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Water made its way into his lungs just like air had not more than an hour ago, and came out with the same ease.
Hunter could still feel his lungs full nonetheless.
The shore he had been thrown on was cold.
Colder than the air in the throne room, its stone walls having seen their last ray of sun long before he came into existence.
Colder than the air back when he had survided the Knee.
Colder than the shoulder his one and only reason had given him for the sixteen years he had been alive for.
Half-alive would be more accurate.
Hunter did not know where he was for a brief moment. Darkness inaded his senses like the sweetest of lullabies.
Emptiness.
Nothing.
The castle stood before him, as familiarly imponent as ever. Its gilded shine was set ablaze with a cold white light, almost blinding him. He knew the halls closest to the many stained glass windows would bear the colorful shadow of those glistening pictures, stories told of past conquers and promises of salvation.
Salvation that wasn't his.
Hunter looked down at his hands.
Almost every inch was covered in scratches, every part of his arms bruised or bloody.
The cold salt air that swept by made his injuries sting a little.
Salt in the wounds.
It felt weird, standing outside while not in armor.
It was weird.
Not taking pride in any accomplishment he were to report, nor feeling any fear at the aftermath of failure before those doors. His brain was pretty much empty, if it weren't for the soft swishing of the tides behind him.
It was weird.
He remembered always thinking of the well around the castle as a faded memory of the water that once reigned there. Right as he had arrived, they had appeared furious, violent. Dangerous. Now, they were barely more than a loving whisper, reassuring him after the rocky climb.
Climb?
Of course, otherwise how had he gotten all the across the spiky rocks that surrounded the castle?
Only then Hunter realized small glass-like shards surrounding most of his many wounds like some sort of storytelling glitter. The soft swishing of the sea spoke to him in words he didn't comprehend, for reasons he didn't understand, an untranslateable guide which, somehow, guided his hand, an invisible force erasing his hesitation.
He knew what he had to do.
Hunter knocked at the door.
He had come a long way for this.
As soon as his hand touched the door, he felt an unfathomable amount of peace sweep through his self.
That was what he was born to do.
Three noisy strikes of the handle disturbed the odd tranquility of the place.
Hunter was astounded by the presence.
Long ago, back when he still hoped one day the lost memories Belos had told him about would be able to emerge, a long-lost comfort to ease his worries, he had thought about this.
The door, despite its heaviness, opened softly.
Far more tenderly than he had ever been held inside of the castle.
Hunter wasn't sure what he expected.
Long ago, back when his skin wasn't yet tarnished with the consequences of his search for love, he had been told about the Titan.
He would lower his head, unable to look at them in the face, the face of the beauty of creation. The face that was a giving light, the face that had to die for him to come alive.
The Titan would surely be displeased with something.
The Titan had big plans for him, and yet, he hadn't been always able to fulfill them.
The Titan would know.
The Titan was preciously divine, the Titan was everything just like everything was the Titan.
Instead, the Titan spoke, their hide dark yet bone gleaming.
"Peace be with you. What do you look for, boy?"
For a split second, he felt his voice disappear. Still, without even thinking twice, Hunter responded.
"What you just wished me.
Peace."
"Hunter, where do you come from?"
"From the other side of the water. From within the castle." He took a second, fidgeting with the least painful parts of his hands he could identify.
"From within the ground.
From you."
The Titan awaited.
"I... I have bled on all the thorns, hurt on all the rocks. I landed on pebbles on the shore."
The Titan stared, compassively.
"Are you aware of what you will find here?"
Hunter nodded, yet didn't answer out loud.
The paradise of not thinking.
"Aren't you scared of unconsciousness?"
He had been unconscious many, many times; more often than not at the same hands that longed for grandiosity yet never cared about him being the disposable means.
Every night, when the castle's silence was only interrupted by tired steps of even more tired scouts, those brief moments of alleged peace as he slept were some of his most precious memories, even if they were not to be remembered.
The gaps in his memory Belos always talked about were, in a way, a true bliss. Hunter could pretend whatever he wanted with those empty spaces, even if imagining a life kinder than the one he lived turned into one of the many things he wished for the Titan before him not to see.
"Hunter, your most precious ideas, the most beautiful of hopes, will be gone. There will be no more voices, never again will understanding be a problem as it will have left. No longer will memories appear, whether to haunt or ease. Do you truly understand? Is that what you desire?"
Hunter nodded.
"Those you have loved and those who have loved you will leave your mind, though you won't leave theirs."
They would be buried along him.
In a way his mind could not entirely comprehend, the thought of resting as a memory, somebody else's, put him at ease, except for one particular case.
"You will not remember your name, any trace of your self will be gone with the tides."
There wouldn't be much to erase anyways.
It would be so little to wash, only a single rinse needed.
I will be happy.
"Will I be happy?" instead he spoke.
"You might, but will you even realize it? Here, no self will appear. No identity, no name, not a trace of who you once were, but not of who you will be either. The relationship you have to me, to other beings, ends. Here, you are one with everything. Are you sure peace is what you long for?"
He wanted to nod. Almost desperately.
Instead, he hesitaded.
He wanted to nod.
Almost desperately.
"Peace is not only here. True, you can find its eternal form;" the Titan said as he gestured behind.
"However, I think we both know eternal, forever, is not precisely what you look for."
Hunter didn't blink.
"Peace before unfinished caring. Peace before unfinished happiness. Peace before yourself.
Leaving your self before finding it."
Hunter's hesitation interrupted the peacefulness of the place, setting the cloudy skies ablaze with the light of life force.
Life force now offered to him.
"It's yours if you decide to take it."
Hunter knew exactly which option it was about.
Hunter nodded.
The touch of warm tides began surrounding him.
Hunter knew one day the memory of that well would become too alive for its extinction.
The Titan nodded back at him.
Hunter closed his eyes as the waters engulfed him, the last feeling his fingertips perceived that of soft feathers and love.
With the last space he had, Hunter muttered.
"Thank you for finding me".
~(X)~
Hunter's lungs expulsed every remaining trace of liquid.
The cold night air pierced them.
About half a dozen stares pierced through him.
The feeling of acidic goo pierced his skin where there had been wounds not long ago.
Hunter had made it out of those too shallow waters.