Six Centuries of Silence

゚・。。・ ゚ ゚・。。・ ゚

Here Come The Cat - Waitress

𐔌՞꜆.  ̫.꜀՞𐦯

WARNINGS: Reunion After Centuries, Unresolved Past, Emotional Tension, Sarcasm, Divine Entity, Former Accomplices, Mystery, Angst.

☆ ゚・。。・ ゚ ゚・。。・ ゚★

Jodah was used to getting what he wanted at any cost, never hesitating even when it meant stepping over others to achieve his goals. Life itself had taught him to be this way — cruel and merciless, leaving him no chance at a carefree childhood and allowing his curse to awaken long before its appointed time.

He was born in Skyzerne, into one of the courtly families — the Avi bloodline. Its members were destined to sustain their own existence at the expense of other people's lives, consuming them through their power of extraction. It was hardly surprising that those around them regarded them with fear, disgust, and hatred. Jodah came to know all of this in early childhood, long before he was old enough to understand what he had done to deserve such treatment.

At the magic school where he studied alongside other Skyzernians, everyone knew about his origins. For his classmates, that alone was enough to turn his life into an endless ordeal. Jodah became an outcast, facing mockery, humiliation, and torment every single day. His studies were difficult not because he lacked talent — on the contrary, he excelled at demonology. It was simply impossible to concentrate on learning when every day had to be spent among those who saw nothing but a monster in him.

The hostile atmosphere at school gradually became unbearable. Sometimes, he wanted to stop leaving the house altogether, if only to avoid encountering those who poisoned his existence. "Every day, my only wish was to get out of that wretched place as soon as possible," he would later recall.

The power of consumption usually awakened in the men of the Avi bloodline at exactly thirteen years of age. Afterward, they were sent to Dismist, where they were trained in the art of discreet killing, prepared for the fate that awaited them. With Jodah, however, everything went differently. His power awakened much earlier — at the age of ten, in a fit of uncontrollable rage. It was then that he consumed Lemak, one of his main tormentors, whose constant companions in their bullying were Robin and Varia.

That moment became a turning point in his life. Jodah realized that he had no intention of passively accepting the fate that had already been decided for him. He had no desire to become an obedient instrument of someone else's will, silently carrying out the role of executioner assigned to him. Instead, a firm determination took root in his heart — one day, he would make everyone who had turned his childhood into a nightmare regret what they had done.

And yet, even in such a bleak life, Jodah had something truly precious.

You.

You were a fellow resident of Skyzerne, just like him, but the only person who never saw his origins as a reason for fear or disgust. You had reached out to him yourself, without waiting for him to ask for your friendship. You never pulled away when everyone else turned their backs on him, nor did you join in the mockery when his classmates repeatedly reminded him of the bloodline he had been born into.

People tried to talk you out of it. They warned you that getting involved with someone from the Avi bloodline was a bad idea. They whispered behind your back, condemned your choice, and frightened you with claims that his nature would inevitably reveal itself one day. But you stayed by his side, as though none of their words mattered to you in the slightest.

You never tried to change him, never demanded proof that he deserved your trust, and never looked at him as though a monster were sitting before you. You simply saw him as Jodah — a boy who, just like anyone else, wanted to have someone he could trust.

You became the only person around whom he didn't have to defend himself against the entire world. His first true friend.

And time and time again, Jodah found himself reminded of this. Even when he consumed his own tormentor, you didn't turn your back on him after learning what had happened. You didn't run away, look at him with horror and disgust, or begin questioning what he had become. You stayed by his side, as though nothing had changed. And perhaps it was then that he finally came to believe that, in this cruel world, there really was someone who wouldn't betray him because of his curse.

Nearly six hundred years had passed. During that time, while residing in Skyzerne, Jodah had consumed approximately twenty thousand lives and eight hundred abilities. The hunger that tormented him from within knew no mercy, and his curse allowed him no peace. Year after year, he continued to kill until he finally resolved to do something truly monstrous — perform the forbidden ritual of consuming a thousand demons. The final line, beyond which there would be no turning back.

But you had never been merely a bystander.

