Chapter 283: Who you really Are
Aren stood there, looking at the angel as it spoke. He was still paused, not the type of pause that you face when you are shocked, no, it was the type you face when the reality that you knew completely shattered right before your very own eyes.
The angel, seeing that Aren wasn’t moving, figured that Aren was probably scared and couldn’t move, so he decided to approach.
"Are you scared, human?" the angel asked. "Don’t be, after I’m done, nothing will matter anymore." The angel said, and then stretched his hand, pointing a finger right at Aren.
Aren stood there, still frozen even when the finger was about to go off.
’I caused this,’ Aren said in his head, it was the loudest that his inner voice had ever sounded. He looked up slowly, eyes pinned right on the angel. ’If I hadn’t sent them here, they wouldn’t have gotten hurt.’
BANG!
The angel fired a blood-red blast, not caring that Aren was deep in thought. It slammed right into the chest of Aren, throwing him back and slamming him hard against the wall. He collapsed to the ground, almost falling off the side.
He coughed a mouthful of blood and slowly looked up.
"I failed them." That was the last line that left his mouth before something happened.
Inside the head of Aren, all the shadows that had been bound blasted out. The pressure from what he saw shattered every restriction that his body had, allowing it all out instantly.
Aren felt a surge of energy through his body as his mind was instantly pulled into a space.
Aren was floating in complete darkness. He was completely naked, and he had no control over how he was floating.
"Where am I?" he muttered. Somehow, in this place, he felt peaceful, which was weird considering what was happening outside.
"This is your shadow mind." Suddenly, a voice cut through the air. Aren looked fast to find the voice, and he saw a version of Nathan floating cross-legged. It was the fourteen-year-old version of him.
"What’s happening here?" Aren asked in shock and confusion, wondering if he was hallucinating.
"This is your shadow mind, like I said, the place where every version of you can stay, including the Nathan from Earth and Aren from your new home." The young Nathan said. He floated forward.
"Before you start asking a lot of questions, what I do know is limited, even as a version of you." Nathan said.
Aren was still confused, even after all the explaining, nothing seemed to make an inkling of sense.
"I still don’t know what’s happening."
"Well, to know what is happening, you would need access to the young Nathan, or the one before."
"The one before?" Aren asked.
"Yup, he is seen as the first and ultimate version of you, Aren, of us. He stays in the shadow and never does anything else other than watch.
I know nothing about him. The only being that does know him is the young Nathan, the only version of you that knows all the truth about you, aside from the one before."
Aren opened his mouth to say something, but then he shut it. He tried to find the right question to ask.
"I know you want to ask a lot, but like I said, I can’t do anything. The young Nathan was trying to send you information through memories to get you ready, but getting things out of the shadow mind is extremely difficult, so only fragments got out, especially when you were emotional.
The other versions of you delegated me to be the one to tell you this. Your emotions broke after seeing your friends, Aren, and now that shadow mind cracked and allowed the youngest Nathan out. He is currently in control of your body and filled with rage."
"Wait, what? In control of my body?" Aren asked in fear and shock when he heard this.
"Yes, he is in control of your body. He has been in control before, well, semi-control, when you had completely gotten enraged and took down that angel avatar."
When Aren heard that, his mind replayed what had happened that day and how he felt. Despite being in control for the most part, it still heavily felt like he wasn’t truly himself in that moment, so now hearing that he wasn’t truly in control put a lot into perspective.
"Shit," Aren muttered. He wasn’t fully sure what was happening right now, but he knew for certain that he didn’t want to be out of control, and if there was someone that was to be in control, it couldn’t be that kid that he saw in the vision.
Aren recalled what he saw. He recalled the rage that filled the heart of that kid. It was a rage unlike anything that he had ever seen before, and now that same kid was in control.
"I have to get out, get back," Aren said in a panic, but Nathan placed his hand on Aren’s shoulder and looked right at him.
"That’s not happening, Aren," he said calmly.
"Huh? What the hell are you saying?" Aren asked.
"All our life, Aren, from two worlds, it has all been pain and suffering, and even now what waits outside is pain and suffering because of what people did to us.
Aren, our heart has been shattered more times than you remember, and only the youngest one and the one before know the truth.
The youngest is tired of seeing all the pain that we have been forced to go through all our lives, and now that he has been given the opportunity to actually stop it all, he won’t give that up."
"You keep saying lives like we have had more than one, we are still the same person inside a stolen body," Aren made clear to Nathan.
"Is that what you really think?" A voice cut through the air. Aren turned around and saw that a version of Aren was standing there, younger and unlike the current him but still a teenager.
"Why is someone like you here? I didn’t enter this body until recently," Aren made clear. He didn’t understand why he was seeing a version of himself that was from when he wasn’t in this world yet.
"That’s because you didn’t take this body, it belonged to you as much as it belonged to the first soul of the Aren that was here. Your soul was born into this body after you died as a secondary soul that didn’t have its memories or control yet, but as the first soul was destined to die, you awakened fully when it did.
Now you have taken the main control of the body. You didn’t just fall into this body, no, you were born into it after your death in your first body. I learned this from the one before," the younger version of Aren explained.
Aren froze when he heard all of that. The information that was tumbling in his mind now was absolutely reality-bending. He looked up at Nathan.
"How much of us do I not know?" he asked, wanting to see just how much was taken away from him.
"The youngest one is the one that bears all our memories, he and the one before. You are the prime version of all of us, the only one that can access the mind of those two, and when you do, you will see all you are and how you ended here and what you are meant to be.
You will see why you are considered that large of an anomaly, and you will see. Right now, the youngest is going to fight for you, but he doesn’t care about friend or foe, all will die from his rage," Nathan said.
"You are the only version that can find a middle ground, but to do that, you must first know the truth of everything.
This is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the shadow mind is opened to you, and the only opportunity where you can access the memories that had been sealed away from you. Right now, Aren, you can free us all and finally understand our purpose," the young Aren said, his eyes showing that he was pleading with Aren to do what needed to be done.
Aren looked at both of them, short of words and confused on what to say. He could feel their pain and their desire for him to save them, and it was heavy.
He took a deep breath. His desire to know the truth rose rapidly. He wanted to know who he was and what memories were kept away from him and why they were kept away.
"I’ll do it. I’ll find out everything that makes me me, and I’ll fix everything that needs to be fixed," he said with full conviction, and then in the next moment he heard a very calm and still voice cutting through the void.