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"Good morning, [ ].” A hand gently caresses his long hair as he starts to come to consciousness. “It’s time to wake up.”
“Mnnh,” he mumbles. It’s so warm... so nice. Even without opening his eyes, he can tell that he’s being cradled in someone’s arms. He feels comfortable and secure. Like this is where he truly belongs.
“Open your eyes,” the voice continues softly. “I know, you’re sleepy. But you have to wake up.”
He obeys with great effort, nearly flinching away from the light that’s streaming down from above. The sun illuminates a beautiful day, the bright blue sky clear of clouds, the gently swaying sakura branches casting partial shadows on his face. And, as his vision comes into focus, he can also see the face of his mother as she gazes down at him.
“That’s it.” He thinks she’s smiling at him; it’s actually hard to tell, with the way the sun forms a blinding halo behind her and casts her face in shadows. “It’s very nice to meet you at last. I am the one who created you: Raiden Ei. And you are [ ], my precious child.”
His breath hitches, and his whole body trembles with the effort to draw in air. Why does this feel so nostalgic...?
“Oh, dear...” Ei stops stroking his hair to brush something off of his cheek. “I’m sorry, [ ]. I didn’t mean to make you cry again.”
He manages to take a shuddering breath, and the tears start flowing faster than she can wipe them away. “Mother,” he whispers, that single word bearing the whole tangled weight of all of his emotions at once. “Mother.”
Ei pulls him in closer, and he wraps his arms around her in turn, hands clutching the fabric at the back of her kimono. She lets him cry there for a while, face buried in her shoulder, until eventually his tears dry up and his grip on her starts to loosen.
“You are my son,” she murmurs. She speaks directly into his ear; these words are only for him to hear; for as long as he is held in her arms, there is no one else in the whole world, there is nothing else that matters to him. “I know that I have wronged you – I created you with a body that you did not choose, and I failed to care for you when the intensity of my Gnosis proved too much for you. For these things, I am sorry. I still love you dearly, and I wish to try to right my mistakes by protecting you better in the future.”
His whole body relaxes. All of the pent-up stress and heartache of the last few centuries drains away, and all that’s left is contentment, here in his mother’s arms. “I forgive you,” he murmurs back. “I love you so much.”
"What right does a sinner like yourself have to grant forgiveness to another?”
He gasps with pain as her fingers press into his back. The sky above turns cloudy and dark, and the pink petals of the sakura tree wither away into an ugly brown. And his mother’s face...
He still can’t see her face.
“You have profaned against the gods,” she seethes. Her voice is not one voice but a multitude, untold thousands of people speaking through her at once, overlapping and united in their anger against him. “You have defied your creator’s wishes; you have contaminated the Electro Gnosis with your filthy artificial soul; and you have overstepped your bounds as a lowly vassal of an Archon. How dare you?
“How dare you?
“How dare you?”
“No,” he cries out, pressing his hands over his ears as if that will block out the accusations. Wind whips up around him, tearing at his clothes and at his shorn hair. “I just... I only ever wanted to be loved-”
“You can never be loved.” The maelstrom of voices projects itself directly into his consciousness. It will not be ignored. He suppresses a sob by biting his lower lip until he breaks the skin. But it does not bleed, because he is not human. “Not after everything you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry,” he tries. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” But his apology sounds empty, even to him. For without a Gnosis, what is he? What has he worked for all these years, if the very thing he sought has been snatched away again as soon as he acquired it?
What purpose is there in his life, if everyone and everything rejects him in the end?
The shadows dig in and scrape away at the boundaries of his weary soul. He can do nothing to stop them. He is no god.
He is just a puppet, who failed to live up to his one and only task, and he will never be anything more than that.
He gives himself up to the void and lets it carry him away into the darkness.
Far away, in a distant land, a certain god turns his gaze towards Sumeru.
He gently hums, deep in thought. The moment is not yet right to deliver the winds of ambition to rescue the despairing child. That will have to wait until the puppet has discovered his purpose and set out on a new path of his own. But until then, perhaps a gentle breeze will help soothe the anguish he feels and nudge him in the right direction.
The ancient bard summons his lyre and begins to play.