I stared at my trembling hand, the grime staining my palm, but it didn’t feel like mine. Was this even me anymore? What had I become? The weight of it all crushed me. What was the point of existing like this—forever trapped in this endless loop, this mockery of a life, as the island’s fractured reality swallowed me whole? Was it worth it? Was anything worth it?

  The question lingered like a disease, suffocating every thought, until it became too much to bear.

  And just when I thought the crushing silence might devour me entirely, the cold, sterile flash of a message screen erupted into my vision, dragging me back from the abyss. My heart didn't stir. It hadn't in so long.

  New Quest: Message in the Bottle

  Objective: Write a message and enchant it so whoever finds it may locate your island. Let the seas carry it.

  Success: They said. Success was if someone found it.

  Success? I didn’t care. I had no more hope left to fuel me. I didn’t care about the reward, the consequences, the endless cycle. I was hollow—every attempt, every quest, another splinter of my soul torn away. One hundred fifty-seven failures. A hundred fifty-seven pieces of myself scattered into oblivion. How could I even remember who I once was? Would my father, Atlas, even recognize the fragments of me that remained?

  A screen flickered again, insistent.

  Notice:

  This quest may not be declined. Failure to complete, avoid, or hinder the quest will result in a forced override of your body to fulfill the objective.

  The coldness of the words didn’t sink in. I felt nothing, even as they wrapped themselves around my consciousness, like iron chains tightening around my chest. My body—was it even mine anymore? I couldn’t feel it. Not a twitch. Not a shudder. Was that relief or another curse? Did it even matter?

  I opened my mouth. A hoarse croak emerged, like the sound of dust being swept across the floor, shocking in its rarity. My throat ached. It had been so long.

  “Now what?” My voice, a whisper to the winds, barely filled the air. I wasn’t asking anyone. I had no expectations anymore.

  How long had I been like this? The thought of moving, of action—it felt as distant as a dream long forgotten. Yet the system kept pushing. Go. Try again. Fail again. Was this what I was meant for? To fail forever, fading bit by bit into the nothingness?

  I glanced at my broken home, its walls crumbling, its corners hollow. It couldn’t even pretend to offer safety anymore. The illusion had shattered long ago.

  I had never heard the system threaten control before. Never had I imagined it would force my hand. But now…? Could I even ignore it? Was I capable of defiance, or had I been stripped of even that?

  Perhaps I once considered defying it, fighting back. But how many of my memories had been erased—before and after the Titan War? I couldn’t even tell anymore.

  If I was going to send a message, I had no choice but to do it willingly. With whatever was left of me. I tried, slowly, painfully, to force myself to feel, to move, to be. Every action, every sensation fought me. It was like trying to wake a sleeping giant. The effort was maddening.

  But I did succeed. Barely. Sweat stung my eyes. My bones, my teeth, every part of me screamed in protest. Yet, for the first time in ages, I felt something. Anything. Alive? Was this what it meant to be alive—numb, broken, but still clinging to a thread?

  "Yes, to the end of time..." The voice echoed in my mind, a whisper that wasn’t mine, as if time itself had taken up residence in my skull.

  I tried to shake it away. I didn’t need that voice, not now.

  I set the parchment down, trying to steady my hand.

  To whoever finds this:

  I can’t go on pretending this is anything but the end.

  I will no longer record the pitiful tale of my existence. This is my final attempt to be heard, though I no longer know if it matters.

  I have been falsely accused—cast here, not by fate, but by the wrath of Zeus. The Olympians condemned me to this forgotten corner of reality, far from Earth, and yet they mock me with a sky and a sea I can never touch. An illusion of freedom.

  I still remember the air—how it felt to wander, unburdened, meeting new souls. It was the best of times, fleeting but precious. But the gods rose, and I was dragged down before I could choose my side.

  Why me? What was my crime? For existing? For being a part of this world? Why must I be chained before I even had the chance to choose my path?

  I am imprisoned in a cage of endless beauty. No mortal will ever find me, unless fate—or luck—sees fit to tear this veil. At times, mortals wandered in, bringing brief moments of life to my eternal silence. Hermes, perhaps, if they were on a mission for the gods. But it has been so long since I’ve seen a soul.

  Now, only ghosts linger—visions of men I once knew, their faces flickering before me, hazy with time. Their features are long gone, memories erased. Just shadows of a past life. And me… a ghost among the ruins of what I was.

  Time has ceased to be. The tide never changes. The stars, unmoving. The wind, scentless. I have been forgotten.

  So, dear mortal, should you find this, know that I am not what they have said. I am not a monster, not a villain. Only someone forgotten by the gods.

  I have set a small enchantment upon this parchment. If you wish, it will guide you to me. But be warned—the gods do not want me freed. And even I am unsure if I wish to be. The choice is yours.

  My hand ached, cramped into a claw around the quill as I forced myself to release it. The simple act of writing had drained me more than it should have, leaving my limbs sluggish and my vision swimming. When had this become so difficult?

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I hunched over the desk, my breath uneven, as I stared at the words I had scrawled onto the parchment. They felt final. Heavier than anything I had written before. As if I had carved them from my very being, each letter stripping another piece of me away. My fingers twitched over the ink, tempted to smear it, to erase it, to pretend I hadn’t just committed another desperate plea to the void.

  But the system had left no room for hesitation.

  I needed to put the message in a bottle. I needed to enchant it.

