Unnamed Memory, Vol. 6: Death of the Nameless Story

If I didn’t exist, you’d find someone else to love. No one is irreplaceable; birth or death is insignificant.
It’s simply that a person loves another person. They love everything about them, feel grateful that they could meet them, and feel like that person saved them. That moment in time is like a miracle, a flash of emotion like lightning in the sky.
I will discover the meaning of that moment.

Tinasha sat up with a gasp. She was in a dark, unfamiliar room. The window showed it was night outside; no lamp or candle lit the room. There was only the pale bluish light of the moon.
As she attempted to calm her panting, gasping breaths, she gazed down at herself—and froze. She wasn’t wearing anything. Instinctively, she hugged her knees and head to her chest, curling into a ball.
“Why…?”
“What is it?” asked a man beside her. She nearly jumped out of her skin at his question. Lying on his stomach, he lifted his head to look at her. His eyes were as blue as the sky right after dusk.
She knew him, yet his name wasn’t coming to her right away. Why couldn’t she recall it? They were clearly close enough to share a bed. That made Tinasha realize she didn’t even know her own name.
While that left her aghast and stupefied, she had to get it together. Pulling up the blankets to cover herself, she inquired, “Who are you, and who am I, and where are we…?”
The inquiry prompted the man to give her the strangest look. He sat up, leaned back against the pillows, and then answered, “I wondered why you woke up so randomly. Are you still half-asleep? I’m your husband, the king of Farsas. You’re my queen, a witch, and the heir to Old Tuldarr. We’re in the royal bedchamber of the castle. Do you need me to tell you our names, too?”
“Oh!”
That was enough to jog her mind and fill in the blanks.
She was born four centuries before and became a witch on the eve of her country’s destruction. Her name was Tinasha.
After many twists and forks in the road, she became his wife. Tinasha had no idea how she could have forgotten such a thing, even if she had trouble with waking up.
“Sorry… I guess I was half-asleep.”
“Sure seemed like it. It’s the middle of the night,” Oscar said with a little grin. That smile filled Tinasha with such fond familiarity that she felt instantly at ease. All the tension drained from her body. He reached out to ruffle her hair, and she blushed.
“It was like…I had a dream of a time that wasn’t this one…and it felt like it took a really, really long time to get here,” she muttered.
“A dream of the past, maybe? You have lived twenty times longer than I have,” Oscar remarked with a smirk.
Then his eyes softened. “You’ve worked hard.” The warmth of his sympathy for the centuries his wife had lived was her reward for those long years of loneliness. He wanted to spend the rest of his life giving her warmth and love.
Tinasha savored a feeling of happiness before she joked, “I certainly don’t feel twenty times more mature than you.”
“Yeah, you peaked a long time ago, considering how short-tempered and socially awkward you are. I don’t mind, though.”
“Stop treating me like a little kid!” she protested, although she was grinning.
After living for eons and choosing to separate herself from other humans, she had concluded that she was an anomaly.
Such was the nature of a witch, and she was the strongest, though still shackled by deep feelings for her homeland.
Yet despite how warped she was, he never denied her identity as a witch, nor did he give up any part of himself to do it. He simply invited her to stand next to him.
Ever since she met him, she had enjoyed the most fulfilling time of her whole life. That was why she’d elected to live the rest of her days as his loving wife and as a force he kept in check.
“I’m very happy right now. I’m glad I finally found you,” she said. This was the most joyful and safest place. She had no worries or anxieties. All she needed was for this to go on forever.
Tinasha gave him a bright smile. But Oscar frowned at the sight of it. “What’s wrong?”
“What? Nothing,” Tinasha replied, but then she realized her vision was blurring. “Huh?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Maybe she’d awoken from that dream so suddenly that her emotions were still out of whack.
I have the strangest sense that I’m a young girl in love, somewhere in time. I’m thinking about wanting to wear a wedding dress.
What would be making her feel that way? Tinasha had already married Oscar. She met him not as a naive little girl, not as an ice queen, but as a witch with four hundred years of ennui behind her.
