued to rebel and toy with the End's Delusion, ruining Stories, saving humans—but at the end of the day, what did it do?

Nothing.

The stars still flickered out; humanity was still dying.

His emotions were growing dull, watching senseless battle. He was stabbed in the back several times when he attempted to slip into groups, betrayed and tormented.

Elias wasn't somebody easy to bully. To those who turned their backs on him, he would retaliate with petty tricks—until he grew bored, and killed them after they betrayed him.

After all, wouldn't they die eventually? He was only hurrying the inevitable.

He felt like a speck in the universe, the cracks that ran along the roads. Always existing, but insignificant. Enough to do something—to trip somebody, to injure and bring disaster, but what else?

He wasn't enough to change the fate of the world. He didn't carry the heroic determination to continue endlessly either.

Every person he protected died, just as that teenager did.

The amount of scars along his back—because he was strong, not invulnerable—continued to grow with betrayal and battle. Fights that he didn't even seek out.

He killed those who approached the Throne because he knew the truth. That no wish would save everybody—the End's Delusion awaited a special wish that even he didn't know. He killed because he was required to, compelled to by a force he couldn't begin to comprehend.

Perhaps he was prolonging the fate of the world.

But there was a faint pulse of hope, hope to see success. To witness a person that would sit on the Throne and break free from the Delusion.

To claim the Throne, it was difficult enough to gather all the swords of legend, belonging to 'Kings'. Those who did always died at his hand—and if there was a person close by, the swords fell onto them.

They would attack, and befall the same fate.

And when there was nobody else in the surroundings, the swords leaped to a different owner, for somebody new to gather them all.

'It's all pointless.'

Elias sat on the Forsaken Throne, dully gazing at the rubble and the endless night skies. It'd reached a point where even the brightest star, the brilliant sun, didn't dare reveal itself.

He wondered how many people were still alive in the sea of chaos and blood. He wondered if he really cared, or if he simply wanted to care. It wasn't the same, the two.

Then, amidst his thoughts, a lonely figure trudged up to the Throne.

He swung up his sword, charcoal eyes burning under the sweep of raven hair. He lifted his chin, but there was desolation and exhaustion that weighed his shoulders.

He wore a tattered doctor's coat, shredded at the ends, but he didn't seem to care. Elias had to wonder if the coat held a special memory, perhaps to honour the dead, or to remember the past.

"I've come to challenge you, Catalyst."

It was a smooth voice, with clearly enunciated words. Elias concluded that before the apocalypse, the man had likely been a well respected person.

Although that didn't matter anymore, not to him, not to the apocalypse.

Elias laughed and pushed himself out of his chair lazily, movements slow and unhurried. Another life to add to the list, it seemed. He stretched out his arm, crooking one finger towards himself.

"Let's see what you've got, hm?"

The once-doctor lunged, with a surprising amount of strength and dexterity. Elias dodged to the side with surprise, and a bored smile played at his lips.

"You'll have to do better than that, doctor." taunted the Catalyst as the man swung, each heavy swing of his sword filled with desperation.

This was probably a hero, a man who had saved many.

A man who had something to fight for.

It was the longest fight Elias had, and he almost had hope that he would be defeated, laid to waste. He was tired, really, of watching destruction occur repeatedly in a society he'd already disconnected from.

He wanted to become the blood that ran along the rubbles, to become nothing. He'd spent so long wondering about the significance to anything.

He couldn't find anything.

But he saw the way the doctor's knees buckled, how the arm of his sword hung lower. Lucas floated, watching with unblinking eyes the scene of his brother's failure.

Kane fell and slammed his blade into the rubble to stop himself from falling. Red ran down his face, and his dark eyes heavily gazed ahead. He opened his mouth to speak with bitter resentment, but all his strength had gone.

His eyes fluttered shut and his body crumpled to the ground, slumping over the sword. Elias huffed, standing straighter to gaze at the new corpse.

