Chapter 17 : Blissful Nothingness

  The woods were silent.

  Not with peace, but with reverence. With dread. As though the forest itself was holding its breath, awed by the thing it had birthed.

  The sun above blazed with unnatural intensity—its light sharp, searing, too golden to be kind. The trees, once gentle sentinels of green, had twisted into impossible shapes—arching like cathedral columns, writhing like frozen serpents. Their trunks bent and spiraled in contortions that defied reason, as if sculpted in homage to forgotten horrors.

  Every surface—stone, bark, soil—was smothered in living green. Moss and vine slithered in slow, sinuous motion. Flowers bloomed and withered in the same breath, appearing and vanishing like hallucinations. Even the air pulsed with strange life.

  And the creatures—

  They were no longer what they had been.

  A squirrel paused on a branch, its left eye replaced by a blooming white flower, half its body fused with delicate wood. Birds perched above with feathers of moss, their wings veined in fungi and blooming with tiny orchids. They blinked with blank, unseeing eyes. Grotesque. Beautiful. Wrong.

  And she could feel them.

  Not with her mind, but in her bones. In her soul.

  She felt their pain as if it were her own—their confusion, their silent screams. The trees begged for release, their agony seeping into her like a tide of rot. She felt every pulse of life around her. Every sorrow. Every fracture. Every breath.

  And her own state was no better.

  Worse, perhaps.

  She staggered, trembling. Her thoughts moved like fog across water. She grasped for herself, for something solid.

  I am Auren.

  No. That wasn’t right. Auren was a name given to a sliver of her. A mask worn by a shadow. She was more than that—vast and sprawling and ancient.

  She was life.

  Her name was Lythara.

  Yes. Now she remembered.

  She was Lythara—the breath between bloom and decay, the whisper between heartbeat and stillness.

  She rose on shaking legs.

  Her gaze dropped to her hand.

  Or what was left of it.

  The hand that had touched the fragment was gone, melted in the moment of contact. In its place now bloomed a new hand—slender and wooden, carved in graceful lines as if shaped by divine intention. Faintly glowing runes shimmered beneath the surface, shifting in color, pulsing like quiet breath. Each symbol a piece of her truth—renewal, decay, growth, memory.

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  Her clothing had vanished—burned away or simply unmade. In its place, a mantle of moss covered her skin, soft and pale green. Flowers bloomed along her body—modest, radiant, strange. They opened and closed in rhythm with her breath.

  She stood in the midst of it all—a figure of ruin and rebirth.

  And the forest watched her.

  And remembered her.

  She walked.

  The forest—dense, tangled, immovable—shifted.

  It opened, wordless and reverent, parting before its queen. Branches twisted in silence. Roots unraveled. Vines recoiled. Where once there had been resistance, now there was surrender. Her fear unraveled, sloughing from her like old skin. Her anger dissolved into the moss beneath her feet.

  She walked.

  The trees bent at impossible angles to clear her path, arching backward like supplicants in the presence of something holy. Her grief crumbled. Her madness quieted. In their place, a silence vast and deep settled into her chest.

  She walked.

  Where her feet touched the earth, flowers bloomed. Strange blossoms—fragile, luminescent, gone in a breath. They did not last. They were not meant to. For with every step, something else faded.

  Happiness.

  Empathy.

  Gone.

  She could still feel the life around her—every creature, every root, every leaf trembling in awe and agony.

  But she no longer had to hold it alone.

  She could give it away. All of it.

  It was a bargain, old and sacred.

  I will feel your pain, she whispered to the world. And you—

  You will feel mine.

  And so they did.

  And at last, came the gift she had once feared most.

  Blissful, perfect nothingness.

  Once, she had called it a curse—this inability to feel, this hollowing-out of self.

  Now, she understood.

  It was mercy.

  Because who could carry the weight of a world and survive the feeling?

  She walked.

  And the forest followed.

  She followed the pull—the invisible thread that led her through the twisting woods. The path was not one she knew, but her feet did not falter. The forest parted before her, as it had before, its limbs bending back in reverence or fear.

  And then—through the curling mist of pollen and breathless air—she saw the edge of the village.

  Or what remained of it.

  The clearing was silent.

  The music had stopped.

  Where laughter once rang, only wind moved now—curling gently through the garlands still hanging from the trees, faded petals fluttering to the ground like ash.

  And the people—

  They stood as they had when she left.

  Frozen.

  Changed.

  Their bodies had become half-green things, part bloom and part ruin. Roots curled from bare feet. Petals grew where veins had once carried blood. Skin shimmered with the gloss of sap and bark. Eyes stared without seeing—open, unblinking, wide with wonder or terror.

  They had not fallen. They had not fled. They had simply… stopped.

  A boy knelt by a table of sweets, his fingers still reaching for a tart now overgrown with moss. A young couple held hands, their joined fingers blooming with soft white buds. A woman sat mid-laugh, her teeth rimmed with the flowering edge of fungus. They looked peaceful, almost.

  Almost.

  Lythara stepped closer.

  And the ground blackened beneath her.

  Each footfall scorched the earth—not with fire, but with grief. Grief so vast and ancient it hollowed the world around it. The flowers at her feet curled inwards. The grass hissed, shriveled, died.

  She passed a tall figure near the drink table.

  His sash was gray, tied too tightly. His hair slightly mussed, a lock fallen over one brow.

  His eyes were glazed with moss. Small vines grew up his jawline, wrapping gently around his neck like a lover’s hands. His face held no expression. No recognition.

  Near him, crouched behind a table, a child curled into herself—hands covering her ears, as if trying to block out something no longer there. Her dress was smudged with berry juice. A crown of thistle slipped from her tangled hair.

  A heartbeat away, a woman stood still as stone. Her arms outstretched, as if she’d been calling for her daughter in the final moment. Flour still dusted her sleeves. Wildflowers had burst from her collarbones, winding upward into her hair.

  Lythara stopped.

  For a moment, something cracked in her chest. Something tried to stir.

  But there was no pain.

  She had given it away.

  And the ground beneath her feet cracked further—black veins splintering out like a broken mirror, swallowing the petals that had once lined the celebration.

  This was her gift to them.

  They had touched her joy. Now they would bear her grief.