91 | sight; the letters that crumble

Elias saw the colours leech from reality, fading into dull blacks and whites, losing its vibrancy of life. Although the colour in Tartarus has been limited to begin with, the shades grew duller, dreary.

He felt no fear as the wind rushed past his ears, Kane's startled expression printed in his vision. Whenever Elias looked at Kane, he would think of Lucas.

What expression would Lucas have made?

The same surprise unfolding over a cold expression? Or would he stare calmly, knowing and expecting exactly what actions Elias would take through those discerning white eyes?

He almost laughed. Nora was dying. The second Ranking had likely left thousands, millions erased from history—an event he'd seen before. The stars had shuttered off, and eventually the world would plunge into an everlasting night.

He was still falling, at it all felt meaningless. Empty.

He was falling, and he wasn't scared.

He imagined the hypothetical situation where he collided into the sleek white of the streets, a mangled corpse with bones protruding from his flesh, blood splattered on the ground to add to the collection of bodies already decorating the streets.

Lucas, perhaps, might be able to see something more than miserable humans destined for death.

After all, he was able to find the humans in Tellers that had long abandoned everything, both themselves and their morals, their faiths, for selfish wishes. Tellers, who desired not to save the world, but instead people they'd lost.

Tellers who wanted to become more powerful than anything.

Tellers, who were horrid and wretched surviviours of the End's Delusion.

He blinked, seeing a flicker of a snowflake pass his vision. In the next second, as an icy cold brushed over his body, he spun in the air and landed firmly in the piles of snow. A soft, burning cold that bit through the shadows covering his body, through his skin.

The voice resounded around him, laughing again. Always laughing, amused by his foolery, perhaps. Tellers had that in common, some of them.

They laughed at the fools making the same mistakes they did.

'How long will you keep looking in this land of only snow, for a love that may already be buried, for a man lost in the white?'

Elias stood up, frowning. There was nothing to be seen but a white so blinding his eyes burned. If not for the cold sensation over his body, he would wonder if he was anywhere at all. If he was even alive in this empty space of nothingness.

He answered calmly, arrogance seeping into his features. "From the moment I jumped, turning back no longer remained an option."

Then he chuckled lowly. "No, before that. From the moment I agreed to his deal, I had signed myself away as well."

The woman only hummed, and Elias had an idea of what Story this was.

The snow woman, the Yuki-Onna. In these unblemished lands in the grasp of her hands, unable to reject or resist her. Beautiful, as she was said to be, frightening and deadly. And empty.

In a nearby distance, both close and far, a man lied buried in snow.

It piled over him, submerging the frozen man further and further, and his mind had long gone numb. All he could see were his repeating sins, forced to lie trapped in his own mind.

The hands of children that reached, and his own that could never save them.

The cold was so painful that it spun and turned into numbness, nothingness. He couldn't feel himself, his body, or his mind. Whether his eyes were frozen open or closed, he didn't know, because he could see nothing.

Fingers, snapped off out of simple amusement, sprawled near him. Even the Yuki-Ona had escaped him, left him.

Lucas didn't know how long it'd been, and he couldn't estimate it either.

Would he remain here for eternity?

He wasn't a self-loathing person, no; he was a man who loved himself the most, and often said it aloud to irritate others. And yet he wondered, would anybody come? Could anybody?

In fact, the sort of love, either romantic or platonic, that would allow a person to devote themselves to sacrifice everything for uncertainty was rare. A love that persisted endlessly only lived in fairy tales, and on rare occasions in life.

Even if somebody found the Story by chance, Lucas had seen the lifted corpses of the Yuki-Onna's collection, long covered by snow.

How long could a person wander the nothingness for the slightest possibility he would be alive? He supposed he only regretted not saying anything to Kane, not speaking another sentence or word.

Any word would've done.

Lucas' mind drifted again, back to the darkness of the crowding deaths. The Punisher. The children. The unnamed victims of the Sleeping Beauty Story. Snow White, the girl who couldn't be saved by her brother.

And a lifetime ago, Kane Silvius, a man that should've become a hero.

He was tired of his failures, of the uncertain future. He was tired, and he wanted to sleep. To lose himself to the cold.

The Yuki-Onna laughed in the distance.

Elias continued to trudge through the snow, no amount of obscure abilities or layers to save him from the overwhelming chill. Was he even moving forward, or was stuck in place only thinking he was moving?

And if he felt like this already, lost to time and space and everything around, how did that man feel, painfully human?

He gritted his teeth and continued.