Curiously, she still felt a twinge of incongruity. It was as though her longing for the dream lingered within her like the traces of a fragrance.
Over the blankets, Tinasha pressed a hand to her chest. “I don’t know. I feel as if…I didn’t get to marry you. That’s the sense I’m getting.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Oscar questioned, not with exasperation but with genuine concern. And it was no wonder. There were too many discrepancies in this reality. Tinasha’s memories were getting all muddled.
Something that should be there had vanished…
Tinasha swallowed whatever was swirling within her. “I’m…fine.”
“I hope so. Don’t stay up any longer. Just go back to sleep. You’ll make it even harder for yourself come morning,” he said softly, reaching out to wrap both arms around her waist and draw her in.
“He-hey!” Tinasha yelped reflexively, but she couldn’t do anything to stop it. As the confused woman was pulled back into place next to him, the sensation of her skin sliding directly against Oscar’s made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. Automatically, Tinasha tried to crawl out of his arms. “This is too—”
Her behavior made Oscar frown. “What is it? Why are you moving away?”
“I—I mean, that felt really weird, okay?! I’ve never done that before!”
“You’re funny…”
Oscar sighed, rubbing at his temples. She flailed in an attempt to break free, but she was no match for the king’s toned arms, which held her fast.
“Looks like you’re still asleep. Guess I should do something to wake you up,” Oscar whispered, dipping his head to place a kiss along her nape.
She screeched like a cat. “Wait! I said wait! Something’s not right!”
“You’re acting weird. What’s up with you?”
“Let’s just talk! Let me go!”
“Not yet,” Oscar refused, pinning Tinasha down as she squirmed beneath him. Even she wasn’t certain why it felt wrong. There was simply a definite feeling of abnormality.
As Tinasha thrashed around, one of her feet knocked against a cold, hard object of some kind that had no place in a bed. She frowned. “Wait, there’s something here.”
“Something as in what, exactly?” Oscar asked, lifting his head. She scrambled out from under him and fumbled around under the sheets for it. Then her hand closed around it. “Here it is.”
The pair of them gazed down at a blue jewel etched with sigils along its surface.
Something deep in her memory whispered, I know what this is.
“Ah!” she cried as waves and waves of memories abruptly flooded her mind. The sheer volume of so many chronicles and lifetimes lived repeatedly was enough to send her reeling.
In some, she never became a witch and perished along with her country. While in others, she died as a young child. There were a few where she perished after becoming a witch.
A few lifetimes came and went without her ever meeting Oscar. A couple she spent alone.
In so many, she died before ever having the chance for atonement. Others had her perishing from a sudden danger that arose once everything was over.
That she could wind up in his arms at all after her fate had changed so many times was nothing short of a miracle, the end point of an indescribable series of events.
This memory was like a dream, which was why she felt so happy and loved here. So much so that she would choose to return to this point from any other in time and space.
Tinasha buried her face in her hands and abruptly broke into muffled sobs, leaving Oscar flummoxed. He wrapped his arms around her soft form. Using a finger to tip her chin up, he gazed into her dark eyes. “What is it? What happened?”
“Oscar…”
Slowly, Tinasha blinked. Her eyes were wet with pearly tears. She took a shuddery breath and then gave him a melancholy smile. “I’ve traveled such a very long way… Will you listen to me?”
The beseeching expression she turned on him was beautiful. It had been a long time since he’d seen her with that look, and it had been equally as long since he’d watched her cry.
Oscar dropped a soft kiss onto her lips. “Yes. Tell me.”
So Tinasha launched into the full story of Eleterria and the history that no longer existed.

After hearing everything, Oscar let out a long, hard sigh. “That’s quite a tale. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Tinasha said with a pained look as she glanced over at the Eleterria orb on the bedside table.
It was the blue one, which should have been locked tight within the Tuldarr treasure vault in the normal flow of events.
