《Shadows Never Die》


 1. World of Ideas

    Umar of Sadina, Grandmaster Assassin of the Order, had died.


    As soon as he felt the disconnect of his body and mind, he became aware of the dreadful fact.


    He should have been scared, especially as he was unable to move either his body or mind as his body was stuck between the two worlds.


    The world of the living and the world of ideas.


    His gaze landed on those who failed to land the killing blow. He had gathered all his most powerful assassins, his Shadows and Master Assassins, yet even their overwhelming numbers that should have been able to take over a fortress had failed to kill him. Yes, his death was not in the hands of others, but his own.


    Enlightenment, their ancestral magic, required an¡­ elevated mind. He still felt the hashish cursing through his body even if the separation between his mind and body grew further apart with each second. But it wasn''t just the hashish he could feel. There was also the opium, the cocaine, the peyote, the tobacco, and heavens knew what else he had put inside of his system.


    Who would have thought that death would make his memory faulty?


    Umar felt more defined, more himself, when the assassins observed his lingering entity. Ah, his mind was projected into the world of the living and his body into the realm of thoughts for the shortest and utmost glorious of moments.


    Soon, the bridge between the two worlds snapped. He had lasted long in the world of the living after his death, and that was commendable but alas, it had been in vain.


    Dead men had no affairs in the world of the living.


    Still, he refused to truly die.


    He was Umar, the mightiest of the Grandmasters, the only person who had rivaled the ferocious Sultanah Aaliyah-al-Ydaz during his youth, and he wouldn''t give death an easy prey.


    Even though he was fully immersed now in the world of ideas, he still could peer into the world of the living. The chamber was poorly detailed as he no longer had eyes and his sight gained a grey and cyan coloration, but the assassins in the room were a whole other business.


    Living people were not visible in the world of ideas like objects were. Umar had known that since his youth when he witnessed the first steps to Apotheosis through the Greater Understanding. Objects were defined in the world of ideas through observation. The more an item was observed, the more defined and accurate it became. That was why his corpse was currently the most detailed object in the room.


    It was a surreal experience seeing his body from the outside. And its detail was even more uncanny. He could see with precision every strand of hair, every wrinkle, every slight imperfection.


    All the attention of his assassins was placed on his body, after all.


    Unlike his corpse, he couldn''t see their features except for their eyes. Glowing orbs of the foulest red. People were fluid things in the world of ideas, and unless they were getting outrageous amounts of attention, they would remain that way. But¡­ the assassins didn''t play by the same rules.


    Enlightenment allowed assassins to partially step into the world of ideas at all times. Tobacco helped even more with its emphatic magic. That understanding and presence were visualized through those red eyes of theirs. Bloodshot from all the drugs on their bodies.


    The room emptied after a while, some of the assassins carried his corpse away, but one person remained.


    His nephew and heir, Tareek.


    Even if he hadn''t participated in the fight that could have marked Umar''s Apotheosis and he hadn''t consumed many substances, his eyes still lingered with a powerful red.


    "I know you are still there," he voiced out with her powerful young voice.


    Perks of a hashashid. Umar mused because he was unable to talk in his current form, but the boy and the new Master of the Order of Sadina had gotten the message, nonetheless.


    Hashashid were those born of assassin parents. Their natality was low and their birth uncommon as both parents had to be high during the whole conception, but in exchange for such difficult labor that would have rendered any other babe a retard, they were born with an uncanny mastery of Enlightenment.


    Both his nephew and he were hashashid, though the boy had always had stronger blood than him.


    "What are you going to do now that the Apotheosis has failed?" Tareek inquired as he circled around the underground chamber.


    I''m afraid, I don''t know, Umar didn''t fake answers, for he had none. Everyone hated those old men from fairy tales that spoke in riddles. Alas, I''m the first assassin that has gotten this far into the Apotheosis. I may have failed to ascend my mind, but as long as I linger on the world of ideas as a shadow of my mind, I will keep trying.


    The young assassin shrugged. "Feel free to do whatever you please, old man. You left me quite the task back in the world of the living. There''s going to be a war, you know?"


    Umar nodded but snorted. Can you blame an old man for dying of old age?


    "If you call suffering a heart attack from an overdose, sure," Tareek snorted. "Can''t blame the geezers for having fun, eh?"


    The dead assassin punched the living one, but his fist went through the misty self of Tareek. He was well aware that people in the world of ideas couldn''t interact with anything, not this world, not the one of the living. The gesture was meant as symbolic more than anything.


    "It''s been a pleasure being your disciple, Umar," Tareek stated in a weird burst of seriousness. "But our paths diverge here. Maybe you have luck in your quest."


    He could have said many things, he wanted to say many things, but a lump appeared in his non-existent throat. The dead were not supposed to bid farewell to the living, but he couldn''t leave like that. He had raised that boy; he had been his father for lack of one. So he simply nodded and mustered a ''Thank you''.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    He was left alone in the chamber where he had died.


    ***


    Being the only ''living'' person in the whole world was a solitary existence. Umar could walk unimpeded into any house in any city as walls were only suggestions in the world of ideas. Mists instead of items, conceptions of what should and should not be.


    It was¡­ weird to describe. In a way, his own descriptions shaped the world around him.


    The reality was perception. The perception was reality.


    The whole world has this greyscale for each item, but when one looked closer to the engravings, the imperfections, and the chipping of every surface, one could see the inlays of cyan. The world of thoughts was a dull one of greys, but sometimes, even the dullest thoughts had an intellectual glint of cyan.


    Traveling was also rather simple as the world of ideas was formed from the mental imprints people left on items. Ydaz was a desert and mostly uncharted beyond its main roads. That was an advantage for him as if he walked outside of the roads, suddenly the world became smaller. A single step into an unperceived desert could lead him further than days down the road.


    He moved from assassin order to assassin order in search of answers. Alas, he was the greatest of pioneers, and even if he managed to contact some of the more¡­ open Grandmasters, they were even more clueless than him.


    Assassins weren''t the answer, so Umar did the unthinkable and visited the cultivators.


    The imperial family of Ydaz could cultivate their body and make themselves mightier than a hundred men, but they were children compared to the assassins in matters of the mind. Still, children could sometimes provide great insights from their special point of view.


    He stalked the capital of Asina and its golden palace for answers, trying to see if the magic of the imperials could bring him any answer, but his effort failed to bear fruit. Nurture wasn''t the answer either.


    Even the mighty Aaliyah, who had no footing in the world of ideas yet her body shone like a second sun from might alone, couldn''t grant him any insight.


    He was alone. And he was dying.


    Again.


    Reality was based on perception, and nobody could perceive him any longer. Even now for the keenest of assassins, he was nothing more than a whisper.


    His time was running out.


    Ah, I wish I had some hashish¡­ Umar mused as he walked the streets of a random Ydazi city. He had gone over through the whole continent by now, but home always called him. He couldn''t withstand the wooden houses of Loyata or the stone holes of Seviren. Only he felt comfortable with the mud and sandstone buildings of Ydaz.


    So this is where my existence ends, in oblivion, in a random bazaar¡­ He let out a chuckle. It was quite an amusing jest. I would be lying if I didn''t say I didn''t overstay my welcome. Death should have caught up to me weeks ago.


    Then, out of nowhere, a change.


    Not that of the moving passersby that were nothing more than whisps of mist as people didn''t tend to observe each other, making them infinitely less defined than the world that surrounded them. No, something different. Something¡­ alive.


    "What are you doing here?" Umar asked the newcomer.


    "Where is ''here''?" The petite girl questioned.


    Yes, he recognized that girl. She was the granddaughter of his late friend Karaim. He hadn''t interacted much with the girl, but those emerald eyes oozing with life were unforgettable. Even in the realm of ideas, she looked as alive as in the world of the living.


    "We are in the¡­ world of ideas. Where the thoughts and dreams lay." As he spoke, the cracks in his misty began mending themselves. Perception¡­ he realized. "But you shouldn''t be here, Aloe Ayad." A moment of clarity allowed him to remember her name.


    "How do you know me?" The girl, Aloe, thrashed around but she soon became aware of her lack of body. Unlike him, she was just a living trespassing into the domain of those who weren''t. "What''s happening to me?" She cried in distress.


    "I already told you; we are in the world of thoughts. And you are¡­ well, your own mind. Your cognition, if you will." Yes, that was what he was. A cognition. A remnant. The shadow of a Shadow.


    "That makes¡­" She cut her words, but he understood the complete sentence. She was experiencing it, the Greater Understanding was flowing to her, and by proximity, to him.


    Forbidden knowledge, unspoken words, unborn wisdom, blind colors, unsung songs¡­ it all flowed into him. Umar hoarded the information for himself leaving the woman unaware. For some reason, the Greater Understanding was favoring her, but he didn''t have the strength to ponder those questions. Perception took energy, and energy was thoughts in this world. The more he thought, the shorter he could his life.


    He had to absorb every kernel of knowledge the Greater Understanding was trickling down of them without pondering, otherwise, he would disappear again if he tried answering those questions.


    "Answer my other question," the living girl said with a hint of rage.


    Umar chuckled. "Hustle your memory a bit."


    He couldn''t give straight answers, he couldn''t gift information. For better or worse, he had to become the worst type of character in a story: the prophet who spoke in riddles. That was the only way to conserve his energies whilst keeping the ones he obtained from Aloe''s perception of him.


    "Umar?" His friend''s granddaughter responded.


    "Yes and no," he kept the riddle act. "I am Umar''s¡­ cognitive imprint. He''s long gone, and I''ll be too myself not long from now. Maybe another year if I manage to fight cognitive decay."


    "What''s happening?" Her emerald eyes portrayed fear.


    "You should tell me that," the dead assassin shrugged. That got the girl thinking for a bit more, gifting him more¡­ cognitive presence. "I am the lasting remnant of a powerful mind, and you are¡­ quite the pathetic girl."


    "Hey!" The young girl protested at the insult, which was exactly what he wanted. He could almost breathe in the perception of her rage.


    "You don''t look nor feel like an imprint, you feel¡­ alive," Umar mused almost to himself.


