thief of fate-Chapter 95: The Original Valerian Diaries 6

Waking up wasn’t a return.

It was a fall.

He opened his eyes—or what he thought were eyes.

There was no light. No warmth. Nothing that hinted at life.

Just shadows moving like heavy clouds, and a smell as if something had died here... then was extracted... then died again.

His body was heavy, coated with something sticky, as if his skin hadn’t finished growing.

He tried to stand, but his limbs wouldn’t obey. He wasn’t even sure how many he had.

Then he saw her.

At first, he thought she was just clumped shadows.

Then her features began to form with the pulse of his scrambled mind.

A woman...?

No. That couldn’t be.

She was old, yes.

But she wasn’t human.

Her skin was pale gray, cracked like a mummy left a thousand years in the void.

Her right eye glowed red, while the left... was just a hollow socket.

Twisted horns grew from her forehead like charred roots.

And her breath... it was so foul the very air seemed sick.

She leaned toward him, a twisted smile stretching across her ugly face.

"Ah, finally..." she whispered, her voice like bones crushed underfoot.

"After hundreds of attempts... after thousands of worthless bodies... here you are."

She laughed, a sound closer to a gurgle.

"My first successful experiment... the first artificial Arkanis."

His mind stepped back.

Arkanis? Artificial?

What does that mean?

Everything was heavy, as if it were being pulled into an abyss inside him.

But he remembered.

Everything.

His name.

His life.

Rayne.

Claire.

Alexis.

Their father Edgar.

Carlos...

And Serathzi.

He remembered the deal. The farewell. The darkness.

But he didn’t expect to be born in this hell.

"Where... am I?" he asked, his voice hoarse, like vocal cords had just been dragged from a rusty wall.

The old woman leaned in closer, caressing his face with her long claw:

"You are in my world, my little darling."

She smiled, revealing two rows of broken teeth.

"In the heart of a cave of flesh, where souls mix with rot, and meat with curse."

Then she laughed and raised her head toward the ceiling.

"My name will be immortalized in their books one day... Mother of Curses. The woman who created an Arkanis from nothing...!"

Valerian trembled.

Not just from fear, but from something deeper.

Why me?

He tried to speak, but his throat closed. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Only his eyes... were asking.

The old woman smiled like she understood, then whispered:

"You are my puppet now, little one."

She let out a dry laugh, as if thousands of tainted memories were being crushed inside her, then said proudly:

"I will name you... Axel."

His eyes stayed fixed on her for a moment, then his gaze shifted.

He didn’t care.

He didn’t say a word, just stood up — with a strange heaviness, in a body that wasn’t his.

This is not my name.

Without looking back at her, he walked with trembling steps toward the decaying stone door that was slightly ajar.

He stepped out.

Then stopped.

And froze in place.

The world that unfolded before him... was no world.

But a nightmare.

A cracked black land, breathing with red veins like it was bleeding lava.

A sky with no color, no sun, raining ash that didn’t fall, but floated.

And millions.

Millions of creatures.

Beings with many limbs, with mouths on their bellies, with eyes on their backs, walking, crawling, flying, and screaming.

And devouring.

Everything fed on everything.

Savagery without law, screaming without language, madness without end.

He saw a creature rip off another’s head, only to be torn apart by a third with broken horns.

A child with eyes of fire crushed under a limb of roasted flesh.

Chaos... without logic.

He stepped back, and felt something sticky under his foot. He looked. It was half a face.

His heart trembled.

"What is this place?" he murmured, his hands trembling.

Her voice came again, from behind him:

"They are not like you."

He turned to find the old woman walking toward him as if she feared nothing.

"They are just primitive forms of life, mere infants... who lost their minds. But you... you are the gift of my mind, my first puppet who can think."

Then she smiled with one eye:

"You are not like them, because you are mine."

But inside him, something rebelled.

Think? Created?

No.

She didn’t create anything.

She didn’t give him anything.

Serathzi is the one who gave him this body.

And as soon as the thought crossed his mind... it appeared.

The screen.

Red. Still. Glowing amid this hell.

Simple words appeared before his eyes:

[Skills Acquired]

Teleportation:

The ability to travel to any place he had seen with his own eyes before, even if only for a moment.

Unseen by Fate:

You exist outside the threads of time; neither the past nor the future can see you. You are unpredictable, untraceable.

You are an exception.

His pulse quickened.

"What is this...?"

Then the voice came.

Calm, familiar, and cold.

Serathzi.

"This is my gift to you, Valerian."

"You are not made of her. You are reborn from me."

"Go. Your journey begins now."

The screen vanished suddenly.