He shook his head with a wry laugh, and turned to walked back to the Throne.

A shadow fell over his head. He spun around, and a body flew towards him, a metal bat soaring in the skies. It swung down with the blunt edge, nicking the surface of Elias' skin before smashing the rubble into pieces.

A young man crouched down, shakily standing to his feet as he lifted the bat up with ease. He wasn't looking at Elias, but instead at the corpse of the doctor, sprawled on the ground.

His entire body shook, only once, as if allowing the roar of sorrow to turn to a boil in his chest. He seemed to be resisting rushing to crouch down, beg the man to wake.

Because he was a person who could tell when somebody was dead.

He wouldn't hopelessly hope for them to be alive.

He couldn't. Shouldn't.

He swung his head towards Elias, two tears slowly falling down his face like crystal drops, like the stars that no longer shone. There was no emotion in his face, nothing displayed to be read.

Without saying a sword, he raised the metal bat high into the air once again.

Elias, no longer startled, admired the man's volatile strength, the bursts and deadly blows made from a simple metal bat. His strings manipulated in the air, a web of sharpness, but the white-eyed man easily flipped upside down, weaving between them.

Elias lips spread out before he realized that he was smiling. And it wasn't one of taunting, no, it was the illusion of hope he'd given up on.

Hope that burned in the snow-white gaze of this man.

But the battle that seemed endless, eventually ended as all things had to.

And Elias felt his hope extinguished once again. He had to give the man some credit, no matter how his skin became sliced, no matter how many times he fell, he would stand and swing the metal bat once again.

He staked his very soul on the fight, breaking past exhaustion. His limbs would waver, and he'd force them back up with sheer willpower.

The man—objectively handsome, decided Elias thoughtlessly—was now collapsed on the ground. Elias had realized at some point, noticing the man's appearance, that it was likely that the man before him and that doctor were related.

Brothers, cousins, something. He had a soft spot for siblings.

But in the end, their fate had been the same. He turned around to leave the man to waste, but a hand clutched at his pants. He forcefully jerked his leg, but the man's grip was as stubborn as his spirit.

Elias felt a little annoyed, watching the man rise and fall again an endless amount of times, refusing to give up to the very end.

It's all worthless, he wanted to tell him.

All so pointless, he wanted to seethe.

There's no reason to fight, he wanted to confirm.

Instead he said in a cold tone, "Your persistence is irritating, darling."

The man choked out a bitter laugh, unsuited for his icy features that glared even in their tiredness. "Humans are like that, sort of like annoying flies that won't stop buzzing around you. It's just the way we are, and I quite like it."

Elias raised an eyebrow in light amusement, at the harsh words in contrast to the trembling voice, hoarse at filled with pain.

The hand falls from his pants, and the man continued calmly. "Will you kill me?"

"Hurry up, stop idling." said the man, irritated even at his death.

Elias lowered his eyes, having no interest in turning away anymore. The man who was bold and strong, likely prideful and fought for the sake of a dead brother. Elias was a little curious.

"Do you want to die?"

"Of... course not. But I'm not stupid enough to hope in a situation like this."

"I could save you."

A laugh spluttered out of the dying man's cracked lips. There was a vicious growl in his throat, and sarcasm flitting over his glare. Elias had to genuinely wonder if this man could smile or laugh joyfully. He couldn't imagine it.

"Do you... honestly think I want to be saved by you? You damned spectator, are you saying you want to fucking save me, now?"

Elias admitted leisurely, "I tried to kill you."

Then he continued, "Now that you want to die, it isn't so interesting anymore."

"...I'd like yo hit you a couple times."

Elias felt greatly amused, more so than he had in a long time. More than the pointless, distant conversations he had by those who feared him. "You could try, hm?"

"Tempting." sneered the man.

They continued their exchange of bitter conversation, though Elias was more amused, and the man seemed to want to die sooner rather than later. Yet his head had turned weakly to gaze at the doctor's corpse, a distance away.