    He was aware the girl hadn''t died, but how she was even here was a powerful mystery. A non-assassin shouldn''t be able to enter the world of ideas, not even the greatest cultivator of history had been able to perceive it. Though Aaliyah''s case was special considering her sheer presence altered the realm, making her the only living person capable of doing so.


    "I am alive!" The being of mist and emerald eyes protested. "I was¡­ dunes¡­" She cursed, unable to remember. That tended to happen in the world of ideas. One moment you were a whole mind, the next you were a vagrant in a sea of¡­


    That''s it! Umar realized the Greater Understanding blessed him for one last time.


    "It seems you have your answer, whatever it is. See you never again, I guess." He raised his hand to bid her farewell. He couldn''t spend any more time here, the shadow of the girl was becoming fickler by the second and she no longer provided him with any perception. He had to begin his journey now.


    "Wait!" Umar stopped in his tracks and looked back at her. "You need to explain to me a lot of things. Too many in fact."


    "I can''t waste my limited computational power answering your questions. The world of thoughts has been quite the enlightening experience, pun intended," he chuckled even if he wasn''t aware if the girl knew of Enlightenment. His late friend had kept his granddaughter in the dark, and for good reason. The world of the assassins was one of cruelty and dry farewells. "But I need all the strength I can muster if I still want to reach Apotheosis, even if I''m dead."


    Still, he was not a monster and dropped her some clues in exchange for the insight she had unwittingly given him.


    "Apotheosis? What are you talking about?" The misty shape of the girl stepped closer to him.


    "Too late," he said. "Wake up."


    As soon as he uttered those words, Aloe vanished from the world of ideas. Whether she was truly sleeping, in a drug-induced trance, or unconscious, he couldn''t know. He just guessed the only way for a living person to reach this far and this consciously into this realm was through a dreaming mind.


    "Okay, Umar," he hyped himself. "Time for the journey of a lifetime."


    He walked into the desert and changed his destination not for a sea of sand, but water. The answers waited for him beyond the uncharted seas of Khaffat. No matter what happened, even if he failed to reach Apotheosis again, he wouldn''t allow himself to reach true death. Even in his incomplete and faulty state, a shadow of his original self, Umar Sadina wouldn''t allow himself to disappear from this world.


    After all, shadows never die.

 2. Observation, Cognition, and Legends

    The sea was the strangest of sights in the world of ideas. Because this realm was shaped by the observation and the fantasies of the living, the sea had become quite the mystic place.


    The endless body of water was too salty to host most life and there was no reason to navigate besides some commercial routes that were faster than land with favorable winds, but most didn''t bother as all commerce could be done on foot.


    Umar had never known how true that would become.


    As he was nothing more than a wisp of a dead person, his interaction with the realm of the dead was¡­ different from what assassins that only peered through their still-breathing bodies. From the port city of Aramita, Umar took a step into the water.


    And he floated.


    Apparently, a figment of a person''s cognition could walk on water. Who would have thought?


    For a moment he would have expected that the journey would have been as simple as walking in the ocean for a few minutes, after all, because no one was observing it actively nor living on it that meant that it would be infinitely smaller than a city in this plane of existence.


    But alas, the weight of legends and fantasies was forced onto him.


    The citizens of Ydaz were used to deserts of a myriad sands that expanded further than the eye could see, so they were acquainted with them. Stories of monsters sleeping underneath the sands didn''t faze them, but the same couldn''t be said for the dunes made out of water instead of sand. Ydazi people had a fascination with the sea. A sea whose dunes constantly moved in an ebb and flow, a land whose soil was liquid instead of solid.


    Those fascinations played against him.


    The ocean should have been small, trivial, but he was met with mountains and valleys of ever-changing shape, reaching hundreds if not thousands of meters. He may be able to walk on top of the water, but he was still affected by the powerful currents.


    "Dunes!" He screamed as a powerful current lifted him upwards. Like a reverse waterfall, he was pulled to the heavens by one of the almost vertical faces of the saltwater mountains.


    If it weren''t because he was a fleeting thought, an already-dead man, he would have feared. But there was nothing else that could kill him.


    Besides oblivion, that was.


    The old assassin couldn''t drown. The old assassin couldn''t be hurt from falls as great as the heavens.


    That didn''t stop the currents from pushing him down to the bottom of the ocean.


    Another one would have been terrified, but Umar¡­ was quite ecstatic at the sight. The world of ideas already had a cyan tinge to every detail, but that held ever truer with the bottom of the ocean. The caustics of the water were exaggerated down here, clearly a product of human imagination rather than the real actual phenomena. The lights were so potent and created such vivid imagery that it reminded him of the northern lights of the tundra of Loyata. Although instead of green and pink, these were grey, white, and cyan.


    Not a more beautiful sight, but another sight. People tended to compare and put arbitrary scores to sceneries, but age had taught Umar that there weren''t better or uglier sights, they just were. The beauty of the golden sands couldn''t be compared to the singed whiteness of the snow. They were their own thing, and that was good.


    "I should get out of there," he murmured underwater as he saw movements on the periphery.


    If the legends of great storms and walls of water had formed literal heaven-scratching mountains, then heavens knew what the maritime monsters could be in this real.


    By all accounts, monsters couldn''t exist in the world of ideas. There weren''t any sapient or living entities in this realm, only the perception of those. He had traveled the whole Qiraji desert and failed to find djinns, dwellers, rocs, sandwalkers, and whatnot.


    And that was even counting his years alive, not even now in his ''un-death''.


    But legends were more exaggerated by the habitants of the desert.


    With some difficulty, Umar found a current that pushed him back to the surface. He took a deep breath as he came out as a reflex, even if he no longer needed air thanks to his lack of body. The fact that he could unconsciously do that relieved him a bit. It was a vestige of his lost humanity. And he would do anything to get it back.


    After a handful of days, he was able to find a purchase in the shape of land. Instantly, he knew he wasn''t in Ydaz anymore.


    It felt wrong saying it, but he had a¡­ connection to his homeland. A mental link that told him "You''ve lived here all your life, born and died here", but he no longer felt that link. And even if he did, the vegetation already told him everything he needed to know.


    The most vegetation someone would find in Ydaz would either be noble greenhouses, sparse oases, or farmlands birthed from the blood of the sultanah. But those places still were desertic, those still carried the thoughts and legends of the sands with them.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    This place didn''t.


    Trees tall as houses. Undergrowth as thick as waster water. All he could see was vegetation, and that unsettled him. It was even hard to see the soil, there was too much vegetable life to feel the land. It was even more unsettling once he considered that plants should be green, but such color didn''t exist in this realm. The best his senses could catch was vague cyan silhouettes to give a hint of color to the foliage.


    "Well, here I am. On the lands across the oceans." Umar''s voice was carried in all directions, yet nothing responded. Not even the Greater Understanding. "Answer me! What should I do now?"


    The old man grunted as silence was all he was met by and continued walking. He still had a few months of life thanks to Karaim''s granddaughter acknowledging, but that gained cognition was fading away. He needed to find answers and solutions fast.


    The thick forest disoriented him a bit. It was big in the sense of the ocean, artificially born out of the collective unconsciousness, but not as expansive as it should be. The foliage was dense and the trees tall, but it only took him a few minutes to walk out of it as it lacked the gathered cognition typical of human habitation.


    "This looks like¡­ Oops." Umar held himself to that thought. His time in this world was already limited, and the more he thought, the shorter he would cut it. He had to mindlessly move around lest he wanted to die out of¡­ thoughtlessness? "Nope, don''t think about it. Coming up with a term requires too much computational power. Move on."


    The humid-looking forest ended quite abruptly, if that was the case in the world of the living or just a byproduct of cognition, he couldn''t know. The vast undergrowth was substituted by mud and dirty waters as he arrived at some sort of floodplain. He had never seen a flooded landscape quite like this, but it reminded him of the delta of the Eyana River at Sadina or the Loyatan fjords.


    But way muddier.


    He skipped around the small patches of land he could find as his first attempt to traverse the floodplains had caused him to nearly sink. This water isn''t walkable, got it. Whether it was the effect of observation from other people who had sunk or just because the ocean worked differently, Umar didn''t want to risk swimming in mud.


    His journey across the floodplains was more tedious and longer than the thick forest as space was mostly existent here, meaning there should be people nearby. And after a handful of hours of sluggishly trudging the islands of dirt, he managed to find¡­ something.


    A city it was not, but at the same time, it wasn''t like any of the villages he had once known. Not the sandstone of Ydaz, nor the wood of Loyata, but instead the houses were made out of leaves and mud. Well, there were also mud buildings in Ydaz, but the color of the soil was different enough to surprise him.


    Unfortunately for him, Umar couldn''t get a good look at these foreign people beyond the ocean. His weakened self didn''t have enough power to gift them with the observation to define their image. The clothes and weaponry lingering around did give them an idea of their technological level, and they didn''t seem to have mastered metalworking quite yet.


    They had trinkets made out of soft-looking metals like copper or gold, but their preferred method of weapon-making was through some sort of crystalline stone instead of metals. Umar''s observations were fickle at best as he could only see outlines devoid of any color. Glass was quite an interesting sight in the world of ideas, though. He could already see through most entities if he ignored them enough, but glass seemed to be always present yet always invisible. A difficult state to describe.


    "The Greater Understanding guided me here. There should be something. Anything at all." The shadow murmured in growing desperation as he oversaw some children playing a game of ball that consisted of kicking a ball over a horizontal hoop on the wall.


    Umar lingered in the village for a few more days, his head completely devoid of thoughts. He could almost stay indefinitely in the realm this way, thoughtless for eternity, but besides that being no way of living, he wasn''t perfect. As much as the assassins took pride in being ''shadows'', he wasn''t a real entity of penumbra at all. He had thoughts, ideas, wills, and dreams. Those were energies he uselessly constantly drained his energies and existence.


    It was inevitable. He was fading.


    "No," the Shadow stated. "I refuse to vanish. I refuse to die. Until my last breath, until my last thought, I will continue trying to find a way to ignore you. Do you hear me, death? I''m not going to fall for your charm, you cruel mistress!"


    He raised his fist at the heavens, even if the skies of the world of ideas were a sad thing composed of grey imagery.


    Rustle.


