It's cold.
Axis was floating in dead space. He moved with the comets, passed through moons, and came face-to-face with the stars. Despite it all, he only felt the ruthless cold.
Not the cold brought by the lack of warmth, but the coldness that comes with isolation.
In this space, he was alone. Nobody to talk to, nobody to share his regrets with.
Is this death? What's this place?
And he soon wished that it had stayed that way.
Far into the vast deepness of the space, a fissure opened. From it, absolute and primordial darkness peered like a predator with a kill.
And even though his body was practically made of intangible transparent light, he felt shivers down his spine.
What the hell is that?
Tendrils of pitch-black mass started growing from the crack and propagating rapidly like a bunch of cancerous cells. And from the deepest spot in that hole, he saw something lock eyes with him, and then it smiled.
He mustered all his strength into moving, but his body won't budge. And without anything to step on, he's practically just a floating target.
I thought I would be rewarded for my good deeds, but this sh*t totally looks like Hell!
Good god, you've abandoned me in my life on Ankh'sur, and you're planning to abandon me in the afterlife as well?!
He was seething with rage coupled with fear as the black mass poured out of the crack in space. But all of a sudden, an iridescent light moved throughout the place, extinguishing the dark trails that it touched and making its way to the crack.
As the light swept over him, Axis' body started glowing in colors he never thought existed.
What's this? This pattern…
A glyph appeared on his body, one that had never been carved on his pathways before his death in the world of living. He was confused, he had no memories of having the glyph nor does he have any memory of it existing in glyph textbooks before.
He felt an uncontrollable amount of energy swelling from his body, and this glyph is the cause of it all.
This amount of energy, it's definitely a top-class soul glyph, far superior than the ones currently existing in the world. But why is it in my body? Is this perhaps… god's reward?
In the Ankh'surr, the power of the main soul glyph determines the amount of sub-glyph you can have and how much of its power you can harness. It's like the root of a tree, the foundation will dictate how strong and big your Glyph Pathway will be.
In the early days of the Babylon Order, the glyphs that they retrieved from the corpse of Nuntius were all low-ranked. Early soldiers were planted with low-ranking glyphs because they were the only ones available for trials and experiments, and Axis was one of the Order's biggest successes.
He adapted quickly to the power of the glyph and paved the way for the new dawn of humanity. But as new Nuntius cores were salvaged and new, stronger and improved glyphs appeared, the new era of glyph soldiers ushered and the necessity for the early glyph soldiers began to fade into oblivion.
Until the time it became possible for the soldiers to replace their old, main glyph with a higher-tiered glyph.
But Axis alone, could not. His glyph transfer procedure was considered a failure and he now houses a dysfunctional main glyph that doesn't activate and can only support low-tier sub-glyphs like Santelmo and Tengu. The worse part of it? The specialists can't take out the glyph out of his body, as forcing it would render him incapable of housing any glyph at all.
He sued the specialists for a hefty amount of money afterwards and he won.
I was told by the specialists in the Order that I had a failed main glyph transplant, so what's this?
Until the end of that battle, I used low-tier sub-glyphs and you just decided to wake up now, huh?!
"Hush, child…" a low, ethereal voice commanded him.
From the iridescent light swallowing the space, a figure emerged from a pillar of blinding brightness. It was a woman made up of the same light that's vanquishing the eldritch being clawing its way out of the crack.
The woman, though made of light entirely, appeared to be wearing a long-flowing dress that covered the space, her figure quite dainty and petite, and her hair moving so ethereally that it felt like they had lived by themselves.
With a single wave of her hand, the remaining dark mass vanished and disintegrated into nothingness. She flew closer to the crack and touched its edges.
"Your kind does not belong here, go back," the woman said in an uncaring tone as the light seemed to mend the crack in the middle of nowhere.
But before the crack mended, the creature beyond took a last glimpse at Axis. The weight of its gaze made it seem to him that it knew him, almost to a very familiar degree.
I may be an adopted orphan, but I at least know that that's not something that has anything to do with my past. Nope.
After the encounter, the woman flew back to him.
"And who might you be?"
If Axis' face was visible at the moment, his eyebrow would obviously be raised from confusion.
