Chapter 124: Unreality
Not good... although she had covered her wounds with Cursed Constructs. Engraving paranoia and restless curses onto her body just to stay awake.
It was uncomfortable. Painful even.
But she desperately swam down, almost like in a trance. The Labyrinth of the Mind was calling out to her, pulling her in with a siren song only she could hear.
Down.
Down.
Down.
The beacon grew brighter in her fading vision. Dark blue light that shouldn't exist at this depth, where no light could penetrate.
So close, just a little further...
Her remaining arm moved weakly, pushing water aside. Her legs kicked, though she couldn't feel them anymore.
Three thousand meters. Almost there. Almost...
Lea's eyes closed.
Her body went limp.
The curses of paranoia and restlessness tried to keep her awake, tried to force consciousness to remain, but there was nothing left to force.
Just a broken body sinking into the abyss.
But she didn't float back up.
Corpses floated. Bodies filled with air rose toward the surface, drawn by natural buoyancy, by the simple physics of death.
Lea's body sank.
Down.
Down.
And down.
As if the ocean itself had decided she belonged in the depths. As if gravity had claimed her more thoroughly than it claimed normal things. As if something far below was pulling her toward it with invisible threads.
The dark blue beacon pulsed, growing brighter as she descended.
Two thousand nine hundred meters.
Two thousand nine hundred fifty.
Two thousand nine hundred ninety.
The pressure should have crushed her. The cold should have frozen her solid. The darkness should have swallowed her completely.
Yet it didn't...
Three thousand meters.
Lea Darkwill reached the depth where the Divine Domain of Unconscious resided.
And there, in the absolute darkness of the ocean's deepest reaches, something opened.
Reality itself unfolded, like a flower blooming in reverse, petals of space-time curling inward to reveal something that existed between existence and non-existence.
The Labyrinth of the Mind.
Lea's corpse drifted through the opening, still sinking, drawn by forces beyond comprehension.
The ocean couldn't follow. The water stopped at the threshold, as if an invisible barrier separated the physical world from whatever lay beyond.
And Lea Darkwill died.
Her heart stopped beating.
Her lungs ceased their struggle.
Her consciousness, that fragile thing that made Lea Lea, finally let go.
She died that day, three thousand meters beneath the ocean's surface, her body drifting into a realm where death and life held different meanings.
But only her physical body died.
Her mind continued.
Sinking deeper still.
Into the Labyrinth.
Into the realm of the Lord of Abyssal Depth.
Into the place where the Unconscious reigned supreme.
Lea Darkwill had died.
=0=0=
The expedition fleet cut through frozen waters, twenty ships bearing the Church of Progress's newly designed banner, a gear interlocked with an open book, symbolizing the union of technology and knowledge.
Dawn stood at the bow of the flagship, Enlightenment, her breath forming white clouds in the frigid air. Even with her Fifth Step body barely feeling temperature, something about this place made warmth feel like a distant memory.
"We're close.", Solafant said beside her, their form wrapped in heavy furs despite not technically needing them, "I can feel it. The boundary of the world."
Jim joined them, his senses clearly picking up something ahead. His hand rested on Curruid's hilt nervously, "The fate lines are... wrong here, like someone took every possible future and knotted them together."
Dawn pulled out her telescope,one of her own designs, enhanced with mystical lenses, and looked ahead.
And there on the horizon, a wall of gray stretched from sea to sky. Impossibly tall. Impossibly wide. Not fog in any natural sense, but something that pretended to be fog to make mortal minds more comfortable.
The Fog Wall.
"Goddess preserve us.", someone whispered behind them.
Dawn lowered the telescope slowly, her mind already trying to process what she'd seen.
She paused with a chilling sensation running down her spine.
Except... what had she seen?
She looked again. The gray wall was still there, massive and undeniable. But trying to remember details about it felt like trying to grab water.
"It's affecting you already.", Solafant observed quietly, "The moment you look away, the details vanish."
Being the demigod of Abyss granted them the power to nullify that thing's power.
Jim shook his head, grimacing. "It's not just details. I tried to follow a fate string into the wall and it just... stopped, like fate itself doesn't exist beyond that boundary."
