Two figures sat separately, facing each other across a pool that had no bottom. Yellow mist drifted, slow and heavy.
Cracks spread across the floor around them. One figure had a faint yellow tint on his robe, his fingers moved constantly, tapping the air, making crisp sounds like music notes struck on an instrument that wasn't there.
The other sat barely visible, he seemed to exist and not exist, seemingly nonexistent in the room.
For a long moment, nothing. Then the barely visible one spoke
"It's further along than I thought it would be by now."
The yellow robed figure's fingers paused mid tap, before replying
"It always moves faster at the end, I thought after this long we would have learned to expect that"
There was silence for a moment, then the barely visible one responded
"I did not mean that as a complaint, I've been watching for a long, long time and now it finally arrives at the place I always knew it was going,.....It...it just moves faster at the end, you'd think by now I'd have stopped being surprised by that"
The place fell silent once more, longer, then the yellow robed figure's fingers resumed
The barely visible one said nothing.
The with a tint of yellow in his robe, his silhouette turned slightly, then spoke
"Do you think there's something on the other side?"
"I think," the barely visible one said, "that the fact that neither of us knows is the only interesting thing left."
The yellow robe stopped for a moment before replying
"Yes, that's it exactly"
Silence again, but heavier, a faint tension in the air.
The barely visible one spoke again
"The Court will move soon"
"They're already moving" replied the one with a yellow tint in his robe
"it's already too late for them right" said the barely visible one
"yes, they were too late before they started"
The barely visible one shifted, for the first time, something in his voice deepened
"And Ren 876? Hunter's nephew, the bastard. Thought he was free."
"was he?"
"Hmmmm.....in this world there's no such thing as truly being "FREE" but to answer your question, NO, but he died believing it. That was enough." the yellow robe replied
and then the barely visible one asked again this time he seemed amused
"Is he dead though?"
"Guess?" the one with a yellow tint responded
the barely visible one asked "You said it was enough, enough for what?"
For you? Your discord? Or your little game with the Court?" The barely visible one's voice was flat, "You used him well. A bastard with a grudge, a pride that wouldn't let him bend, you didn't even have to lie to him. You just had to let him hear what he wanted to hear, and as a result you removed both Hunter and Ren 876 from the picture, stirred up muddy waters between Hell and the Court of Aeon though i'm sure you've been planning and making little actions for years it seems like your grand plan is about to unfold"
The yellow-robed figure's fingers stopped tapping,
"You make it sound like I orchestrated everything"
"Didn't you?" the barely visible one retorted
A laugh, a vile laugh, from the yellow robe,
"I nudged things around a little, fed the desires of people, I was never in a sense truly involved in any one anything but if you want to call me out then I guess I was just...gardening"
"Gardening?" the barely visible one was skeptical and amused
"Pruning dead branches, the world has been dead for eras, it just didn't know it yet" The yellow robe shifted again,
"And you? What do you do, while I garden? You've been wandering here and there, appearing and disappearing"
He stopped, his body leaning forward, as he continued
"taking things that don't belong to you"
The barely visible one was quiet for a moment, then he said quietly
"The gem?"
"The gem," the yellow robe agreed, "Aydris wanted it, as did his disciples and many monsters who were alerted the moment it was born, And you? You just walked in, took it, and walked out"
"It was nothing, a trinket, some might even say a cultivator's failed enlightenment, why are you interested in this do you want it as well?" the barely visible one said
The yellow robe was quiet before saying,
"No...I'm just curious and if it is what you say, from your tone, then why take it?"
There was no answer, and then silence again yellow mist drifting past before the yellow robe spoke again
"Because," the yellow robe continued,
"you're bored, right? That's all it ever is with you. Boredom, you don't care about the war. You don't care about the Court. You don't care about the world do you? You just want something to watch."
the barely visible one didn't respond but asked
"And you? Are you any better, Why cause all this if you're so clean?"
"I'm not clean, you should know that personally I...hmm...I simply want something to grow" the yellow robe responded
the barely visible one stood, The mist seemed to thin around him, white hair faintly visible. He looked down at the pool,
"Then grow," he said, "But remember even gardens burn too"
And then he was gone. Truly absent in every sense from the room now
The yellow robed figure sat alone at the edge of the bottomless pool, for a long moment, nothing. Then he raised his hand and drew an arc in the air above the water. His finger left a trail of yellow light that hung for a second before falling
A drop of water formed at his fingertip, then fell
Plip
The pool rippled. The surface became a mirror, then a window, then a....world
A vast city of light, towers of stories stacked upon stories, bridges of comments spanning between them, rivers of words flowing through streets that had no end,
The Light Novel World, alive, once thriving.
Now, fracturing.
The towers flickered. One by one, their lights going out. The bridges crumbled, comments falling into void like ash, the rivers of words slowed, thickened, turned the colour of old blood.
Factions moved through the dying city, Chaos and Order, not as armies but as movements, groups of readers and writers clustering around the last lit towers, shouting across the darkening gaps, their voices carrying farther than they should because the walls between realms were thinning.
The laws of the platform distorted,
Chapters vanished mid-sentence,
Borders between novels became visible. Seams like scars showing through skin, faint and unmistakable.
And everywhere, the people. Hollow eyed, thin skinned around the world a theatre of disaster
a world that had turned on itself from the inside out, the discord sown, the trust broken, the factions entrenched. The shutdown would be the spark, but the explosion had already been built, piece by piece, nudge by nudge, by a gardener who wanted to see what grew from ash.
The yellow robed figure looked at it all. A split mask settled back onto his face. Half white, Half black, the smile carved into it wider than the world. He laughed. One low sound, a laugh of gratification and satisfaction, the laugh of someone who had finally reached the part where the flowers were about to bloom.
He leaned forward once again, his finger touched the pool's surface one more time.
"It's starting"
Another drop fell. Then the image shattered. The pool went dark. The yellow mist drifted. The cracked floors settled. And in the silence, if you listened carefully, you could hear the sound of a world unraveling and behind it,
the laugh of a MADMAN