The boy disintegrated before Arlok's eyes. His body turned to dust in an instant, leaving no trace of the crying child's face. In that same moment, the world, once engulfed in flames, began to fill with different hues.
These snow-white skyscrapers were so tall that Arlok struggled to see their tops. He watched as these buildings slowly but surely crumbled, destroying strange translucent bridges where shuttles and machines had been flying through the air just moments ago.
Explosions began to stand out among the cacophony of sounds of crumbling buildings and chaos. Arlok's eyes tried to discern the sources of the explosions, but amidst the white columns called houses, he couldn't locate them.
Suddenly, his ears picked up the sound of footsteps - they were quiet yet echoed in Arlok's "head." His snow-white body still glowed, but considerably dimmer than in the "endless ocean." The man, whose body was enveloped in a golden-white mantle, had his face concealed by a hood, but his chin was visible. There, a small cross-shaped scar stood out against his pale-white skin.
A hand in the golden mantle rose, and at that moment, Arlok realized that the buildings were not collapsing due to explosions but because of Eden. It crushed them, as if it were detonating them, and they fell by the will of the unknown hand...
In an instant, a strange shining golden spear flew through Arlok's chest, and in that moment, the world began to accelerate and crumble even more. The unknown ascended, Arlok's eyes witnessed how the power of this "individual" increasingly influenced the environment, destroying it.
The earth cracked open, huge pieces rose into the sky. Buildings collapsed, flames spread. The man continued to speak, but Arlok couldn't hear the words, only saw his lips moving while the sky and the ground trembled under the influence of the Unknown's power.
"Father..." - the word flickered in Arlok's mind, it was something unknown and alien to him. It was something he had never possessed in his life.
While the man shattered the illusionary world above Arlok, his "heart" focused on the boy. Those initially sad, mournful eyes turned in an instant to ones of destruction and anger. Without taking a step away from the door that glowed behind him, Arlok tried to recall the boy's face, trying to grasp even a thread of truth, but he couldn't remember the face or anything else - it significantly differed from the last time.
"Weird..." - he looked at his body, at the white glow. The spear that flew moments ago failed to wound him. His body seemed to disappear, fade against this place where white houses collapsed, fire consumed them, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to blend with the sky, only to fall back to its rightful place, destroying more and more territory each time.
Behind the "man," more and more strange weapons began to appear in the sky - from swords to spears, axes, and much more, the names of which Arlok didn't know despite his love for antiquity. They disappeared in the distance, while buildings behind Arlok collapsed...
In the sky, ships slowly began to appear. He recognized them instantly - it was the Alliance fleet, a symbol of its power, the second battleship, Impegro. A military space vessel created for war; in turn, the Treon battleship was an expeditionary and punitive ship. But at that moment, behind the huge battleship, a second one appeared.
Arlok's eyes widened; he had never seen two battleships in one place before. Moreover, he saw them from the planet, and considering the size of the ships, it was beyond reasonable. Hundreds of thousands of golden guns were directed towards them; a part of the soul of the strongest thought that this weapon would not be able to penetrate the Eden Shield of the ships. But the explosions made him understand differently; the ships fell incredibly fast. They were crushed, and the weapons continued to destroy the world around them.
Suddenly, his body turned by itself. Arlok witnessed a strange sight. A dozen spears pierced the man's body; he bled, his crimson eyes barely open, and his gray hair soaked in his own blood. These crimson eyes, exhausted from everything, looked up at the glowing figure in front of him.
"If only I had fulfilled my mission, if only I had trusted ****'s words" - at the moment when he pronounced the name, something, a strange sound, prevented Arlok from hearing his words. - "Everything would have been different!" - he coughed blood, which surprisingly continued to flow from his body.
His head, barely able to move, tilted back, and he began to look at the sky, which was increasingly filling with the explosions of thousands of ships.
"By the authority granted to me, I am the Grand Admiral..." - the semi-dead man struggled to speak and breathe.
"What are you?!" - Arlok took a step towards him, approaching, but the man died before finishing his sentence. Blood stained the golden eagle on his chest, visible due to Arlok's proximity to his body.
As the snow-white tips of Arlok's fingers touched the bloodied body in an attempt to help, he began to rise involuntarily towards the sky. He appeared before the man who was destroying this world; his face was hidden behind a golden glow, much like the man who pointed at the "broken mirror" but this time it was something else, a different force concealed the man's appearance. He reached out, and Arlok flew away; behind him, a door appeared abruptly, and he flew into it.
The endless black ocean was around him again, the white glow of his body illuminated everything incredibly strongly.
"What was... that just now, the second me?!..."
At that moment, two hands broke the frozen picture behind the door, entering the territory of the "endless ocean." These bloodied hands grabbed Arlok by the legs and dragged him back into the door.
