Serenely calm, a rosy wind picks up in the Heavenly Fields.
It makes the luscious grass dance in harmony and the ethereal clouds drift in the sky.
The floating blue shrine of ARCHAIA stands still amidst the gust.
Violet knelt down onto the pillowy grassland, clasping her hands together and closing her eyes.
"You ready?" Matt asked her.
"Yeah, just a little nervous," she responded.
Matt grimaced as he gazed upon her shaking figure, "Do you not want to go through with it? You don't have to."
"I do... I know it'll be for the better it's just..."
"You don't want to dissapear from this world."
Violet hung her head, "No, that's not it."
"Then what is it?"
"I don't want to lose you or Iris."
...
The symbol of a bloody pentagram with an eagle, hourglass, and a mask was burned onto the ground around Violet.
"Become my creed once more.
ARCHAIA, I pray that my flesh become yours. Awaken from within my soul."
Matt's eyes widened as he clenched his fist.
"Cath Palug," he chanted.
The giant feline of Authurian myth birthed into exsistence and let out a roar that shook the earth.
It ran forth and clawed its way to the top of the crystalline shrine.
Reaching the pinnacle, it's vicious claws were brought down upon the structure.
A kaleidoscopic light filled the fields from the clear blue skies to the dancing green grass as the shrine housing the goddess collapsed.
...
June 2nd, 2025. (5 years ago)
"Plato's theory of the soul states that the soul is split into three parts. "Logic, Spirit, and Desire."
In every sentient being there is a voice of reason, emotion, and wants.
But what if one of these parts of the soul were to be completely destroyed?
Would they still retain their sense of self?
Would they simply turn into a mindless beast?" Juan posed the question to his colleague, Godfried.
"I don't research the theoretical, I simply follow the guidelines of reality.
The fact is that souls are eternal and cannot be destroyed. They will be endlessly reborn in a body anew.
Weisenburg already completed his experimentation for the erasure of a soul. Our job with Protocol A is to find the next closest thing...
Transferring a soul to another body."
Juan smirked and interrupted Godfried, "But have we seen it for ourself?
For all we know Weisenburg could've lied to us or made assumptions about the nature of a soul.
You're too rooted in reality Godfried.
You know...
People who don't change are left behind by the ones who do."
A silence became of the two.
"Then again destroying one part of a soul would likely cause irreversible damage to the host. It's just a twisted curiosity I'd never act on," Juan quickly added on.
"Yeah... that's too cruel..." Godfried replied quietly.
...
In this indelible present, Violet would be born anew.
Her usual scowl relaxed and her posture lightened.
Her hair blew with the breeze, veiling her face.
And she shut her eyes for the final time.
...
June 5th, 2026. (4 years ago)
A lone woman with hair so dirty its original color was unknown, yet with brilliantly shining ruby eyes walked through the dim streets of downtown Los Angeles.
A place teeming with heaps of trash and graffiti.
"No one's coming to save me." "I'm alone."
"Will it be like this for the rest of my life?" Were thoughts that repeated in the young lady's head.
She stumbled onto a garbage bin filled to the brim and began rummaging through it.
A muddy paste smelling of fecal matter and ammonia plastered her body as she sorted through the trash bags.
She dove into the sea of dead rodents and grotesque rottage, managing to scavenge a small bag of half-eaten food.
"McJuan's," it read.
She savored the morsel of McJunuggets and Big Juan, filthy as it was.
"It's late," She muttered to herself in a daze.
Crawling beneath the trash bin, she shut her eyes as tears began to roll down her sooty cheeks.
"I can't do anything. I'm worthless."
...
That night she dreamed.
She dreamed of a kingdom so vast and abundant that everyone were free to roam anywhere they liked without having to worry about food or shelter.
"Wealthwood."
...
The woman woke up with a violent jolt.
"Matt that isn't him!" Someone shouted loudly.
The sun shone brightly in her eyes, the garbage bin she slumbered under scraping across the concrete as it was dragged from above her.
"But he's supposed to be homeless right? We'll find Gabe if we look hard enough," A man suggested.
"Look at her, that isn't Gabe!"
An auspicious man in a trenchcoat and a white-haired woman looked down upon her.
"Oh..."
...
"So what's your name?" The white-haired woman asked.
"..." She whispered, her statement inaudible.
"I'm Matt and she's Iris, You don't have to be scared around us," The man said, pointing to himself then his partner.
A long silence followed before...
"...I don't have a name."
"Then what do people call you then?" Iris asked.
"People don't really... talk to me."
Matt put his head down as if deep in thought, "Well let's go back to the hotel so we can get you cleaned up and fed."
...
"Woah your hair is so... purple," Iris commented.
Freshly out of the shower, the woman stood awkwardly at the doorway wearing nothing but a baggy shirt...
Her thin frame and bright eyes accentuated a subtle beauty.
"Let's call you Violet. It matches your hair," Matt said.
"That's a retarded name. Are you autistic?" Iris asked Matt.
"Shut up bitch that's why Grandma didn't love you."
"Eternal Garden: Flower."
Roots sprouted from the ground, pinning Matt down.
"Consume."
"W-Wait!!" Iris shouted out as the words left his mouth.
Iris was swallowed whole by the distended jaw and was erased from existence.
"Hehe... Sorry about that," Matt turned to Violet.
