BLITHE  —  Devourer of Worlds
Chapter I.VIII

Blithe stood in the middle of the burning village of a star cluster.

She stood there as she always did. No emotions. No remorse.

“Your Highness! There are no survivors left!” a henchman enthusiastically shouted at her while grinning.

Blithe looked at her emotionless.

“Acknowledged. You may go. I will follow to our base shortly,” she said and dismissed her.

She bowed and left with the others.

Blithe furrowed her eyebrows once every henchmen left the star cluster. Her mask of indifference was exhausting to maintain.

But she had no choice to reign all her emotions in. She had to look the part. Otherwise, people would catch on to what she was doing behind the scenes.

She has perfected it.

Creating a black hole with an exit point to another place. A black hole with just enough power to bring anyone in another space and weak enough to not tear anyone inside apart.

She had mastered it before the next job her father gave her, thanks to Nikos’ help and her practice.

And Nikos, who has been her accomplice, has been helping her with transporting survivors. He would lure them away, pretending to chase them, and push them towards a black hole transporting them to a safer place in the universe.

Blithe surveyed the area.

Burned-down houses.

Destroyed buildings.

Lifeless bodies.

She closed her eyes tightly. She had been doing this for quite some time now ever since they ventured out again.

46 star systems.

She has already been to 46 star systems. With each star system, she did her best to save what she could, sent anyone within her reach to safety.

But of course, she still couldn't save everyone. Her henchmen often did their job. If she pulled them into a black hole at that moment, her henchmen would be suspicious. And she couldn't let them find out her new ability either.

It wasn't realistic to save everyone. She knew that but a part of her heart couldn't accept it fully.

Her heart was heavy with guilt but she offered herself a tiny bit of comfort. If she could help minimize the damage, it would be enough.

…

But was it ever enough?

She was getting tired. She didn't know how long she could last.

She approached one of the lifeless bodies on the ground. A guard who protected the village with his very life. She reached out to close his open eyes.

“I’m sorry,” her hand trembled.

Blithe found herself often whispering those words for the past few months. She spoke it so often that she even wondered if she was truly sincere with her apologies.

She looked at her hand, now bloodied. She stood up and looked around. She remembered there was a lake nearby when she was studying the map of this place. She headed towards it and squatted at the edge of the water to wash her hands.

As she scrubbed her hands, she noticed a white swan approaching her. It swam towards her just stopping a few feet away in front of her.

It stared at her and she stared back, as if in trance.

It looked so peaceful and pure, unlike her.

CLINK.

“You tried your best, Your Highness.”

Blithe snapped from her trance and turned her head to look at Nikos approaching in the corner of her eye.

“But, sometimes we just can't save everyone.”

Blithe paused and returned to washing her hands. She scrubbed them so hard that she wouldn't be surprised if her hands inside her gloves turned red .

Nikos had seen her crumble after everyone left after every job. He could see her fall apart every time she saw the dead bodies on the ground once the chaos disappeared—lives that she wished she could save.

“Your Highness?”

“I know,” she hurriedly answered.

“It’s only been months, so… I haven't come to terms with that fact yet,” she answered, almost forcing the words out.

She stopped washing her hands and placed them on her lap, looking up at the sky, slowly dimming. “You’ve been doing this for a long time, right? How did you cope with this feeling?”

Nikos took a deep breath. “To be honest, I don't know how to answer that optimistically… But sometimes, you just need to desensitize yourself to death, so that you can help more people to live…”

“So, in other words… There's no escaping it,” Blithe laughed humorlessly.

“Yeah,” Nikos couldn't say anymore.

“I’m finally able to feel, but I need to reign it all in again… The irony,” Blithe wryly smiled as she looked at her reflection on the lake.

The swan from before swam a little bit closer to her.

“I would say it would be nice to be emotionless again, but knowing what I know now, it would hurt to be ignorant once again…”

…

Then a thought entered her mind, and she blurted it out.

