Following the soldier patrol to the Bastion, Sevia took a lift to the top and walked to the edge of the ramparts, brushing her hand against the rough brickwork as she looked down at the city below.
The bleak wind stirred her hair, and in her eyes, the once-bustling city was now silent, as if shrouded in a layer of gray.
She looked toward the castle perched atop the distant peak; the mountain rose from the very heart of the kingdom, abrupt yet spectacular.
The grand sight suggested the legends were not mere stories; a hundred years ago, the advent of a miracle had indeed descended upon this kingdom.
Sevia tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, took out her pen and paper, noted the date, and began to sketch the scene.
"My favorite thing to do is stand on the city walls alone, especially when the wind is blowing hard," Atula said, spreading her arms.
"There is always a gust that comes from my homeland, and I can smell the wild grass and purple fragrance in the air."
"Why did you choose to leave your home and come here?" Sevia asked.
"Because our homeland was destroyed," Atula said softly.
The brief words carried a heavy weight of emotion.
Sevia paused, startled.
Just a moment ago, the other woman had been describing the scenery of her home and her greatest wish.
"How did that happen?"
"That is why I say this world is a mess..." Atula tried her best to look composed. "I know my wish will never come true."
"That meteorite destroyed everything we had."
"Fragments of the meteorite took root in the soil of Turatan, the sky-curtain fell to the earth, the plains were set ablaze, and the rivers evaporated.
The fertile land turned to ash and scorched earth, and from it crawled golden creatures that slaughtered our people without mercy."
"To tell you the truth, all the stories I told you were recounted to me by Grandma Hatan while we were part of the great tribal migration."
"I was born on the back of a sheep and have never seen my homeland with my own eyes."
Atula thought back to her younger self.
Her parents had died in the advent of the golden creatures.
That catastrophe had become a scar etched into the soul of every member of the titan race.
As a young girl, she had followed Grandma Hatan and several thousand tribespeople, forced to embark on a journey away from their home under the leadership of General Belisa.
At night, she would lie on the back of a sheep and look back toward their home, only to see a giant golden tree rooted between heaven and earth, siphoning the nutrients of Turatan.
She saw the sky and the wilderness turn dim and lusterless beneath that massive tree...
Sevia listened patiently as Atula recounted it all, realizing that the titan warrior woman was perhaps not as carefree and open-minded as she usually appeared.
"Atula." At that moment, Flora stepped out from the gatehouse and tilted her chin toward her.
Atula nodded in acknowledgement and looked at Sevia.
"Let's go. Didn't you want to see those wizards? I will take you to see General Belisa first."
Sevia nodded.
The three of them walked down from the wall and headed deep into the gatehouse.
They went all the way down, passing through hidden compartments and corridors until they reached a dim underground space; the scene before them made Sevia’s eyes flicker.
Cages were lined up on both sides like countless squares embedded into the walls, totaling over a thousand.
Behind the iron bars were piles of prisoner corpses; human limbs were entangled like a nest of snakes.
Some bodies were heavily decomposed and fermenting, with foul-smelling pus oozing from the gaps in their bones; it was practically a giant incubator for a plague.
The guards were fully covered, yet even they couldn't help but be dizzied by the stench.
They walked through the narrow passage, hosing down the cells; as the clear water filtered through the corpses, it became a yellow slurry mixed with excrement and bloody pus that flowed down the sloped floor into the prison sewers.
Bang! The water washed a corpse down from above, and its already rotten, fragmented head slammed against the iron bars.
An eye popped out like a struck billiard ball and rolled to Sevia's feet.
Looking into that horrifying face, Sevia silently turned her head away and continued forward.
The scenes that followed were a constant assault on Sevia's senses.
She saw a blood-stained old man crouching in a cell, shoving rotten bits of meat into his mouth to stave off hunger while muttering crazily; sensing her gaze, he flashed an eerie smile.
She saw a woman clutching a child born in the prison; her body was already cold and stiff, leaving only the sound of the child's crying to echo through this living hell.
She saw someone kneeling and coughing with extreme weakness, finally coughing out their own dissolved internal organs before collapsing, lifeless, onto the ground.
She saw someone howling as they pounded on the iron door; half of his face was covered in coarse, stiff hair, and his arms had degenerated into long, thin limbs like bamboo poles.
Sharp incisors had pierced through the man's entire lower lip; at the sight of light, he let out a pained shriek and scurried back into a corner, huddling his body.
Tens of thousands of people were locked in this sunless underground prison, struggling in despair before the release of death arrived.
"Are these all..." Sevia’s voice failed her.
"Your reaction is smaller than I expected," Atula said, glancing at the girl.
She was becoming more and more curious about Sevia's background.
When Atula had first seen this scene, she had almost vomited up her stomach bile; she couldn't eat for days and had suffered nightmares for over a month.
"Yeah."
Sevia had seen many, many such memories.
In the final act at the theater, the "Artist" had flooded her mind with the painful memories of countless people, completely drowning her self-awareness.
In that instant, she had witnessed all the suffering of the people of the Star of Art over hundreds of years.
That pain was simultaneously superimposed on her consciousness; she had become the vessel for that suffering, and her very "self" had been washed away like a collapsing dam by those millions of memories that did not belong to her.
Before her journey of rebirth began, she had relied on her willpower to cross that storm, salvaging the last fragments of her self so they wouldn't slip through her fingers.
Initially, the memories of those people had caused her great distress; this symbiosis was undoubtedly painful, making it impossible for her to distinguish between "others" and "self."
All she could do was seal away all the memories, including those of her "self," beneath the surface of a sea of memory.
Now, she was merely riding a small raft of "self," fishing for her own fragments in a vast, murky ocean.
Sevia did not know how much time she had left to make a choice.
The consciousness of the "Artist" was constantly eroding and occupying her remaining "self."
She could feel her own humanity slowly fading and her ability to empathize weakening, which would eventually make her cold and indifferent.
This erosion was subtle and gradual; even if the voices in her head stopped trying to tempt her, no matter how much she resisted, it was to no avail.
Once she failed to piece together a complete "self" before her consciousness was entirely eroded—or failed to actively embrace the memories of the people to become a new self—the true Starry Singer would descend upon this world.
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