Page 22 of In Your Light

The hut was small enough that every creak was familiar now. The fire had long since dwindled into amber coals, and dusk seeped in through the window in pale and fading greys. His body ached with the ordinary pains of humanity—stiff shoulders, cramped hands, lungs that insisted on drawing breath one at a time instead of all at once. Such ridiculous labour. Such relentless need.

He sat on the chair at the table, eyes closed.

Quiet. That was all he wanted.

Not silence. Silence had never really existed in his mind. Even in the oldest reaches of his existence, there had never been peace.

Not even the newer technologies he’d had implanted had helped. As the voices crying for help had begun to fade, the silence in his mind grew louder. No, not silence... the void. The void of horrors he’d inflicted.

He wanted those noises inside himself to end. He wanted to remember his true form.

He breathed slowly.

Who was I? Who was I before I was lost?

The question had become ritual. Every evening it returned, and every evening something invisible folded over the answer before he could grasp it. He still reached for it anyway.

Cern had told him to find his true self, but Hadeom wasn’t sure that part of him existed anymore.

There had been... power. Immeasurable and untouchable. Men and monsters alike feared him.

As they should have.

There had also been height. Not of body, but of being. He had been untouchable once. Now time and guilt held him down, invisible tethers that kept him prisoner.

He remembered, once upon a time, looking down and seeing mountain ranges as wrinkles. Oceans merely pools, rivers as veins. Forests were patchwork quilts of vivid greens, topped with pillows of pure white snow.

He was soaring above it, scouring and searching, and humans and monsters scurried like ants.

But then the memory dissolved, dragging the feeling of freedom and purpose along with it.

He frowned harder, digging deeper into his memories. Into who he’d once been.

There had been wings⁠—

Yes. But it was more than that. He was more than that. Something larger. Something endless. Something with moveable parts that made up the whole of him. And while his mind could pluck these memories from the files of times long ago, his body could not remember.

His body had forgotten how.

Your true form, Cern’s voice said. It sounded like nothing more than the river outside, but Hadeom wasn’t fooled. He knew that voice.

“My body has forgotten how,” he replied out loud, sounding pathetic even to his own ears.

Patience, came Cern’s reply. What are you in such a hurry for? Did you forget that rules don’t apply to time?

His pulse quickened, and the heaviness around his shoulders clung a little tighter.

“Nothing. I’m not in a hurry for anything.”

Then who are you in a hurry for?

Hadeom rolled his eyes for good measure. “No one. Well, that’s not true. I’m doing this for me.”

Why the rush?

“So the rest of my existence can begin,” Hadeom said. “I can’t sit here, aimless and pathetic, while I waste away in a forest at the end of the world. Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”

Rain pattered the window like gentle laughter. Oh, my dear friend. You are exactly where you need to be.