“Tuldarr, huh? I would’ve liked to see it,” Oscar remarked nonchalantly, making Tinasha’s heart ache. The people who loved and protected her motherland were all gone. In this world, that country had fallen to ruin four centuries before.
In lifetime after countless lifetime, there was only one in which Tuldarr survived. But that instance was already lost to the sands of time; nothing of it remained. A half-cracked Eleterria had deemed it a dead end and initiated a rewind.
“In the end, I couldn’t…save Tuldarr,” Tinasha murmured, pressing her palms against her closed eyelids. Her regret turned to tears; Legis’s last smile surfaced in her memory.
Tuldarr was like some illusory phantom, a country she had possibly dreamed up at some point. But it was no fantasy. Despite the fact that it didn’t exist now and that the alterations in time had erased it, that nation and the people who’d lived in it were there. She would be the only one to recall the beauty of the city lights and the days she’d experienced.
Had the people of Tuldarr been truly happy? It was useless to answer that; it would make for a poor consolation.
“There is no world where everyone is happy.”
So Valt had said. Had he been correct?
The world kept spinning as tragedy and salvation intertwined like a pair of lovers. It was impossible to rescue everything. Someone would always be screaming with grief at any given moment. Tinasha had survived with her country once, and now she was left alone again.
Her eyelashes stirred. With his thumb, Oscar gently wiped away the tears from her cheeks. “Was it a good country?”
“Yes… Very much so.”
Tinasha would need a little more time to process the blow of losing her country a second time.
Through Tinasha’s story, Oscar had learned about Eleterria. After a bit of hesitation, she also revealed the full truth of his mother’s death, which he listened to with astonishment. Then he let out a little sigh, not seeming mixed-up over it in the slightest. “To be honest, sometimes I would see this silhouette flash through my mind, one I’d never glimpsed before. I guess that was…a remnant of the memories that got sealed away. Did you know all along that I was related to a witch?”
“More or less, yes. I recognized her magic in you… I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner.”
“It’s fine. You were being considerate,” he said, mussing Tinasha’s hair. As she watched him, she cast back through her memories.
This feels strange.
She wasn’t her current self, the one who was a witch. Some other, weaker—and yet very determined—self was alive within her mind. Since the day Oscar’s actions had changed history and the timeline diverged, she had lived a total of seven years. While that was a drop in the bucket for a witch, it was agony for Tinasha, the Queen of Tuldarr.
And at the end of it, here she was, her current self.
Oscar gazed into his wife’s teary eyes. “So you have these recollections that should have been erased, which means…”
“Yes. I’m the new Time-Reader heir.”
At this point, there was no Valt or Miralys. In the normal flow of time, the role of heir went unfilled. Yet instead of them, she had become the Time-Reader after touching Eleterria.
“So you remember every life you’ve ever experienced? That must make it feel like you’ve existed forever,” Oscar remarked.
“Yes, I need to keep some degree of control over it, or things will get rough,” she replied.
Mental fatigue had occasionally overwhelmed Tinasha after living for only four hundred years. Now she had the memories of the infinite existences she’d led before. Staring at her own memories would grow unbearable.
There was also something else to consider. The Time-Reader was generally a hereditary title. Any child she birthed would eventually become the next heir.
“I was selected as heir under quite unusual circumstances. Eleterria was partially broken in the lake water when it took apart the world and reformed it to escape. I was the closest, so it made me the heir, took my memories and existence as the anchoring point, and reformed the world.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that this world was created the moment I woke up,” Tinasha stated. Oscar gaped at her, which was understandable, as he possessed no awareness of having awoken only a short while before. This timeline was one Eleterria had selected out of innumerable overwritten pasts, then had reconstructed from scratch. None of that appeared immediately plausible, but as the Time-Reader, Tinasha knew it was true.
As Oscar mulled over her story, a pensive look came over his face, and he stroked his chin. “Gotcha. So it was almost broken and pulled an emergency evacuation. Did you try to destroy it in the water?”