"You did not see the truth hidden behind the past in the form of the future, which changed the present!" - it was his own voice.
Plunging into the frozen picture, the world there changed. There was no trace of civilization, only ruins, a planet covered in lava flowing from all the crevices. On the only islet sat Arlok pierced by hundreds of spears. His body was bloodied and torn, drops of fresh blood dripping from the corners of his lips.
The tiny fraction of his soul watching this now drew close to his half-dead body. It was a simple force pulling him now, not hands.
The "soul" entered the "body," and he began to see through its eyes. He felt unbearable pain, but someone's touch on his head made him shudder from within, and the soul and body, together, felt the excitement.
"Brother..." - this voice he recognized among millions of others; this affectionate voice belonged to Mary, his younger sister.
In an attempt to lift his head and open his eyes, he gritted his teeth and attempted it. Raising it, he didn't see a person; he saw only a destroyed planet and hundreds of black spears that miraculously changed their color in an instant.
"Sister..." - these words resonated within, but he couldn't speak them - he was dying.
The picture of the destroyed planet was right in front of him; he looked at it, and his eyes closed quickly, but suddenly his sister's voice made them open again:
"Please, save me, brother... I want to live, see the sunset and sunrise, think and love, wish and lose, I want to be alive again!..."
The world began to change again; lava oceans turned into boundless green fields, he knew them very well - they were on his home, Mother Earth.
There, swirling in a dance by herself, was Mary, a beautiful girl with green-blue hair. She jumped; her bare feet hovered around the greenery. But in an instant, a golden spear pierced her chest, shattering the ground beneath her feet. She hung on the spear, unable to fall to the ground.
"No! Not her!" - Arlok could move; he reached out to her, and his body screamed.
But immediately the world began to change again; now Arlok sat, his knees submerged in grass, but a little further, bodies rose. They were maimed and disfigured; only their faces remained unchanged.
"What have I done..." - the soul just watched, and the body spoke. He buried his head in the cold abdomen; this person was dead, like thousands of others behind him. The entire green field became a place where Arlok bid farewell to thousands of people, mourning them for the last time, where the scent of green fresh grass was replaced by the stench of blood and flesh...
Tears rolled down his face; he buried his nose in the dress, soaked in blood.
"Mary, Lucy... forgive me, a fool who couldn't keep his promise! I never, never, never, never!..." - each word came with a stutter; he bit his lip, trying to hold back the tears, but they burst out each time with renewed force.
"I just wanted to make the world better, to give it a chance! Forgive me!" - he embraced the two bodies, trying to calm his tears, but controlling this emotion was impossible.
"I... I..." - golden crosses appeared in his crimson eyes for the first time in his long life.
The world changed again; Earth turned into a strange room, in the middle of which stood a lonely man, his head directed somewhere far, and in that moment, the room filled with vegetation and a sunset view.
"Arlok, do you know why the world submits to the Council, why people, creatures inclined to fight for freedom, live in this prison?" - it was the voice of an old man; he sat down in a chair that appeared from the floor. When Arlok approached, the old man continued:
"Our entire history, our past, future, and present path have already been written long ago by someone. Like everything else, this path has its beginning and its end," - the old man began to cough. - "How can we see the written history to live without fear? It's dreadfully simple, follow the Protocol, which exactly repeats the lines of the written history of our ancestors, us, and our descendants!"
"But even so, everything is dreadfully entangled... The future, the past, and the present intertwined, turning the unreal into reality..." - his head fell weakly; he died.
The world changed once again; Arlok saw an endless water expanse, where the sky was as blue. He was dressed in his clothes, and his shoes touching the water created a weak, small wave. His body held a cup to his lips, he uttered words that the soul could barely hear...
"Under the whisper of starry songs, again I will step on the path that leads through the echoes of ages. Again, ruins will rise and fall from my breath, again, I will create and destroy, in the whirlwind of fate and time. Such is my path, like the Lord of the Forgotten Sea, where the answer may hide in the shadow of the waves, or maybe my answer is not here."
But in this whisper, in this song of the words of the departed, another question sounds, subtle and barely perceptible, like a gentle breeze playing in a sleeping child's hair: "What is the path of man in this world, where every step is an echo in the abyss, where every word is a reverberation in eternity? Where is his path in this fabric of destinies woven from a thousand and one threads?"
In the midst of this water expanse was a black door; Arlok's hand pushed it open, and he saw another frozen world; this picture belonged to his "soul" when the world belonged to the body. Stepping in, the door consumed his body, closing behind him...
"Ha-ha-ha!" - Arlok returned to the black "endless ocean" of his strength, he gasped, although he felt no pain in the "body" here. His soul, he himself, felt a strange pain of loss; he saw many places that changed one after another...
"Repetition of the same," - he swallowed. - "Have I reincarnated?..."