I am a lonely dream, and in that dream,
I forgot or tried to forget myself.
I am the dawn and the dusk,
The morning of yore, the first sea I saw,
Or the servant of that indifferent moon
That knows no Virgil or Galileo.
I am every moment of my long life,
Every restless night of insomnia,
Every parting and every eve.
I am that other who once saw
And after death will continue to gaze upon the desert.
I am a mirror, an echo.
I am the epitaph. (From Borges's poetry collection, 《The Deep Rose》)
...
The world of the Death Abyss did not differ much from reality, except that it lacked all excess color, stripped down to nothing but blood-red and pitch-black.
Li Yue wandered the streets of Yakutsk. Everything seemed the same as usual, except there were no living things, no life. The sense of despair remained, and upon that foundation, something more had been added.
The blood-red sky and the houses, pitch-black as if they were mere silhouettes, felt so strange yet so familiar. However, none of this mattered to Li Yue anymore.
She walked slowly toward the depths like a living corpse.
“Are you really going to keep going like this?” A blue and white figure appeared at her side. She looked like Clo, but there was a slight difference from the Clo Li Yue knew.
“If I don't go this way, where else is there?” Li Yue asked indifferently. “Is the weather in the south warm?”
“The south has its own cold too.” Clo walked beside Li Yue, accompanying her. “Nothing can be changed, right?”
Clo waited quietly for her answer. Li Yue fell silent for a moment, feeling as if everything were strangely familiar.
“Is fate what cannot be changed?” Li Yue looked toward the distant sky. It was a solid sheet of blood-red, resembling neither a sunset nor a sunrise. “It doesn't matter. As long as we're the only ones hurt, it's fine.”
“Is that your answer?” Clo put her hands behind her back, a faint smile on her face—a smile that seemed to carry both helplessness and bitterness. “I like that answer. What cannot be changed is fate; what will be changed is yourself.”
“Maybe a tiny change can rewrite everything?” Clo said with a smile. “I'll wait for you, in a place even further away.”
Her figure gradually dissipated, leaving Li Yue to walk alone on the pitch-black road.
“Even further away? But right now, it feels so far already...”
She didn't know if this was a hallucination, but before she could think further, she saw someone else in the distance. The person's face was hidden in the shadows of a black robe, with snow-white hair flowing out from the hood.
She couldn't see who it was, but she knew clearly that it was herself—yet it wasn't. It was the self she didn't want to become.
She watched as the black-robed “entity” said nothing and simply opened her arms. A gentle smile played on her lips, as if she had been waiting there for a long time.
In the sky, the dead began to fall. Their corpses smashed into every corner of this blood-colored world, destroying houses as their flesh vanished into the black tide.
The tide was rising...
The black tide supported her pale feet, lifting her slowly. At some point, Li Yue's clothing had completely changed. She didn't know what kind of clothes they were; they looked like sacrificial attire, yet also like divine raiment.
She hesitated and looked down at the pitch-black tide. The smooth surface of the water reflected her body—a perfect form, though it possessed a certain sense of deficiency that did not diminish its perfection.
“Let it be...” She opened her arms and embraced the “self” before her. The black tide wrapped them together, and the shattered world slowly vanished.
It was a tiny world of complete darkness, yet it allowed her to lie down comfortably. She fell asleep in this cradle-like place, lying on her side with her body slightly curled.
...
In the outside world, the fleet and the city had been out of contact for over half a month. The influence of the Death Abyss had completely vanished. At the approximate location provided by Reinhardt, everyone conducted a thorough search of the sea.
Aside from intense lingering magic fluctuations, they found nothing. Even the Death Abyss had disappeared along with it. They found the skeletons of the captain and his crew on the seabed, and within the icebreaker, they found countless frozen remains.
Beyond that, they found nothing. The girl they were looking for had vanished without a trace, as if she had disappeared along with the Death Abyss.
In front of a private residence in Yakutsk—the house Li Yue had rented when she first arrived—it had been a long time since anyone lived there. The contract was still in effect, so no one else had moved in, and it remained empty.
A small patch of shadow appeared on the ground. Slowly, it spat out a figure—a girl with long, snow-white hair.
She pushed open the door, her lifeless eyes coldly surveying the furnishings within.
She wore solemn attire and her feet were bare upon the ground, yet she did not seem like a creature of the mortal realm. Her sclera had turned blood-red, while her pupils were as snow-white as her long hair.
The pitch-black shadow beneath her feet slowly vanished, as if merging into the floor.
“Where is this?” she asked softly.
“And who... am I?”
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