Chapter 35: The Time of All Living Beings - The Will to Remain

Memories of his previous lives gradually resurfaced, accompanied by the sensations of currents passing through his leaves, sunlight filtering through the water, and the slow deterioration of the meadow that had once been his home. Yet beneath those memories, something else began to stir.

He still remembered being a blade of grass, a towering tree, and, most recently, a patch of seagrass rooted in the seabed. Each life had left its mark on him, adding another layer to his understanding of the world. But as these experiences accumulated, the boundaries separating them began to grow increasingly fragile.

For a moment, he could no longer distinguish where one life had ended and another had begun.

Was he Elden, the mage who had entered through the wooden door in pursuit of becoming a Great Ruler? Or was he the silent tree that had endured for centuries, the fragile blade of grass crushed beneath an animal's foot, or the seagrass that had struggled to survive as its environment slowly deteriorated?

Those lives had ended, yet their experiences remained embedded in his memory, as vivid as the recollections of his own past.

He was beginning to understand why a tree spent centuries reaching toward sunlight, why a tiny creature struggled so desperately to escape a predator, and why seagrass continued to grow despite being unable to control the world that sustained it. He had experienced their existence from within, and their suffering could no longer seem insignificant simply because it differed from his own.

This realization frightened him more than any death he had witnessed.

If he continued experiencing the lives of every living being in the world, would he eventually lose the ability to distinguish his desires from theirs? Would his ambitions lose all meaning beneath the weight of innumerable souls, until the person who had entered the trial disappeared entirely?

He had always believed that understanding the world meant observing it, studying its laws, and uncovering the principles that governed its existence. But now, he was discovering something far more unsettling.

When you experienced the lives of other living beings, you could no longer see the world exclusively through your own perspective. You began to understand that every creature experienced existence in its own way, and that what seemed trivial or insignificant to you might represent an entire world to something else.

A single day might be no more than a fleeting moment in a human life, yet it could constitute a substantial portion of another creature's existence. A patch of grass might seem unworthy of attention, but to the microscopic organisms living among its blades, it could be an immense landscape filled with shelter, danger, and an unending struggle for survival. Even the death of a seemingly insignificant creature could mark the end of an entire existence that had never known anything beyond its own small world.

No single perspective could encompass all of this.

And Elden was being forced to experience every one of them.

There was still so much more to come.

He could sense that the experiences he had accumulated were only a small fraction of what awaited him. The trial had not ended, and there was no reason to believe that the next life would be any easier to endure.

What if the coming experiences were more complex, more painful, or more difficult to reconcile with his own identity?

What if he eventually experienced a life whose desires contradicted everything he believed in?

Would he be able to understand that existence without accepting its perspective as his own?

Elden clenched his fists, desperately trying to hold on to something familiar. He remembered his teacher's face, the conversations he had shared with his senior brother, and the ambitions that had once seemed so clear and undeniable.

Now, those things felt strangely distant, like fragments of a life he had lived in the distant past.

He lowered his head, feeling the weight of this realization settle over him. The more he understood, the harder it became to hold on to the assumptions that had once defined him. His memories remained intact, and he could still recall the person he had been before entering the trial, but he could no longer pretend that his previous understanding of the world had been sufficient.

How am I supposed to remain myself after all this?

For the first time since entering the trial, Elden felt genuine fear.

It was not the fear of death or suffering, but the fear of gradually becoming something he could no longer recognize. He had entered the trial believing that his unbreakable will would carry him through any ordeal, yet he was beginning to realize that the greatest threat to his existence might not be the pain he endured, but the possibility that he would eventually forget what he was trying to preserve.

what was the value of determination if the person who possessed it eventually disappeared?

What would happen to his ambitions if he could no longer distinguish them from the countless desires and instincts he encountered?

And if he eventually reached the end of the trial, only to discover that the person who emerged was no longer Elden Morven, could he truly call that a victory?

He clenched his fists, desperately trying to hold on to something familiar.

The gesture was instinctive. He no longer possessed a physical body in the darkness, yet the familiar movement offered him a fleeting sense of control.

He wanted to hold on to his memories, his ambitions, and the relationships that had shaped his life. At the same time, he understood that rejecting the experiences of other living beings would defeat the very purpose of the trial. He could not become one with the world while refusing to acknowledge the countless lives that extended beyond his own.

For a long time, he remained suspended in the darkness, caught between two conflicting desires: to understand everything, and to preserve the self that had sought that understanding in the first place.

For a fleeting moment, he wanted to give up.

Perhaps that would be easier. He could stop struggling against the weight of countless lives and surrender to the inevitable, allowing the trial to carry him wherever it wished. He had already experienced death more than once, and he had begun to glimpse the immensity of what awaited him. There was no shame in admitting that the road ahead frightened him.

But surrender had never come easily to him.

Because he had made a promise.

Because he had chosen to continue despite his fear, and he would not abandon that choice now.

Because he was a man.

A man who could carry the memories of a thousand lives without allowing them to bury the one life that was his own.

A man who could stand before the boundless mystery of existence, knowing that every answer might shatter something he once believed, and still dare to seek the truth.

Because he was Elden Morven.

And Elden Morven never gave up.

Something changed.

A faint warmth emerged from the depths of the darkness.

At first, it was gentle, barely distinguishable from the surrounding emptiness. Gradually, however, it spread throughout his consciousness, enveloping him without demanding anything in return.

Elden froze.

The warmth was unlike sunlight, unlike the heat of a living body, and unlike anything he had experienced in his previous lives. It carried no urgency, no instinctive desire for survival, and no fear of whatever might come next.

It simply surrounded him, as though the darkness itself had reached out to embrace him.

The trembling within his consciousness gradually subsided.

The countless memories remained inside him, but for the first time, they no longer seemed to pull him in every direction at once. They settled into the depths of his awareness, each retaining its own existence without completely overwhelming the others.

Within that quiet warmth, Elden sensed something vast and distant, something beyond any scale he could comprehend.

It was not a voice, nor a presence he could perceive through any ordinary sense. Rather, it was an awareness that seemed to extend throughout the darkness itself, encompassing everything without belonging exclusively to any single thing.

The Will of the World.

It did not speak to him or explain the meaning of his experiences. Its warmth simply continued to surround his consciousness, allowing him to regain his composure and recover his sense of self, which had nearly been lost beneath the weight of innumerable lives.

Gradually, Elden realized that this warmth was neither erasing his memories nor shielding him from the trial. His experiences remained with him, and the understanding they had brought could not be taken away. The Will of the World was merely supporting his consciousness, giving him an opportunity to recover before he was transferred into another existence.

He did not know whether this assistance had been prepared for him from the beginning or whether the world itself had responded to the struggle unfolding within his mind.

Perhaps the distinction did not matter.

For now, he was still Elden.

For now, that was enough.

He took a slow breath, despite no longer possessing a physical body that required one. Then, surrounded by the gentle warmth of the Will of the World, he closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment of silence.

Gradually, the warmth faded, leaving him alone in the darkness once more.

Yet the emptiness no longer felt as suffocating as it had before.

Elden raised his head.

Whatever awaited him, he would face it.

The darkness trembled.

Another life awaited him.