I saw many stars and planets on my way to Concordia.

I didn’t know why, but I was a part of a trichiliocosm.

A certain path was paved for me, and that path ends for me here. Not because I was destined to die, but because the figure in front of me, standing on top of a storied building, basking under the light of the sun was me before I started my journey.

I had asked myself why I was sent to that world in the first place. Then, it dawned to me that there were two paths that were paved for me.

One path ends with me walking the bleak path. The path which I have been able to take. I became a bleak walker that walked on the bodies of my comrades, trek through dunes, and reached a world where none could imagine. All because of a superimposed coincidence  that led to the path where I reached a state where I could pull a tug on creation. But I came to notice that I wasn’t the only one suffering. The other me, he was still walking his bleak path, forced to take on the task that I refused to looked at.

No, it was because I knew that it was not Audrey, not the woman who carried the lamp, and certainly not the Burnt Woman who forced the fool standing on top of a building to start the journey. No, it was not the call of the void, but merely a simple push on his back, down to that tore in where he would start his journey.

I looked down on the hole where he fell, before I dived out of the place. I was not an eternal being that could create life, sustain life, and see through all creation. I was simply an anomaly loose on a cog, a cosmic plaything that was created through a single imposed coincidence.

I did not think when I pushed my own back through that hole in space. All I thought was how natural it was for me to do that. 

Even though I know what hell was waiting for me.

Even though I know that I would suffer.

But it was a needed coincidence.

Nolan Salvatore will have to become the bleak walker and be split into two. I was in a state of being high with power that I turned my attention to the fella that was wandering without looking back. He was thrown into another world, searching for the fragment of the burnt woman. He was in chains and was dragged by people who wore strange armor made of steel powered by crystals containing energy that greatly enhances their strength. He turned his attention to where I was looking and nodded. His smile was so sad that I wondered if I was right to abandon this fragment of mine. But then I turned my attention to the place where they were waiting for me. Ciara, the Ciara that I met in that world, and our children had grown lovely. I think he knows it somewhere inside his soul that there was a possibility that he could have the joy that I had felt for the four years before the planet came to this world.

But it was his own choice. He needed to hunt the Burnt Woman for the sake of his own peace. Usually, the fragments would return back to where my soul was. But then again this soul had become independent due to the souls it took. It was a symbiotic relationship, a body that relied on the body of Kaiser, the Guardian Half-Dragon to gather power through the cosmos. It was because of his strong body that gathers power, and the ability of the Old Revenant. Their souls fed on him, and bonded, forged by exploring the cosmos. It is no wonder that I was able to have this power. I understood that the moment this ‘planet’ that I tore apart, showed me the power that my soul embraced. I didn’t know what to think about it other than this was meant to happen. I needed to become a fixed being.

I could not know anything. It was the same as asking why the worlds were formed. It was naturally there. That was what I thought when I saw the ‘me’s’ starting their journey. Across the seas of space and time there was only the Deadman left, the Nolan Salvatore who took in the name of Amadan, a name that meant fool, a loony.

I could not stop his wanderings. I could not stop the need of this fragment who had separated from me. I know that this was a fragment that knew that there was no helping it. The Burnt Woman needed to die, before she could reach another world where she could grow again. She would repeat that, for she had become a goddess who had thought to save everyone, knowing that when she saves worlds she would leave it burning.

He was the second Nolan, the Nolan that woke up in that desert, thinking, that he would be able to do something, knowing that he came from the future, not knowing that he was trapped under the cycle of someone who wanted to become god for the sake of the good she wanted imposed on any worlds she saw suffering.

“Why is it so wrong to seek for the good of it all?” she  said once.

She was fighting against a madness that every intelligent lifeform had in any world. To take that away means that she was going to rob them of their freedom.  It was a selfish, yet somehow pure wish that she could not let go, even if it means losing her sanity to achieve it.

I was filled with hate for her.

He was as well.

But I could not chase after this woman who wanted to save worlds. You could say that I was running away, after all, I finally found the place where I belonged. I finally found it. That’s why I could only pray that one day, he too would find it as well. 

I pulled my consciousness out of that realm. Leaving only images of my fragment who called himself as Amadan being taken into a cart, headed to a market where he would start again.

I saw them on the beach where they looked up. My little boy, my daughter, staring at the sky with glazed eyes. Her hand was clasped together. I fell down like a feather, and prompted myself upright, when they saw me coming out of the clouds, the falling stars shining behind me. I saw the joy that I have been looking for.

“Welcome back,” she said. My children grabbed on to my thighs as they cried.

They say that a bleak walker marches until they find their oasis.

I finally found it.

This was my oasis.