"...Is she... dead?"
"Probably not."
...
6 months pass.
In the barren deserts of Australia, where wild creatures and unknown lands were endless, Matt stopped his car at an empty gas station.
"Violet, what do you want to do in the future?" Iris asked, the two of them sitting in the backseat as Matt filled gas up.
She looked at Iris with a puzzled expression, "What do you mean..?"
"Just in general. People are so caught up with fulfilling their desires in the moment that they have no long term goals."
"I guess... I want to keep staying with you guys," Violet responded.
"Haha... that's not too grand of a goal. Let's think of something else you want. Something bigger."
"That's all I want though..."
Iris smiled while pulling out her phone, "Well you like traveling around with us, right? Why not find someplace you really want to go?"
"I want to go to heaven."
"Violet..."
Matt got back in the car, interrupting the two, "Alright, where are we going now Iris?"
"You should kill yourself, now," she responded.
...
17 months pass.
Violet, do you want to head over there?" Iris pointed to a coastal town somewhere along the beaches of Taiwan.
"Do we need to..?" She asked meekly.
"No... I just thought you'd like it."
Matt sighed, "Give it up Iris. I know you just want to make Violet happy but she's already happy like this. Visiting random places or "searching" for the one thing she finds passion in isn't going to change anything. Some people are content living their lives without aspirations like that."
"Maybe you should kill yourself so everyone around you can be content with life," Iris responded.
Violet cut in, "Iris... I really appreciate you doing this for me... but I just don't have anything that interests me like that..."
"I know... but I just want you to find something to pursue in life. I can't imagine living without a dream to chase."
"It's fine... Just being with you two is fine..."
...
31 months pass.
The three rode upon a giant whale summoned by Matt, his car also fastened to the back of the creature.
"Violet, which way should we go?" Iris asked.
In the middle of an ocean vaster than anyone could imagine, there was complete freedom.
Any way would lead to a new adventure, a new discovery.
Violet gazed at the horizon, the sun beaming blindingly onto the rushing waves.
What is this feeling..?
She pointed onward to the brink between the ocean and sky.
"If we defeat all our enemies over there... will we finally be free?"
Matt asked, "What are you talking about, Violet?"
"If I lose it all, slip and fall, will you laugh at me?"
Matt and Iris both looked at each other bewildered, as Violet mumbled on.
"I think this is it. This is what I want to do. I want to keep going as far as I can with you guys. This feeling..."
Iris smiled, "You look forward to sharing what's beyond the horizon."
"That's right. I want to go to the ends of the world with you two!" Violet shouted out.
"I don't care where we go or how we get there, if you're both with me I know everything will be fine."
...
Present day.
"...Violet?" Matt muttered.
She twitched ever so slightly.
And in an instant, Matt fell to his knees and prostrated himself.
The air.
The grass.
The sky.
It all changed the second she opened her eyes.
That wasn't Violet.
ARCHAIA had returned.
There was no being on this planet that could match her in any way and it would be made apparent to anyone who stood in her path, yet...
Far away, a chant could be heard.
"Open the Gates of Limbo."
The city of white would fall from the sky to envelop ARCHAIA and Matt.
Amidst the looming white towers, he looked down upon the goddess.
"Ready for a rematch?" Weisenburg spoke.
ARCHAIA gazed at him before quickly rushing towards Matt.
Weisenburg suddenly disappeared from his vantage point and reappeared between the two.
...
The "Toba eruption."
A mass extinction event that is said to have killed 99 percent of humans during its time, leaving less than 3,000 people on Earth.
The largest volcanic eruption ever.
...
"Distant Purgatorium: Time."
Weisenburg raised his palm to face ARCHAIA and released the melting eruption from the annals of history.
She was launched through a dozen of the monochrome buildings, molten lava drowning her in an inexplicable heat.
Flames perforated the world as everything would burn.
Matt simply stared dumbfounded.
Their speed was completely incomprehensible, the entire exchange barely lasted a fraction of a millisecond.
In the next fraction, Violet would emerge, her scarlet eyes burning with the soul of ARCHAIA and lava dripping down her body.
Hundreds of arms came from within her, all poised towards Weisenburg.
Slowing the time around him, Weisenburg weaved through the spiderweb of limbs effortlessly before summoning a shower of meteors that pelted a 10 mile radius around ARCHAIA.
"This is every asteroid that has hit Earth in the past 300,000 years of human history."
With the same intensity as countless atomic bombs raining upon a city, nothing but a blind raging destruction filled the present.
"Something's off," Weisenburg muttered.
"...She was never this weak."
...
Weisenburg froze as a shock reverberated throughout Limbo.
Chills shot down his spine.
ARCHAIA used this split-second distraction to take hold of Matt who barely just began reacting to the situation.
"Claim."
...
Ah.
So that's what's different.
Violet was able to find happiness in this timeline. Those emotions she felt, the bonds she created with others, it overwrit and destroyed the "emotional" aspect of ARCHAIA's soul when they conjoined. It's great that the goddess has been weakened but still... Weisenburg thought.
ARCHAIA was now capable of cold logic, disregarding not only others for the attainment of her goals, but her own self as well.
She had lost any sense of pride or humanity.
A mindless creature only driven by the desire to survive and kill.
In every sense of the word, she was a monster.