A flame.
What is it exactly?
It has many forms and shapes.
Some think of it as the result of combustion, a chemical reaction that is well known to everyone.
However, there were people who chose to change its meaning, granting it a higher purpose.
It's a symbol.
A sign of life that will burn no matter what stands in its path.
A desire that burns deep within oneself, pushing them to its absolute limits.
An omen of unstoppable destruction.
Everyone has a different view of flames, either good or evil.
But what remains the same is how it works.
To be born, someone needs to start it.
So, who was it that created those flames?
Was it the omnipotent god who's known for creating life? Perhaps it was humans themselves who created it by accident. In this world, it was the sun that created it using its boundless knowledge.
However, the bright flaming light.
The luminescent blaze that shines so brightly on that starry sky, painting the stars in shades of pallid scarlet with fresh paint of autumn harvests.
It is a fragmented beauty of life that no one can deny after glimpsing its silhouette even once...
***
Amidst the corroding light, a boy awoke with a clear mind.
His eyes, those of the deepest sea bottom that could not peer above the water's surface but watched everything below, were looking up at the clear dusky sky filled with shattered stars of tomorrow.
The air felt fresh, but also dry in a way that made him think it was purified one too many times by the same person.
Looking down, he noticed himself wearing his clothes, now void of any tear and wear as if they were brand new. His ashen coat was slick and spotless while his inky sweater held firm against his skin, bringing internal warmth that made him take a deep breath, savouring it in its entirety.
Without asking pointless questions to himself, he pushed himself off the pale grass that was stiff at his touch. It felt... lifeless, artificial even.
This place is just absurd...
With a hollow chuckle, he stared off into the distance.
The world was covered in nothing but white grass that eerily stood still despite the calm breeze pushing it down; he could feel the wind's soft texture brush across his ebony hair, twisting it and letting go like a human's touch.
The grass reached slightly above Valentine's ankles, enough to make him wary of it but just a hair's length too short to make him keep his gaze focused on its glossy surface.
As he stood up to his feet, a chilly gust greeted his face, forcing his brows to furrow.
"This place... It looks just like that landing site I was at a second ago."
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Further away from him, a bustling city stood tall before his eyes, reaching high towards the dome of foggy glass covering the world outside. The buildings looked unnatural and misplaced.
They were built of steel and stone that filled in everything with their shadows. However, in that disharmony, he found himself enjoying the view of black and white, feeling a desire to add color with himself as the brush, with his body and soul that would be a mere fragment of the world.
He himself was standing quite far from the main city.
Somewhere on the edges where light barely reached, considering its endless walls were not far from here, this place was what one would call the outskirts, filled with construction and unfinished buildings visible with the naked eye.
So this is a Cradle.
Taking another look at the absurd city that matched the size of a small country, he frowned to himself.
But where did everyone go?
Looking around, no soul was in sight.
Only the sound of calm wind was carried through the empty grass and the construction site nearby. Noah and his knight colleagues were gone in an instant as if they were never there in the first place, while the giant flaming sun was replaced with something else.
A pale crescent moon hung in the skies above, looking down at the colorless world with an empty gaze.
It wasn't as big as the sun created by Aurora, but it was still quite formidable, being a few times his size and gliding a dozen meters away from him.
Gazing up at it, Valentine thought of how pretty it looked in this place.
Hanging in the air above him, it glowed faintly with an ethereal glow of fresh mountain snow that had fallen from the furthest mountaintops. From it, dust was scattered along the careless current, mixed with moonlight that shone like glitter in the world above.
At his thoughts, it seemed to react to him, pulsating for a moment before returning to its fixed state.
He reached out for it with his hand, grasping at the grains of fallen moonlight with his fingertips until they dispersed under his faintest touch, fleeing from his vibrant form like scared mice that had their own thoughts.
Taking his hand back, he wiped it on his coat before putting his hands in his pockets and going forward, outside the landing site.
He didn't have time to stand around and look at his surroundings.
Despite it being completely unfamiliar to him, with his eyesight sharpened under Sunday's pure flames, he noticed a trail of moonlight at his feet, leading him outside, into the city that lay beyond.
It was barely noticeable on the thick monochrome grass, caught by their tips that could not disperse their feeble forms.
His instincts were telling him that following it would be a wrong choice; turning his head away, towards a path filled with church-like buildings and brick roads, his mind felt at ease, almost at home.
However, curious about the meaning of this strange moonlight and the pale moon above him that kept following him at the corner of his vision.
He passed through the construction site filled with monotone warning signs, squeezing through a broken fence with one loose plank he lifted without any trouble.
***
Standing in the middle of the street with his arms crossed. Noah looked down at the faintly moving outline of Valentine in the distance, lying on the ground just like the rest of the children that were engulfed in Aurora's flames, spreading across the cold stone while writhing within golden flames.
His steel armor shone under the sunlight, his half cape proudly showing off its thorny silver to the passersby alongside the row of knights that stood with him side by side, watching the children in front of them struggling with sweat dripping down their faces.
"It has been half an hour already." He spoke to the woman next to him with a downcast gaze, looking at the boy with ebony hair, letting out pained groans. "Is this what we have to do?"
"Of course it is." The knight with her hair tied in a bun turned her head toward him slightly.
"Did you forget what we had to go through?" At that, Noah bit his lip weakly, not enough to draw blood but to feel the pain of his teeth sinking into his skin.
His grip tightened over the stainless armor as if he were about to crush it with his grip into brittle pieces of silver.
"I do remember, I remember it too well."
She looked at him with sympathy, looking down.
"Then you must surely know how hard it is to find her light." She sighed quietly as if the memory was something she did not want to remember as precisely as she did. "You were one of the furthest from it after all."
At that, his face darkened.
He could not deny it.
What the embers were currently going through was what one would call a selection.
Everyone would be taken by a specific church into a world of flames conjured via the blessing they mastered; all would differ from each other, but the task would remain fundamentally the same.
You have to follow the light granted by the goddess, navigating through the conjured world within your consciousness and finding an altar that will grant you a blessing. The first stage towards the goddess.
However, there are some exceptions that can get lost within such a world, hidden away due to not having what it takes to bear her divine power.
And if you don't get to it fast enough...
"We can only pray that no one will be sent to her embrace this soon."
A forced test of will had begun, unbeknownst to Valentine, who explored the colorless world with a curious mind.