Chapter 158: The Immortal Boy
When I opened my eyes, I found myself floating in an endless sea of crystalline fragments. Each shard pulsed with a faint light that seemed to reach out hungrily toward my soul, as if trying to draw sustenance from my very existence. The fragments formed patterns that reminded me of constellations, but these were constellations made of broken dreams and fading hopes rather than stars.
It took me a moment to realize that I was inside the crystal heart the boy had been carrying. The space around me was vast yet claustrophobic, like being trapped in an infinite mirror hall where each reflection showed a different piece of a dying world.
Well, this was something new.
The good news was that I'd managed to wrestle back control from Han Renyi, whose consciousness was currently having what I could only describe as a very understandable panic attack.
"Master, where are we? What's happening? Is this... are we dead? We can't be dead, right? Father will worry when he notices that I’ve disappeared, and Qingyi—"
"Calm down," I replied, trying to project confidence I didn't entirely feel. "We're inside what appears to be some sort of crystalline heart structure. As for what's happening..." I paused, studying our surroundings more carefully. "That's what we're about to find out."
"Outsider."
I turned – or at least, I performed the mental equivalent of turning, since physical directions felt more like suggestions in this place. The boy from the shop stood before us, but he was... different.
His appearance had shifted, becoming both more and less human. Stars dotted his hair like jewels, but they weren't the brilliant points of light from the stories I'd heard. These were dying stars, their light guttering and weak, some barely visible at all. It was a fitting metaphor for the state of this world, I supposed.