“I couldn’t. That lake water has the same properties as Akashia. I can just barely use my magic if I pressurize it, but only for simple spells. A powerful, high-output attack would be out of the question.”
“The Lake of Silence, huh? Who knew there was something like that underneath the castle.”
“That timeline was the only one where it was excavated. Travis seemed to know about it, but maybe that was because he heard about the excavation. I can probably teleport us there if you want to see it.”
“Hmm… No, I’m good. I feel like I’ve got a general idea already,” Oscar replied, sounding like he’d accepted the crazy story. He patted Tinasha’s head.
“What idea?” Tinasha questioned, cocking her head to the side. Reclined on the bed with her cheek resting on one hand, she resembled nothing so much as a curious cat.
Oscar kissed her forehead. “Those outsiders’ artifacts or whatever have powers that defy the laws of magic, right? But even before you knew about them, you’d already encountered something else that works in mysterious ways.”
“I had?”
Tinasha had no idea what Oscar could be referring to. She had lived a very long time and had seen many things, but only a few of those were things Oscar could be aware of.
As Tinasha fell into deep, serious consideration, Oscar flashed her a chagrined look. “Come on. You don’t need to think so hard. I’m talking about Akashia.”
“Oh!”
He’d meant the royal sword, the only blade in all the land capable of nullifying magic. It was prodigiously effective, but no one knew how it functioned. The sword had been passed down since the founding days of Farsas without ever getting lost to the ages.
“The legend says an inhuman creature pulled Akashia out of the Lake of Silence. So wouldn’t it make sense if whoever that was came from outside our world? Didn’t Travis call the Lake of Silence the insiders’ lake?”
“O-Oh yes, he did…”
Travis had said, “While she was an outsider, she also wasn’t. She chose to be an ally to humans and lived and died among them.”
What if the person he met was the very one who’d pulled Akashia from the water?
“The first queen of Farsas…Deirdre?” Tinasha wondered.
“The name of the first queen was never recorded.”
“I heard it directly from a member of the Farsas royal family four hundred years ago, though not until after I became queen. She traded her own power for the sword and gave it to the first king. But in exchange, she could no longer return to her birthplace. So the story goes.”
If the inhuman creature who pulled the sword from the lake was the same person as the first queen, it explained why Travis was surprised that Oscar didn’t know about the existence of outsiders’ artifacts. Travis believed the Farsas royal family would have passed on the truth about the first queen and the royal sword.
“Then does that mean I have outsider blood in my veins?” Oscar posited.
“It happened twenty generations ago. It would be very diluted by now,” Tinasha replied. Examining Oscar magically also revealed that he had no inhuman qualities. Farsas was founded seven centuries in the past.
Tinasha gazed up at Oscar, impressed with his deduction skills. “But wow, so that’s what it was! I’m so accustomed to how unusual Akashia is that it didn’t occur to me at all.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty used to the sword because of how much trouble it gives you. But that does seem to explain why the Eleterria orb cracked inside the lake.”
“Yes, it does…”
The outside observers and the one outsider who’d mingled with humans and married one.
Deirdre, who chose the human world, left just enough power to eliminate the artifacts her kin introduced. Now Tinasha knew she hadn’t imagined the water rushing for the orb.
“So Eleterria escaped from the Lake of Silence,” she mused.
That timeline was scrapped because the Lake of Silence had been excavated.
To capture a Tinasha who wasn’t a witch, a Time-Reader heir broke into the treasure vault, which resulted in the creation of an underground labyrinth. A series of new events had driven Eleterria to desperation.
“When…I first considered where to hide Eleterria, I thought of submerging it in the Lake of Silence because almost no one would go near it,” Tinasha recalled.
“If you’d done that, this would’ve all happened sooner,” Oscar pointed out.
Tinasha let out her umpteenth sigh of the night.
Had Valt known this would transpire, he might have chosen another method. Or perhaps he would’ve reached out to Tinasha anyway?
Valt Hogniss Gaz Kronos.
