"Noble Chroma: Blue."
Humans are egotistical.
"Torrential Origin: Blizzard."
People are allies to themselves and themselves only.
Palace of Sin: Envy
Everyone is inherently selfish. Being selfless only serves to hurt you.
"Pure Chronostasis: Death."
So why do we cling so helplessly to others?
...
8 years ago.
It was autumn.
A rather cold autumn.
Alan looked off into the deep blue sky lined with the silhouettes of tall trees that surrounded his high school.
Beaumont High School.
He was only a junior but had already studied the Akashic powers and their implications more than almost anybody in the world.
He also had attained the power of "Pure Chronostasis: Death."
Perhaps because of his personality or the unconscious knowledge of his deadly aura, he had no friends.
No one around him.
Not an "outcast" but simply someone who nobody talked to.
The bell rang and he walked over to "Building X" which held a secret classroom taught by none other than...
"Mr. Weisenburg."
"Here again, Alan? Haha, it's like you have no friends OR bitches!"
"I don't."
"Ahh... that sounds... unfortunate."
"Yeah."
Alan went to take his seat but as he readied himself for the lesson, his gaze was met by the purple-haired girl who sat next to him.
"Violet" was her name as he recalled.
They silently acknowledged each other for a moment before the door of the classroom creaked open.
A student wearing a grey tracksuit and slicked black hair walked in.
"Oh, Juan! What're you doing here? Weren't you going on a date with that girl?" Weisenburg called out.
"She cheated on me with some big black dude."
"Oh... that's... damn."
Juan sat down next to Alan.
A lengthy silence followed once again before Weisenburg boldy announced, "The lesson on Akashic powers will begin now! This time, I'll talk a little bit about myself..."
Juan sighed, "Just teach us how to control our powers, old man."
Weisenburg smirked, "But I think you'll find this lesson quite interesting..."
...
"The Most Powerful Man in the World," a title Weisenburg had earned for himself years ago.
And his battle against the immortal goddess, ARCHAIA.
"The Invincible Generation."
Years ago there were four people just like Juan, Michael, Alan, and Matt.
They were the strongest Akashic users of all time.
Four legends.
...
10 years prior to the lesson.
A fragmented memory.
Monstrous shadows loomed menacingly, surrounding a small search party in the midst of a neverending hallway.
They were attacked in the tunnel of Eternity's End that led nowhere but straight ahead.
"Eir, take the flank," Weisenburg said demandingly while summoning a crystalline-like orb that slowly grew bigger in his palm.
"Yes, sir," Eir responded and then called out...
"Noble Chroma: Blue."
A cascade of navy flowed from her body and flooded the pack of monstrous shadows looming behind.
"Haha, stop acting so professional. We know that you two got married!" Kiara yelled out to Eir and Weisenburg while an invisible force crushed the murky creatures, embedding them into the reflective floor.
"Huh!? You know?!" Eir yelped in suprise.
"Yeah, we all do," Godfried said coldly while tearing up the group of monsters in front of him with his blade.
An ancient treasure named the "Kingslayer."
Godfried rushed to Eir's side, eviscerating everything in his path into thick chunks of flesh and limbs.
"I can handle this, Godfried. You should battle on the front line," Eir said as he arrived to the back line.
"I need to protect you, I can't let someone so important to Weisenburg get hurt."
"You're pretty considerate for being so brutal."
Godfried's emotionless face turned to her, "I only care about the lives of those important to me."
...
For a moment everything froze.
The chaos of the battle stopped and the air was sucked out of the space.
"Distant Purgatorium: Time," Weisenburg uttered.
The kaleidoscopic orb in his hand reached its limit and exploded as all the creatures in the area seemed to age hundreds of years and deteriorate in an instant.
The power of time manipulation.
Godfried deeply stared at Weisenburg from the corner of his eye.
"Watch out," the voice of Eir suddenly sounded from behind.
"She's awakened... ARCHAIA."
Their surroundings suddenly began collapsing and debris rained from above.
From the depths of the abyss, a hand shot out.
One that dwarfed the four of them and grasped directly for Eir.
She closed her hands together, blue shooting out from the shadows and slashing the giant arm in a whirlpool of whips.
Kiara stomped her leg to the ground and struck the air with an open palm.
"Divergent Pressure: Atmosphere..."
The arm was blasted into the wall adjacent, leaving an indent in the mysterious material.
Godfried rushed in, readying his knife to lacerate the fingers but before he could...
It swung its hand in an arc, coming into contact with Godfried and whipping his body into a fine bloody mist.
Being quickly reborn beside Weisenburg, Godfried readied himself again.
"Careful, rookie. You don't know what this thing's capable of," Weisenburg muttered playfully.
Godfried sighed irritatedly before whispering under his breath, "Kingslayer: Activate."
His blade glowed a golden light of authority and the symbol of a bloody pentagram with an eagle, an hourglass, and a mask was burned alongside the hilt.