Elias hated the colour white. It was desolate and an empty colour of hope never answered. But in Lucas' gaze, it was the unblemished colour that refused to be dyed in any other. It was hopeful, in not an empty sense, but a stubborn determination.

For the sake of seeing that man's eyes one more time, he would continue in this endless nothingness.

The Yuki-Onna, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, smiled.

She smiled, eyes curving beautifully, chin resting on her delicate hands as raven hair cloaked around her. She didn't believe in romance, and she didn't believe in humanity.

The world would end, and she would cheer.

Look at her now, how beautiful and free. Untainted, untouched, where nobody could reach unless she allowed them. Look how powerful she was. The beautiful she, envied and wanted by many, loved by none.

She watched as Elias passed a pile in the snow where a half-alive body remained covered. To the almost corpse, she whispered,

'Don't you wish to remain imprisoned in time, a statue preserved in your best state? Where failures can plague you no longer, where you don't have to worry about the ugliness of your character, your actions?'

Of course, Lucas could no longer answer, long submerged in the darkness of his mind. He was stubbornly clinging to life, she'd give him that.

No matter what he did, no matter how he tried, he would exist meaninglessly.

She hummed as Elias passed entirely, unable to make out the shapes or levels of snow when everything remained a singular shade.

Then, his brows furrowed, and he pivoted. Stalking over, unable to see but somehow knowing, he fell to the ground and unearthed the snow. The black shadows covering his body pillowed around him, as if creating a space for just them.

He tore through the soft, tall layers, frost biting his fingertips.

His hands touched a frozen body. Elias' eyes widened and he dug faster.

And there he was, eyes closed in a fixed expression, with the slight crease between his brows and downturn curve of his bloodstained lips. Elias' stomach dropped—he couldn't feel the beat of a heart, he couldn't feel anything at all.

Was Lucas' body too cold, or was his too numb?

It'd been a long time since he'd felt helplessness, the inability to do nothing, to save nobody. He smiled wryly.

From the colour white, to his feelings of fear and loss, to the name he abandoned.

"You've made me remember too many things to abandon me now, darling." muttered Elia hoarsely, as he tilted the man's chin and pressed his lips down.

He kissed like a man wanting to pour his entire soul, his very being, into the other. As if there were a way he could insist on giving his life and his warmth to resurrect the frozen body.

He clutched Lucas' body and cursed the fact that he was too cold to warm the other up. What a miserable state he was in, fallen in this snow with nothing but thoughts he could give.

But Lucas' body shuddered, still frozen solid, and with a struggle, he slowly opened his eyes. Frost tumbled off his eyelashes, onto his cheeks. Lucas' eyes weren't looking at Elias, they weren't looking anywhere at all.

His lips parted, burning from the kiss, and the first thing he did was scowl.

"You took a damned long time."

Elias stared, uncertain if he was conjuring illusions from the frozen state of his mind, or if it was real. Then he chuckled. "It couldn't be helped. I was thinking about some things."

Lucas arched a brow, or attempted to. "Like?"

"How I'm sure now that I love you, of course." Lucas' eyes widened, and Elias continued calmly, proclaiming a fact rather than a confession.

"That I love you more than the stars that no longer shine, Lucas Silvius. "That I love you enough to have been willing to wander in this terrible white forever if it meant catching a glimpse of you again, alive or dead."

Lucas was quiet, but Elias didn't expect a response yet. He couldn't read Lucas' thoughts as well as the other could read him.

Instead, he held the close body to his chest, allowing the other to leech whatever warmth he had away. With another hand, he stretched it out and strings plucked from his body like unraveling skin, plummeting towards the ground in every direction.

Lucas stiffly grabbed his arm. "The consequence. The pain." He warned, and Elias tilted his head.

"Are you worried for me, darling?"

"It's your hell to bear."

"I understand the depths of your feelings, don't worry." Elias said as Lucas' scowl deepened and he rolled his eyes and didn't continue warning.

The particles of snow began to tremble, shuffling aside to reveal the corpses, her treasures, prizes. Then, in a way that was entirely and scientifically unreasonable, though everything about the End's Delusion seemed to be, a small flame lit one of the bodies.

Lucas squinted, feeling a blinding light cover his vision. No doubt Elias was doing something unreasonable again, making a grand mess.

Then he paused and carefully raised a finger to brush over his eyelids.

Another flame lit up, and another, and another until the endless landscape of white flickered with flames, razing the ground.

The Yuki-Ona stumbled in the clearing, screaming.