    All his alarms cried out in perfect synchronicity as he heard a noise. A noise in the world of ideas. Umar spun around trying to find the source of the sound.


    "Who goes there?" His voice was potent. Define. Observed. He realized. Someone is observing me and that gave me more presence. "I know you are here. Reveal yourself."


    He heard of pathetic whimper before a set of eyes revealed themselves. Red. Bloodshot like his assassins. No, not quite. Umar knew the effects of Enlightenment and drugs on the world of ideas. Perhaps the principle of the figure was the same, but he was too acquainted with the effects to know those weren''t red eyes of tobacco. For starters, tobacco didn''t cause eyes in the world of the living, but the same couldn''t be said here. But the shading was wrong. The figure had consumed a different substance.


    "Oh, I beg your pardon, great spirit!" The figure bowed, even if Umar could only see their red eyes, the movement of those eyes told him enough to intuit that. "This one is thankful for your presence."


    Are you high? Umar almost asked that, but he refrained from doing so. Of course, the figure was high. Enlightenment needed the intoxication of the mind and the body, even if it didn''t seem to be the Enlightenment he was acquainted with.


    "What is your name?" The assassin asked to play safe. At least if the figure disappeared, they would have gifted him enough cognition to stay afloat for a few more weeks by just answering his questions.


    "This humble servant goes by the name of Mictlantecuhtli, oh great spirit!" The figure continued bowing, but now that Umar had a name for them, they became more defined. First, he heard the voice more clearly. By the end of the sentence Umar could tell the speaker was a man. Second, he saw the outline of the man, confirming his musings.


    "Mictlantecuhtli, huh?" Quite a tongue-twister of a name. He kept that to himself. Which was hard.


    They were on the world of ideas and he himself was but a remnant cognition of a dead man. It wouldn''t be wrong to call himself a thought. So, most of the time, when he was speaking, he just was¡­ thinking aloud. Conversation as a shadow of a man gone was¡­ curious.


    "Indeed, oh great spirit!"


    Now, for his third revelation, Umar noticed that they weren''t speaking the same language. The curious name was a dead giveaway ¨C heh, dead ¨C but the problem was how they were communicating. None of them were speaking, but as he had said, thinking aloud. Speech may be bound to tongues, physical and metaphysical, but the same couldn''t be said for thoughts. They were more primal, more instinctual. Even the newborn babe who had no notion of language could still think, even if communicating was a bit different.


    In this realm of thought, it would appear that language wasn''t a thing.

 3. Assassin and Druid

    Mictlantecuhtli was a curious fella from a curious land. There didn''t seem to be a centralized government in this country, even calling it a country was a misnomer as it was closer to the tribes of the Loyatan Coalition than the Sultanate of Ydaz. Villages were independent and their cohesion came from culture and religion rather than any mandate.


    The question is, how do I know this? Umar grabbed his head in pain. He and Mictlantecuhtli hadn''t talked, at least not enough to get this much information out of his. It''s like I''m reading his¡­ Legend? What does any of this mean? The shadow grunted and cyan air came out of his mouth. What''s this?


    The act of thinking was paining him, degrading his cognition even if he was being observed by Mictlantecuhtli, but he couldn''t stop doing it. He was close to getting answers. Any of them.


    Enlightenment, the dead assassin mused. I''m¡­ revealing something as I''m being revealed something at the same time.


    He looked at the man before him. Mictlantecuhtli looked at him back in confusion, he too felt something. Experienced something.


    There''s a bond here. Similar to Enlightenment. He seems to practice the arts even if he himself isn''t aware of them, I''ve seen that happening before with some drug addicts and vagabonds before. But his connection is not with the drugs, not entirely at least, but with¡­ me.


    Umar looked at his hands. The images and the resolution of his body degraded and reconstructed in a sinusoidal manner, ebbing and flowing between peaks of definition as clear as his living body had been and valleys of oblivion where he was nothing more than a mist.


    I''m being the source of this specific set of Enlightenment abilities, whatever it might be. Every drug provided peculiar abilities. Tobacco allowed telepathic communication, any alcohol boosted one''s strength, hashish ¨C the trademark of assassins ¨C unlocked the ability to become shadows and step across them, and there were many more substances a person could consume.


    But Umar had never imagined he would become one of these substances.


    Has the Apotheosis truthfully succeeded? Is this why I''m able to connect with this priest-looking man? No other alternative was formed by his mind. But what even is Apotheosis? What shape should it take if no one has performed it before?


    The lore of the assassins mostly came from the masters of yore that managed to form a powerful connection with the Greater Understanding, they got answers when no one had had them. The most accepted definition of the ritual of Apotheosis was that if an assassin survived the trial ¨C which was basically ritualistic suicide as one needed to take enough substances to run a hospital for a week ¨C then they would be able to perform Enlightenment without the need of any catalysts any longer.


    It may seem underwhelming for foreigners, the word Apotheosis was certainly too big for such a trivial modification, but what it did was eliminate two of the most egregious faults of Enlightenment: consumables and mental state.


    According to the lore, in this state of Apotheosis, the assassin would be able to perform any of the abilities they were acquainted with without the need to consume the substances that would have once triggered them. This meant that the ascended assassin would have been able to use any given ability without a limit as they would no longer need to carry substances around and those wouldn''t be expended, but also and most importantly, they were clear of mind and body.


    Drugs affected the mind, which was a surprise to no one, but they also weakened the body. Any assassin beyond the status of Shadow was physically weaker than the average person as their body was devastated from the continued consumption of substances. But even then, a pure body couldn''t even be compared to a clear mind. Assassins had to go wasted on missions, which meant that mistakes were common, even for Masters. But if one assassin had clarity of mind whilst being able to perform at their utmost maximum capabilities¡­


    That was the true might of Apotheosis.


    I''ve failed my Apotheosis, of that, I''m sure. Umar pondered. But perhaps I was close enough that¡­ this happened. I may not be able to use the perks of Apotheosis myself, but maybe, just maybe, I can grant them to other people.


    "Mictlantecuhtli," the shadow finally raised his voice after minutes of silence.


    "Yes, great spirit?" The foreign priest still kept his bowing posture. He had been there so long that some people had gathered to look around, defining furthermore his image.


    "I will grant you my blessing," he announced, "but you will need to fulfill my tasks."


    "Of course, oh great spirit. I pledge to serve your cause."


    Mictlantecuhtli wasn''t actually going to provide him with any answers, but his assistance could help him come up with them. That''s why you guided me here, didn¡¯t you? No one may give me the answers, but with these revelations, I may reveal them myself.


    The Greater Understanding acted in weird ways, not many people could hear it as clearly as Umar, but even then, the answers it brought were hard to understand and even harder to interpret.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    For now, he would use this man of a foreign land to live for longer. His cognition would be far more valuable than Karaim''s granddaughter as he seemed capable of maintaining his consciousness in the world of ideas, unlike her who had vanished as soon as he had told her to wake up.


    <hr>


    Days quickly passed by as the foreign priest acted as Umar''s voice, though the man fancied to call himself a ''druid''. The word didn''t exist in Ydazi, so Umar just assumed that it was the word for ''priest'' in whatever language Mictlantecuhtli talked with, though the term had naturalistic remarks. Some kind of middle ground between priest and herbalist, with touches of apothecary.


    They almost had a symbiotic existence with one another. Umar would give him the ability to perform Enlightenment without the need to consume drugs, whilst the druid gave him the necessary acknowledgment to continue existing.


    I still have no idea how to come back to life, though. Mictlantecuhtli didn''t have answers, so it was still up to him to come up with them. And there was a problem with the relationship besides the dependence, and that was the exchange. Whilst Umar willed their bond, Mictlantecuhtli would be able to use any Enlightenment skill like telepathy or pyrokinesis, but the druid was still a human. He couldn''t always be in the world of ideas either because he wasn''t intoxicated, or he was sleeping.


    This meant that, technically speaking, Umar didn''t have a constant source of observation. Maybe unlimited, but not constant. Thinking took too much cognition, meaning that the assassin couldn''t afford to think with all his prowess. It was curious that if he willed it, he could live for eternity. But that sluggish, thoughtless existence was not something that he wanted. Perhaps a corporeal and ephemeral life was better than an ethereal and eternal one.


    "Mictlantecuhtli," Umar voiced out throughout the world of ideas and a few moments later the druid manifested himself from the world of ideas.


    "Yes, oh great spirit?" Even if it had only been a few days, the man no longer looked as pathetic as before. Umar couldn''t quite point out if it was because the man was mostly clean of drugs, or because of his growing confidence from his newfound powers.


    The druid had been gifted an Apotheosis, after all.


    He had been using his newfound abilities to perform party tricks to impress the villagers, but nothing much. Nor did Umar want the man to overextend himself. Some of the abilities of Enlightenment could prove lethal to the user if used unwisely. It was better to let the man gloat if that meant acclimating to his powers.


    "Has there been any progress in the quest I assigned you?" He spoke to him as if it was one of his assassin acolytes.


    "We have been gathering all the hallucinogenic substances we know of besides most medicines available to us already, but there''s a limit to what we could get."


    "Mmm," the dead assassin grunted. "Is there something you can do to get access to more? What I want is quantity, distinct drugs that may have unique properties."


    "Well, we could rage war against other villages¡­" Mictlantecuhtli meekly offered.


    "Too direct," Umar turned him down. "You can blend into shadows, are stronger than most men, can feel the movements of the earth, and do a myriad more of things. Go get them yourself. Steal them if you must."


    "But the druid must stay with his community!" He talked back.


    "Mictlantecuhtli, I''ve observed you for a few days. Your value to this community is purely ritualistic. You have the properties of a healer, but you have a herbalist in this village already. They can do a few days without an apothecary."


    "I¡­" The druid seemed to speak, but he quickly shut himself. "If you wish so, oh great spirit."


    Dejected, Mictlantecuhtli turned back to the world of the living. A few hours later after he bid his farewells to the folk of the village, the druid departed for the jungle. Umar commanded his orders through telepathic communication. This meant that Mictlantecuhtli had to constantly take smoking breaks to refresh his tobacco.


