Chapter 303: The Stirring Darkness

"Go ahead and ask. If I don't know the answer, I'll check with Avia and the others later."

Wang Yu tossed another chunk of ore into the forge beside him, flipped the switch, and activated the Chariot's power. As molten heat began dissolving the stone, he carefully extracted the impurities and turned to face the Lady of the Night.

It was rare for the goddess to come seeking answers. He wasn't sure what she wanted to know, but if it involved obscure or esoteric truths, his knowledge might not be enough to satisfy her.

"If there is a being," she began slowly, "who once committed great and unforgivable sins—but has since forgotten all of it, even shed its body and power, to the point that the current self shares nothing with the past—should that being still be held accountable for what it once did?"

"Or rather... is the being that exists now still the same as the one who committed those sins?"

Her voice trembled slightly, betraying a deep inner confusion and hesitation.

"What?" Wang Yu blinked. "Ah, damn it!"

He had been half-focused on refining the ore, but her question demanded his full attention.

As he tried to process what she'd just said, his hand got too close to the forge and was splashed by molten slag. Swearing, he quickly summoned the Chariot to handle the mess.

"A philosophical question, then?" [1]

Wang Yu pulled up a seat next to her rocking chair.

"Philosophy? I suppose it is," she answered, unsure. Unlike Avia, she clearly wasn't used to the Earth-born terms that occasionally slipped from Wang Yu's mouth.

"Well, there's no right answer to a question like this," Wang Yu said with a shrug. "All I can give you is my own take on it."

Who knew how the Lady of the Night had come by such a question?

He leaned back, thinking aloud. "So, I'm a hypocrite. Let's get that out of the way first. For me, personally—there's no past life, no future self. I'm me, right now, and that's all there is. If someone says I'm just a copy or a remnant of someone else? I wouldn't give a damn. I know exactly who I am.

"And if someone showed up blaming me for something I supposedly did in a past life? I'd send them to their next one. If I didn't do it, it's not on me. Doesn't matter if we share a body, or even a name. Wrong guy.

"But like I said, I'm a hypocrite. Flip it around—say someone wronged me in the worst way, and years later they show up claiming they've changed, that they forgot everything, that they're someone else now? I'd still smash their skull in."

Wang Yu scratched his head after this impromptu speech.

"That probably didn't help much," he admitted. "But I guess what I'm saying is—just follow your own sense of judgment. Don't shoulder a burden that doesn't belong to you. And don't let someone throw off their guilt by pretending they're a brand-new person. Use your eyes. If it looks like a lie, it probably is."

He glanced at the goddess, who was sitting upright in her rocking chair and listening closely.

"I see," she said softly. "I think... I understand now. Thank you."

Her figure began to shimmer and fade as she vanished from the Seed of Eden's pocket space.

"Wait! hold it right there!" Wang Yu snapped. He grabbed the base of the rocking chair with the Chariot's power to stop her exit. "This isn't one of those ‘I have a friend who...' stories, is it?"

He had belatedly realized what was going on. It was painfully obvious that the "being" she'd spoken of was herself.

This wasn't someone asking a hypothetical question. And she'd never seek him out just to ask something so abstract unless it mattered. No way in hell was he going to just let her walk off without explaining.

"Nothing important," she replied, her voice calm again as she rematerialized. "It was just a question."

"Do I look like an idiot to you?"

Wang Yu pointed at himself with exasperation.

"..."

The Lady of the Night stared at him for a long moment in silence, then quietly sat back down.

"Talk," Wang Yu said. "I'll ask Avia about it later if I have to."

Wang Yu wasn't the kind of person who liked prying into others' secrets. But that depended on the person. If someone like Avia or Sieg told him "it's nothing," he'd leave it at that, no questions asked.

But this wasn't Avia. This was the Lady of the Night—a goddess who, in his eyes, was a little too impulsive and eccentric for comfort. He couldn't help worrying that if she took a strange idea too far, she might do something irreversible.

"Lately, I've felt my power growing," she said slowly. "But there are new elements to it, abilities I never possessed before. All of them are tied to darkness... but far deeper and stronger than what I wield.

"I can access them. I can channel them through the Tree of the Night to my followers. But they're not mine."

Wang Yu narrowed his eyes. "You're a manifestation of power itself, aren't you? So... these things aren't you. They're just... available to you."

"Exactly. As you said, I can use them, but they don't belong to me. They didn't originate from me."

She paused. "But they've appeared within my domain. They follow me. And... they're starting to show me memories. Images."