Dawn felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
This was what had enclosed the North Pole for centuries. What had kept an entire continent hidden from the world, what Charlotte had warned them about in her cryptic prophecies.
"When the throne of the World is reclaimed, the enemy of the world shall reveal itself."
"What do you think is in there?", Jim asked quietly.
"Answers.", the princess said, though her voice held less certainty than her words, "The Church of Sacrifice went in already. We need to figure out what's really happening."
"Or die trying.", Solafant added with their bluntness.
"Or that.", Dawn admitted, feeling uncomfortable.
The fleet sailed closer. The Fog Wall grew larger, filling their entire field of vision until it was all they could see was just endless gray in every direction.
And with proximity came... pressure.
Not physical pressure, something else entirely that pressed against Dawn's very sense of self.
It felt like forgetting. Like standing on the edge of a memory that was slipping away even as you tried to hold it. Like knowing you'd lost something important but being unable to remember what.
"It's making us forget...", Dawn realized with growing horror. She had expected this, but it was way beyond what she thought.
So seamlessly, so naturally, without any rejection.
She looked at Solafant and Jim, "Do you remember why we came here?"
"To... to find...", Jim's face scrunched up in concentration, "We're looking for... someone? My Divine Domain... The Church of Sacrifice... And... and..."
"Lea.", Solafant finished firmly, "We're looking for Lea Darkwill, who ran away after being tortured by a Star God."
The name anchored them. Gave them something concrete to hold onto.
"Right...", Dawn's eyes were shaking, "Lea... we're here for Lea, stop whatever Charlotte is planning, and to reach Jim's Divine Domain."
She pulled out a notebook and began writing frantically. These were products she got from collaborating with Device V, paper made with Memory and Void, the same type Charlotte used to write the Secret of Life books. Indestructible in every sense.
We are here for Lea Darkwill. To find the Church of Sacrifice. To reach Jim's Divine Domain of Motion, witness the new era. DO NOT FORGET.
"Everyone!" Dawn turned to address the crew, "Write down why you're here!! Write down your names, your missions, your loved ones!! The Fog Wall makes you forget, fight it with written words!!"
The crew scrambled to comply, pulling out journals, scraps of paper, anything they could write on. The fleet pushed forward.
The gray wall loomed impossibly large now. Up close, Dawn could see it wasn't actually uniform; it pulsed slightly, like breathing, like a living thing pretending to be weather.
Solafant whispered in awe, "The Fog Wall is aware. It's not just a barrier. It's... something else."
"A prison?", Jim suggested.
"Or a seal.", Dawn countered, shaking her head, "Charlotte said, 'as long as the Ego remains dethroned.' What if the Fog Wall is keeping something in rather than keeping us out?"
Before anyone could respond, the Enlightenment struck something.
Not ice or land. Just... resistance. As if the ocean had decided to become solid here.
But they kept moving forward, pushing through whatever boundary existed.
And suddenly—
Land.
Frozen shore of black sand covered in frost. Rocky outcroppings.
And ahead, partially obscured by falling snow, the abandoned ships of the Church of Sacrifice. Vessels run aground, their hulls already freezing into the shore.
"They're already inside." Dawn whispered to herself.
The Enlightenment and the rest of her fleet hit the beach with grinding crashes. Dawn gave no orders to secure the ships for departure.
Like the Church of Sacrifice, they'd come here for a one-way journey.
Forward was the only option.
Dawn, Solafant, and Jim disembarked, their boots crunching on frozen sand.
The Fog Wall stood before them now, close enough to touch. Up close, it was even more unsettling. The gray seemed to pulse in rhythm with Dawn's heartbeat, as if synced to her biology.
"Do we just... walk in?", Jim asked.
"I don't think we have a choice.", Solafant said, pointing at the fog.
The fog was advancing. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, but definitely moving toward them. As if it had noticed their arrival and was coming to greet them.
Or consume them.
Dawn took a deep breath, checked her notebook one more time: We are here for Lea Darkwill.
The three of them stepped forward into the Fog Wall.
The gray swallowed them. And behind them, on the frozen beach, their ships began to freeze solid, becoming permanent fixtures.
There would be no retreat.
Only forward.
Into whatever nightmare awaited in the North.