    The Apotheosis Umar had granted him was flawed. A true ascended assassin wouldn''t need to refresh their drug effects. Mictlantecuhtli seemed to need some modicum of contamination to perform Enlightenment, but at the same time, he was able to use every skill Umar had known over his long life with only a drug as harmless as tobacco was. Harmless for the mind, at least. Going through a whole satchel of leaves in a whole day surely couldn''t be good for the lungs, and Mictlantecuhtli''s coughs showed it.


    At least the journey across the jungle ¨C as Mictlantecuhtli and the villagers called it, though the concept was novel for Umar ¨C was swift and safe. Enhanced senses, enhanced strength, and being able to teleport from shadow to shadow tended to do that.


    Umar ordered the druid to mostly move between shadows to acclimate himself to the assassin art of shadow stepping. It was one of the most difficult Enlightenment techniques, but also arguably the most powerful. Intangibility, near invisibility, teleportation¡­ it brought a lot of advantages.


    And also severe mental exertion.


    But Umar was pleased to find out that was mostly due to the copious amounts of hashish the assassins had to consume to keep shadow stepping over long distances. As Mictlantecuhtli was clean of the drug''s influence, he had greater resistance and didn''t tire as fast, both mentally and physically.


    Yes, this is how Apotheosis should be. A tireless assassin with an unlimited skillset. If we get our hands on more drugs, and new ones at that¡­ The greater his arsenal was, the more chances Umar had to become alive again, and not this shadowy state that couldn''t be considered life.


    The assassin could easily follow the druid across the jungle even if the man was teleporting around in the world of the living. In a way, they were both teleporting as space didn''t behave equally in the world of the living. Mictlantecuhtli stepped from shadow to shadow, but Umar''s steps were more significant than any living being. This section of the jungle was poorly observed, allowing Umar to calmly walk even if Mictlantecuhtli was shadow stepping with all his might.


    Moving this hastily, it didn''t take them long to find the closest neighboring village. Mictlantecuhtli had wanted to declare war on them, but with a single shadow step, he was able to infiltrate into the local healer''s hut and steal every drug he didn''t recognize. Alongside their tobacco stores. It took but a minute and they were already gone.


    For the next one.


    Using the mantle of the night as any fully-fledged assassin should, they moved in secrecy to loot any drug, medicine, plant, alcohol, and whatnot that could be useful to them. The more, the merrier.


    In a single night, the dead assassin and the ascended druid had ransacked twenty-seven villages. Certainly a feat of strength even among Grandmasters. It showed the might of Apotheosis that a single untrained assassin could be capable of such destruction and mobility. If Umar had allowed him to use pyrokinesis, he didn''t doubt Mictlantecuhtli would have set the other villages on fire to raze them whilst everyone was sleeping.


    Such an act of skullduggery almost brought Umar back to his young years, but he didn''t have the cognitive capabilities to reminisce about the past. Nor the time. They had a lot of work to do now.

 4. Prophecies of Cyan, Freedom of Red

    "This ''toadstool'' has been quite interesting," Umar mused as he saw Mictlantecuhtli struggle with his movements. The druid had consumed one of the many items they had stolen, in this case, a white-dotted red mushroom. "You are salivating a lot, but you seem to be able to¡­ heal more rapidly."


    The man had gone a bit crazy after consuming, well, not exactly. Mictlantecuhtli only became enraged after tapping into the mushroom''s power with Enlightenment. Because of that, he had thrown a pot on the ground, and when it shattered it cut his bare foot, which wound quickly coagulated.


    "Purge the substance now," the old assassin ordered him.


    It took the druid a few seconds to process the order, but he finally went through with it. Assassins could quickly be consumed by the hallucinogens they consumed, so purging their body out of the substances was a must for an assassin that at least strove the title of Shadow.


    Umar was bewildered to find how purging affected the world of ideas, though. He had never before inquired about how the substances could just disappear from an assassin''s body, but now he realized that the world of ideas may have something to do with it. The toadstool appeared in Umar''s realm for a moment in an abstraction of what the grown mushroom should look like, before collapsing into smoky cyan light which rapidly decayed and homogenized with the rest of the world of ideas.


    "Next one," the ''spirit'' ordered, and the druid grabbed the next product. It was some sort of beverage with plant-looking things floating on top. Truth be told, from a world apart, Umar couldn''t tell much more about this substance. Not its color, not its smell, and certainly not its taste. It disappointed him, but another part of him was happy at not having to shove a myriad of unknown substances into his body.


    Well, unknown to him.


    "This one is ayahuasca," Mictlantecuhtli explained. "We could have prepared it here, but because it''s mostly used to cure hangovers and herb addiction, we don''t have a use for it. But I took it as you said medicine was valid."


    "Yes, one medicine from beyond the ocean, opium, is used to produce fires. So perhaps your native medicines can be useful."


    Whilst people, especially lowlifes, used opium to get intoxicated, Ydazi hospitals were brimming with it as it was a good anesthetic. Assassins didn''t use it much as the flame it produced was meager, but it did save in oil expenses in the long run.


    "Well, chug it then," Umar encouraged him.


    What happened next was curious. Mictlantecuhtli''s connection to the world of ideas seemed to flicker for a moment, the bond he shared with the druid also seemed to be slightly strained, but the effect was mild enough that it was harmless. Hmm, this substance could be weaponized against assassins if they are cut from the world of ideas, I''ll take note of this. Mictlantecuhtli didn''t notice the disconnect nor could he hear Umar''s thoughts and simply tapped into the concoction''s power.


    "Huh," Umar mused before Mictlantecuhtli could. "Our connection has strengthened, also yours to the world of ideas. How do you personally feel?"


    "I¡­ yes, great spirit." The druid nodded and he did seem now more defined than normal in his cognitive self. "The¡­ Greater Understanding is¡­ confounding me. I feel like I can smell¡­ deceit?"


    "Yes?" Umar snickered with his arms crossed. "The sun is yellow."


    "I¡­ what?" Mictlantecuhtli blinked in confusion as he sniffed. "Yes, that smells like lies. But why? The sun is not¡­ what? May my eyes deceive me, but the sun is yellow. Why do your thoughts smell of deceit?"


    "That may be true for the world of ideas, druid, but here it''s different. I can only observe but a pale and dead imitation of dull grey." Dead like me. "Let''s try a new one. My name is Yusuf."


    The druid sniffed around. "Deceit, again."


    "Hmm, this substance could be useful indeed," Umar scratched his beard. "What about¡­ I am alive."


    Mictlantecuhtli sniffed but his gestures were different this time. "I cannot smell deceit this time."


    "Alright, this shows that the ayahuasca works." Interrogations have become easier now. "Show me how you prepare this beverage."


    Umar was not surprised to find that most of the ingredients needed to prepare the drink were available back in the Qiraji desert, but if he understood the principles behind the medicine, he could potentially recreate it. After all, most alcoholic beverages granted a boost of strength even if they were fundamentally different.


    Mictlantecuhtli purged the substance and continued with their list.


    "Oh, this one is interesting," he said.


    "What is it?" Umar looked over the druid''s shoulder to find a bowl filled with powder.


    "Shadowleaf powder," the druid explained. "We combine it with cocoa beans to produce a stimulant. But to produce the powder is a tedious endeavor as you need to turn them into ash, enough that it gains its properties, but not too much that it becomes charcoal."


    Considering how assassins used hashish instead of straight-up cannabis, it didn''t faze him that some medicines were this convoluted.


    Mictlantecuhtli sniffed the dust and after coughing a bit, he seemed to¡­ vanish?


    "Mictlantecuhtli, where are you?" Umar exclaimed.


    "I''m¡­ here, great spirit?" A voice said next to him.


    "Where?" The old assassin asked again, looking around but failing to see the druid. He could still see the fading silhouettes of the rest of the villagers, but he could no longer see the acolyte assassin.


    "Interesting¡­" The invisible Mictlantecuhtli mused. "The powder''s power seems to make me invisible to minds, and only minds as I''ve just waved to a boy and he waved at me back."


    "This could be useful to hide yourself from people with your same skillset but¡­ there aren''t many of them. Nor they are as present in the world of ideas as you."


    But if I could use that power, then that would make me completely invisible. Umar pondered it again. On second thought, that''s a bad idea. I need to be perceived. But on certain occasions¡­


    After many hours, and days of testing ¨C Mictlantecuhtli was getting ill with too many repeated consumptions even after purging the substances ¨C they were able to make quite the interesting list of abilities. Not all plants, medicines, and drugs provided effects. Either they weren''t potent enough, or they were sharing known abilities with other substances like what happened with alcohol.


    They ended up gathering quite useful abilities besides the mentioned ones like inducing illusions onto other people or being able to dote the mind with single-mindedness. This latter one seemed useless, but considering how an assassin was more powerful the more wasted they were, absentmindedness was a given. Being able to supernaturally focus on a single task was a heavensent.


    But the last one¡­ the last one was something else.


    "So why have you left this one for the last?" Umar asked Mictlantecuhtli as he hovered over the druid''s shack.


    Whilst he couldn''t quite levitate as a shadow in the world of ideas, he could purposefully get stuck on things like walls to simulate the effect. He had had so much free time that he was discovering things like that.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    "Ah, because it''s quite the delicacy!" Mictlantecuhtli explained. "This is iboga bark! The shrub doesn''t grow on these lands, so I don''t know where they found it, but this yellowish color means it could only be it. I''m sure of it!"


    "And is this bark special?" The dead assassin swung from his legs like a pendulum to fight boredom.


    "Much so!" The druid enthusiastically nodded. "I''ve heard of elder druids using this on their death bed to commune with the spirits!"


    Umar fell to the ground. Mictlantecuhtli failed to notice this as he couldn''t perceive him as clearly as the assassin could with him, but Umar was struck with the greatest of epiphanies. Of course! They can use primitive Enlightenment, obviously some of these druids would have heard of Apotheosis before even if they don''t have a name for it! Could this be it then? This bark is why the Greater Understanding guided me here!


    "Consume it! Now!" The old shadow ordered him.


    "Yes, oh great spirit!" Mictlantecuhtli''s voice was filling with insubordination as of late as the power was getting to his head, but in this, they were aligned.


    The druid consumed the bark in some sort of ritualistic manner that required many gestures and tapped the power residing on the plant, and then¡­ he exploded.


