Dancing on the golden ashes

Where am I? My eyes slowly opened to reveal a bright blue sky, its vast expanse so clear and endless that for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. The gentle warmth of the sun danced across my skin, tickling my face with a comforting touch, yet despite that warmth, I couldn't move a single muscle. My body felt stiff and unresponsive, yet somehow, I could still feel everything — the cold, jagged ground pressing against my back, the whisper of the wind brushing against my skin, and the clean scent of fresh air filling my lungs with every slow breath I took. But something felt wrong... deeply wrong. What was I doing here? Why was I here in the first place? No matter how hard I tried to remember, my thoughts refused to connect. It was as if my mind had been wrapped in a fog — thick and suffocating — leaving me to grasp desperately at scattered memories that refused to take shape. Try to remember, Gaon... just what the hell happened yesterday that left you in this state? I pushed my mind to focus, but it felt like spinning in circles, my thoughts looping over themselves with no end in sight. The world swayed around me, and I could swear the sky itself was turning, slowly rotating counterclockwise since the moment I opened my eyes. I tried to shake it off, forcing myself to move, but the instant I tried to shift my neck, a sharp, fiery pain exploded through me, stabbing so deep that I nearly blacked out. "Even my neck is broken? Great..." I muttered under my breath, my voice barely escaping as a faint whisper. Even speaking felt like breathing flames — each word scraping painfully against my throat. Time seemed to lose meaning as I drifted in and out of consciousness. The sun rose and fell, replaced by the quiet glow of the moon, and then returned once again, the endless cycle repeating far too many times for me to count. Moments stretched into hours, and hours blurred into days... and soon, I believed that weeks had passed, maybe even a month. For some reason, my body refused to heal. My wounds barely closed, and the faint warmth of regeneration — something I had once taken for granted — seemed to flicker weakly within me, like an ember struggling to stay alight. And yet... something else stirred inside my mind — faint and distant, yet undeniably there. My memories trickled back, not as a rush but in fragile fragments, each piece slowly sliding into place like a puzzle being assembled by clumsy hands. It was agonizingly slow... so painfully sluggish that I swore a two-year-old child could have completed fifty puzzles in the time it took for my mind to piece together just a few memories. Each image, each fleeting thought, felt just out of reach, leaving me stranded in this endless limbo with no choice but to wait... and hope that soon, I would finally remember what had led me to this broken state. Another month or so had passed, and the silence that surrounded me had grown almost suffocating. The entire place felt still, as though the world itself had forgotten how to breathe. There were no distant footsteps, no faint rustling of leaves, and no beasts howling in the night. The only sound that ever broke the silence was the occasional storm, washing over me with bitterly cold rain that soaked my unmoving body. In a way, that silence was a blessing. No danger, no unexpected threats... yet somehow, that peace felt cruel. I wished for someone, anyone, to stumble upon me, to see me buried beneath this growing layer of dirt that now clung to my skin like a suffocating shroud. The earth had slowly piled over me, a thin sheet of soil and debris forming over time, as if nature itself had begun to claim me as part of the land. "What a pain…" I muttered weakly, my voice dry and hoarse from disuse. It was a pathetic complaint, yet somehow, speaking it aloud made me feel a little less alone. I suppose another week had passed before my memories finally returned — not in fragments this time, but as a flood that surged through my mind with relentless force. The weight of those memories crushed me, and before I could stop it, an overwhelming wave of sadness washed over me. Tears spilled down my face, burning hot trails against my cold skin. "So... she had always been with me," I whispered through choked breaths, my voice trembling beneath the grief that threatened to break me. "She was always there... accompanying me… Why? What's the point of such a sacrifice? And how... how did she ever get reduced to such a state?" My fingers clenched tightly into the dirt beneath me, and I felt an ache deep in my chest — a pain that no wound could compare to. "This is unfair... life is unfair... yet..." My voice faltered, and for a moment, I felt like digging myself deeper into the earth, as if I could disappear beneath the cold soil and let the world forget I had ever existed. "But... why am I still alive?" I asked no one, my voice barely louder than a whisper. "How can I even exist... when she was the beginning of it all? Are we the same... or are we different?" I didn't know. I didn't understand. And no matter how hard I tried to make sense of it all, the answers continued to slip away, leaving me drowning in uncertainty. I wanted to stay buried, to let the dirt consume me — but my body, fragile as it had been, had healed just enough to move again. Slowly, I pushed myself upright, breaking free from the thin layer of earth that had tried to swallow me. My limbs trembled, weak and stiff, but I forced myself to stand. The world that greeted me was nothing like the one I remembered. The land stretched out before me, gray and lifeless, as though the earth itself had been scorched down to its very bones. Craters marked the ground wherever my eyes could see, jagged and deep, like open wounds carved into the earth. Even the air itself felt unstable — distorted fissures shimmered in the distance, cracks in reality that seemed to pulse faintly as if the world itself struggled to remain whole. "So this... this is what a battle between gods looks like…" I muttered bitterly, my gaze sweeping across the ruined wasteland. A dry, humorless laugh escaped my lips. "I was a fool... a complete fool to think I could challenge the Creator — even if it was just a clone…" The truth weighed heavily on me now, pressing down like an iron chain. I had a long road ahead — far too long — and for the first time in what felt like ages, I wondered if I even had the strength to walk it. As I walked across the ashen ground, the cold wind brushed against my face, whispering a quiet reminder that this world was no longer what it once was. Perhaps that was why my body had taken so long to recover — as if something fundamental in this world had shifted, and I was no longer part of what it had become. When I opened my system profile to check my status, my heart nearly leapt from my chest. [Unknown user]