'Stop, stop! You're ruining it all! The beauty of this world! It's unbecoming, it's ugly! You're terrorizing my peace.'

She sobbed loudly, tears of blood streaming down her charcoal eyes. She was a mess now, hair stuck to her face and skin, feet blackened by blood and dirt. She stopped at the center of her burning world, and stared at Lucas who stared back.

There seemed to be an unfocused blur in his gaze.

Quietly, he told her, "It's fine. This madness, the burning grounds, it suits you. More than the innocent white of the snow."

The Yuki-Ona's raven eyes stared silently, her wails dying at her throat.

When she opened her mouth again, Lucas didn't hear the sweet echoes in his head, but the frail and uncertain voice of a young girl.

"Oh dreamer, will you wake us all up from this nightmare?"

"I intend to."

She didn't smile this time, standing in the flaming grounds. The snow had long since melted to reveal dozens of dismembered corpses. "Don't be a fool, dearest dreamer. Do not fall for the bewitching lies the delusion tells. Do not lose yourself to the illusion."

Her figure faded into the distance as Elias stepped out of the world, into a blur of black and whites, and then back onto the rooftop.

In a low voice, he said, "Leaving her Story is enough of an accomplishment for you to exit Tartarus. Hers was worth more than a regular one."

Lucas had remained silent, and he thought of what he'd seen, the memories and history of Elias and him. Of all the others. Of Kane, destined to die. The reality that he thought was fiction, made in his thoughts.

But they were memories.

With his mind still clouded by negativity and doubt, he couldn't help but ask, "Can I believe in your truth?"

If you've been hiding everything else. If everything had been a lie.

It wasn't a novel he wrote, but a life he lived. Elias, from the beginning, had known his own identity even if he didn't remember Lucas, or the repeating cycles. Elias had known the opposing paths they would stand.

Lucas thought about everything, the misery he felt after losing the children, the madness of the Prison Story and all the others.

The entire time, Lucas had thought he could read Elias well. But what if he couldn't? What if it'd all been a game, a Teller toying with a human? No, Lucas could conclude that Elias hadn't been cruel, before the End's Delusion.

But all he felt was doubt, fear for making the wrong choices, fear of killing those he wanted to protect.

'Save me! Save me, help me!'

'I trust you.'

'Protect them. Protect her. Protect him.'

They step back onto the roof, and nobody was looking at them. Lucas' body had been unfrozen by the licking flames, but he felt numbed to the core again.

Nora slumped against the ground, knees propped up as darkly inked words covered her entire body, a spreading infection that had begun to crawl up her face. Flakes of her skin had pieced off, crumbling away like a broken puzzle.

She coughed and raised her head. Immediately, the exhaustion and fear faded into bright relief. She stretched a hand out to wave, to greet her first companion in the terrible apocalypse.

Wren was crouched by her side, clutching her other hand, but Lucas didn't pay attention to anybody else. He didn't turn his frozen head, didn't move his gaze from its numb stare at the dark skies.

As Nora's hand lifted, it begun to crumble away at her fingertips.

It took only seconds. For her entire body to disappear into pieces of words, black, floating letters. They crashed to the ground, the patter of thousands of letters falling where she sat.

Lucas, his eyes unclear and unseeing, heard the shatter and felt ill to his stomach.

He shoved himself out of Elias' hold, his legs aching and unsteady as he rushed to reach her, but he was too late. He scrambled at the ground, almost bumping into Wren, and only felt the shape of block letters spilling past his fingers.

His voice wavered, and he swallowed. "This... what am I holding?"

Wren bent over, sobbing into her arms. When she heard the question, she snapped her head up angrily. "What do you think?"

Lucas shook his head, and she only grew angrier.

"Are you fucking with me? What you're holding, touching, is what remains of Nora Nilsen!"

Wren's bitter words reverberated in his skull. Too late to save another. Always. His head throbbed and his eyes burned, and all he saw was death reaching out in a dozen ways, in all the ways the children he failed died.

He clutched his head and bent to the ground, reliving the memories of all the ways the children died, all the ways those he killed passed, murdered.

It's too much, it's too much, it's too much.

A dull sheen covered his eyes and Kane rushed to his side, crouching down beside. "Lucas? Lucas. What happened? Are you okay? Were you—were you injured?"

Kane frowned with worry, but when Lucas slowly lowered his hands, the other flinched back as if hit. Lucas lifted his head, and his eyes—they were devoid of everything. Of light, and of emotion. The dull gaze stared at Kane numbly.

And a cold, broken voice spoke.

"I can't see. I can't see anything."