Elias watched silently, and he wondered, what if he rebelled against the End's Delusion one more time? All his rebellions had resulted in nothing, but what was one more time trying?

One more time hoping?

He'd met a woman stuck in time, briefly. A Teller who watched the sidelines like he did, always scowling or messing around. But her existence seemed hopeless, like a drifting ghost.

She knew when how to notice a bad person from a good, and as soon as her odd coloured eyes landed on him, she'd looked ready to break out into a sprint.

Disguised, he managed to coerce her into answering a few questions. She'd said she didn't know how she was stuck in time when the world was still moving forward, but that a Title that bounded her claimed so, and therefore the rumours begun.

It was a little disappointing to find that she wasn't a person who'd trudged through present, over and over.

But she'd told him one thing.

Tellers, the most powerful in the End's Delusion, could in a way shape their own abilities. They could perform acts inhumane, even stranger than the normal oddness of the apocalypse.

His ability was a form of panpsychism, allowing him to dive further into the thoughts of inanimate objects, but also living things. He preferred using it on the latter—the former had too many drawbacks.

And he was no scientist, but perhaps it was worth the effort. Worth one last rebellion, because if not this, then he would waste away and truly become a puppet.

It was unlikely to work. Too easy, too beyond what the End's Delusion would allow.

He would try anyway.

He spread his fingers wide, the delicate and fine threads that once belonged to a young teenager, who fought to revive a sibling long gone. They continued spinning out like thread, a pulsing glow in every fiber.

"Do you want to do it again?"

He heard himself say quietly, to the last hope he saw.

The threads flew out, twisting and threading between and around broken stone, rubbles. Broken buildings and corpses under the black curtain of night above.

"I'm not insane." Insisted the fallen man hoarsely. "But... I'm fucking annoyed."

"Why was that person sacrificed for the sake of this stupid game? Who made it in the first place, and why couldn't I see them and punch them? And you too, damn bastard, I want to punch you too."

Elias chuckled at the harshness of the dying man's words, blue gaze reflecting the glowing threads that had stolen into the ruined world around, waiting for his order.

If he could manipulate everything, every object, every corpse, every single thing to turn back, using this stupid ability that was never really his, given by the End's Delusion as a means to control him—

—It wouldn't matter what he'd have to lose.

Of course, his ability would more set things in motion. It would push the clock hand back, urging it to spin rapidly backwards until the End's Delusion was forced to cooperate, resetting the world.

It was an experiment. One that would destroy this world, and in turn, any life left in him. Or one that would change everything.

The dying man's voice cracked, and he shakily raised his vicious pale gaze to Elias. Through the threads that consumed his vision, Elias thought that the man's eyes were beautiful. Lit with stars that no longer shone.

"I loathe this stupid, broken ending where I survived alone."

Every thread felt like it was woven out of Elias' skin, his flesh and bones. It trembled with the ghosting of air, and Elias' entire being felt overwhelmed, as if he were strung and electrocuted.

He fell forward over the man, deciding to ignore the pain and focus on the way the light retracted over the snowy vision.

He reached out, wiping a smudge of blood as pain roared in every atom of his body. There was the twisting urge to scream in agony, a million sounds blasting in his head, every cell burning in lava.

"Then change it."

Elias' vision blurred, and as he saw the man's head fall to the ground, his body slumped beside the near corpse.

"You will not remember this." He said softly. "And yet, let the regret that makes you burn and boil etch into your mind."

'Feel the same hatred to the End's Delusion as I did, and force another ending.'

He reached out a hand. At least, if this were his dying moments and not a new beginning, he wanted to remember the warmth of human skin. But as his fingers lightly grazed the man's cheeks, he found it icy cold.

He spoke, a bare whisper, a pleading hope that for too long had been masked with indifference and laughter.

"Wake up, dreamer of dreamless dreams."