For centuries, you had walked alongside him, helping him find victims, lure them into traps, and personally bring before him those whose lives were to become yet another price for his existence. You knew what you were doing. You knew how many lives were cut short by your own will. And yet, you continued to convince yourself that there was no other way, that one day it would all come to an end and Jodah would finally be able to live without enduring eternal torment.

You became his anchor, his justification, and his accomplice. The person who saw not a monster in him, but that same boy who had once sat alone amid mockery and hatred. You clung to your memories of him as though they could justify everything the two of you had done together.

And then the day finally came when the ritual was complete.

Jodah had obtained what he wanted. The curse no longer tormented him from within, the eternal hunger had finally fallen silent, and with it disappeared the very threat of death. He had attained absolute immortality — the freedom he had pursued for six centuries.

Silence fell.

You watched him, expecting to see relief, to hear something — anything — that would confirm that all those years of suffering, all the bloodshed, all the lives sacrificed had not been in vain. But standing before you was Jodah, his gaze empty and uncharacteristically calm. No more pain. No more hunger. No more need to keep killing.

And only then did you finally understand.

You had done it all for nothing.

For six hundred years, you had justified cruelty as a necessity, convincing yourself that other people's lives were merely the price of his freedom. You had helped him step over countless bodies because you believed that one day he would be able to stop. And now, when that day had finally arrived, you discovered that you yourself had become someone you could hardly recognize.

Jodah was free.

And you were left with twenty thousand deaths on your conscience, the blood of the innocent on your hands, and the realization that not one of those victims would ever return. There was no longer a curse to blame for what you had done. No necessity capable of justifying every murder. And no purpose left that could allow you to keep turning a blind eye to your own actions.

But the disappearance of an entire race could not go unnoticed by Time itself.

Soon, the Watcher found Jodah. Seeing the aftermath of the ritual and concluding that he had exterminated the entire demon race, he made no attempt to investigate the truth. Jodah was taken to the Prison of Time, leaving you behind.

In reality, the demons had not vanished without a trace — they were all inside Jodah's mind, consumed by him during the ritual. But you had no time to explain this to the Watcher, prove your innocence, or even secure an opportunity to say goodbye.

Everything happened too quickly.

Only moments ago, you had been by Jodah's side, sharing a secret that had endured for centuries. Now, you were returning to your homeland alone. Without him. Without the only person for whom you had once crossed the line — and continued crossing it again and again.

And it was at that very moment that the first crack appeared in your worldview.

For the first time in six hundred years, you were forced to face yourself alone — without Jodah, without his curse, without the need to save him from his torment. There was no one left to protect, no one left to place above everyone else. There was not even a way to convince yourself that one day, all of this would finally have meaning.

You returned to Skyzerne as the same person you had once sworn to remain — his loyal friend.

But now, you were no longer certain that you still knew what that meant.

The Prison of Time was no ordinary place of confinement, one that could be escaped by finding a loophole or waiting for the right moment. It was a sanctuary for the most notorious and dangerous criminals who had dared to violate the laws of the multiverse itself. Here, the familiar concept of a sentence did not exist: prisoners were granted an eternity to reflect on their deeds, and far from everyone managed to retain their sanity after spending even a small fraction of that eternity in captivity.

The warden and master of this place was the Watcher — the embodiment of Time and Death in a single being. His authority extended far beyond the comprehension of ordinary creatures. And if he ever took someone into his domain, hoping for leniency was nothing short of naive.

You knew this. Or, at the very least, you suspected as much.

Jodah was not someone you could simply wait for at your doorstep. You had no way of knowing how many eternities he would have to spend in captivity, whether he would ever be allowed to return, or whether you were destined to see him again at all. Perhaps your next meeting would take place centuries from now. Perhaps thousands of years would pass. Or perhaps it would never happen.

Gradually, this thought became your constant companion.

Day after day, you found yourself returning to it, even when you tried to occupy yourself with familiar routines. It surfaced in the silence of the night, in unexpected memories, in places you had once visited together. Sometimes, you could almost convince yourself that all you had to do was turn around, and Jodah would be standing beside you, just as he had been for six centuries. But the moment the illusion faded, reality caught up with you once more: now, what lay between you was not merely an eternity, but the Prison of Time itself.