Kiara muttered, "I remember when I used Ancient Treasures..."
"Why'd you stop?" Weisenburg asked.
"My grandson started playing with them and almost blew himself up."
"Hahaha!"
Blood spouted from the giant arm.
Violently slashing from the fingers to the elbow, Godfried's golden Kingslayer emanated a fiery blaze of stars with every strike.
Eir casually walked forward towards the chaos and laid her finger into a pool of the goddess' blood.
She grinned as it was imbued with her blue, "I wonder if I can do it to even an immortal being like you..."
"Copy."
...
A low rumbling..
And a scream.
One that seemed to shake the origin of everything in its presence.
Eir strained and tensed as she desperately fought to replicate the violently thrashing arm.
"Don't push yourself too hard," Weisenburg casually placed his hand onto her shoulder and grinned caringly.
Raising his other, a reflective orb with historic cataclysms etched onto its surface formed in his palm.
"Judgment."
...
Everything was destroyed, ripped from its place.
As if anything that previously stood in front of him was erased from reality.
The giant arm.
The infinite hall.
They both disappeared being violently torn from existence, revealing the looming figure of a goddess.
...
In that moment, Weisenburg looked more omnipotent than the deity opposing him.
The divine figure of a nude woman.
More beautiful than anything in this world.
More disturbing than anything in this world.
A hundred arms emerged from her figure and her pale skin glowed in the abyss.
Her deep ultramarine eyes illuminated her lustful facial features, supple neck, and plump breasts.
ARCHAIA.
The goddess continued to shriek as the arm that was torn off by Weisenburg flailed wildly.
"She's huge... If she ever got out into the real world it'd be a catastrophe," Kiara muttered as her invisible power spread across the vast empty space.
Atmospheric pressure lightening around the four, the capabilities of their bodies were heightened.
Eir turned to Weisenburg, "What do we-"
But before she could finish, he had leapt forward and sounded a deafening boom.
The void raced around him as he approached.
Traveling several miles in the matter of seconds, he faced ARCHAIA with a terrifying glint in his eye.
Time warped around his fingers as he intertwined them in a dizzying spiral.
ARCHAIA's countless arms shot forward to assault Weisenburg in his airborne state.
He smiled.
Whereas anyone would inevitably feel terror in the presence of a divine goddess, he felt excitement..
The goddess' arms were slashed into meaty chunks as Weisenburg shot the petrified time wrapped around his fingers with a flick of the wrist.
"Fauetr... Phiali... c'est... Melanu..." ARCHAIA groaned in a foreign language.
"Is she... saying something?" Kiara whispered under her breath.
The void language.
"Waratte."
...
An ominous premonition enveloped the four.
Silence.
Followed by ruin.
Blood began to overflow from every orifice of Eir's body.
Her eyes were dyed crimson and the congealed liquid poured from her mouth.
Godfried raised his blade and stabbed himself between the eyebrows.
He was reborn beside Weisenburg and he once again raised the Kingslayer.
But this time he thrust downward and impaled Weisenburg through the chest.
Weisenburg's eyes widened in shock and time seemed to pause like a clock ticking on the same second.
Blood splattered onto the abyssal floor, being expelled from his throat.
Kiara sprinted across the vast space towards them, being swarmed by hundreds of arms grasping for her desperately.
She panted heavily, barely avoiding the countless forms mobbing her.
"Eir.. Weisenburg... Why? Why Godfried? Why?!" She shouted, stopping in her tracks and slamming her fists down.
The pressure of a hundred tons slammed and crushed the arms into the ground as she cried out.
In a blurry blink of movement, the goddess made her move.
...
ARCHAIA appeared directly behind Kiara.
The deity laid a single finger onto her and uttered the word, "Sjool."
Convulsing violently, Kiara retched and clawed at her own skin.
Red flooded around her as she ripped and tore her body apart, bits of tissue and sinew lodged in her nails.
"Ahh... ah," she struggled, curled up in a pool of her own blood.
Like the sound of velcro, tearing and tearing.
Screams and flesh flying into the air.
The destruction of oneself.
"M-Matt... I-I'm sorry."
The devouring of oneself.
"Is this... my sin..? Ha.. haha."
Repentance?
Eir was one who constantly helped others yet neglected herself.
She repented by having her body destroyed from the inside out.
Godfried was one who pushed others away to avoid the pain and weakness that comes with human relationships.
He repented by betraying the one person who was there for him.
Kiara was one who put herself and her needs over others.
She repented by destroying herself bit by bit.
...
ARCHAIA's power could be seen as divine judgment.
But it could also be seen as...
The power to control someone's soul.
"With just a touch and the use of that strange language... You can take complete control of someone," Weisenburg muttered, heaving his body upright.
Reincarnating at a far distance, Godfried rushed towards him with the fiery Kingslayer in hand.
"Judgment."
Godfried was razed from existence as Weisenburg turned his palm towards him.
