The Fallen Author's Heart in the Land of Love-Chapter 22: Rebirth

Her awakening was not gentle. It was a violent unearthing of something long buried—something terrible.

Colorless

Aira's world had become colorless.

No—not in the poetic sense. Not some melancholic exaggeration born of sadness. No, this was real. Visceral. All-consuming.

The trees were not brown or green or gold; they were pale silhouettes etched against a sky that had forgotten what blue was. The wind moved through them like breath through a corpse—soundless, scentless, meaningless. The birds no longer sang. The ground no longer felt solid. The world had become fragile. Hollow. Like wet paper waiting to tear.

The sky was no longer the sky. It was an empty lid—an upturned bowl of ashen black, sealing her inside a rotting shell.

And the people... oh, the people.

They moved, yes. They spoke. They worked and argued and cried. But they were nothing more than echoes. Smudges of humanity. Puppets on invisible strings, stitched together by hunger and habit. Their faces flickered at the edges, details bleeding into the air like spilled ink. They weren't real anymore. Not to her. Not to what she had become.

Aira was hollow.

Numb.

She had stopped dreaming. She had stopped feeling. Her body was alive, but her soul—whatever piece of it remained—had already crumbled into dust.

And yet she still walked. Still breathed. Still lingered.

Like a ghost that refused to vanish.

A Burden to the Living

She had thought, once, about going back.

Back to the village.

Back to that crumbling little home where the roof leaked when it rained and the floor was cold as a grave. Where her father's old coat still hung on the door like he might return any day.

But he wouldn't.

The guards had taken him. Dragged him away with hands wrapped in steel and eyes full of apathy. The noble's army needed bodies. Not warriors. Not soldiers. Just meat.

He had become meat.

Another name lost in the mud. Another scream swallowed by war. His body, perhaps, fed the crows. Or the worms. Or worse.

Her mother had been left behind. Not truly a widow, not truly a wife. A phantom stuck in waiting.

Seven children.

Seven fragile, starving, coughing children who all had the same sunken eyes and cracked lips. Who cried in the night from hunger until they no longer had the strength to cry.

If Aira returned, she would be an eighth mouth. An eighth weight pressing down on a woman already sinking.

She could see it now—see it too clearly.

Her mother, gaunt and trembling, pretending not to be hungry. Pretending she wasn't dying so her children could survive a few days longer. Breaking a crust of bread into eight pieces. Smiling while her insides devoured themselves.

If Aira went back...

She would kill them.

Quietly. Slowly. Stealing air from the lungs of her siblings. Stealing the last bit of warmth from a fire already going out.

She was a burden.

A shadow.

A ghost haunting the living.

And she hated herself for it.

The God Who Shouldn't Be

But then—

The thought.

That damnable, hideous, beautiful thought.

She wasn't normal.

She wasn't like them. Like the colorless crowd that wandered aimlessly from dawn to dusk. Because somewhere deep in her rotting soul, she knew something no one else did.

This world didn't come from the gods.

This world came from her.

She had created it.

Every tree. Every monster. Every crooked church bell and bloodstained blade.

The demons in the mountains. The angels in the sky. The cities carved from stone. The ancient forgotten ruins beneath the sea.

They all came from her.

From her mind.

Her stories.

Her hands.

But now—now, she knew almost nothing about it.

She was a god born without memory. A creator exiled from her own creation.

Aira laughed.

A small sound. Choked. Sick. Like a dying bird gasping on cracked stone.

If she told anyone—if she screamed the truth into the uncaring wind—what would happen?

Would they mock her?

Would they spit at her feet and call her mad?

Or—worse—would they believe her?

If they believed her, they would chain her. Burn her. Dismember her soul and scatter the pieces in salted earth.

The nobles would whisper her name behind closed doors. The church would declare her an abomination.

They would try to use her. To tame her.

They would try to worship her.

And that...

That would be the greatest cruelty of all.

Because if they believed she was a god, then the other gods—the real ones, the old ones, the monstrous ones—would take notice.

And they would not be merciful.

She would become the enemy of heaven.

The hunted of hell.

The devoured of gods.

The Madness Beneath

There was a noise in her head now.

A low, gnawing static. A whisper made of rust and glass. She could almost hear it forming words. Almost—but not quite.

Her skin didn't feel like skin anymore. It felt... thin. Like paper stretched too tight over something waiting underneath. Something that wanted to tear free.

The trees began watching her.

Not literally. Not with eyes. But with... presence.

The shadows moved differently when she passed. The wind curled around her like it recognized her shape.

The world remembered her.

And that was terrifying.

Because if the world remembered her, it meant it knew her. It feared her.

It resented her.

The very ground she walked on quivered, as though aware it was carrying its own mother.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fгeewebnovёl.co𝙢.

And in some far-off cathedral, a statue cracked down the middle.

The Waiting is Over

She had been waiting.

Oh gods, how long had she been waiting?

For something.

A miracle. A mentor. A prince in shining armor. A glowing sword buried in stone. Some revelation, some divine sign that would lift her out of misery and hand her the keys to her fate.

She had played her part like a fool in a stage play.

The sad orphan. The broken girl. The one destined for greatness.

But this wasn't a story.

This was her story.

She had been waiting for a miracle when she was the miracle.

She had been waiting for a savior when she had created salvation.

Why suffer? Why endure?

Why not reshape the world?

Why not devour it?

Becoming

The shadows bent toward her.

The light fled from her skin.

And something... awoke.

Aira's hands stopped trembling.

Her breath slowed, became steady, deep.

A pulse began in her chest. Not of blood, but of power.

Something dark. Ancient. Hungry.

The ground beneath her feet rippled as if reality itself had flinched.

And then—she smiled.

Not kindly. Not sweetly.

It was a thin, cruel thing. A blade wrapped in skin.

Because her journey was no longer about surviving.

No.

It was about taking control.

Breaking the world open like a rotten egg and rebuilding it from its bones.

She was not a god.

Not yet.

But she would become one.

No.

She would become something more.

Aira looked up.

The sky did not smile back.

The wind turned cold.

And far away—deep in some celestial realm—an old god opened a single eye.

Aira's new life had begun.

And the world had just earned a new nightmare.