Seeing the feathered serpent coiled deep within the black fog, and the face atop its mountain-like body, Azik was momentarily stunned. Then his temples throbbed as if a wedge had been driven into the side of his skull, splitting his head in two.
Amidst this piercing pain, disjointed images suddenly flashed through his mind: The face of a feathered serpent, identical to his own in every meticulous detail; A silent land covered in countless pale corpses; A cloud floating in midair, formed from the skulls of different races; Black, segmented tentacles emerging from the ground, with dead fish-like eyes at their tips; His own transparent spirit body being forcibly pulled from its physical shell.
After these flashing images, a pair of eyes where a pale flame was on the verge of extinguishing looked over. A white feather, stained with pale grease, drifted down and cleaved Azik's transparent spirit body in two.
One half abruptly shot up and merged into the "Cloud of Skulls." The other half, combined with a golden ornament that had materialized out of thin air, returned to a body of flesh and blood under the searing pale flames.
This scene pounded against Azik's mind like the giant hammer of a thunder god. He could no longer bear the agony. He clutched his head, his knees weakening, and he collapsed onto the stairs, kneeling.
He finally remembered everything. He understood why he died and resurrected repeatedly, why he always lost his memories and found them again: His soul was incomplete!
Similarly, Azik realized why the feathered serpent, oppressing the entire space within the black fog, bore a face identical to his own: It was him! It was another "Azik Eggers"!
And all of this stemmed from a covert experiment conducted by the God of Death before his fall.
If a "sewing of souls" exists, so does a "division of the spirit." At that moment, the mad and mighty God of Death, as if foreseeing his own end and unwilling to simply perish, secretly divided the soul of his child, the "Death Consul" of the Balam Empire. He took one half away and sewed a certain item into Azik's spirit as a replacement.
Whether due to the God of Death's deliberate arrangement or the unconscious influence of the Church of the Dead's artificial deity plan, the half of Azik's soul that was taken merged with the "Uniqueness" of this pathway—the goal of the artificial god creation. This granted the latter a certain instinct, causing it to actively influence high-sequence "Corpse Collectors" who had failed in their advancement.
As for the other half, although it had a substitute and thus wasn't "incomplete," the lack of true wholeness in the soul meant it could only die and resurrect repeatedly, like an "Undying" of Sequence 4. Influenced by the "golden ornament" within him and the call from the other half of his soul, each time Azik started a new life, he would gradually recover his past memories over time.
Azik had tried to investigate the cause before, but was hindered by the fact that by the time most of his memory naturally returned, he was very close to another death, leaving no time for meaningful exploration. Moreover, the Church of the Dead's plan for the artificial God of Death was only proposed a few hundred years ago, with first results appearing only recently, so he had never been able to find the answer.
Hah, hah, hah! Azik's hands, at some unknown point, had left his head and were propping him up on the steps below. A sound unlike a human's escaped his throat.
Beads of sweat dripped from his brow, hitting the stone slabs before him, soaking into pale greasy stains and sprouting fine, white fuzz.
At this moment, he felt the call and yearning of his other half. The two parts of his "self," separated for over a thousand years, were impatient to reunite and become whole again.
"No..." Azik muttered in pain, unwilling to raise his head or extend his right hand.
He had seen it clearly: the "self" transformed into the feathered serpent had not a shred of reason. It was filled with a cold, utterly extreme cruelty and madness. If he merged with it, he would likely instantly revert to the state of the "Death Consul," or even become a false God of Death, with nothing left but divinity and no humanity!
He would forget everything, forget everyone he had ever cherished.
"No..." The word was forced out of Azik's throat again, but his neck uncontrollably lifted bit by bit, and black, cold scales emerged on it.
On his forehead, a lump suddenly bulged out as if alive. It split open, forming a bloody gash.
A flash of golden light then materialized from the void, taking shape in the flesh.
It was an ancient ornament, seemingly forged from gold. It resembled a slender, long-bodied bird, surrounded by wings of pale flames. Inside its bronze-colored eyes, light layered upon itself, forming a single, mysterious, and illusory door.
The moment it appeared, Azik gave a pained roar and fully lifted his head. In his weary eyes, two flames of pale fire blazed up.
The feathered serpent, both illusory and real, deep within the black fog, straightened its body and extended its head. The two identical faces, one large and one small, met in a silent, still gaze.
As the four pale flames flickered, Azik, propping himself up on the ground with his face twisted in agonizing struggle, slowly rose to his feet and walked toward the serpent known as the Artificial Death.
With his approach, the entire mausoleum began to tremble. Its surroundings turned translucent, revealing a world filled with countless skeletons and apparitions.
Bloody arms, black-green vines bearing infant faces, slimy tentacles topped with dead fish-eyes or lined with rows of sharp teeth pierced the boundary between reality and illusion, reaching into the mausoleum, yet they remained pressed flat against the ground, not daring to move.
…
East Balam, City of Gulasai.
Daly Simone, who was making her way to the next target, suddenly stopped, raising a hand to her temple.