Chapter 171 --171
Elara processed this. "So your anger isn’t moral—it’s practical. Inefficient souls cost you more to maintain."
"’I—that’s not—’" The voice stopped. Started again. "’It’s BOTH. Yes, I’m angry about the waste. But I’m also angry because they’re HURTING themselves. They’re taking something precious and beautiful and breaking it, and they don’t even CARE that they’re breaking it. And then you—YOU—sit here and tell me life is just ’expendable equipment’ like you’re a MACHINE, and I want to shake you until you UNDERSTAND—’"
"Understand what?" Elara cut in. "That you have emotional attachment to your creations? I already understand that. You made humans. You value them. You’ve structured an entire afterlife system to maintain and correct them. The attachment is obvious."
"’Then why don’t you VALUE yourself?’"
"Because I’m not you. I didn’t create myself. I don’t have any investment in this body beyond its utility function. It’s just a vessel. When it breaks, it breaks. Another soul will use the resources."
"’NO.’" The voice cracked like thunder. "’No, that’s not how it WORKS. Listen to me—LISTEN. When you die, your soul doesn’t just transfer cleanly to the next vessel. You carry damage. Trauma. Scars from how you treated your previous incarnation. And if you keep dying the same way—casually, carelessly, treating your existence like it doesn’t MATTER—the damage accumulates. Eventually you’re so broken that you can’t incarnate as human anymore. You regress. Back to animal consciousness. Back to insect-level awareness. Back to START.’"
Elara went very still.
"Clarify that."
"’You think you’ll just die and get another chance? Wrong. You get chances based on the condition of your soul when you exit. Die well—die after LIVING, after growing, after treating your existence with respect—you progress. Maybe to higher human incarnations, maybe to something beyond human eventually. But die like garbage? Treating your life like it’s nothing? You REGRESS. All that accumulated development, all those millions of years of progression, WASTED. Gone. You start over as something that can’t even comprehend what it lost.’"
For the first time in this conversation, Elara felt something shift in her chest.
Not emotion. She still didn’t process emotion correctly.
But recognition of a pattern. A threat. A consequence that actually mattered.