    Perhaps exploding wasn''t the most appropriate of terms, but that was how Umar perceived it from his biased viewpoint. Mictlantecuhtli suddenly fragmented into many selves that moved independently from one another, creating an explosion of smeared images.


    "Are you well, Mictlantecuhtli?" Umar asked him.


    "I feel¡­ better than ever," the druid spoke with a cacophony of voices. The myriad of sounds all stem from him and all were with the exact same voice and tone, but they all copulated with one another to generate quite the interesting phenomenon.


    "What are you experiencing?" The fact was, Umar wasn''t really worried about the druid. Even if his objective was to starve off death, that goal only included his own. And he was aware some sacrifices had to be made for such a lofty goal.


    "It is¡­ utmost curious," the acolyte looked at his shifting myriad hands. "I am seeing futures, or rather, possibilities. Not only my own but also those of others. I can know the path a man will take before they take the first step, but the further I look out, the blurrier the images become until they split into a mess of possibilities."


    "I see¡­" He didn''t. But if what the drugged druid was saying was true, then this drug had a lot of potential.


    Powerful indeed, but how does this help me with coming back to life? Have I misunderstood the Greater Understanding?


    "Yes, I see it! I behold it!" Mictlantecuhtli started screaming out of nowhere. "For the truth is the most painful! For the truth is the most disgusting! I behold you!"


    "Mictlantecuhtli?" Umar took a step backward from the shifting maelstrom of visages that the druid had become, howling faces trying to rip themselves out from the main body. But his query fell on deaf ears.


    "They sing with nine truths! They are the beginning and the end! Their name is Reality!" His voice became more potent but rugged, he started clawing at his visage, blood pouring out of his orifices. "They are a conjoined effort! Truth is but the most dangerous offense! I see you! Let the hand go, wicked gemstone! Step backward, lavender soul! Hold your ground, illuminated one! Shine your thoughts, feathered serpent! Share your secrets, emerald mother! Speak your love, silvery king! Accept the offer, golden traveler!"


    Each of the voices shouted orders at the different people with different titles, but most of them became too blurry for Umar to hear them, but there were countless ones.


    Then, all voices focused on Umar. "Escape now, fading shadow."


    Before Umar could ask what he was talking about, Mictlantecuhtli collapsed on the ground and he felt their connection snap. The old shadow didn''t need to check on the pools of blood nor the silent cognition to know that the druid had died.


    Nor did he have the time.


    The world of ideas moved. The whole reality trembled and shone.


    Umar turned around and saw something that shook him to the core. On the horizon, he saw a monolithic shape that even eclipsed the pale sun. A massive, world-spanning tree loomed on the horizon. But even worse, it shone with a color.


    Red.


    What the¡­ Instantly, Umar knew that was the answer to his prayers. Red was the only color that materialized in the world of ideas, and it only came from practicing assassins directly looking into this plane of existence. He didn''t know how that much red had appeared or how it had been shaped into a tree, but he didn''t care. He just ran.


    Exhaustion wasn''t a thing in the world of ideas, at least not physical one, so Umar ran with all his might. He ignored every zone that may have a modicum of habitation as the more deserted places were, the faster he would reach the red tree.


    Escape now fading shadow, he said, Umar pondered as he reached the ocean and stepped over the sluggish waves. Not many people seemed to observe these coasts closely, enough for the waves to move, but insufficient to produce realistic movements, just an approximation of what it should be.


    Unfortunately, the dead assassin got his answer.


    The red tree flickered.


    No! The shadow protested and extended his hand to the light even if he was leagues away. Fortunately, it seemed to be only a hiccup, or more precisely, an advent as it turned back into its shining and crimson self. The light and the color were dimming. He needed to get there fast.


    "I didn''t want to do it this soon¡­" Umar grunted and took a deep breath.


    Whilst short, the days he spent with Mictlantecuhtli had been useful in comprehending the world of ideas and his status as a remnant of a dead man. This version of Umar, himself, interacted differently with the world of ideas compared to a living person. An assassin couldn''t affect this realm, but¡­ he could. Enlightenment was an act of mind, of corruption and finesse. And a mind was something he had plenty of.


    For the first time since he had died, Umar shadow stepped.


    He zipped across the peaks of the colossal water mountains like lightning, not stopping, not tiring. But his actions had a price. Like the assassin who lost part of their intoxication when they performed any act of Enlightenment, he was losing cognition. Mictlantecuhtli had given him plentiful reserves, but shadow stepping couldn''t be compared to plainly thinking cost-wise.


    With each step, Umar felt as if a part of his very being was being consumed.


    Eradicated.


    But he knew deep into his bones ¨C into his fleeting memories ¨C that the way out of this world was through that ethereal red tree.


    Even without any lungs, the old assassin panted as each time his mental body materialized after each step. Instead of shadows like in the world of the living, he was becoming puffs of cyan, but each subsequent puff had a less vivid color. Each step wasted weeks of cognition if not months.


    His cognitive self was disintegrating. But the tree was disintegrating faster.


    He couldn''t allow himself to miss this opportunity.


    Like a castaway on a foreign land and without food, Umar began sacrificing parts of himself. His skill with the mind and Enlightenment allowed him to be selective, so the first things to go out were his hair. They brought no use to him. Then with careful sacrifices as he allowed himself a single thought per shadow step, he slowly consumed the fat accumulated in the perception of his old body, as if he was eating himself.


    But those weren''t enough. All these body parts had no intrinsic value, they held no cognition, they held no observation. Umar grunted at the realization that the Greater Understanding brought to him. Sacrifices had to be made. With the next shadow step, he cast away his right eye.


    Funnily enough, he felt no difference in his sight even if now a void filled his right eye. This world worked through thoughts and perceptions, so to observe it eyes weren''t needed, only a clear mind.


    This sacrifice brought him enough energy to jump into the Ydazi mainland. Yes, this was where the red tree had spawned. In the Ridged Highlands of the border between Ydaz and Loyata.


    He perched over a mountain peak ¨C a real one this time ¨C and overserved the landscape. There were many red dots around the tree, he instantly recognized them as the eyes of fellow assassins. All looked at the tree in confusion like him, but they couldn''t understand its importance.


    Umar took a step forward; he couldn''t allow himself to rest as the light had almost faded by now. No longer a mastodont that threatened the very heavens, but a mere hill in size. Its red light was dissipating into the ground and transforming into a blinding cyan. The shadow had never seen such a powerful cyan before in this realm, but he couldn''t bask in its glory now. What he needed was that violent red of life, not the placid cyan of wisdom.


    But he was betrayed.


    Upon taking that step, he fell to the ground. The old man grunted, but no words came out as he tried to stand up. Emphasis on tried. His body didn''t respond to him. Nothing responded to him. What¡­? His previously cohesive self had degenerated into cyan mist, only resembling a vague silhouette of a human.


    No! I''m so close! Not now! Umar struggled around. If he couldn''t walk, then he would crawl. If he couldn''t crawl, he would throw himself out of the mountain and try to land on that dwindling tree, only the size of a common tree now. NOT NOW I''VE SAID! He threw himself and floated in the air like a leaf carried by the wind, even if such a concept didn''t exist in the world of ideas.


    He was close, so close¡­ A whisp by now, truly a shadow of his previous self, but that meant his movement was sluggish. Slow. Yes, she would reach the spot of the red beacon, but by that point, it would be too late.


    No¡­ No! I refuse! You won''t have me, death! But his struggle was in vain. No amount of willpower could change the fact that his cognition was so degraded. Even getting the assassins on the ground to observe him was impossible as they were all fixated on the light that pierced both worlds.


    No¡­ n-o. . . He felt himself fading again. His cries of desperation were powerful thoughts that only degraded him further. Let alone reaching the beacon''s location, he would disappear before the light would.


    This was it; Umar of Sadina, Grandmaster of the Order and almost-ascended assassin, was going to die. Forwent to oblivion.


    Eyes. Cyan. Observation. Acknowledgment.


    It came on like a flash. A cosmic imagery. It was the briefest of instant. A unit of time so measurably small that it meant nothing to a human mind. But Umar felt it. Those cyan eyes peering at him, reading his very being, but beyond all else, acknowledging his existence.


    The surge of power was immeasurably small, but that had been the last push he had needed.


    Being acknowledged.


    With one last act of willpower and stubbornness, Umar, the undying shadow, crossed through the fading red light.

 5. Dreamers

    "That was an interesting story, indeed," the crowned silver serpent spoke. "Your dreams of the present have been the most interesting Umar of Sadina."


    "Quite," the bronze mannequin mused with a dull yet ringing voice. "Especially those dreams of the future. There''s nothing more important than a dream, a wish to uphold."


    The three figures nodded in unison. A crowned silver serpent, a masked bronze mannequin, and a cloth doll with a long-brimmed hat. Dreamers, they called themselves.


    Umar wasn''t sure how this happened, but after crossing the red light, he awoke in this place. A realm similar to the world of ideas but with a different nuance. One could say it was the world of dreams.


    If one peeked at the horizon, reality started to unfurl and lose meaning. Trees growing from clouds, lands of flesh, and eyes of truth with perhaps a hint of gold. A truly cyclopean land of imagination. It was a curious place to describe, especially because he couldn''t trust his senses at all. Colossal cities, minute realms of even smaller beings, cradles of starfire, settings of flowing metal and glass, flying humanoid beings and horned aberrations¡­ Everything simply was.


    These figures had been here when he woke up, and even if he wasn''t hearing the Greater Understanding as such, he instantly understood that these were beings of power. True forces of nature and not imitations.


    "Share with us your dreams of past, present, and future, and we will grant you your wish." They had said in a perfect cacophony after he had woken up.


    The crowned silver serpent wanted to know about his present, and what he had done recently, so Umar explained the events that had led him to this world of dreams. Truth be told, he still didn''t know if he was still conscious or if this was some sort of pre-death delirium. Maybe he was high too, wouldn''t be the first time.


    It didn''t help that time here seemed to be a¡­ suggestion.


    "Now it''s my turn. Tell me about your dreams of the future, your expectations, your wishes." The bronze mannequin, a figure with many articulations but that moved rigidly and in straight lines, inquired about his future. His dreams of the future, as they had put it. The Dreamer wanted to know what he wanted, and the answer had been easy.