“What if I just… disappeared?”

A heavy silence fell upon them.

Nikos looked at Blithe's back, horrified by the hopeless tone of her voice. It was so different from the time she was proudly showing him that her black hole finally worked, how happy she was when they both successfully warped into that uninhabited star system. He couldn't see what face she's making.

Blithe had tossed away this idea before, claiming that she didn't deserve to choose her own death while others didn't get a choice under her own hands.

But during these 46 jobs, the idea began clawing back in her mind. She started to entertain it again.

She was just so tired. Her initial hope of being able to save people was being extinguished by the reality of not being able to save them all.

An uncomfortable silence dawned upon the two of them.

Nikos furrowed his eyebrows, closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

“You know,” Nikos suddenly broke the silence. “My parents were long-time followers of the Dark Emperor. I basically got born into it. Never really had a choice on that.”

“I grew up following in their footsteps—following orders, killing people, destroying places, devoting myself to the Dark Emperor,” he winced at past memories he wanted to forget.

“But being on these jobs, I've started to notice how beautiful the sights are outside the Dark Empire… How life looked so… full of life— What they're really meant to look like... How we’re missing out on so much. I started to imagine myself living in it, even tried to make plans to escape and… maybe venture out to the Light King's territory but…” he looked down.

“Thinking about all the things that I’ve already done, I believed that I don't deserve to live among them — that I should just stay where I am and live with that for the rest of my life. What's the point? They’re probably going to kill me once they find out I’m a Dark Matter anyway,” he wiped away the tears forming in his eyes.

“And then I just stayed there, thinking the best I can do is to try to help to the best of my ability—” Nikos placed his hands on his hips, bit his lips and looked up, attempting to stop himself from crying anymore.

“I’m a coward. I hate myself.”

Nikos’ words carried such a huge weight, not just for him but to Blithe as well—because she felt the same way.

He heard her sniffling.

“I’m so tired, Nikos. I just want this feeling to end. It feels like it's not going to get any better,” Blithe sobbed into her hands.

The swan swam closer again.

“I know. Because, I’ve already been in your shoes, Your Highness,” Nikos nodded as he looked at her trembling shoulders.

He looked up at the sky again and saw it was dimming faster than before—a sign that the star cluster they were in was already dying.

“But you know what?” he turned his gaze to her once again. “I started to entertain the idea of going to the Light King again because of you,” he said with resolve.

“Not because I have a death wish… but because you gave me hope.”

Blithe’s tears stopped when he uttered those words.

“What? Why?” Blithe weakly asked as she turned around to look at him.

“Looking at you and everything you've accomplished, made me feel like we finally have a future. Like we finally have a different path, a different choice. T-That something's going to happen if we take risks. That we have a fighting chance under your leadership,” Nikos gestured with his hands to take the point across.

“Remember what I told you about your plan to go to the Light King. Maybe it's time to pick it up again,” he clenched his fists.

“This regret and pain we're feeling. Nothing's going to end if we just stay at the same place for the rest of our lives. We must sacrifice what we can. And with you here on our side, I feel like we can finally have a future.”

“So, if you disappear, that hope will be gone. Please, don't leave us.”

He bowed, pleading to her not to give up, to stay strong for a chance to change their future.

He realizes that it was selfish of him to say that to her in that state, maybe a little manipulative, but everything he said was sincere.

He really started to look at her as their hope and chance. He wanted her to know how much her existence means to him and his group.

That memory of her laughing while kicking the sand and water replayed in his mind.

He wanted to see it again, and together with his group.

“Hope…” she muttered to herself as she stood up.

Nikos closed his eyes.

“Well,” she started. “If I’m thinking of dying, I might as well do something that can change our lives, right?”

Nikos straightened up and looked at the woman in front of her.

Her face bore a sorrowful yet peaceful expression.

“Then, please help me again, Nikos.”

The star cluster started to crumble around them.

The swan from earlier got out of the lake and walked to the Blithe's side.