He was a second-generation Time-Reader and Tinasha’s former subject. Tinasha knew his full name because it was inscribed on the records she had access to as the latest heir. His thoughts and desires during his many lives would forever go unknown, however. For he’d never revealed the full truth to Tinasha.
Huddled in the bedsheets, the witch exhaled. “This is all so bizarre. I can understand why Valt was trying to destroy the orbs. There have been far too many rewindings of time in this era.”
“So the orbs have passed from person to person over the years, huh? Is our current timeline one step ahead of the one that disappeared?”
“To be more accurate, it’s exceedingly close to it.”
This instance—the one that would have gone on had Oscar not traveled back four hundred years—had been recreated with Tinasha as the anchor. However, as it was a thing remade, there were likely to be some discrepancies.
“I chose this timeline,” she told him.
“You did?”
“Yes. A person’s wish is required for Eleterria to activate. When it asked me where it should rebuild the world, I chose this moment… Because in all of my memories, I am the happiest right here and now.”
She had wished to return to him. She was most content with him, so she’d woken up here.
Oscar broke into a grin when he heard that. “I’m honored.”
“When you met me when I was a young girl, you promised that if I could meet you four hundred years from then, you’d make me happy. And you were right.”
“Yeah?” Oscar asked as his hand brushed over her cheek. Tinasha stared at the reflection of herself in his eyes.
Oscar carried no recollections of his previous lifetimes. But now, something had settled between them—eternity. The weight of all the time accumulated within her and the breadth of the love he poured into her made this place where both intertwined eternally.
Yet she could not stay here forever. Tinasha could not allow the Farsas royal family to become Time-Reader heirs. She would attempt to detach the heir’s soul from Eleterria; if that failed, Oscar would have to take another consort.
Tinasha had no choice but to stop her physical body’s growth again, which would allow her to live as long as possible as the sole Time-Reader. That way, the artifact wouldn’t take a new prisoner.
Oscar might object to her stepping down as the queen consort, but she intended to stay in the castle until he died.
And with as many memories as she had, she could live off them forever.
Lost in thought, Tinasha cast her eyes down. However, she looked up again after noticing Oscar’s gaze. A bittersweet smile decorated his face as he stared at her. “Tinasha.”
“Yes?” she replied, waiting for him to go on.
He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her eyelid. Then he stood from the bed and began to dress. “Let’s go. Put some clothes on.”
“What? Go where?”
“There’s another one, isn’t there? In the treasure vault. Bring that one, too, but be careful,” Oscar instructed, pointing at the blue Eleterria orb as he grabbed Akashia.
From behind, he looked masculine and powerful. The way he never hesitated was beautiful. Reflecting on how his actions spoke to his unshakable will, Tinasha nodded, despite her doubts.
While the guards outside the treasure vault were bewildered to find the king and queen visiting it in the middle of the night, they bowed and made way.
After refusing an escort, the pair entered the vault. Tinasha found the little box right away. “This is it.”
“Hmm.”
After Tinasha cleared away the other jumble of objects on the pedestal, she placed the two Eleterria orbs side by side on it.
Red and blue.
The same patterns on both made a complementary pair.
Oscar cocked his head to one side as he eyed them. “You have to destroy them both at the same time?”
“Yes… But wait, you want to destroy them?!”
“Of course,” he responded matter-of-factly.
“What?!” she cried, her jaw dropping.
Her flabbergasted look made Oscar give her a look of chagrin. “I understand your point. The point made by the version of you who argued with Valt. I don’t know what you’re thinking now, but if you still want to save people, even if it means altering the past…and if you’re prepared to have that affect your life…then I want to honor that and destroy it.”
“Oscar…”
Eleterria had reshaped events over and over. Those were all, undoubtedly, challenges to destiny. In the shadows of history, people had challenged fate ceaselessly.
This would be the final confrontation—destroying Eleterria and restoring all of the altered destinies to what they should truly be.
If that counted as yet another change, it would be the biggest yet.