    "I want to live," Umar answered.


    "Mmm," the metal sculpture moved from side to side in perfect repeating motions. "That''s not quite right. Your heart is not in the right place, though it''s not as if I would know." The Dreamer opened their chest to reveal nothing inside, no different from an empty suit of plate armor. "Dreams are bold, but that dream is not bold, Shadow''s shadow. You can be so much more. You are so much more. What is the true form of your desire?"


    He hadn''t spent much time in this place, perhaps an hour retelling all the events since his death, but the Dreamers seemed to be familiar with him. And at the same time, he ¨C somehow ¨C felt familiar with them.


    "Are you my dreams?" He asked.


    "You are not the one who asks questions here," the cloth doll interjected as they rotated their hat like a spinning top.


    "Indeed, he does not," the silver serpent nodded. Its eyes and tail swayed from place to place, but its crown stayed constant in one spot, like the head of a chicken. "But we do talk, and words carry meanings."


    "We are beyond time, we are beyond perception," the bronze mannequin added.


    "We are no one''s creation. Not of our own, nor of others," the silver serpent continued.


    The cloth doll sighed, and its hat brim collapsed, almost covering its whole body. "We were, we are, and we will continue to be until the last sleep is dreamt and the last desire forgotten."


    "We are the Dreamers," they said now at the same time.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    "Yes, you''ve already said that." Umar held a grunt but couldn''t help to ask himself one thing. Have they? Had they truly said this already or was it the first time they had mentioned it? "But what does that mean? Do you really need to speak in riddles?"


    "Yes!" The serpent responded with a giggle as they hid their mouth with their tail. "Where''s the fun if we don''t do that?"


    The grunt escaped Umar''s lips as it was no longer sustainable. He appreciated the Dreamers'' acknowledgment of his existence as it allowed him to continue existing, especially as he was still but a misty cognitive being. A Shadow''s shadow like the mannequin had well stated.


    "I am the dream of the what will be and what is wanted," the bronze mannequin said. "You may call me the Dreamer of the Future, and I still have to listen to your wish."


    "I said I want to live," Umar responded again with a hint of grumpiness.


    "That is not my jurisdiction," the Dreamer of the Future pointed at the crowned serpent with its masked face devoid of eyes.


    "I am the dream of the what it is and what is needed," the silver serpent merrily stated. "You may call me the Dreamer of the Present, and you have told me your dream and your story. You want to live, and that is what you need, not what is wanted."


    "So you are saying that there''s something else?" The assassin scoffed.


    The whole situation was ridiculous. He was talking with inanimate objects, even the serpent seemed more like a silversmith''s trinket rather than an actual serpent. He tried not to focus on the background as the delusional state of this world was too imaginative to conceive as a static image. It flowed like wind more than water, if that made sense. Which he doubted it did. Indescribable, but comprehensible. Not a true paradox, just a conundrum. It had a beginning and an end, everyone had just forgotten where those were.


    "You are well aware of your dream, but you are just not ready to speak of it just yet, and that is fine." The Dreamer of the Future said with its echoing voice, not fully metallic. "This only means that you need more time to internalize your greed. People don''t like to know themselves, but they must confront it. A desire is only ugly when confronted with reality, after all."


    Umar didn''t know why, but the mannequin''s words cut him deep.


    "Let us make time for now, there''s another that would like to hear your story." The mannequin turned its mask to face the doll, only rotating the trinket even if the body stayed in place.


    "I am the dream of the what had been and what is remembered," the cloth doll echoed with its human-like voice, almost motherly if it weren''t for its androgynous tone. "You may call me the Dreamer of the Past, and I already know your truth as we do all, but we want to hear it, nonetheless. Share the story of what brought you here, and you will have my favor."


    Perhaps it was because of his advanced age or his dead status, but Umar could feel his very being resonated with the Dreamer of the Past. Indeed, he knew what he had to say to get the figure''s favor, but rather than the answer, what mattered was the question. Should he?


    "What I''ve shared about my present was something I don''t consider a secret, but my past very much is, why should I tell that to you all?"


    "For your dream," the cloth doll with the big-brimmed hat replied.


    "For your reassurance," the masked bronze mannequin added.


    "For yourself," the crowned silver serpent finalized.


    All the reasons resonated with him. The doll convinced a younger self that wanted to pursue his goals and wishes no matter what. The mannequin convinced an older self that wanted to justify the path he had taken as he looked backward. The serpent convinced himself, not an older or younger self, but who he was. There was nothing wrong with living for oneself, as arrogant as it may seem.


    Why am I doubting this much? Umar asked himself. Whatever these creatures are, they hold power. Real power. Or at least enough to make me live again. So why am I doubting? Why am I struggling to say the words? He knew the answer to that question, but as the Dreamer of the Future had said, it was hard to confront oneself. That mannequin was truly a visionary, that was perhaps why he held the title of the future.


    The truth, the reason why he was so averse to speaking was because¡­ he didn''t remember. His actions, much like the drugs he had consumed during his whole life, had consequences. It wasn''t like he had lost his memory, but between making his sacrifices to reach this far and almost being swallowed by oblivion several times had taken its toll. They were small holes, but holes, nonetheless.


    Those trivialities made him doubt. What if these holes were the ultimate separation? He already knew he wasn''t Umar, but this was the last straw. He had lost parts of the remaining Umar, even if they weren''t many. What made him himself any longer?


    Who was he?


    Umar could have done many things, but he chose to grunt and scratch the back of his head. Somehow, the fat and the hair he had sacrificed were back, but the same couldn''t be said for his right eye. Only a socket remained of that organ.


    "You want to hear about my past? Of how things got to this point?" The cloth doll nodded, almost dropping its hat in the process. "Alright, let this dead man tell you his tale, the story of a young man born from parents with substance problems and how he willed himself to eat the world regardless of his upbringing. Let''s go back to the capital of Ydaz, Asina, fifty years in the past¡­"

 6. Three Worlds

    Asina had always been a warm city, but I hadn''t always lived there. With everything that happened in that place, I didn''t end up living that long there, but those times are still valuable to me. Born in Sadina to parents addicted to opium, I wanted my way out as soon as possible, so during a random night I joined the first caravanserai I found out of the city and directed myself to the capital.


    Unlike some others looking for opportunities, I did have a certain skill set under my belt. My parents, whilst useless, had been experienced apothecaries. No one taught me that an apothecary shouldn''t get high with their merchandise, I had to learn that myself as a child. It was much later that I learned they were assassins.


    But those days don''t matter now.


    Once I reached the capital city of Asina, I had to do some gigs and odd jobs to keep myself with a full stomach, but nothing too egregious. In a way, I had luck. Working as a courier, I found an apothecary needing to deliver some medicine, and after correcting him on the dosage, he found my experience and skills suitable, so he took me in as an assistant.


    One thing led to another, and suddenly I found myself in the botanical gardens of the University of Asina. There it is where much of the story took place.


    I was nothing more than an assistant to the gardens, but from time to time I talked with scholars, most of the biologists and botanists. There I became friends with a lad younger than me, Karaim. Whilst not exactly a noble, his father was an important landowner so he had sent his son to study the land as he had a passion for plants.


    Karaim was an odd fella, but that became truer when my world became mystical.


    Following the tradition of most drug dealers being assassins, my mentor resulted in being one. He didn''t force me to join any esoteric order, but when you saw a man become a puff of shadow and appear on the other side of the room, you couldn''t refuse such arcane powers.


    That was when I learned of my parents'' status. Not because my mentor personally knew them, but because of my skill. My mentor told me my keenness for Enlightenment was similar to those he called hashashid, born of the hashish. Hashashid could only be born to parents who were constantly high during the whole conception ¨C it didn''t have to be hashish, any drug worked ¨C but just being wasted didn''t work. Both parents had also to be active assassins using Enlightenment.


    It was easy joining the pieces by then, but when my mentor taught me that opium was one of the most useless drugs as it could only produce mediocre flames, I knew my parents were more drug addicts than actual assassins, which infuriated me.


    For the following year, I trained myself with the arts of the assassins. Apparently, hashashid were supposed to have reduced mental faculties whilst not on any substance, but my blood was weak enough that I could think just fine without being drugged, but strong enough that I wouldn''t get high easily whilst still reaping the rewards of Enlightenment.


    Sometimes being a magical bastard is a heavensent.


    I orbited around Karaim by that time, not only because I liked the boy ¨C he was only three years younger than me ¨C but because he was knowledgeable. Only sixteen, but he was almost an eminence in what plants were related to. Interested in finding new abilities for Enlightenment, I stalked behind him. Maybe there was a plant that hadn''t been proven just yet, but I wasn''t going to try random herbs to get high. That kind of recklessness could get you killed.


    So slowly and casually, I investigated alongside Karaim. He was interested in making more fertile soils and growing plants faster; I was interested in finding drugs that could give me new powers. That''s how found the tremor sense ability granted by peyote that would later be used by all assassins. Karaim was especially interested in the Blood of the Sultanah, the one substance that kept Ydaz''s farmlands fertile. One drop of the blood of the ruler could create a new farmland, and he wanted to investigate that.


    But our world changed with the apparition of one key individual.


    Her name was Aaliyah Asina, princess of the Sultanate of Ydaz, and a great mind interested in all academia-related. Also, only fourteen.


    It is curious how if we hadn''t interested her back in the day and she would have flung herself to another of her many interests, life could have been different. Not just for us, but for the whole world.


    Even with the many holes in my memory, I still remember with utmost clarity how she appeared in our lives.


    "What are you doing?" She extravagantly presented herself in the botanical gardens and squatted before a parterre as her eyes moved between us and the plants. Her eyes shone with child-like innocence and wonder, two of the greatest amethysts the world had ever seen.


    A simple presentation, not very princess-like, we certainly wouldn''t have known she was a princess if it wasn''t because she was wearing expensive purple silks, but nonetheless remarkable with its exuding enthusiasm.


    Karaim was instantly beholden to her. Of course, a kid would become stricken by a princess, especially one as cute as Aaliyah had been in her young years.