She glanced at him again, her voice quieter than before.

"Memories and visions, huh? I'm guessing those are what made you come ask me that question. Show me."

Wang Yu rubbed his chin thoughtfully. What the Lady of the Night described stirred a memory in him, one that demanded more details. He needed to see the rest for himself.

With a wave of her hand, flowing darkness spread across the Seed of Eden, coalescing into visible images and sound.

The stars shone brilliantly in a sky swept clean of clouds. Sea breezes stirred up gentle waves that lapped softly against the docks of a tiny coastal fishing village. A few wooden huts still glimmered with lamplight, but most were already dark. Snores rose and fell like the tide, mingling with the occasional murmur of whispered conversation.

A middle-aged constable, an advanced knight-in-training, walked alone through the village streets. It was his nightly patrol to protect this poor, defenseless place from ocean predators and thieving raiders from nearby settlements.

His steps halted. He looked up. Something in the sky caught his eye. Where the stars had shone clearly just moments before, a strange darkness now gathered—as though something unseen had smothered the heavens.

"A storm coming, huh... better remind the old fishermen not to head out tomorrow," he muttered. "If the rain hits and the wind picks up before they get back, we'll have a real problem."

A veteran of coastal life, he understood the sky's moods well. Clouds that rolled in at midnight often heralded foul weather come morning.

The village sat nestled in a narrow cove between two sea-facing mountains. The lighthouse on the cliff was often obscured by the terrain. In fog or heavy rain, sailors returning from sea could easily lose their bearings—and if they missed the harbor, they'd be swallowed by the open waters.

When that happened, the result was almost always the same: they would be devoured in the dark by sea monsters or deep-dwelling fishfolk. Sometimes, an empty boat would drift back. More often, nothing returned at all—not even bones.

The constable turned his gaze away. He trusted the old sailors. They were seasoned, and some were even worshippers of the Lord of Sea and Storm. They knew how to read the ocean better than he did. He just needed to give them a heads-up.

What he failed to notice was this: there were no clouds over the sea at all. The stars hadn't been covered. They had been erased.

The sky and ocean had turned pitch-black, as if every star had been swallowed by an unseen force. Even the faint light from the lighthouse, normally capable of piercing the gaps between the twin peaks, was gone. It had vanished.

And from the sea's edge, something crept in. A shadow, silent and consuming, washed over the village. It erased everything in its path, swallowing houses, trees, paths. Even the unaware constable's body was slowly eclipsed by the darkness lapping at his side.

And then... silence. The fishing village, obscure and unimportant as it was, faded from the world. Every light extinguished, every sound silenced.

When the first rays of dawn pierced the night between the twin mountains, all seemed unchanged—except for one thing. The village was gone. There was no wreckage, no survivors, and no hint it had ever existed at all.

"I saw it," Wang Yu said. "A colossal black arm, stretching from the far reaches of the sky and sea, grasping that entire village in its fist. And the next day... nothing was left. That's the presence you meant, isn't it? That ancient being commanding darkness."

The visions had been shared with him not as mere memories, but as something more, something shaped by the goddess's divine perspective. In that rendering, the terror was palpable, and the scale cosmic.

The Lady of the Night nodded. "Yes. That is Its power. It's far deeper than mine. If I am the night... then It is absolute darkness.

"My domain is concealment, shelter," she continued. "But Its domain is... oblivion. Forgetting. And now, that power—Its power—has begun to manifest within me. A voice whispers to me... that I am It."

Her voice wavered, filled with disquiet.

Wang Yu folded his arms, brow furrowing. "Okay, first of all, you're overthinking it. It is It, and you are you. End of story. These thoughts—this confusion—did they come from a follower's influence? That can happen. But you already have the Tree of the Night. It should've filtered that out."

He paused. A more troubling idea emerged. "Wait... what if this power bypassed the Tree altogether?" He frowned deeply. "I've seen that happen before, like with the Flamewarden, or that librarian, Samuel Hayden."

This situation mirrored the rebirth of the fallen God of Knowledge, whose essence had reawakened in a human body. Except this time, it wasn't a human. It was a god.

"If that's the case, then the condition for Its resurrection must have been met." Wang Yu frowned. "Someone remembered that fallen god. Someone looked at you and believed you were It."

He pieced it together step by step.

"So... the visions you're seeing—the thoughts, the power—they're not your own. They're the memories of a follower. A new follower."

1. Ship of Theseus, basically. ☜