And for the first time in centuries, you had no idea what to do next.

You had grown accustomed to living for him, to treating his well-being as the purpose behind your every action, even when those actions became monstrous. But now, he was gone. All that remained were memories, the weight of everything you had done, and a tormenting sense of uncertainty.

You did not know whether you missed Jodah himself — or the person you had been when you were by his side.

Yet the more time passed, the more often you caught yourself thinking that you wanted to see him again. Not to justify yourself. Not to return everything to the way it had been.

Simply to look into his eyes one day and understand whether anything remained between you of the friendship that had once seemed unbreakable.

But eventually, it all became unbearable.

You could no longer keep returning to the past endlessly, reliving the same memories over and over again and hoping that the pain would eventually subside on its own. You understood that you would never be able to wash the blood from your hands. No amount of remorse would bring the dead back to life, and forgiveness would not undo what had been done. And yet, you did not want to spend the rest of eternity imprisoned by your own sins.

If you were destined to carry them for the rest of your days, then you would have to learn to live with them. Acknowledge every single one, stop searching for excuses, and one day find the strength to forgive yourself — without forgetting what you had done, but without allowing the past to consume your present entirely.

That was precisely why you decided to leave.

You left Skyzerne — the homeland that held far too many memories for you to remain there any longer. Every familiar corner reminded you of Jodah, of the centuries you had spent together, and of the person you had become during that time. You needed a place where no one knew your name, where the past would not follow you like a long, bloodstained shadow.

That was how you found another world.

Almost no one spoke of it. Some knew of its existence only through rumors, others preferred not to concern themselves with it at all, while a third group deliberately steered clear of it. Nearly abandoned, with a tiny settlement and only a handful of inhabitants, it seemed to have become lost among the countless worlds of the multiverse — unwanted by everyone and noticed by no one.

The perfect place to start over.

You settled there, gradually growing accustomed to the unfamiliar silence and the unhurried rhythm of life. You would have to make certain that not a single trace of your former existence remained — no name, no connections, no records that might one day lead someone to you.

You wanted to disappear so completely that it would be as though you had never belonged to the world in which you had spent the first six hundred years of your life.

And only when everything was ready, when the past had been left far behind and your new life had finally begun to take shape, did you allow yourself one final step.

You ran away.

Not from the Watcher, not from punishment, and not even from Jodah. You ran away from the person you had once been, hoping that far from everything familiar, you might manage to become someone else.

However, some things cannot be left behind simply by moving somewhere new. The past can be buried, a name can be forgotten, and one's own story can be hidden from an entire world.

But you cannot hide from yourself.

Upon finding himself in the Prison of Time, Jodah could never have imagined just how drastically his life would change after meeting Lucius. It was Lucius who helped him regain his freedom and, in doing so, introduced him to the existence of gods, demigods, and Zephyrion, the viceroy of Skyzerne. Through Lucius, Jodah also learned of a world threatened with destruction — a small, insignificant corner of the multiverse that Zephyrion intended to erase from existence.

For Jodah, this was reason enough to act. He had no intention of allowing anyone to dictate the fate of entire worlds while he himself remained powerless against the authority of others. But before setting his plans into motion, he returned to his homeland.

And he did not find you.

Not a trace. Not a single reliable mention of where you might have gone. Everything connecting you to your former life had either remained untouched, as though you had left only a few days earlier, or vanished without a trace. You had not died — at least, nothing suggested that you had. And yet, finding you proved impossible.

Jodah could not understand what had happened. Why had you left Skyzerne? Why had you left not a single clue behind? And, most importantly, why had you not even tried to wait for his return?

He spent some time searching for you, but circumstances soon demanded that he turn his attention to matters of far greater magnitude. That did not mean he had forgotten you. It was simply that he now had to change the very balance of power within the multiverse, and he could not afford to postpone his plans.

Thus began his new game.

While in Dalivarik, Jodah accidentally absorbed the powers of the demigoddess Eola, who had been trying to save the fairies from a dying world. Her magic affected him, awakening an unfamiliar sense of compassion and forcing him to look at certain things differently. Even so, it could not persuade him to abandon his ultimate goal — becoming a god.