  A bitter laugh scraped my throat. When was the last time I had even used my magic? The thought was distant, fogged over, like so many others. I barely remembered what it felt like—casting had once been as natural as breathing, but now? Now it was another muscle left to atrophy. Would it even respond? Would I even be able to do this?

  I had no choice.

  Shoving away the exhaustion, I forced myself upright. My legs trembled under my weight, the movement jarring after so much stillness. I rolled the parchment with slow, careful movements, as if rushing would cause it to crumble in my hands. Then, I searched through the remnants of my ruined home.

  There.

  An old glass bottle, weathered and dust-covered, half-buried beneath the broken remains of a shelf. I pulled it free, brushing away the grime with unsteady hands. This would do.

  I made it to the door before my body locked up.

  The wind whispered through the cracks in the walls, stirring the dust and carrying the scent of the sea through my ruined home. It should have been comforting. It wasn’t. My fingers tightened around the bottle, my pulse thrumming against my skin.

  I didn’t want to go outside.

  It was irrational. I had stepped beyond these walls before. But the system’s threat lingered, curling around my ribs like a vice. If I resisted—if I refused—it would force me. Would I be aware when it took over? Would I be trapped inside my own body, watching as it marched me to the shore like a puppet? Would I even remember?

  I doubted I had the strength to fight back.

  And if I had to fall, I’d rather do it on my own terms.

  With a deep breath, I stepped through the doorway.

  The first step was the hardest.

  The rest were no better.

  The island was deceptively beautiful. It always had been. The path to the shore wound through dense foliage, thick with vines that reached for me like grasping fingers. I pushed forward, my hair catching on branches, my bare feet scraping against jagged roots and stone. Every step felt heavier, as if the island itself wanted me to turn back.

  But I didn’t stop.

  By the time I reached the shore, my legs buckled, and I collapsed onto the sand. The impact sent a shock through my body, but I barely felt it. My fingers dug into the damp grains, clenching until my knuckles turned white. I had made it.

  The tide lapped at the shore, gentle, uncaring. The same waves that had circled this island for what felt like eternity. Would they finally carry something away instead of trapping it here?

  I swallowed hard, forcing myself to move. With shaking hands, I unrolled the parchment and whispered the spell.

  Magic.

  The word felt foreign in my mind, the power sluggish and unfamiliar as it stirred in my veins. The moment I spoke the enchantment, the air around me hummed, a faint glow wrapping around the bottle as the magic seeped in. The message within would call to whoever was fated to find it.

  If anyone still believed in fate.

  Or me.

  I exhaled, watching the glow fade. Then, with the last of my strength, I cast the bottle into the waves.

  It bobbed on the surface for a moment, caught in the lull of the tide. For a brief second, I feared it would return—spit back onto the shore like every other failed attempt. But then, as if something unseen had reached out and pulled it forward, the bottle drifted beyond the break, swallowed by the endless sea.

  Gone.

  I let out a shaky breath, sagging forward.

  And then—

  A shadow moved across the water.

  My breath hitched, my pulse slamming against my ribs. I hadn’t seen it approach. I hadn’t heard anything. But there, just beyond the waves, a figure stood at the edge of the sea.

  Watching.

  I scrambled back, my exhausted limbs protesting, sand clinging to my skin. The figure didn’t move. The water barely stirred around them.

  They shouldn’t be here. No one should be here.

  “Who—” My voice cracked, raw from disuse. “Who are you?”

  The figure tilted its head, as if considering the question.

  And then, with the faintest whisper of sound, they took a step forward.

  I tensed, every muscle locking as if that alone could prepare me for what was coming. I couldn’t fight. I knew that. My limbs were leaden with exhaustion, my magic barely a flicker in my veins. If they meant harm, there was nothing I could do.

  My heart hammered so violently it drowned out the sound of the waves. Blood roared in my ears, rushing in tandem with the tide, and my breath came in uneven gasps as I struggled to keep my focus on them. To see.

  But my vision blurred.

  Sweat, thick with dirt and sand, dripped into my eyes, burning, stinging. I couldn’t even see them properly. Just a silhouette standing against the horizon, unmoving except for the faint shift of fabric in the breeze.

  And then—they raised their arm.

  I blinked through the sting, helpless, as my breath hitched.

  The bottle.

  It was in their grasp now. But how? I hadn’t seen them bend, hadn’t seen them retrieve it. Had the sea given it to them? Or had it never belonged to me at all?

  A lump formed in my throat as they turned, bottle in hand, and without hesitation, they began to drift away. Not walk—drift. Their movements were too smooth, too weightless, as if the water held no resistance against them.

  I swallowed hard, watching in horrified silence as they neared the horizon. The barrier.

  My body swayed where I knelt, hands buried in damp sand, as I realized what I was seeing.

  The moment they reached that unseen edge—the threshold where this forsaken place ended and the rest of the world began—something shifted.

  The air itself wavered, a ripple distorting the space around them, as if the sky and sea were nothing more than a fragile reflection in a shattered mirror.

  A low, resonant hum filled the air.

  And then—

  They changed.

  Their form flickered, unraveling at the edges, stretching into something both human and not. The silhouette warped, light bending unnaturally, as if they were stepping through existence itself.

  A gust of wind tore through the shore, sending sand skittering around me, and in that brief chaos—

  They vanished.

  The bottle was gone.

  The horizon was empty.

  And I was alone again.

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