The Patriarch's gift buoyed her, and the familiar aches and strains of her previous journey disappeared, replaced with an ease that allowed her to plunge deeper than ever before, unimpeded by the weight of the abyss.

  Eventually, Lenity crossed into a new, disorienting depth—the domain of souls that had never touched the mortal realm. An unsettling sensation washed over her from the moment she arrived, as though something was fundamentally wrong here.

  The souls in this place were impossible to distinguish, swirling together in a chaotic dance of blurring forms. They writhed and melded, their identities lost in the formless mass. The depth itself felt like a fluid, swirling soup of vital energy, distorted beyond recognition.

  Strange, pinkish objects—almost like organic bubbles—would shift and transform, shrink and grow in and out of existence, twisting and reshaping the souls as they passed through, altering their essence at will. The souls themselves appeared to be tossed and twisted, caught in an endless cycle of transformation, their forms shifting unpredictably.

  Lenity's mind strained against the overwhelming chaos, unable to grasp what was happening. The deeper she delved, the more disoriented she became. This was no natural state of being. Something here was fundamentally broken, and despite her knowledge of the soul sea, she could not comprehend the depth of the disturbance. All she knew was that what she was witnessing felt wrong.

  Lenity felt a jarring, excruciating rupture deep within her soul—far worse than any pain she had experienced before. The violent shockwave rippled up through her entire being, sending a surge of unbearable nausea through her physical body, a sensation that felt like her very essence was tearing apart.

  Her soul instinctively recoiled, trying to pull back to the safety of her body, but Lenity gritted her teeth and fought the urge. Her resolve hardened. She would not retreat, not now. Not until she had achieved her purpose.

  She pushed her soul forward with sheer determination, forcing herself deeper into the uncharted and warped depths of the soul sea, refusing to yield.

  She felt a tinge of regret abandoning the tortured souls at this depth, but there was no turning back—this path was necessary for the completion of her mission. With that thought burning in her mind, she dove further into the soul sea, bypassing the pure souls, their innocence too haunting for her to linger on, and moved into the heart of the void. A place so deep, so desolate, that nothing existed there—not light, not life, not even time.

  Her soul screamed in protest, every fibre of her being rebelling against the depths she ventured into. The anguish was beyond anything she had ever known. An incessant barrage of neural torment exploded through her soul, it was a primal pain that formed beyond physical comprehension and developed as a raw mental demolition.

  As her soul tore through the void, she felt her sense of self begin to unravel, like threads of her identity being ripped apart. Her consciousness trembled, slipping into an abyss where nothing remained of her body, her mind, or even her very essence. Even with the power granted to her by the Patriarch, Lenity was stretched to its absolute limit.

  Somewhere far above in the shallows, the royal devadoots had moved her anchor off her body and into the soul sea. Disconnected from her body, Lenity was now, for all intents and purposes: dead.

  Lenity continued down deeper and deeper until she arrived at what she was told to find. A new depth that existed under the soul sea itself. What was strange was that she had already seen all these souls before. These were the same souls that she saw at the depth that had yet been born. Though unlike before, the souls now seemed normal, unwarped and unmolested by the pink objects.

  A chill ran down her soul, deeper than the pain and fear that had plagued her journey so far. She knew what she had to do—she had to take one of these souls and bring it back with her. But the thought of disturbing them, after seeing the torments they had endured, gnawed at her. She had seen their suffering, their endless anguish under the grip of the pink objects. To take one now felt wrong, as though she would be committing a cruelty upon something that had already endured enough pain.

  Lenity went even deeper, desperately hoping there was another layer. Every inch she descended felt like a violation of her very being, a tearing away at the fabric of her existence.

  The pain was beyond unbearable, her soul, once tethered to her body by an invisible thread, now hung on by the barest of strands. The only solace to her agony was that her own cognition had melted so thoroughly that the pain appeared as a nebulous law of reality rather than infliction onto her as an individual. She could hardly differentiate between world and self anymore.

  Lenity's thoughts began to fragment as the pain pressed harder against her, a suffocating force that pulled at her sense of identity. Her mind drifted, struggling to hold on to the remaining fragments of clarity.

  She had once known the royals, the devadoots who watched over her soul, but their faces blurred in her mind, their names slipping away like water through her fingers. Who were they again? The question felt almost irrelevant now as if the world itself was dissolving into a vast, unfathomable ocean where nothing had meaning except the immediate, the visceral.

  She pressed onward, propelled by an instinct that had long since surpassed her conscious thought. The pain had become a constant companion, gnawing at her very being, yet it spurred her to dive deeper still.

  The universe herself knew there would be more, if it kept pushing forward, she would find something, someone. What was a someone?

  She affirmed it to herself, half to motivate herself through the pain, half to remind herself that she was a self. "Soon, we will be able to get him soon." She decided that the target would be a him, a nomenclature used to distinguish between groups. She was an entity of one group and the target of another. Yes, she was an entity.

  The guest was close; he had to be, or else she would die. But, what even was death at this point? There was, and there wasn't. The thought of Lenity was so long, so encompassing of the logoic plane that was there a sense in differentiating between states of life and death? Lenity was a Patriarch, she was a royal, she was a pink object?

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Eventually, she found it.

  Lenity arrived at the surface of the soul sea? The shallowest layer where all the living souls resided? But if this was the surface then-

  Another pain ruptured throughout every fibre of her being, splintering the delicate strands of her soul, and the shock was so immense that, for a moment, she feared losing herself entirely.