    So there we were, three people from three different worlds. All scholars in a way, but all living in different realities. Karaim was a common-ish man, I was an assassin using magic that corrupted the mind, and Aaliyah was a princess. But most importantly, she was a cultivator. Their kind hated mine, and whilst the reasons for it were beyond me, I didn''t want to get caught in the crossfire.


    It took her a lot of time to find out what I was though.


    Aaliyah wasn''t like other sultanzade ¨C children of the Sultanah ¨C as most were lavish and hedonistic, but that princess had an interest in the natural world like any other. She would boast of her intelligence and how she would learn the imperial magic in the future from time to time, but she also admitted her mistakes when she was wrong in a debate and learned from there.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    That was mostly attributed to her passion for education. Whenever she was in the university, it was either in the botanical gardens with us or in some lecture. She thought that fostering the mind was the greatest thing that could be done to a person, and took it as a duty as a princess of Ydaz to show that to the world.


    How such a lovely, passionate, and intelligent girl became the biggest monster the world had seen is beyond me, even if I was present in those early steps.


    Our life in the botanical gardens was simple but entertaining. Karaim would come up with theories, Aaliyah using her intelligence and resources as a sultanzade would prove or deny them, and I would be there keeping them company and helping them. Sometimes I question if my presence was what caused the Ydazi harem to exist. Maybe we could have had a sultan, and his name would have been Karaim-al-Ydaz.


    I was well aware I was a third wheel but considering both of them were a handful of years younger than me and didn''t understand what they had until they were much older, they never realized the nuisance I was.


    Those were beautiful and cozy days, but like any remembrance, it was bound to find a crack. And the first one that cracked was Aaliyah.


    We didn''t know how, but one day, Aaliyah came to us differently. Changed. Her gaze was dead, and her voice lacked the enthusiasm she usually had.


    "Are you fine?" Karaim asked back then.


    "Y-yes," and she answered softly.


    But my eyes were focused on the bruises on her body and hints of extreme sunburnt, hidden with subtle layers of make-up. Especially those in her fingers. Something had happened, and someone had apparently cracked her fingers. Repeatedly at that.


    Perhaps my people wouldn''t be persecuted now if I had been more accommodating to little Aaliyah if I had been a support to her instead of just keeping my thoughts to myself. But I was also young and stupid back then, and she was a princess and a cultivator, bound to be my enemy at some point, I told myself.


    That prophecy was only fulfilled because I willed it into existence.


    But if I had noticed all of that had happened on her fifteenth birthday, I am sure I could have changed fate.


    It took her a few days, maybe weeks, to open up and reveal to us that she had been taught the imperial magic. But she had only revealed to us that once we discovered she had been whoring herself out. In any other place, it would have been unthinkable to see a princess whoring herself out, but we were in Ydaz. Our culture, religion, and lore told us that the sultanzade were promiscuous and sought the pleasures of the flesh.


    But we knew Aaliyah.


    Whilst not exactly shy, she was no whore. She probably wasn''t interested in the slightest with the body, only with the mind. Yet another window for me to have exploited, to have helped her, but back then I just assumed she was as hedonistic as the rest of the sultanzade.


    Aaliyah didn''t tell us much, only that the magic of the sultanzade had to do with the body and that she needed to do this, to understand the body. I needed no Enlightenment to tell she was not being fully honest, but that was enough for Karaim, he even offered himself as some sort of test subject, but Aaliyah declined. She said she couldn''t do that to him.


    But she did something in the end, she managed to get us a precious sample of the Blood of the Sultanah.


    Karaim''s passion for the plants grew to a fervor, he believed he was close to a heavenly revelation. But I won''t deny I was passionate about that too. We extended the use of that blood to the utmost limit, scrapping for the most utility out of that small sample.


    We discovered that not only did the blood turn infertile soil into fertile lands, but it also made plants grow faster and more nutritional. That translated especially well with my drugs as a potted plant of cannabis I grew ended up producing a specimen of hashish more powerful than anything I had consumed before. Well, until Karaim perfected his research many years later.


    But our greatest discovery was that of vital energy, or as it was called by the cultivators, vitality. I had known of its existence for a long time as Enlightenment used that energy as a fuel, but I didn''t have a name for it. We, the assassins, didn''t have a name for it as it was more of an afterthought. We didn''t spend vitality, nor did we need to store it like the cultivators, it was a¡­ parallel product to our magic.


    And that slip got out of my lips. My memory is foggy about that exact moment, but we all three were discussing our findings and my tongue was a bit too loose, perhaps because of that empowered hashish. But anyhow, I ended up revealing my station as a hashashid.


    That made Aaliyah furious, she felt betrayed as she had made it very clear she was a cultivator. But at the same time, she was still that inquisitive mind from always, so she stayed with us, even if that wonder from her eyes was fading away with each rumor we heard about her lying with a new person. Sultanzade doesn''t discriminate between genders, after all.


    Now that the secrets were mostly out, we focused ourselves on discovering these vital arts as we had called them now that there were two of them. The magic of the assassins and the imperials were interconnected we could tell that, Aaliyah and I, even if we left Karaim mostly in the dark. And even after being blocked with many secrets, it was he who made most discoveries. He was working with the incomplete puzzle, but he was the most competent of us.


    Thanks to him I developed a whole theory about the purity of the material used for Enlightenment, but also of the right dosage for every assassin. It may seem trivial in hindsight, but everybody''s body is different, so every person required the right doses to make the most out of Enlightenment. I was the first person to discover that, and only because a farmer who was a bit too interested in plants helped me.


    Karaim was rejoiced with that, but Aaliyah didn''t like it. Perhaps it was because my magic required me to taint the mind ¨C something she valued far more than her body ¨C or perhaps because I was an assassin and she a cultivator. I should have asked, really.


    Our relationship was becoming more and more strained with the weeks until it became impossible to sustain after a few months. Aaliyah was no longer a young princess with no merits, but a recognized scholar throughout the whole country. Only in Ydaz could you be one of the brightest minds at that age whilst having bedded people in the hundreds.


    Not wanting our relationship to come to light, Aaliyah gave me an offer. Should I leave for Sadina at once, she wouldn''t kill me. Truth be told, it was quite an attractive offer. I didn''t have anything tying me to Asina besides those two, and I didn''t want to make the Sultanate an enemy out of me.


    So I left.


    Though I grabbed Karaim on the way out. And, oh boy, Aaliyah didn''t like that.


    Our farewell was a curious one. Aaliyah held the honor of the offer even if I was taking Karaim with me as his investigation could be beneficial to the future of Enlightenment, and she didn''t kill me on the spot. But as we exchanged farewells, something happened. Aaliyah and Karaim kissed, a lover''s kiss at that even if they weren''t much so, but Karaim collapsed to the ground, exhausted with a deathly white skin.


    "My last gift to you," Karaim had said.


    Something changed within Aaliyah at that moment. Not only a change of heart but also of will. Her eyes rekindled with the same potency that when they had met her, though instead of wonder, they were now filled with fire.


    "I cannot let you go without a present now," Aaliyah responded to the perilously white Karaim. She gave him her purse, which was brimming with gold as the princess she was. "This is but the first one of my presents. As for my other one, I hereby grant you the accolade of Ayad."


    "What?" The exhausted boy exhaled. To explain what had happened there, Aaliyah granted Karaim a knighthood, in a way, making him a real noble, even if those accolades were just only word of mouth.


    And that was that. We bid our farewells and then we left her alone, and free to kill her mother and two-thirds of her family a few years later. Wholesome stuff.


    But that would be her story, not mine.


    Oh right, she also kicked me in the balls before we departed. Daughter of a whore.

 7. Shadows Never Die

    This would be all, wouldn''t it? There you have it, my past, what made me myself, and what led me to this path. I won''t deny I''m free of blame or sin, but no man is perfect except those who actively decide to become monsters.


    ¡­No? ¡­A climax you say? My story needs something else, eh? Alright, then, let''s add one final climax to my past.


    Many years had passed since our exile from Asina. By this point, Aaliyah had already murdered most of her family and become the Sultanah of Ydaz, the greatest to exist even. Most rulers of Ydaz were powerful people, but she was different. Ageless.


    Of course, if one were to look at her right now and compare her to her young self, one would be able to see she has very much aged. No longer a teenager, but a woman in her early twenties. Which isn''t that much aging considering half a century has gone by, but oh well.


    Yes, I did question if this agelessness was Karaim''s doing and asked the man about it. His response was¡­ inconclusive. He told me what he did should have slowed her aging alright, but only by a half. Meaning that she should look in her early forties rather than twenties. But that isn''t the case. Whatever she had done, it wasn''t Karaim''s magic any longer. I did try to convince him to make us age at that slowed rate, it was an untold blessing, but he refused. He said it was too much of a price and he was still paying it.


    Back then I didn''t understand what he was talking about, but once he died, everything finally clicked. Karaim was a healthy man with a healthy routine. A man like him should have lived for many years, easily into his eighties and maybe more, but he died in his mid-sixties.


    For the most knowledgeable of life, he was the first of us to go.


    I did end up dying a year later, but I was the only one and my body was full of drugs. Reaching the seventy-year milestone is basically a feat of strength considering how messed up everything about my being was.


    But going back to our desired climax, by this time I was entering my forties and already a Grandmaster Assassin and the leader of the cell of Sadina. Aaliyah had long put the country in a chokehold, closing borders and making everyone depend on her blood to keep the country afloat. She did it in an intelligent manner, though, making most think she was a hero rather than the root of their problems.


    And perhaps she was a hero. During her reign I never heard of a famine or a war in our lands, but who is to say she was right? Certainly not me, because I actively opposed her. Aaliyah was opposed to the assassins, our ideals and our magic. She became more and more radicalized with age, but also more laidback.


    This was my doing.


    Young people are zealous, but Aaliyah hadn''t had the time to drive that zealousness toward us as she was busy running a country. She was seething with anger at those who used the farmlands grown from her blood to grow drugs, drugs who would destroy the mind and values she held dear.


    Finally free of more pressing matters, she launched a crusader against the assassins, to exterminate us.


    As the most powerful assassin of Ydaz ¨C and Khaffat ¨C by that point, I had to oppose her.