Gradually, Jodah began shaping Dalivarik under his own leadership. He established schools of magic, founded the Order of the Great Tree, and met Dovin Baan. Soon afterward, he encountered Lucius once again and attempted to absorb his magic, but Eola's powers prevented him from doing so directly.

That was when Jodah found another way.

He decided to use the Tree as a conduit capable of bypassing the restrictions imposed on him by Eola's magic. To carry out his plan, Jodah erased Lucius's memories, created the O.U.D., and established a barrier designed to weaken the demigod's powers and deprive him of any chance to escape. He deliberately led those around him to believe that the world stood on the brink of an apocalypse and that only the demigod's powers could restore the disrupted balance.

All of this was part of a meticulously devised plan. Jodah took Lucius's powers and left his own diary somewhere the members of the Order of the Tree and Lololoshka could discover it. He expected them to take action and attempt to stop him, never suspecting that they were becoming participants in a game whose rules he himself had established.

At the same time, Jodah struck a deal with Lucius: Lucius would provide him with information about the Interworld-Demiurge, and in exchange, Jodah promised to free him from the Prison of Time.

He then sought out Dovin Baan and, together with the Heavenly Enclave, established Sinelist — a new home for the inhabitants of Skyzerne. Afterward, Jodah traveled to Abyssa to hand her over to the Watcher, thereby strengthening his relationship with the god of time.

He wanted to prove that his intentions had never been about mindless destruction, and, in the process, he also made a request to the Interworld-Demiurge, hoping to absorb his powers later and gain the ability to travel freely between worlds.

Zephyrion was the last on that list. Jodah absorbed his powers and sent the former viceroy to the Prison of Time, irrevocably altering the balance of power.

Once everything was complete, Jodah returned to Dalivarik, to his own office, where the members of the Order of the Tree were already waiting for him. There, he revealed his plan, returned Lucius to them, and distributed the powers he had acquired among those he trusted. Celesti received a portion of Eola's powers, while his brother Jace inherited Zephyrion's powers and the Celestial Cradle. Jodah declared the latter the viceroy of the new Skyzerne.

He also proved to the Watcher that demigods were no longer necessary to maintain order, handed over his entire library to the Order, and brought Katrina and Argus back from the dead world of the fairies.

But even after all of this, Jodah understood that the members of the Order would hardly ever forgive him for his betrayal and manipulation. So he staged his own death and disappeared, leaving the others to deal with the consequences of his decisions.

The final scene, in which the High Council plays chess, only confirmed what had happened. Jodah was no longer a piece controlled by someone else's power. He had become a new player — a god capable of independently influencing the course of events throughout the multiverse.

And yet, among all the worlds, plans, and newfound possibilities, there remained something Jodah had still failed to achieve.

He had not found you.

Even after becoming a god, even after acquiring powers that allowed him to alter the fates of entire worlds, he could not find the one person who had been by his side long before any of this began. The one who knew him not as a powerful mage, the founder of the Order, or a new player on the High Council's chessboard, but as a lonely boy from Skyzerne whom the entire world had once rejected.

He kept searching. He returned to old leads, tried to discover where you might have disappeared to, and investigated anything that could possibly lead him to you. But every time, his efforts came to nothing.

You seemed to have dissolved into the countless worlds of the multiverse, deliberately erasing every trace of your existence.

Jodah did not know that you had chosen to disappear. He did not know that you had found a quiet, almost forgotten world and tried to begin a new life there. And he certainly could not have known that the reason behind your departure was not indifference, but your inability to continue living with the weight of the past.

Perhaps he believed you had died. Perhaps he thought you had come to hate him and had chosen never to see him again. Or perhaps, somewhere deep inside, he still hoped that one day you would simply appear before him, just as you used to after another difficult day, asking for no explanations and posing no unnecessary questions.

But time passed, and you never appeared.

The irony was that Jodah, who had devoted six centuries of his life to freeing himself from his own curse, had ultimately attained divine power — and yet remained powerless in the face of your disappearance.

