Chapter 89 The Price of Being Perfect
Klishei traced the faded text of a journalism textbook, the words blurry. News ethics. Story headlines. Human interest pieces. The mundane pulsed with a rhythm alien to her now.
Her professor, a severe woman with spectacles perched on her nose, cleared her throat. “Aizal, your assignment? Due last week.”
Klishei blinked. “Right. My apologies, Professor. I… I had a family emergency.” The lie felt thin, fragile, like old paper. How could she explain celestial beings, banished dragon kings, and a reborn cosmos?
“This is your final warning, Miss Aizal,” the professor said, her voice dry. “Another absence, another missed deadline, and you will not pass this semester. We believe in second chances here, but not endless ones.”
Klishei nodded, a forced smile pasted on her face. “Thank you, ma’am. I understand.” She did not understand. Not really. How could the fate of a universe be less important than a feature article on local politics? The world had shrunk, its edges frayed.
Weeks bled into one another. Klishei pushed through her classes, a phantom navigating a classroom of the living. The metallic tang of campus coffee was tasteless. The laughter of her friends sounded distant, like echoes trapped in a deep well. Their concerns, their gossip, their dreams of summer vacations, felt like whispers from another dimension. Her own dreams were worse.
Sleep offered no solace, only a different kind of imprisonment. She plunged into the collective unconscious of past Phoenix vessels. Flashes of ancient queens, their eyes burning with cosmic fire, stared back from the abyss. She saw hands, calloused and strong, reaching for her, desperate for the touch of a new life. She heard the silent pleas of civilizations turning to ash, the wails of forgotten goddesses. She was a canvas upon which the agony of countless eras painted itself anew each night.
She woke drenched in sweat, a silent scream clawing at her throat. The familiar textures of her bedsheets felt alien against her skin.
Yeseus watched her. He saw the way her gaze often drifted, unfocused, beyond the walls of their small home. He marked the slow, graceful movements that masked a deep unease. He noted the way she picked at her food, no longer devouring it with the earthy passion he loved.
The dark circles under her eyes deepened each day, the subtle tremor in her left hand as she lifted a glass of water. Her laughter, once bright and clear, now sounded hollow, an imitation.
One evening, he found her staring at the moon—a sliver of silver in the black velvet sky. Not the dark-rose moon of prophecy, but an ordinary, indifferent orb.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice low, gentle, fearing to startle her further.
She did not turn. “There are so many more stars out there, Yeseus. Billions of them. More beautiful than anything here.” Her voice was flat, devoid of wonder. “They scream in my head. All the time.”
He crossed the room, his long strides silent. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. Her body felt rigid, unyielding.
“What do they scream?” he murmured into her hair, inhaling the faint scent of ozone that still clung to her despite the earthly scents of shampoo and fresh air.
“Life. Death. The yearning for a future that won’t come.” She leaned her head against him, but there was no comfort in the gesture, only resignation.
“It’s too much. Everything is too much.”
That was when he decided that he needed answers. He needed help.
He waited until she finally succumbed to a troubled sleep, curled on the sofa, her hand resting on a half-finished novel. He slipped out, his human form dissolving the moment he stepped outside the house, replaced by the shimmering, almost transparent form he wore when traversing the cosmic veil. The journey was familiar, but this time, desperation gnawed at him.
He stood in the ethereal chamber where the new council, born from Klishei’s Rebirth Ritual, now gathered. They were figures of light, their forms ever-shifting, imbued with the nascent conscience of a purified cosmos. The Phoenix herself, now a separate entity, glowed softly at the center, her golden eyes welcoming, yet sorrowful.
“I need help,” Yeseus proclaimed, his voice ragged with an agony he had stifled too long. “Klishei. She is not well. The return… it has broken something within her.”
The Phoenix’s light pulsed, a silent agreement. “The burden she bore, Yeseus, was immense. Her mind— it still holds the echoes of every Phoenix vessel that came before her. The weight of millennia. It was not meant for a human mind to contain.”
“Then what do we do?” Yeseus insisted, his gaze fixed on the luminous form. “There must be a way to ease her suffering. To bring her back to herself.”
A new voice, deep as the void, resonated through the chamber. “The human mind seeks balance. The dissonance tears at her sanity.”
Another, higher-pitched, like wind chimes: “She is connected now, irrevocably. The Phoenix within her was fused, then freed. But the pathways remain.”
“Her sanity wanes,” the Phoenix stated, her golden gaze fixed on him. “The memories. They overwhelm her. She sees not the world as it is, but as it has been, and as it might be. Every choice she made, every suffering she witnessed, plays on an endless loop.”
“Block them, then,” Yeseus pleaded. “Erase the knowledge. Seal the pathways.”
“We cannot simply ‘erase’ truth, Yeseus,” the Phoenix explained, a hint of weariness in her tone. “The knowledge is part of her now. The fusion was complete. The Rebirth was catalyzed by her. Only if she willingly lets go, will her mind find peace.”
“Willingly let go of what?” Yeseus asked, his voice barely a whisper. Doubt tightened his chest.
“Of the anchor,” the Phoenix said. Her voice resonated with ancient wisdom, the kind that held both profound comfort and unbearable truth. “The last thread connecting her fragile human mind to the overwhelming reality of what she endured. That anchor… it is you, Yeseus.”
A cold dread spread through Yeseus, chilling him to the bone. He felt the words, not just hear them, but feel them dissect his very being. “Me? What do you mean? How could I be her anchor?”
“You were there at the beginning of her awakening,” the Phoenix clarified, her light shimmering. “You were her adversary, then her protector. You were the bridge between her human world and the world she was thrust into. You are the embodiment of her cosmic journey. The fear, the love, the terror, the sacrifice… all inextricably linked to you in her deepest subconscious. Her memory of this cosmic life, and of you, intertwines.”
“So, to save her…” Yeseus trailed off, the implication a bitter taste on his tongue.
“She must forget you,” the Phoenix finished softly. “Not just the events, but the core relationship that defines them in her mind. Her desire must be to sever that connection entirely. Erasing you from her heart, from her memory, will allow the cosmic pathways to recede, to dim. Only then can her mind reassert dominance over the echoes.”