Fragment 106 Insight

Special Thanks to Mod 「」 on the discord for doing extra validity checks, and Happy Birthday!

If this entry felt very confusing, repetitive, and rambling in philosophy… Congrats. That was the point: To be a near-pointless, philosophical merry-go-round. Strange, no? When you pick up a story, or a new entry to one, there’s normal conventions that are usually followed. By being a bunch of circular ramblings, confirmations, and rhetorical askings, the work threatens to appear as off-putting, droll, and even pretentious in presentation. However, after calculating and drawing the lines, I felt that this was only the proper way to present Void Shiki’s thoughts.

Because, first and foremost, any of her actions are deemed meaningless by herself. She is the very embodiment of the Root, and thus knows everything that is to transpire before it even happens. That means, anything that she does ultimately feels meaningless because it was already guaranteed and slated to happen. Can you imagine living a life of omniscience like that? Where anything you do you understand was pre-determined and guaranteed? Where nothing comes as a surprise?

That’s why I wanted to make this fragment feel conflicting, confusing, and circular: To put you in her shoes. She’s walking around, but why? She’s watching a bunch of moments that are so miniscule and inconsequential the Root hadn’t even recorded them thoroughly. Again, why? If this presentation was any indication, Void Shiki can be very, very difficult to write because of this.

Nihilistic is a fair guess to her own thoughts on action, but she still does it. The only feasible reasoning is because she is the embodiment of the root forced into a merger with the human identity. As noted by her My Room lines and gleamed from that special episode of Kara no Kyoukai, it is plausible to get through to her on some level. That human spirit within isn’t exactly dead, but she’s certainly not about to pick up random hobbies or learn how to jet ski. She’ll move on fleeting whims, with the purpose of wanting to experience whatever meaningless acts she can to enjoy.

Then came the strangest oddity I readapted for FoC: Her partial dismissal of wishing to be but a transient dream to be seemingly tangible to a chosen one. In the game, it’s you on varying levels of affection. In FoC, it’s a friendship with Ereshkigal, who she can relate with on a rather unique level: They’re both not exactly human, and forlorn, seemingly hopeless isolation is something they both know well. While Merlin can relate, he was added more like a bridge to help Void Shiki better understand Ereshkigal’s adoration for the fleeting present.

But Void already understood that but didn’t. Again, circular logic, confirmation, reasoning, and acceptance/dismissal.

Despite how endless the cycle appears, I hope by the end it still instilled a sense of bittersweet hope for the transient powerhouse hidden within. She’s willing to help when Chaldea is in need, but there’s also a sense of slow progression. She’s forever a ghost in the night, but those who are aware of her is growing, despite the risk the other identity will find out. She seeks to enjoy the little glimpses she can despite the grim reminders of what looms on the horizon.

Though she serves to declare that FoC is very much guaranteed to head to the Lostbelts, I hope her tone and convenient glimpses helped settle a few frayed nerves: FoC is taking them on in their own iteration. Their way.

Teaser: A lot had transpired since their summoning. Reunited with their sister, they declared themselves many, but one in the same. Yet dear Bryn had grown different from them. It was incomprehensible and worrying, then grew more so when the same seemingly happened to them. Now they seemed unrecognizable, but was it really all that bad for them to pursue their own wishes too? Collective or not?