The mother who was first given Eleterria would not be able to save her child, and the Time-Reader family would vanish.
Valt wouldn’t be born, and he wouldn’t meet Miralys.
Not only that, the lives and destinies of many people alive now would be modified, such as how Oscar’s was when his mother rescued him from a demon attack.
“You…,” Tinasha began, but couldn’t go on.
Does he understand that he might die? The witch gazed into Oscar’s blue eyes searchingly, and he flashed her a little grin.
“I can say that because Eleterria saved me, and I’ve used it to save another. Even so, changing the past is honestly a backward-looking way of doing things. No matter how much you regret something, you have to live with it. We shouldn’t…be able to do anything for what’s behind us.” He stroked her hair. “Besides, wouldn’t it make us more careless in the present moment if we knew we could go back to fix things?”
It sounded like he was chastising a small child, and Tinasha smiled sorrowfully.
Oscar was right, but it was only because he was so strong that he could make such a declaration.
How many human emotions and revisions had gone into this world? The littlest feeling distorted history, and that deformity spread until it became the next foundation.
It was wrong. Tinasha knew that. However, she wasn’t sure if she could dismiss it, for it was so very human.
Oscar was different, though. “If you’re ready, we can end it here. I don’t know who these outsiders are, but it gives me the creeps to think of them taking advantage of human regrets and amusing themselves. I’ve had enough of getting watched and documented.”
If Oscar had been given the option to travel to the past, he would’ve refused. He’d only saved Tinasha because he was already there—because he was strong. Oscar was the kind of person who could get on his feet and start moving, regardless of where he was.
“Whatever kind of tragedy this is, we should rise above it. I believe that all humans have the power to do that,” he declared.
After a long silence, Tinasha nodded. Oscar’s dignity was the sanctity of human life.
This world wasn’t a miniature garden, and its people weren’t toys.
Tinasha would reject any observers and their aims. She would not allow fate to be manipulated. She recalled the pride given to her when she was born alone in the world and when she achieved independence as a separate individual.
Oscar watched his wife. Abruptly, tears filled her dark eyes. His heart ached to see it, but he didn’t let his emotions show, as that would only wound her further.
She gave him a lonely smile. “It always surprises me how decisive you can be.”
“Yeah? I think this is the only natural conclusion.”
“For you, yes.”
Tinasha wrapped her arms around him, and he hugged her back tightly.
If outside laws induced the alternation and reformation of the world, then it would reach its limit someday, given that each instance carried a significant burden. History had come to an impasse. What would happen beyond that? Everything might collapse. That meant someone had to ease the weight before the implosion. Akashia must have been passed through generations for just such a purpose.
Oscar stroked Tinasha’s hair gently. “Besides, if we don’t destroy it, then I know you’ll go back to saying you won’t have my baby. And I don’t want that.”
“I never mentioned anything like that,” Tinasha protested, grinning through tears.
Forget a baby—it was improbable that Oscar and Tinasha would ever meet at all.
Eleterria had been introduced into the world in a blank space in time more than a thousand years before this moment. Everything would be redone from scratch, starting from that distant point. The two of them may not even be born. Even if they were, they could die before reaching adulthood. Oscar was only alive because his mother had used Eleterria to rescue him. In the true flow of history, he’d perished.
Allowing any of that to show through his expression would rob Tinasha of the will to go through with this. All Oscar could do was smile at her like it meant nothing. The bit of deception helped ensure she carried no regrets.
Oscar whispered to her, “It’s all right. You don’t need to bear it all alone.”
If they didn’t get rid of Eleterria, she would remain the heir, seal it away, and try to live a long life.
But that wouldn’t fix the problem. She would be bound to Eleterria as Valt was.
So they would end it here, staking everything on a timeline whose fate was unknown. That’s what humans did.
Oscar heard Tinasha heave a deep sigh. “You really do see through my every thought.”
She looked up at him as a smile like a moonlit flower bloomed on her face. He held her tighter.
