Chapter 1: The End and New Beginnings
(A/N: For the uninitiated, this is the sequel series to Endless Path : Infinite Cosmos. Reading that isn't necessary to understand what takes place in this one, but it would certainly provide a significantamount of context.)
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"This brings back memories..." remarked a tall man with dark, somewhat messy hair that framed a handsome face and deep aquamarine eyes, which, upon closer inspection, appeared to swirl with innumerable, ever-shifting specks of light.
"It truly does..." responded a petite woman with equally messy black hair, emerald green eyes with slit-like pupils, sun-kissed brown skin, and a slim yet shapely body adorned with distinctive, cat-like ears and a tail. Like the man, her eyes glistened with specks of shimmering light, but their number and intensity were greater.
"It amazes me that, no matter how many times we reach this point, it forever feels like the first..." mused the man, turning to face the woman and adopting a smile that caused the surrounding darkness to retreat, casting the entirety of the boundless expanse they were in with equally endless light.
"That's because it is," hummed the woman, approaching the man and embracing him for the first and last time. He readily reciprocated, and though the two had already spent an eternity together, they enjoyed a few eons more as seconds to an ordinary person. Then, without further need to communicate, the body of the man broke down into countless motes of light, sinking into the woman's body but leaving behind a tiny, ancient-looking orb covered in indecipherable runes.
"And thus, life eternal makes way for endless possibility..." muttered the woman, her body breaking down to a nebulous mass that appeared both male and female, its form ever-shifting depending on the perspective and angle it was viewed from.
Though nothing happened for a truly incomprehensible amount of time following the woman's utterance, so long as the possibility of something happening existed, she would wait. Fortunately, she was never alone, the dreams of countless beings materializing within her, their pasts, presents, and futures coexisting within a single moment...unchanging...expectant...
Rousing from what felt like an endless dream, the woman looked down to find a single mote of light, born within the darkness that had encroached upon her in the wake of the man's disappearance. This was what she had been waiting for, but while she felt an indescribable urge to reach out and grasp it, she remained patient, a single, even smaller mote of light, barely a speck, separating from her nebulous mass to meet the anomalous mote that had appeared from nothingness. Memories of a boy with translucent skin and glowing blood flooded into her, rousing countless others, but as it was her first time experiencing this particular set, alongside the feelings attached to them, she couldn't help muttering, "You poor child..."