  Her self-awareness snapped back into existence, only for her to face the realization that she had defiled herself on this journey. Her identity felt so fragile, so exposed to the void, that it seemed she might dissolve entirely.

  That awareness quickly waned, flickering like a fleeting flame in the dark.

  Desperation surged within her. No, she couldn't lose her grip—not now. Not when she was so close.

  She focused her fractured consciousness on the task at hand. Through the torment, Lenity reached out and grasped the nearest soul, one so weak it was barely hanging on, its form already beginning to crumble into the sea. It was fragile, an ephemeral wisp in the vastness of existence, and she could feel its fragility as she clutched it, pulling it into her grasp.

  The weaker the soul, the easier it would be to carry. Lenity gritted her teeth and wrapped her remaining strength around the fading presence, pulling it tighter into her grasp.

  To form communication seemed an insurmountable task. How does information convey when one is all with the one all? It felt more like physical phenomena interacting as results of natural law rather than a verbal interaction between subjects, but the resounding waves of sounds echoed out. "Got him."

  Lenity opened her eyes, she had those. Her senses returned to her body; that's right, Lenity had one of those, too. She felt the cool weight of her body, the subtle pull of gravity, the thrum of her heart—each sensation a reminder of physicality.

  The sudden influx of personal information was almost overbearing for her; the very concept of family, history, and experience came flooding back, and she could hardly believe that she had so easily forgotten such emotionally pivotal aspects of herself.

  The odd feeling she felt within quickly dissipated, making way for a comforting familiarity. This was herself, after all, and she lived with herself for over twelve hundred years.

  Lenity placed a hand over her chest, simply touching herself. Fingers and pectorals, two things that existed and sensed and rubbed against each other, smooth and warm, with friction and force. It was all so involved, so stimulating.

  But amongst it all, there was something not quite right. The sensation was faint, like running fingers over fabric that no longer fit. A strange dissonance buzzed at the edge of her awareness. She knew her soul better than any other part of herself—it had always been a constant, a core of unyielding form. Now, it felt foreign, transformed.

  Lenity's swirling thoughts were abruptly cut off by the Grand Deiwos, their voice a monotone constant, devoid of any trace of emotion. "Move off to the side, Lenity. The guest's body will be fully generated soon."

  She blinked and shifted her gaze toward the center of the room. There, hovering in the complex sigils of the ritual, was a partially formed human body. The sight was both mesmerizing and unsettling.

  Most of the body had already taken shape—muscles layered over a skeleton, skin forming in smooth waves across its surface. The process was seamless, unnervingly natural for something so unnatural. Yet Lenity's eyes caught on two glaring irregularities.

  The head was still missing, a blank void where a face should be, leaving the body disturbingly incomplete. But stranger still was the left arm—or rather, the absence of it. The right arm hung perfectly formed, its fingers curling faintly as if testing newfound life. But the left side was barren, the shoulder tapering into empty space.

  Lenity squinted, trying to discern if the arm was simply delayed, but there was no shimmer, no flicker of forming matter. It was as if the process had simply... stopped, leaving the figure permanently unbalanced.

  Lenity took a shaky breath, trying to anchor herself in the moment. The flood of individuality still weighed heavily on her, the stark contrast between the boundless unity of the soul sea and the confines of her singular existence. Her thoughts were fragmented, her sense of self only beginning to solidify.

  "Yes, Grand Deiwos," she murmured, her voice soft and unsteady.

  She rose to her feet quickly, her movements clumsy as if her body were a garment she hadn't worn in centuries. Her legs wobbled beneath her, nearly giving out, but she caught herself just in time. She glanced briefly at the Grand Deiwos, but their impassive gaze did little to steady her nerves.

  Lenity moved to the side of the chamber, pressing herself against the wall for support. Her fingers grazed its cold surface, grounding her as she waited. Her eyes fixated on the incomplete form at the room's center.

  At last, the human's head finished forming, the delicate intricacies of bone and flesh weaving themselves into existence. His eyes opened slowly, revealing a piercing, unnatural green.

  The gathered devadoots recoiled instinctively, their celestial forms shuddering with a reflexive revulsion.

  But the Grand Deiwos was not one to falter. They regained their composure in an instant, their expression unreadable as they stepped forward. Their tone, calm and detached, carried the weight of authority, unfazed by the disturbing sight before them. "O great one," the Grand Deiwos began, their voice echoing through the chamber with an almost reverent cadence. "We have pulled your soul from time and space in its moment of greatest weakness. We have summoned you here to humbly ask of you to defeat the evil White Witch which plagues our world with unforgivable evil."

  The words hung heavily in the air, a solemn declaration that seemed to resonate with every soul present. Yet, despite the grandeur of the moment, Lenity found her gaze drawn back to those eyes—those haunting, unrelenting green eyes. What had they brought into their world?

  Then, there was the chime of a bell. In front of the human, a small pink rhombus appeared, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes.

  The Grand Deiwos, unfazed by the anomaly, continued their address with the same measured authority, their voice cutting through the surreal spectacle as though it were mundane. "To accomplish this task, we have blessed you with our divine Devadoot blood to reinforce your soul with god-like power and have granted you an invitation."

  The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with two limbs. One arm was outstretched towards the summoned human and the other towards Lenity. Each arm held onto a glowing parchment. Lenity looked at the parchment facing her: It read.