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Chapter 207: Broken Soul. Broken Family. Broken Mirror I
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"Death? You want to understand Death?" A shadowy figure asked with the calmest tone possible.
"Yes. I simply can not get a glimpse of it, and I am curious... Will seeing Death grant me anything?" A kid asked, looking strangely similar to Ian, well, a younger Ian.
The kid was seated on the ground without care while eyeing the individual gracefully sitting on the throne. They were in a colossal hall, looking marvelous, but most important of all, elegant.
"The most greedy in the family... That's what your mother told me." The Mysterious individual responded, his tone still just as calm.
"Then she must be mistaken because I only want to be granted things instead of taking them for myself." Little Ian shook his head in denial.
"Why Death?" The Shadowy individual asked.
"Because I can not see it. My siblings may be okay with that since it means immortality, but... I'm curious." Little Ian instantly responded as if he had rehearsed the sentence for long, seeming quite excited.
"Wouldn't you rather seek the concept of Death when you're fully grown? You'd have more control over the outcome then, no?" The shadowy individual asked another question, almost like he wanted to convince little Ian otherwise.
"But you're my Dad, and mom told me you always know best, even the things you aren't supposed to know." Little Ian provided his counterargument. He was quite the witty child.
"..."
There was a fleeting silence in the room before the shadowy figure stood up from his throne and started approaching little Ian, "Exquisite. You're just as odd as your siblings. Making me proud, so I'll grant your wish."
By the end, his tone reeked of amusement as he crouched before Ian, giving a clear view of his immaculate presence. It always feels to his family like they were seeing him for the first time despite living with him, very foreign.
Little Ian felt at that moment like he wanted to 'borrow' that immaculateness, to become just as alien to what's considered normal.
His thought process was stopped by feeling his father's hands find themselves around his neck, then slowly and surely, his father tightened his grip much to little Ian's confusion.
"Uh? Hh agh..." Little Ian could swear he was immortal like the rest of his siblings.
He could swear choking didn't work on him because he didn't need to breathe like the rest of his siblings, yet here he is, feeling himself desperate to catch a breath to no avail.
The last thing he remembered before dying was his father's dark tranquil eyes. He died and he got to experience Death for himself only to realize that Death is just as arbitrary as it is relative.
Death didn't come to take his soul. Nothing came. It was just left there ever to wonder a vast dark expanse. No mere Death would ever dare to reach out for his precious soul, little Ian realized.
Perhaps Death was afraid. No, all Deaths were afraid because he realized that there are as many Death personifications as there are stars in the sky... Or in the entire Multiverse combined.
Death isn't special, and he isn't special either because he felt like his soul wandered the darkness for ages, yet his father never came.
Is he sentenced to eternal darkness? Little Ian was very much afraid. How could he not when he was merely twelve? His fear only grew the more time he spent there.
Much to his relief, however, his father appeared right before him. An anomaly in the darkness that brought him more despair as soon as it started to fade.
"What you have just experienced is false Death. True Death is the absence of a soul, memories, and any traces that you ever existed. Allow me to show you True Death."
His father's tone was as calm as it ever was, seemingly not bothered by killing his own child, and so, a touch with a finger evaporated little Ian's soul.
Little Ian finally caught a glimpse of what True Death means. At that exact moment, while his Father's finger was making its way to him, Ian saw Death.
He felt hopeless. He saw no escape, only darkness. No, he saw nothingness. He will become nothing, and no one will remember him with time.
Fear overwhelmed him in that mere moment before the finger came in contact with him, so much fear it almost overwhelmed his greediness.
Little Ian was smart enough to realize that someone can die before they truly die because he felt like he was already dead. It was the realization that killed him.
And so, his soul was erased, "Hmm..." His father was left in contemplation, seemingly revising what he had just done. Perhaps he was regretful?
"Was I too kind? Yeah, I should've been harsher." The man nodded to himself before... Well, things changed.
Little Ian found himself alive, still seated on the ground, and his father could still be seen seated on his throne.
"Satisfied?" Little Ian was asked, but he didn't answer, still too stunned to respond. The father didn't mind, instead, he sent him to his room, allowing his mind to cool, to get his bearing back.
Moreover, he made sure to seal the room so as to not allow anyone to enter. That was something little Ian had to deal with alone, and he did.
Time passed, and little Ian grew to become Ian, someone obsessed with fighting against True Death.
Perhaps he realized the immortality granted to him by his father wasn't true immortality. Perhaps he realized that Death can find him.
His fear of Death drove him towards a certain path, a path unreachable by Death, even by his father.
Still, his path led him right back to his Father. He grew up, becoming a fully grown man, yet here he was, standing in the very same place he once sat on when he was a child.
Most interestingly, he was here for advice, or more like a bit of help, "I can not move further anymore. I feel like I've reached the furthest I can go unless something changes."
"And You seem to know what needs to change..." His father spoke, his tone still just as calm.
"I want Death, but even I can not grant myself Death anymore... Can you?" Ian asked with determination.
"There will be consequences to the kind of Death you seek." His father reminded, knowing that he doesn't want true Death, but what he wants isn't so far off.
"It's the only way. A mirror isn't enough... I want a broken mirror, but I can not destroy the mirror myself because I created it to not be destroyed." Ian explained as vaguely as possible.
"Alright. I'll grant your wish... This should be amusing, so..." Amusement seemed to be the goal of his father as a bow-like construct manifested above him, reeking of pure darkness but also glowing with red lightning of destruction.
It didn't really look intimidating, not for people at Ian's level at least. It seemed normal to Ian which is why he knew right there and then, "You can really kill me... Even after how far I've gone..."
No more words were said as his body broke turning to dust, his soul almost following in the same fate.
The arrow released by the bow was so accurate it left Ian's soul on the brink of destruction, fractures traveling throughout it.
His father needed to do nothing more but watch the show as the broken soul acted on its own, seeking a premeditated world to settle in.
"Commitment. The word truly known by very few." The father murmured as his vision traversed the vast odd expanse to eye a beast of sorts following after the soul with pure hate.
It's safe to say that Ian was very committed, and he planned for everything beforehand, so upon turning into nothing but a broken soul, everything flowed along naturally.
That even included the beast trying to completely destroy the soul.
"Your soul will either completely break, or it will slowly mend to... Well, become a mirror, a broken mirror. You'll truly become unbreakable because breaking you will not matter anymore."
Ian entered the process known as reincarnation. He grew with his broken mirror dimension barely working, yet it was still able to stop the beast from erasing him or even erasing the entire universe he was in.
Now just that, the world he reincarnated in was chosen carefully to act as a tunnel for a lower world, a place he would later automatically travel to once he grows enough.
He entered an even bigger Multiverse, an odd place where he can grow relatively quickly to reach the exact state he's in now while not only letting his broken mirror world protect against the beast but also protecting the entire Multiverse from destruction by that same beast.
The beast hated him to such a degree that it was trying to kill him numerous times per second every second across all of his years of life, thus tunning his Dark Mirror World to function very differently than it previously did.
Thus why Dr. Manhattan asked this question, "How are you alive when you're supposed to be dead? I can finally see it, your soul is fractured beyond repair..."
His soul was supposed to have been destroyed, so why does it look even more broken?