Was there such a thing as predetermined fate, where no matter what one did, one would inevitably arrive at the same end?
Even the desire to escape fate itself—was that merely something fate had long since decreed?
Ausia did not know the answer.
She remembered once encountering an elven scholar who had fallen into darkness.
Perhaps the longer one lived, the more easily one began to doubt the Essence of the World, believing that everything about oneself had been planned out—that one was merely an actor upon a stage, every action following a predetermined script.
So he had wanted to prove his conjecture and break through the invisible cage.
Ordinarily, as a scholar, having a few strange ideas that surpassed worldly conventions was perfectly understandable.
Kolo had once said that mages and scholars were the groups most likely to touch the gods.
Yet for his own goal, he had tried to sacrifice an entire nation to that unknown existence, hoping to touch the authority of the gods through such means.
"You have no idea what kind of world you are living in!"
"False! Everything is completely false!"
"The moment you can glimpse the truth, you will understand everything—the so-called fate has long been set in stone!"
"Everyone is nothing but a puppet on strings. What you see is merely an illusory dream!"
"..."
Mad ravings.
Even ordinary people could understand that whoever said such things was, nine times out of ten, insane.
In truth, quite a few veteran scholars seemed strange in the eyes of ordinary people. They simply had not crossed a certain line.
What had she said back then?
Ausia could not quite remember.
But whether she remembered or not was unimportant. She had merely suddenly recalled the matter, recalled the ideas that elven scholar had believed in.