    It must be said I was more powerful during that age than I am now, or rather, prior to my death. Drugs take a serious toll on one''s body, and even if I wasn''t a teenager anymore, I did have experience and mastery under my belt, those proved much more useful than a body at its peak. It''s quite the balance, you know? Physical prowess and mental wisdom.


    But enough rambling, let''s give you that climax.


    I met Aaliyah at the Heaven''s Starway, the mountain range next to the capital city of Asina. My demands were simple: don''t kill us and we won''t thrash your country.


    Aaliyah laughed at my face.


    This was not a surprise. Whilst she was good at playing diplomacy and had a true passion for science and education, Aaliyah had been a rabid beast at her very core. She had needed an outlet for a very long time, and I needed to pay back some old grudges.


    "All that has been said matters no more," Aaliyah spoke with her honeyed voice as her eyes shone like amethysts. "There has not been a battle against an Assassin Grandmaster and a Ruler of Ydaz ever before in history. Do not disappoint me, Umar."


    "Fret not, you will see a master at its work, Aaliyah," I responded.


    Looking from the outside, the scene was quite satirical. A man in his forties cloaked in black robes launching himself to a still teenage girl wearing not that much clothing. The funniest part comes from the fact that the girl had the strength of a thousand men.


    I lunged at Aaliyah with fire in my hands. I knew it was quite a futile effort; it was already hard to kill a person with fire, let alone a cultivator, but if I could singe her skin, I was more than happy with the result. The sultanah may not have valued her beauty, but her followers certainly did.


    But I couldn''t get close to her before she also lunged at me, except that she was magnitudes faster than me. I became one with the shadows to avoid the strike and my fire still lingered, and even if it was a vicious deflagration that no assassin had managed to perform before ¨C swallowing her entire body ¨C Aaliyah came totally unscathed once the flames dissipated.


    The only thing affected by the fire were her clothes, but otherwise, she was completely impervious to the flames.


    "This will be harder than I thought," I mused as I perched from the edge of a boulder.


    "And this will be simpler than I thought," Aaliyah snickered back.


    She launched at me with preternatural speed, but she wasn''t the only one with augmented senses. Not only was tobacco giving me an emphatic connection to her, allowing me to guess her movements with increased ease, but with the myrrh on my stomach I also reacted faster than normal.


    Not many assassins used the resin as it reacted poorly with the shadow powers granted by hashish ¨C the body and the mind didn''t understand being shadows ¨C causing severe nausea, but I was at my peak here and I could afford to combine many types of drugs.


    This led me to my only tactic to win against the force of nature that Aaliyah-al-Ydaz was.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    I couldn''t hurt her, that much was clear from the beginning, but I had another drug at my disposal. It also wouldn''t hurt her, but it would affect her, and I had to gamble on that fact. But for that, I had to touch her first. Physical contact was a must for it to work.


    And also, I needed time. This medicine was toxic and if I wanted to affect her, I would need to consume high enough doses that nausea and vomiting would be the least of my concerns.


    But Aaliyah was vicious, each time she sensed me nearby, or rather, close enough that she could bridge the gap in a single second, she would assault me. And when someone was as fast as the Heavenly Descendant or with such outrageous leg strength, her area of action became a sphere of influence, completely unaffected by terrain advantages like height.


    "Will you stop running, Umar?" She asked, her voice was but the most beautiful of songs.


    I knew better than to fall into that trap. And it wasn''t like she didn''t know where I was. Unless I shadow stepped tens of kilometers away, she could still feel my presence. This wasn''t a common cultivator, but Aaliyah-al-Ydaz. I had to constantly keep telling myself that.


    This was the best opportunity that I would have, so I shadow stepped to the peak of the mountain we were currently at. Sahil, or the Second Step of the Heaven''s Starway. From there I opened a small pouch containing a handful of saffron and ate it whole. The powder was dry and it made me cough, but I was able to feel its power. And also feel how poorly it was reacting with my body.


    Saffron was already toxic to people, especially in such absurd doses, but I was under the influence of a handful of drugs. Which also reacted poorly with saffron. Unless I was swift with the execution of my tactic, I would die.


    And the sultanah didn''t give me the opportunity to execute it.


    The brief seconds that had taken me to consume the power the cultivator had used to jump into the air, and now she was descending from the very heavens with the violence of a boulder thrown with a trebuchet. Hundredfold.


    Fuck. Those were my honest thoughts at the time.


    One misstep and I was dead.


    One sluggish thought and I was dead.


    Only now the gravitas of those facts struck me. I was an assassin, what I was doing here? An assassin hid in the shadows and struck with an unseen blade, yet I found myself in a duel. Cowardice was our essence, and I, above all else, was a coward. Only now that I saw her might I remembered that.


    As I became shadows and moved far away, Aaliyah impacted against the peak. The mountain itself screamed against the collision as the earth began grumbling.


    It was the most terrifying sight I had ever seen.


    Nothing came even close.


    But a part of me couldn''t give up now. I had to at least try for a strike.


    Under the heavy mantle of dust created by the impact ¨C the cloud of debris reached tens of meters high ¨C I sneaked behind her as I still was a being of shadow. Aaliyah''s senses were the most acute Khaffat had seen, so my infiltration had to be perfect. Never before had I had my heart on my fist like that before.


    Time was moving slowly as we both executed our movements. Aaliyah hastily extended her arm where I was, the movement was so powerful that she displaced most of the dust cloud. I didn''t fully dodge as I didn''t want her to retract her arm, enough that I could touch her but wouldn''t fall prey to her clutches.


    I just needed a moment.


    And a moment I had.


    The moment our skins met I unleashed the power of the saffron with my full might. It was normally a useless ability made even more useless by the fact that the substance could rapidly kill the assassin.


    But this wasn''t a normal case, nor I was a normal assassin.


    What was the saffron''s ability?


    Simple.


    It shared my intoxication with her.


    Aaliyah-al-Ydaz, Sultanah of Ydaz, Ruler of the Qiraji, and force of nature became intoxicated for the very first time in her life.


    I was well aware that the body of cultivators was strong, but even the strongest of bodies were suggestible once they tried a substance for the first time. And I was offloading a hospital worth of drugs into the woman.


    I was the first and only person in the world to see Aaliyah kneel as she lost her balance and began coughing uncontrollably. And I could see it in her blazing eyes, she had lost control of her precious mind. I had stolen her of the only thing that truly mattered to her.


    Others would have rejoiced, but I was horrified at the sight. That was my strongest card and she was still standing. I had irreparably damaged my body to do this, and she was still conscious. I would never be able to repeat this attack and no one else came close to me.


    But she didn''t know that.


    "Let''s call this a stalemate. Unless you want to repeat this experience, that is," I whispered to her before disappearing, letting her think I could recreate this attack.


    That quick thinking was what allowed me to maintain the status quo for decades.


    As I shadow stepped with all my might away from the Heaven''s Starway cordillera, I was able to hear the screams of range of the woman, but beyond that, the screams of the mountain and the earth.


    Whatever happened after I left, I would never know. But everyone knew that day the Sahil Mountain disappeared, buried in debris as fine as whole houses.


    For once, I was just happy to be alive.


    ***


    "Marvelous story, count me satisfied and my favor granted," the Dreamer of the Past mused as it flopped around its long-brimmed hat. "You fought a being that had not only stored a lot of Power but was also Aligned with Life. Rejoice, Shadow''s shadow, for your feat of driving her to the ground is one of a kind, let alone the feat of your survival." The cloth doll clapped its hands, but the floppy fabric didn''t make for a good clapping device and failed to produce sound.


    "Sapient beings aligned with the Primordial Aspects are rare, but this world of Khaffat had granted us many in a short span. Such¡­ randomness," the silver serpent mused. Its eyes weren''t looking at him, but the crown¡­ Umar felt as if the crown was peering directly into his being. "Alas, this is not a discussion for now, nor knowledge you yourself should have. You have gained my favor and that of Past, now answer Future''s question and your dream shall be granted."


    Umar looked at the Dreamer of the Future, the hollow bronze mannequin that showed all its humanity through a bronze mask that wasn''t even attached to its body.


    "Do you know what your greed is?" The mannequin finally asked.


    "Yes," Umar nodded. "I''m a coward. I''ve always known that. I sacrificed others without even sacrificing myself first. But truth be told, I ached for simpler days, devoid of violence. I just wanted to experiment with Enlightenment, not use it for destruction."


    "We understand those are your honest thoughts, but that is not the answer." The Dreamer of the Future said.


    "A preamble to my answer," the shadow chuckled with the weight of age. "I now understand why you were so hellbent on me telling the tale of my past. I have realized something with this ''climax''. It''s not that I want to live again. No," he shook his head. "It''s something deeper. Greedier."


    Umar stopped for a moment and looked at his hands. They were eroded from his time in the world of ideas but also defined by the observation of the Dreamers. He was no longer Umar of Sadina, but a shadow. A greedy shadow with the utmost despicable of dreams.


    The shadow smiled and opened his mouth to speak the words. "I want to live forever."


    The triumvirate of Dreamers nodded simultaneously at his confession.


    "You''ve told us what you remembered," the cloth doll with the long-brimmed hat said.


    "You''ve told us what you needed," the crowned silver serpent continued.


    "You''ve told us what you wanted," and the masked bronze mannequin finalized.


    "Now we shall grant you your dream," the three Dreamers, Past, Present, and Future combined spoke at the same time. "Shadow''s shadow, may you fulfill that dream with your very hands."


    The shadow didn''t have time to answer as everything turned turquoise. By the time the light faded away and he was able to open his eyes again, reality had completely shifted. Yes, he could easily tell that as a curious¡­ essence enveloped the world. No longer was he an incorporeal being as air rushed into his lungs and noise assaulted his ears with the rage of tinnitus. His sight was blurry and devoid of depth perception, but he was able to see his own hands covered in blood.


    The Dreamers hadn''t outright granted him his dream but had allowed him a new chance. A chance to make it come true by himself. The shadow had been reborn.


    He giggled in the body of the infant, his body, for he knew what he had to do now.


    Fulfill his dream and deny death of its prey again. Not just for another time, but forever.


    For, after all, shadows never die.