It faded as it appeared, without sound, without a trace... as if it had been nothing but a dream.

But what remained after its disappearance was no longer Valerian.

No, not anymore.

He was no longer the boy who shyly smiled or missed Carlos or wondered how Rayne saw him.

He had become something else.

Axel...?

Maybe.

But the name no longer meant anything to him.

His steps carried him through the place... if it could even be called a place.

Every corner teemed with rot, with moving corpses, with creatures that chew, crush, slaughter, and are reborn.

Creatures as huge as mountains, or as small as fingernails, but no difference between them... all trying to kill.

And when some approached him, with their empty eyes and corroded mouths...

Nothing happened.

They did not attack.

It was as if the air around him had changed, as if something hidden — unseen, unheard — had whispered to them to stay away.

As if the whole world — even in its absolute chaos — knew that Axel was protected.

Mother of Curses.

Had she really been protecting me?

Or did she simply not want her puppet to die before its time?

He kept walking.

He saw cities... or what resembled cities.

Inverted bone towers, tents of skin, roads of broken teeth.

Civilizations... few.

But even with their presence, they were not human civilizations.

They were savage, their rituals slaughter, their feasts blood.

And among them were some... the few... who resembled him.

They were capable of thought.

But without reason.

Just greed, desire, lust for eating and control... no purpose, no nobility, no plan.

Axel looked at them coldly.

This is not my place.

Then he stood there, amid the floating ash, and began to think:

"I must reclaim my body."

"But... where do I start?"

The question hesitated inside him, then the wind blew suddenly, as if the whole world was listening to his will.

He knew that returning was not merely physical.

It was the retrieval of something... identity, existence, destiny.

But he could not do that while carrying a human heart, one that weakens when it sees a tear, or feels longing.

"Emotions..."

he whispered to himself.

"They must be restrained... not erased, but muzzled."

He thought of Carlos...

Of Claire...

Of Serathzi...

Then of himself.

There was no time for feelings.

He had a talent... ancient, born with him even before Serathzi appeared.

The talent to understand others.

Faces, eyes, tone of voice, finger movements, eyelid stillness.

He saw intentions, reading them before they were born.

And now, in this body, he could do more than just understand...

He could plan.

Mother of Curses made me for something... something that does not begin with these monsters, but with humans.

They are the ones who can be influenced. They are the ones who build armies, build thrones, worship, betray, and rebel.

"Controlling them... yes."

"But... protecting them as well."

Not out of love for them, but because control does not last without protection.

How do I become their shadow... and their leader? How do I become their terror... and their hope?

Then he raised his eyes to the dark sky and breathed deeply.

"I need a plan."

The first step?

Entering the human world.

And with one last glance at the hell around him, he whispered:

"Alright, let’s start again."

And when he noticed a speck of light in the distance, he remembered it...

A human village that had passed before him on a screen long ago.

He rubbed his finger, and...

He vanished.

He appeared between blinks.

The air was different...

Cold, lifeless, scentless.

A village.

But not as he imagined it.

No children running, no open windows, no sound of cows or barking dogs.

Just silence.

And the echo of death’s scent.

Axel took his first steps on human land, and his body trembled—not from cold or fear... but from that grim truth:

"I’m late."

Bones scattered, blood coagulated, windows broken as if the wind had screamed once and never stopped.

No survivors.

No gasps.

Not even a bird circling the sky.

He stood in the middle of the square, surrounded by decomposed corpses, some still warm...

As if the killing had happened only hours ago.

Who did this?

A question he didn’t care much about, but one that whispered in his mind like a thread that might lead him later.

He raised his eyes toward the horizon, toward something he couldn’t identify at first...

Then he saw it.

A mountain.

Not the greatest or tallest, but it was there, waving its spirit, not its stone.

And as Axel focused his gaze... he felt it.

A pulse.

A subtle vibration.

Something alive.

But it wasn’t human.

Nor a beast from that underworld.

An Arkanis.

But not like any Arkanis...

Like him.

He stopped in his place.

He did not advance yet.

Still far away.

But he felt it clearly.

As if the earth whispered to him from its depths: There... there is the first thread.

"The first step to control."

Axel said to himself in a tone without any enthusiasm.

A mere fact.

He knew, this creature in the mountain... would lead him to something greater.

Perhaps to a place of influence.

Or wars.

Or secrets.

Or even... to a way to reclaim his body.

He walked away from the village, without looking back, and had not yet reached the mountain.

Not now.

But he marked its location...

And drew the first point on the map of chaos he would subject to his order.

Then he vanished again, in a silence resembling death... but it was the beginning of something else.