And the worst part was that Jodah himself could not understand where this longing had come from. Perhaps it was Eola's powers, which had made him more sensitive to the feelings of others and his own emotions. Perhaps it was the belated realization of his own guilt. Whatever the reason, he finally acknowledged what he had once preferred to dismiss: he missed you.

Sometimes, when returning to your former home, he would involuntarily imagine finding you in the kitchen. As though nothing had changed over the centuries, as though you had merely stepped out for a little while and would turn around at the sound of his footsteps at any moment. A foolish, sentimental thought, utterly unbecoming of someone who had only recently attained divinity. And yet, it kept returning, again and again.

After all, your bond had never been limited to friendship alone. There was something far darker and more complicated between you — shared guilt, shared crimes, shared blood on your hands. Both of you knew far too well what you were capable of when another person's life became a bargaining chip in pursuit of what you desired.

And, philosophically speaking, you were bound together by a shared darkness — the very same darkness that could consume you both if either of you ever stopped resisting it.

Perhaps that was precisely why your disappearance troubled Jodah more than he cared to admit. He knew you. He knew you were capable of cruelty, but he also remembered the person you had been before centuries of killing turned your friendship into something burdened by blood and regret. And now, he could not understand what exactly had driven you to leave.

Had you become afraid of what you had turned into? Had you grown to hate him? Or had you simply looked down at your own hands one day and realized that you could no longer continue living the way you once had?

But why couldn't he find you?

Divine power allowed him to interfere with the fates of entire worlds, reshape established orders, and challenge those who had once seemed beyond his reach. Yet, in the face of your disappearance, all of it proved useless. Neither his newfound abilities, nor his knowledge, nor the possibilities now at his disposal had brought him any closer to an answer.

Perhaps the demons he had consumed six centuries ago would have laughed at such irony. The one who had once taken thousands of lives to secure his own liberation could no longer find the one person he so desperately wanted to see.

Well, he had eternity at his disposal. More than enough time to think. And he had plenty of responsibilities, concerns, and new schemes to keep himself from dwelling on the past for too long.

At least, that was what he told himself.

☆ ゚・。。・ ゚ ゚・。。・ ゚★

Now, however, let us return to the present.

That day, Jodah was occupied with one of his numerous schemes, which eventually brought him to a world that rarely attracted the attention of the multiverse's inhabitants. It was so obscure and remote that, without a specific purpose, he would probably never have bothered to visit it.

And, he had to admit, the world wasn't all that bad.

Upon setting foot on the ground, Jodah folded his wings and leisurely surveyed his surroundings. The nature here was beautiful in its own way, the locals seemed reasonably agreeable, and the settlement itself appeared quite peaceful. Nothing extraordinary, but nothing particularly deserving of contempt either. Then again, he hadn't come here to admire the scenery.

He needed more information.

As he passed the locals, Jodah repeatedly caught them staring after him in bewilderment. It was unlikely that someone with wings appeared in their settlement every day, especially someone whose mere presence raised so many questions. This prompted a quiet snort from him, but he had no intention of lingering just to satisfy other people's curiosity.

Soon, one of the houses caught his attention. It was reasonably spacious, well-maintained, and no more remarkable than any of the others. A perfectly suitable place to begin his inquiries.

Jodah stopped at the door and knocked.

Perhaps he should have used his ability to see the future. Predicted who would answer the door, prepared the appropriate words, and calculated the possible outcomes. The sort of ordinary foresight he so often demanded of others.

But for some reason, this time, he hadn't considered it necessary to look ahead.

And perhaps that was precisely the decision he would come to regret first.

The door opened.

Jodah froze.

For a moment, the world around him seemed to lose all meaning. His purpose for coming here vanished, along with the questions he had intended to ask and the carefully constructed chain of thoughts in his mind. Even the familiar confidence with which he had grown accustomed to facing every unexpected turn of events began to crack.

Because standing on the threshold was you.

Not a ghost from his memories, not another baseless fantasy conjured by his own longing, and not the image he had imagined countless times while returning to your empty home.

You were here. Alive. Real.

The very person he had been searching for all this time.

The very person he had thought might be lost to him forever.

