NieR:Remnant

0 - Awakening

"Everything that lives is designed-BUILT-DESTINED? to end

"WE are perpetually trapped

"In a never-ending-NEVER-ENDING-NEVER ENDING spiral of life

"Of life...and DEATH?

"Is this a curse?

"Or some kind of PUNISHMENT?

"WE often think about the god who blessed-CURSED us with this cryptic puzzle

"WE wonder if WE'LL ever get the chance...

"A chance.

"A chance."

"A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself."

"Huh?" A voice gasped as the digital landscape flickered to life, pockets of nothingness twinkling all around where the white had failed to form.

"What is this?"

There was a flash, a pulse of pure light, and with that the pockets vanished. There was nothing but white, not a single pixel off.

"Voices...?"

"...gative...error...boot..."

The formless entity turned to look here and there, there and here, up and down. Or was it down and up? Everything looked the same. It couldn't discern.

"...checks completed...personal...loading...inability..."

"Hello? Where are you?" called out the voice, moving what it perceived to be forward. It kept going for what felt like eternity, but still, there was nothing but white.

"I-I don't know where I am!" it cried out. "I-I'm scared! Please! Help me-whoa!"

Another pulse, but this time negative, the pitch of darkness. "Is... Is that me?" The voice could finally perceive a depth, a space, in the environment, as well as itself, all thanks to the dark. It moved itself through the more clearly defined white, careful not to hit any walls.

"What is this?" Its words were slow, spaced out, spoken with a pinch of joyous curiosity. It had come, at last, to a series of hallways, branching off from one "master" hallway in the center. Or was this where it had always been? The scale and structure of it all, there was no doubt that this place was important, but why?

"Hm." The voice approached a small circular node at the end of one of the branching hallways. It reached out, but stopped itself with a gasp. A limb was forming, shimmering bright enough to make out a vessel against the landscape around it. An arm, two arms, with hands and fingers all! "Well, that's convenient!" It reached out again towards the node, but before it could touch it, another clearer voice thundered across its awareness.

"I have removed the virus."

The voice cried out, startled. The other voice was different, external, but also the same as its own. The exact same, yet it didn't come from within.

"So...you've seen it all, huh?"

"Agh!" Its sense of environment flickered with that second, or third, voice, so soothing, welcoming, yet so weak, so familiar and carrying with it an unspeakable dread. The voice rested one of its newly formed hands on its cheek, feeling a liquid trickling down.

"I don't intend to kill you anymore... So kill me."

"Stop!" It covered its forming ears as it shrieked out to the presence above.