"You've turned my allies against me. You've destroyed those I love. Is this what you think is repentance? You false idol," Weisenburg challenged the goddess.
It cried out and launched an assault of open palm strikes.
As the arms raced towards, Weisenburg smiled.
"You're the emotional type and easy to provoke. Those slow attacks will never hit."
Forming a giant whirlpool of time and space in his right hand and stuffing the other in his lab coat's pocket, he stayed smiling.
"I will never allow you to hurt them ever again. Die."
A kaleidoscope of hellish history formed on the tip of his finger.
A lifeless forest that sped through the seasons like a time-lapse, yet always remaining frozen.
A log cabin in a wheat field that spanned seemingly endlessly in every direction.
An alternate time or perhaps a distant future shot forward and consumed the goddess.
"With this, even the gods cower in my presence," Weisenburg spoke.
An ever-growing city of white stretched and stretched into the vast abyss as ARCHAIA was thrown past infinity itself.
Unraveling in an infinite series of columns and blocks, the buildings of white reached into the void.
Like the birthing of a universe, Weisenburg used his body as the trigger and the void of Eternity's End as the reactant.
The white was built off the fundamental concept of his Akashic power and the materialized time flowed endlessly.
In that moment, he transformed the landscape of Limbo permanently.
A veil that hid reality.
Anyone who discovered Limbo from that day forward would come across the white city Weisenburg created in this moment and only if permitted by the man himself would they be allowed into the "true" Limbo.
The true Limbo that consisted of the three subareas, "Eternity's End," "The Heavenly Fields," and "The Sea of Reality."
...
ARCHAIA was launched past the border of Eternity's End, her arms being torn from her and countless slashes latching deep into her flesh.
She was shredded to pieces.
The culmination of the most devastating events in history.
The Black Death.
The World Wars.
The Holocaust.
The Great Famine.
The Rwanda Genocide.
The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It all pulverized the goddess' body as the history of humanity consumed her.
Weisenburg's control over time. His control over history. His rage.
ARCHAIA's soul was launched to a destination that was so far from the present it would never be reached by any human alive.
The edge of Limbo, the border of existence.
...
"Eir!" Weisenburg rushed to her side.
"Weisen..burg," she said in a barely audible tone.
Kneeling down, he elevated her head and placed his hand over her chest.
Her skin was pale, smeared with blood from her ears, mouth, nose, and even eyes.
"ARCHAIA's gone now, you can rest easy," Weisenburg uttered.
"No..." She coughed and spewed the nauseating red from her innards while forcing her body to stand.
Yet she smiled.
The same mischevious smile that Weisenburg wore in the face of victory.
An explosion of blue came from within as a giant form began materializing around her.
The dizzying, spiraling ribbons of beautiful color wrapped her body in a cocoon of flowing blue plasma.
The navy tide spread and swallowed up a bleeding out Kiara and newly reborn Godfried.
The wave rushed through the hallway to the end, sending them through the gates of Limbo and to the safety of the real world.
Reaching her hand out to Weisenburg, the ethereal swirls emerging from her arm echoed into the abyss.
He reached his hand out and accepted it.
"I need to get to the Heavenly Fields... Will you walk with me?" She asked
"Of course."
An endless voyage.
The two walked into the abyss, leaving Godfried and Kiara by the hallway of Eternity's End.
A trail of blood followed them, Eir painting the red road behind.
They walked and walked until they reached the grassland of the Heavenly Fields.
A tiny orb that reflected a darkness indescribably deep laid in the beautiful long grass and peonies, standing out significantly.
...
"Weisenburg... we've blundered," Eir said, the heavenly blue glistening around her.
"Yes... it seems we're a generation too early." He replied.
"Only THAT power could destroy ARCHAIA at this point."
A gorgeous silence washed over the place like waves against a shore.
"Then I will wait for that day to come... When that power is born into this world. But for now..." Eir paused.
Weisenburg's eyes met hers.
"...will you accompany me?"
The deep blue within Eir blossomed into petals of flowing crystal.
"Eir..." Weisenburg said with a pained expression.
Her body slowly crystallized into a ice-like coating, spreading from her chest.
"I will pass down my power to whomever you choose, Weisenburg.
I will trust you to find the right person... the person who can defeat ARCHAIA."
Ultramarine walls and columns erupted from within and spread into a massive structure resembling a shrine.
"Eir! Wait!" Weisenburg ran forward, tripping and collapsing in his panic.
"Weisenburg... I'm glad I met you. I wouldn't want to have spent my life with anyone else."
Weisenburg cried out, "I swear... I'll find a way! I'll find a way to save you!"
"I'll be waiting then..."
Constructed by Eir...
Was ARCHAIA's prison.
Was the lone shrine that laid in the Heavenly Fields that acted as such.
Eir's will.
Passed down by the ultimate sacrifice.
With the moniker of...
"Noble Chroma: Blue."