And for the first time in a very long while, Jodah had absolutely nothing to say.

After letting the silence stretch on, Jodah slowly exhaled. That barely audible breath carried far too much within it: the absurdity of the situation, the tension of the past six centuries, and the familiar cynical irony he invariably used to conceal everything he had no desire to reveal to those around him.

The corners of his mouth twitched, forming the semblance of his familiar, faintly arrogant smirk. His eyes, however, betrayed him far more effectively than any words could. Far too many emotions lurked beneath his outward composure for him to genuinely remain indifferent to what was happening.

"You know," he finally began, his voice regaining its usual velvety smoothness, though unfamiliar notes of tension still lingered beneath it, "I've had time to consider a good dozen possible fates for you. Everything from a mundane murder in some backwater tavern to a ridiculous disappearance into a spatial rift caused by the instability of the local magic. The latter, I must confess, seemed considerably more likely."

He tilted his head slightly, as though contemplating his own words, before his smirk grew more pronounced.

"But I must give you credit. The possibility of voluntarily relocating to the middle of nowhere, establishing a cozy home, and living a quiet life far removed from everything else never occurred to me. I suppose that's the one scenario I was incapable of predicting."

Without waiting for an invitation, Jodah stepped forward and crossed the threshold, as though his habitual inclination to command the space around him had proved stronger than even the most basic courtesy. His wings stirred almost imperceptibly behind him before folding more tightly against his back. His gaze swept over the interior of the house, keenly noting every little thing, every detail that might reveal more about your life than you would have willingly told him yourself.

He didn't spend long examining the surroundings, though.

His attention returned to you.

"Six centuries," he reminded you, emphasizing each word with deliberate slowness. "Six. Hundred. Years."

Jodah raised his eyebrows slightly, as though even he were astonished by the sheer scale of what had transpired.

"In that time, I've rid myself of a curse, escaped the Prison of Time, acquired powers I once could only dream of, and finally taken my place among those accustomed to commanding the fates of entire worlds. I must admit, I assumed that beings of our... stature preferred to leave ruins in their wake, overturn established orders, or at the very least accomplish something sufficiently grand that they would still be remembered several thousand years from now."

He took another step, closing the distance between you, and stopped just a few paces from the threshold. His golden gaze studied your face intently, as though searching for even the slightest hint of an answer that had eluded him for so long.

"And yet, all you left me was an empty house, vanished traces, and so much uncertainty that even I began to find it irritating."

For a moment, his smirk faded.

Something ancient and dark flickered in the depths of his golden eyes — an echo of those centuries when your fates had been bound together far more closely than either of you would have cared to admit. A memory of the blood you had once shared, the crimes you had committed side by side, and the fact that, after everything you had endured, you had chosen to disappear without even giving him the chance to say goodbye.

But the shadow vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Jodah once again donned his familiar mask of composure, though what lay concealed behind it now was less cold calculation than a burning curiosity.

After all, he had found you.

And now, he intended to find out why you had made him search for so long.

"Well," he drawled, spreading his hands slightly as though granting you the freedom to choose in a situation whose outcome he had already calculated in his mind, "what shall it be? Will you slam the door in a deity's face, pretending you have no idea who stands before you, or will you finally show your old accomplice some hospitality?"

His smile once again took on its familiar air of arrogance.

"I assure you, I can survive a refusal. Although, I must confess, it would be rather amusing to discover that, even after everything we've been through, my manners have finally lost their appeal altogether."

He paused briefly, never taking his eyes off you.

"And afterward, I suppose we'll talk. About the six centuries of your absence, about why not a single trace of you remained, and about what exactly made you choose this forgotten corner of the multiverse over everything you once held dear."

His smirk slowly faded, leaving behind nothing but an attentive, almost piercing gaze.

"And this time," Jodah added more quietly, "I'd prefer to hear the truth. All of it. No omissions, no pretty excuses, and no disappearing act before I have the chance to get my answers."

He fell silent, finally allowing the quiet to fill the space between you.

For the first time in a very long while, Jodah found himself facing a mystery he couldn't solve through sheer power, careful calculation, or interference in someone else's fate alone.

And that mystery was you.