Waiting For Your Reincarnation Chapter 158

The goddess, having rid the world of Iris’ existence, fled the temple in triumph.

 

Zephyto fell to his knees and bowed his head in anger. At the goddess for killing Iris so hastily, and at himself for being so complacent about it all.

 

Alone in the temple, he relived the nightmare, seeing clearly, even with his eyes closed, how her body had shattered into pieces and scattered into the void. Zephyto remembered the vow he had made in that moment.

 

‘I must die.’

 

This time, he would go straight after Iris.

 

Zephyto searched his mind for the time when Iris hadn’t existed. How much he must have suffered during that time. He could not bring himself to repeat that life twice.

 

Now that his thoughts had gone that far, he felt more at ease.

 

“Iris, please wait for me.”

 

It was time for him to gather his strength. Something shimmering in the distance caught Zephyto’s eye.

 

Something glowing where the goddess had swept away in her fury.

 

Zephyto approached the figure with a curious gaze.

 

On the floor lay a single shard of soul, glowing with the faintest of lights. It was a small, delicate form, and the moment he saw it, his emotions stirred.

 

There was an undestroyed soul fragment where ahe had destroyed Iris.

 

His heart raced again at the thought. Zephyto whispered, his voice trembling.

 

“Iris…?”

 

Zephyto stepped closer to the soul shard, wondering if it was real. Zephyto smiled faintly as he felt a warmth emanating from it, as faint as spring sunshine.

 

This was Iris’s soul shard.

 

Convinced it was her, he carefully lifted it with both hands. It felt as if it would crumble to dust if he touched it, but it was here anyway, and that gave him great hope.

 

Originally, a soul was a potentially powerful being, but at the same time very weak. When it had a form, its power was limitless, but it was very easy for it to lose its form.

 

So when he first came to Tanato, one of the first things he learned was how to take care of the soul so that it would not be damaged.

 

Or to put it another way, if a soul was shattered in this way, it was supposed to disappear like dust, not retain its form in pieces.

 

But why, then, did Iris’s soul fragments not disappear, but exist?

 

‘Was she not completely gone from the world?’

 

Zephyto turned his head and looked down at the temple. The goddess had scattered fragments of Iris into the world beneath the temple.

 

If Iris hadn’t ceased to exist, then… If he can find the countless Iris that have fallen there…

then maybe Iris could exist again?

 

With that thought, Zephyto clenched his fist slightly. He stared at the glowing piece in his palm without saying a word.

 

A silence hung heavy in the temple. He felt his vision, clouded with rage, gradually clear, like a fog lifting.

 

Zephyto reached out and summoned the wind, enveloping the fragment of Iris’s soul in its energy. Tightly, so that no matter what happened, the fragment of Iris’s soul would not be lost. 

 

Very tightly.

 

He combined it with the egg of the ring Iris had given him.

 

“Just wait, Iris. I’ll find you this time.”

 

Zephyto kissed the ring very respectfully, as if it were Iris herself, and then, with one last glance around the shattered interior of the temple, he leapt beneath it.

 

Zephyto had cleanly discarded their beloved Tanato. From the moment Iris was gone, Tanato would no longer be his paradise.

 

* * *

 

Abandoning Tanato, he set out on a journey to find the shards of Iris.

 

The unlikely premise proved true. The shards of Iris were broken and scattered throughout the world.

 

Seeing them filled Zephyto with hope. That if he could only collect them, he could return to her side.

 

But as usual, Zephyto’s life did not turn out as easily as he had hoped.

 

At first, he was content just to get his hands on Iris’s trace again, running like a madman to wherever he could find a piece of her soul.

 

Zephyto had devoted many long years to the sole purpose of finding Iris’s trace.

 

But when he had gathered less than half of her soul shards, a long emptiness washed over him like a tidal wave.

 

The soul shards had been scattered farther and farther across the world than he had thought, and the number of shards she had scattered was incalculable. Iris’s aura grew weaker and weaker as she was overwhelmed.

 

“Since we are now immortal beings, shouldn’t we be able to live forever?”

 

He sighed, remembering Iris’s words from Tanato one day. As time passed, the once-clear image of Iris began to blur.

 

Soon, instead of hope that he would one day see her, Zephyto was left with despair that he would never see her again.

 

‘How much longer would he have to endure alone?’

 

He thought back to the years he had walked and realized that he would not last much longer.

 

Some time later, Zephyto stumbled upon Tanato’s land once again. Tanato was still mysterious, warm, and beautiful.

 

But there was no sign of Iris’s void anywhere. In the end, the goddess had lost nothing.

 

“Why am I the only one… Why should I lose everything…”

 

The sight of it stirred up a long-forgotten rage in him.

 

Then his core, which had always been as beautifully colored as a transparent glass ball, slowly turned black. He didn’t even realize it, focusing only on the heat that enveloped his head.

 

“Shouldn’t this world also disappear?”

 

Having come to that conclusion, Zephyto’s eyes showed a certain determination. Then he unleashed his power, slowly disintegrating Tanato.

 

From the fields Iris loved to the souls seeking rest. One by one, he destroyed the world.

 

The black energy completely consumed his core. The core began to crack, unable to withstand the black energy.

 

Zephyto traveled to the temple to destroy the goddess one last time, and there he found a strange presence. They were the white spirits that Iris had cared for.

 

“You said they were gone, but you hid them here.”

 

He wondered why the goddess had hidden Iris’s traces here.

 

He looked at the white spirits and smirked. Whatever meaning it had, nothing mattered to him anymore. His mind was a pit of sticky oil, and he couldn’t think clearly.

 

All that remained in his mind was the determination to destroy everything. Zephyto reached out to destroy the white spirits.

 

But the moment his fingertips touched the spirits, he felt a wave of energy similar to Iris’.

 

“This…”

 

“Ming…”

 

He jerked his hand away in surprise. Suddenly, his core was back to its original color, and the gold was back on. It was as if nothing had happened.

 

His mind was as clear as if he’d been poured with purified water. At the same time, the black desire to smash and destroy everything subsided.

 

Zephyto’s brow furrowed as if he were trying to figure something out.

 

In the meantime, the goddess had returned to the temple, and before Zephyto could realize it, she had given him his second punishment. He would not die, but would spend eternity remembering Iris.

 

Pressing his fist to his chest, he cursed the goddess with a curse he knew he would regret, but she didn’t seem to want to hear it, and disappeared again.

 

“Ha…”

 

In the place of anger, only longing remained. He was no longer a body that could truly die with her.

 

He thought about wandering off to find the shards of her soul once more, but he couldn’t muster the motivation. It felt as if he had already lost Iris completely.

 

Instead of wandering, Zephyto headed to Tanato’s field where she had been with him, where most of Iris’s soul fragments had fallen, and where her aura still lingered.

 

He stared at the mystical pillar that helped souls reincarnate. The pillar had lost its light and no longer functioned.

 

He took a seat in front of it and lay down. He closed and opened his eyes slowly, and each time he did, he remembered the kiss he’d shared with her in front of the pillar.

 

He placed his right hand on his chest and looked up at the ring on his left ring finger.

 

“I’ll see you in my dreams, Iris.”

 

He took a few moments to sleep to clear his mind of the harsh realities of the day, and suddenly felt as if a very heavy stone had been lifted from his heart.

 

He consciously drifted off into a deep, deep sleep, as if he were hibernating, and for hundreds of years, Zephyto did not awaken.