Chapter 176: Chapter 174

I found myself in a colorless and insubstantial copy of the island I was chained upon. I was still bound, but no longer felt any of the pain I had been suffering due to malnutrition, among other effects from the lack of a proper lifestyle. It didn't take long to realize that this was likely due to the fact that I was no longer alive, at least not physically.

I no longer had a sense of any physical sensation, and even things like my ability to see wasn't restrained by a normal physical body. Though what really sold me on that idea was the sight of my emaciated body that was present in my same location, though completely still. It was much like when I had found myself in the false Hell confronted by Gabriel's sister who had been masquerading as the Queen of Hell. However, unlike then, I found myself completely alone and isolated, unaware of anything beyond the small island.

I was able to move around as if I was floating, however, the area I was able to access was the island and nothing else. Some kind of force walled me in and prevented me from going beyond the confines. Even floating up or down was not an option, as while I was able to phase through the ground somewhat, there was still a barrier that prevented further movement, the same barrier preventing getting anywhere near the ceiling of the cavern as well.

I was restless as I floated around the island trying to find any kind of weakness or flaw that I could exploit. If I was truly only a spirit, then I doubted it would be long before Gabriel made her way down here to end my existence. Though I wasn't able to accurately track time here, I still felt as if there was an invisible clock ticking away at the seconds left in my life as I tried a variety of things to escape or reenter my body, to no avail.

Just as I was about to give up and accept that death was my only path a low voice suddenly rumbled throughout the space. "In such a hurry are you, young one? Patience is needed for our kind, only then-" The voice suddenly cut off as I found the source. The large skeleton that was mostly buried  had a translucent figure appear from it, a large and colorless bird. "Forgive this one, it had thought that thee were one of its own, yet this one sees that you are not. Yet, how interesting."

The bird spirit sized me up, its eyes widening as it did so. "Impossi-. No. Improbable. Amazing that it is thee, out of all the myriad of beings, that has been entrapped here. What a fortuitous event."

I felt unsure of the bird spirit as it exclaimed mirthfully, its body shaking back and forth with excitement before suddenly pausing. "Ah. This one apologizes. Thy must be extremely confused. Things will make more sense, but this one doubts there is much time. The unknown Radiant said she was going to grant thee a true death, something this one cannot allow. Tell it, have thee ever performed a soul stitching?"

It felt like the excited bird was trying to overload me with so many different things at once, but I honestly answered its question by shaking my head. I'd never done one, but I could vaguely recall that the black book had mentioned something about it. It was something about fusing two or more broken souls into a single complete one. I had probably misunderstood something about it, but that had seemed like the general idea.

The bird's head bobbed up and down as if it were nodding. "This one didn't think so, not very many have the opportunity, let alone the ability to even do so. Since time is short, this one must teach quick, listen well.

A soul stitching requires three things, a host soul, the fabric to be stitched, so to speak. An additional soul, to be the thread that will be used in stitching, and the ability to interact with souls, the needle as one might imagine it. While this can be used to repair souls that have been damaged, it has many purposes depending on how the stitch is applied.

This one desires you to perform a transfer stitch. To cut this one's soul into thread and weave it into thyself. The soul of thee has already been stitched several times, many of whom are much stronger beings that this one, so it doubts that thee should have any trouble. Thy would be granted this one's memories, along with some of its strength, notably, the proper technique for utilizing thine Shadow Phoenix heritage.

First, thy must allow thine soul to show its true self, not the façade thine sees thyself as. Ignore thy earthly desire to don a certain appearance, let thine true self out."

I had all sorts of questions and concerns, but the bird was right, I probably didn't have much time, and it wouldn't be the first time I followed the advice of a strange being. Though mostly I just didn't have another option, it was to trust the bird and see what happened, or wait for my impending end.

That said, ignoring what I desired to appear as wasn't an easy task. Everyone had an internal image of themselves, and while some people might not see themselves as beautiful or attractive, I doubted that many, if anyone, had an internal image that matched whatever their true self was.

Though I didn't need to, I exhaled as I sat cross legged, trying to remove the image I had of myself from my head. I wasn't sure if what I was doing was correct, but I felt that I had overestimated the difficulty, but that may have been because I had experience with becoming someone that wasn't myself, so to lose my image, I simply had to complete half of the process of reliving the memories of my past lives, losing myself, but then not picking any of the options, and simply allowing myself to be free for a while.

"Good, good, thy are managing to do so quite well, now all that thine must do is to reach thy appendage over to this one's body, starting from the tip of one of its wings. Pinch down with the intent to unravel this one, pull slowly until you can see a or feel a thread between us, then use the same finger to push the thread into thine true form, it will be painful but thy must endure, and repeat until the the entirety of this one's has been used, best not to leave evidence behind for the Radiant girl to hunt."

I carefully followed the instructions of the bird, pinching upon the tip of its wing and pulling, eventually managing to grab what appeared to be a thread, something that caused the bird to shift around uncomfortable, likely for the same reason I screamed out as I threaded it into my own soul, the intense pain. I wasn't sure how the bird had managed to keep itself from making any noise while enduring its complete unraveling at my hands.

Despite the pain I continued to endure on the slim chance that this would actually do anything to improve my predicament.

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