“Oscar… If history changes and everything goes back to how it was, even if no one remembers and I’m never born, I’ll still love you. You are my first. My last. My only.”
She swore that to him emphatically, her words filled with conviction. The depth of her feelings for him bled into her voice.
She was a rare find. He was lucky to have known her.
Loving her and receiving that same love in kind had been a miracle. It was worth trading his life for.
“That’s more than I deserve to hear. I feel the same way—I love you.”
Oscar was touched that Tinasha had chosen to come to him from myriad memories. Now that he knew what a mess the world’s history was, he was overjoyed that she still loved him.
Even if their world had only just been created, Tinasha carried memories of a life with him. Those were worth something, even if it all disappeared.
Those recollections were sure to support the decision she was about to make.
Oscar caressed his beloved wife’s cheek. A tear rolled past her long eyelashes and fell over his thumb.
If at all possible, I want her to have another happy life.
It didn’t matter if they never met, as long as a life free of the torment of loneliness and hardship awaited her.
But if by some chance he did get the opportunity to gaze upon that azure tower again, he would go forth without the slightest hesitation to meet her. Then he would be near her again, even if he bothered her initially, and they could eventually share a life together…
It was a silly dream that would never come to pass.
But for right now, Oscar wanted to believe in that happy idea.
Tinasha was trembling minutely, and he whispered to her, “Don’t worry. I have no intention of letting you go. This is just a waypoint for us. Don’t hesitate. Whether you’re queen of another nation or a witch doesn’t matter to me. Just come to me. And if you don’t, I’ll barge in on you again.”
“I can picture it,” she replied with a grin, one that was beautiful through the tears.
Oscar hugged Tinasha close. He could hear her sniffling into his chest. But soon enough, she bit her lip, and her tears stopped. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself to him.
“You are my king. I have loved you for an eternity. Everything in me—my power and my mind—exists to protect you.”
The blessing Tinasha gave Oscar was utterly steadfast. That was how strongly she felt about him. He knew that the strength of her love had saved him in return.
The witch loved fiercely, intensely, and awkwardly.
He could never doubt her devotion to her people and husband. It was because she was with him that he could go forward.
As Oscar savored the feel of Tinasha’s body heat seeping into him, he listened to her make an unwavering vow.
“Please wait for me. I promise I will come to you. I will cross time. And then we will love each other again.”
“I…look forward to it,” he replied with a broad smile. The world was about to change as they dreamed of such a modest little vision.
After Oscar patted her on the back, Tinasha released him. They gazed into each other’s eyes, pressing their foreheads together.
Dark eyes and twilight eyes reflected one another’s forms.
As their noses, cheeks, and, finally, lips brushed against each other’s, they shared a last kiss.
Their destinies had undoubtedly intertwined when they were not originally supposed to. That was why things had to end here.
To attempt to change things, as humans did.
Tinasha took hold of Oscar’s left hand. With a nod, he unsheathed Akashia.
He turned to face the pair of artifacts that glittered with all of the human emotions they had absorbed.
“Was it fun toying with us? Don’t you dare look down on humans. Your days of amusement are over.”
The double-edged sword glittered like a mirror as Oscar lifted it aloft and gave his decree with a ringing tone.
“We reject your interference. You shall turn to dust and leave us be!”
Akashia came down. The blade touched both of the orbs at once.
A white light consumed everything.
Immediately after the clear tinkling of the orbs’ rupture, terrible pain stabbed through her body.
“TINASHA!”
Oscar instantly gathered his wife into his arms.
The power to dismantle the world swirled in the air, whipping into a mad vortex.
It was impossible to see anything, and she didn’t know what was happening.
The shards of Eleterria, attempting to absorb what they could, and the power of Akashia, following them in hot pursuit, were transforming her soul.
A force brought in from outside this world was pouring into her, enough to change her into something inhuman.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHH!” she screamed.
Oscar held her tight as everything turned white and burned away.
Then they were thrown into an unknown place.
END OF UNNAMED MEMORY ACT TWO