Rage Against the Dying of the Light
After, time shattered.
The Americas regressed a thousand years or more, Europe exploded and reformed, a patchwork quilt of cyber technology and early-age tribalism. Asia was the worst hit – time periods slipped and slid against one another like a billion panes of frosted glass, people popping out of existence or aging a hundred years in a day.
In the confusion, only a small area remained isolated from the rest. Several leagues in every direction from Houtou Castle the time stream was still and unchanging, an after-effect of five hundred years in stasis; the days did not grow colder, the sun did not shine, and no-one could leave. Nobody aged, or died, or hungered – it was a landscape of ghosts.
A few years into the reconstruction, stories started to drift towards the palace of a lone youkai who lived by the river. He had livid blue markings crawling across his skin, like the people of the north, and the most vivid eyes that the villagers had ever seen. The few who had ventured close enough to attempt to speak to him had received no answer but a blank stare.
His hut sat on the edge of the river bank, hidden by a dense canopy of trees. Its small garden was wild and overgrown, its windows dirty and cracked. What facilities there were went unused – the youkai remained in the river, venturing inside only to sleep.
The youkai had no name – or any need of one – and even if he had one he was in no state to give it, for he was quite mad.
- - -
Every day – all day – he would stand in the river and stare at the sky, where the sun should have been.
It wasn’t there, of course. Time around the castle didn’t change any more, and the endless night surrounded it like a fog.
Nevertheless, stare at it he did, as if he could will it into being. The days did not grow longer – or shorter – but he continued to stand there, blue with cold, in the river that did not move.
He was waiting. He knew nothing, he was nothing – he could see no past, no future, no shining path that stretched before and behind him, as far as the eye could see, and further.
At the edge of thought, faint as cobweb, something whispered.
- - -
The next day, the youkai rose and walked into the river, wading to the centre where the moon was as bright and clear as a silver coin. He closed his eyes, and drew in a breath, and dived.
He swam down to the riverbed, and further down, into the bowels of the earth, through ancient oceans, through lakes and rivers and streams, through crushing pressure and shoals of shadow and stars and blackened bone.
Above him, now, he could see the sun glancing off the surface of the water, painting it with gold, but his limbs felt so heavy, like they were made of lead...
His lungs felt like they were dying, shrivelling in his chest; his eyes stung and blurred. In an unexplainable gesture he reached out-
And a pair of hands grasped his, pulling him upwards, faster and faster, until he broke the surface of the water and saw light.
He stood in the centre of the river again, alone; a river that moved swiftly and surely between its banks while birds sang and wind rustled the leaves of the trees.
He looked up, up into the sun; the blinding sun, hot on his skin and his soul, lighting up the world and the shining path that stretched ahead of him.
I can hear a voice.
