Early Afternoon - Early Winter : Northeastern Bahamut

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"I'm going to need you to give me some details..." I gave the goddess a threatening glare as I carefully watched her body language. "Don't even think about running off this time..."

But instead of looking to run away, she lowered her head and raised her arms. "~I won't.~" Her demeanor quickly shifted as her voice turned anxious. "~It's about time you learned anyway...~"

*fwoosh* *fwoosh* fwoosh* The loud flapping of my wings filled the air as she paused.

"~Do you.. remember anything from before you were born as Vasilias Ragnarok?~"

I tensed up immediately as I questioned how to respond. -I should probably be careful with what I say...- "I remember a few things..."

I expected her to go somewhat wide-eyed, but to my surprise, she just looked at the ground with a dark expression. "~Then you must remember that horrible sensation right before you were born as well... The feeling of your existence being eaten...~"

My eyes went wide. "Y..yeah.. I do." At that moment, every other concern in my mind vanished. -She really knows something...-

"~That sensation you felt was your soul being eaten by the realm you have come to call the void... You were truly lucky to survive with a remaining sense of self...~" She rubbed her arm like she was speaking on a bad memory.

Assuming she already knew the implications of that realm, I decided to take a shot in the dark. "You.. also came here from a different world.. didn't you..."

She paused before reluctantly nodding. "~I don't remember much of it, but I remember that I was a god.. a strong one at that... Just like you...~"

-Huh?- I was slightly taken aback. "What makes you think I was a god?"

"~You must be kidding... A mortal being can't have a soul remotely as horrifying as yours... Your's rivals a being in my home world, which we all naively considered the one above all... He was simply called God.~"

-What? My soul is that strong? But.. how...- Although most of my previous life's memories had become foggy with time, it was true that I still vividly remembered everything from my death as a human to my birth as a dragon. -I was most definitely not a god...- But that only raised the question... -So how do I have the soul of one?-

But while I was slowly spiraling down into an unfathomable rabbit hole within my mind, the goddess continued. "~Your soul was essentially in tatters when I first saw you. The soul of a god with no form, and no ability to resist... You were essentially a massive ball of strength that could be absorbed and turned into my own at any moment... But as time passed.. your soul somehow started to repair itself and morph into something new.. something truly scary...~"

My eyes went wide as I finally confirmed it. -So she really is the woman from..- "Ack..." A searing pain rushed through my head as I thought back to my first dragon sleep.

"~You probably don't remember anything about back then because the memories are exclusively in your soul and not your mind... But you will remember in time...~" She gave me a slightly remorseful look before continuing. "~Regardless, your soul was not only too strong for the body you had, but it was also barely even holding itself together. If that artifact didn't split them apart, they would have simply destroyed each other.. essentially erasing you from existence.~"

Questions that only dug the rabbit hole deeper ripped through my mind as I tried to settle on the right question to ask. But after not saying anything for a while, I managed to think of it. The issue was that the question had the potential to screw me. "What if.. I wasn't a god in my past life?"

She just shook her head though. "~That's not possible... Even if you somehow managed to absorb several souls to resist being devoured by the void, to go from being a mortal to what you have now simply isn't conceivable. You would have been the one that got absorbed unless you were already a god yourself or only picked up millions, if not hundreds of millions, of clean soul remnants before the void devoured them. Soul fragments, at their biggest, are only a tenth or fifteenth of the original soul. You would have needed to devour a world's worth of them to get anywhere near where you are.~"

-It would take that many, huh...- Almost immediately, a seed of doubt was planted in my sense of self. -Did I really just.. have a life I don't remember anything about? Or.. am I even who I think I am?-

We both fell into silence as my mind slowly sank further and further into the dark, but after another moment, the goddess snapped me out of it. "~Regardless of the past, if you let me absorb Tyr's soul fragments, I promise I will do everything I can to help you recover the strength you lost.. even if your memories are lost to time.~"

I paused as I thought about her offer again.

But I still felt suspicious. "Why have you helped me at all up to this point... As you said earlier, you could have just absorbed me the moment we met..." Although not doubtful of her word, my gut continued to tell me something was off.

"~There is something I wish for you to do eventually, but you aren't strong enough currently, so I will keep it to myself for now.~"

-There it is...- "And what if I don't agree to the request when you eventually ask?"

"~Then I will accept that as my fate...~"

I paused for a moment to give her an odd look before letting out a quick breath. "Haah..." Momentarily setting aside the mountain of doubt and confusion that filled my mind, I started slowing down. -Even if she gets stronger, it shouldn't be anything to worry about...- "How do you go about absorbing the fragments?"

"~I need you to enter the void with me, then I will find and absorb them. Once Im done, I will need you to bring me back as well.~"

"Alright... Do you need me to protect you from the void?"

She was quick to respond, even though she looked nervous. "~While I may be weak, it would take an eternity in the void to cause any noticeable damage.~"

-But an eternity in the void is a second within the real world...- Immediately glossing over the countless other risks of the void, I grabbed a bit of space mana. "Alright, then..." *FWOOOSH-vwoop*

Instantly stopping myself with a flap of my wings, I encapsulated us in a gate and killed the rest of our momentum before entering the void.

The abyssal darkness inside the gate quickly faded as we were released into the nebulous space of the void.

The goddess instantly got nervous though. "~Ugh.. I will be quick...~" Hastily looking around, she found a scattered pale cloud not far away and floated over to it. "~This place is just as unpleasant as I remember...~"

As soon as she reached out to it, it slowly began to twitch and change shape before being pulled into her palm.

Her figure started to change almost instantly, becoming significantly more defined and gaining some faint colors. "Hoooh..." Even her voice was much clearer than it had been.

But what caught my attention wasn't her body or her voice.

On her back, there were two large, feathered wings that resembled an avian's, but they were larger, the feathers were much smaller, and above all, they were black.

The moment she noticed me looking at them, she folded them inward and made them vanish. "Sorry..." She sounded surprisingly remorseful. "They turned black to remind me of my sins..."

-Huh?- I was immediately taken aback.

But she continued as if she hadn't said anything. "Before we go, could you cut off this hand?" She immediately held out her hand which was faintly glowing. "It's the core of Tyr's soul, so I can't absorb it without taking a big risk... It's better to let the void eat it."

"Ah.. alright..." Coating the tip of my claw in space mana, I reached over and swiped it through her wrist.

The hand instantly detached from her and turned into a glowing orb before she pulled away and formed a new hand.

As the orb started floating away, a faint blue glow formed around it, a sign that the space mana had already begun eating it.

It was a sight that once again made me question myself. -It's only been a few hours, and his soul was already reduced to that small cloud... If I really came to this world through the void.. would the soul of a normal human have really survived?-

It was a seed of doubt I couldn't simply shake off, one that would cause an inconceivable amount of strife.

But the goddess noticed right away. "Questioning what or who you are will only cause harm as things are now."

I quickly turned to look at her as she slowly floated back toward me.

"Who you are, changes at every moment, but the fact that you are you at any given instant is also true. You can't let questioning who you used to be, bog you down because your past lives are no longer you... If that is too hard to accept, then lock the memories of them away, or else you won't ever be able to look forward." As she finally made it to me, she turned around and looked out into the void with a slight guilt on her face. "Memories are a tool you can use to learn from, but they can also be a bomb that completely destroys who you are... You simply need to be careful in how you use them..."