"Aren't you supposed to know that?"
"I'm asking because I don't," the woman told him.
He physically felt the irritation surge through his nape even though he didn't have a body. Even then, he tried to compose himself because he knows nothing good would come out of being rude to the woman, especially after seeing the feat she has just done.
She might even be a goddess, as he initially thought, so he just assumed she's all-knowing. Maybe he's the one in the wrong for enforcing such a stereotype.
"I'm sorry. I'm Axis, I just died so now I'm here in this… domain," he told the woman.
She tilted her head. Even though her face wasn't visible, Axis knew that she looked dumb and confused. She put a finger on her chin as if she was thinking.
"Why would you be here though?"
Hold it in, hold it in, hold it in.
Axis took a deep breath, not that he could do that nor he actually needed it, but he did anyway. He just woke up from a battlefield, and now he's in the presence of a giant-slaying woman of light who's the only person apart from him in this isolated space, and could be the only one to answer his question.
So it wouldn't be wise to crash out here.
"Ah, I apologize. I meant to ask why you would be in my abode when you're supposed to be in the death realm," the woman of light clarified. "Are you perhaps an usurper?"
"No, that's not it either. You seem normal enough…" She continued talking.
"I have just died from battle. Seeing that you also don't seem to know why I am here, I assume we're both clueless as to why I am here," Axis told the woman, but the woman was deep in thought and didn't seem to hear anything.
"No, there's something different," the woman finished her thoughts. "You reek of an usurper even though you're not one yourself."
Axis was confused. He doesn't know anything about this usurper business that the woman is babbling about, the only strange thing about him now is his new glyph.
"Ah, that's right! Would you happen to know what this–"
Axis couldn't finish the question when the woman suddenly raised her hand and stuck it inside his chest, pulling out the glyph that was glowing just recently.
He didn't feel any pain, though. But still, having his innards grabbed like that took him by surprise and left a bad taste in his mouth.
"What the heck…" he murmured.
"This… where did you get this?" The woman asked, her previous ditzy demeanor gone.
"I don't know, it's a core from a Nuntius," he stuttered weakly.
"Pardon me, once again."
"What do you–ackkk!"
This weird bitch!
The lady raised her arm once again and this time, she stuck a hand inside Axis' head. She moved her hand inside, and closed her eyes to read his mind. After a while, she let go.
"So that's it, you humans have come up with something so vile while I wasn't looking," she said, letting go of his head, his glyph still on her other hand.
Why does she keep grabbing my organs like that? She started with the chest, the head, at this rate, the next is--
"Oh, Father, why have your lambs strayed from your embrace."
"Stray?" Axis asked in an irritated tone. "This is our lifeline, our survival, and you're telling me we're straying for trying to survive?"
"I didn't mean that–"
"What have you 'divine beings' done while those monsters were having a full-blown buffet down there, huh?"
"Didn't you see? I was closing up–"
"And we were supposed to die while you do that?"
The woman fell silent. After a while, she spoke.
"I'm sorry, that was very insensitive of me to say," Axis was taken aback, he didn't expect the woman to apologize.
Wow, I thought gods would be a little more… stubborn? I guess I might be stereotyping.
!!!
All of a sudden, Axis' body started to shoot out light and break apart at a rapid rate. But this time around, it's painful, and it's making his head feel like it's splitting apart.
"This is… no!" The woman looked visibly shocked at the development. Axis' glyph seemed to shine even brighter, and the pattern became even more recognizable.
As the woman reached towards Axis, another rift opened up in space. This time, with a more violent outpour of dark mass and an eldritch, incomprehensible growling.
Sh*t, what's happening?! It hurts!
The woman closed her eyes and shook her head. She retracted her hand from Axis. "I'm sorry, this comes first!"
She flew towards the rift and swung her hand. A stream of light permeated the place and concentrated around the crack where the dark mass is.
"Axis! When you're back, go to my temple!" She screamed at him as she attempted to close the rift.
"H-How am I supposed to do that? I'm dead!"
"The thing you call 'glyph', I'll tell you about when we meet again. Go!"
His consciousness started drifting away from his grasp.
I don't wanna meet you again, though?