556: Outer Gods VIII 556: Outer Gods VIII Aiden hesitated.
Not out of fear.
But because the Akashic Insight in his soul… scread.
It couldn’t see beyond this threshold.
It couldn’t comprehend it.
That had never happened before.
Even in the monts when his eyes bled, when forbidden symbols etched themselves into his vision—there was always sothing.
Here?
Nothing.
Just void.
As if this place wasn’t rely forgotten by reality… …but denied.
He stepped in.
No flash.
No transition.
Just darkness swallowing light.
Then— Stairs.
Thousands of them.
Carved from obsidian glass that reflected not his body, but his soul—shifting with each step.
With every level he climbed, voices rose.
They spoke in forgotten tongues.
But the aning seeped in, like ink through skin.
“What is your na?” Aiden paused.
Looked up.
There was nothing but stairs.
“Why does that matter?” he asked aloud.
Silence answered.
And he kept climbing.
The second floor.
It wasn’t a floor at all.
It was a mory.
His.
But… wrong.
He saw himself.
In a field of red grass beneath a shattered moon.
Shelly stood there.
Smiling.
Whole.
She reached out to him.
But when he stepped closer, her face split open into a mouth lined with impossible teeth.
“Aiden,” she rasped.
“You left .” “No,” he whispered.
“You were taken—” “But did you look back?” the creature hissed.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he walked through the illusion.
It didn’t shatter.
It wept.
The tower approved.
On the third level, he found a room.
Circular.
Empty.
In the center, a mirror.
Much like the lake.
But this ti… it didn’t show him.
It showed nas.
Thousands.
Millions.
Cascading through the reflection like stars.
He reached toward it.
And one na stopped.
Familiar.
His own.
But not as ‘Aiden.’ No.
[The Naless Child of the Bleeding Void] His hand froze inches away.
“What is this?” he whispered.
The mirror cracked.
And from within it, a voice answered.
“You are what the Outer Gods feared.
A seed that did not die.” The mirror collapsed into dust.
He was alone again.
But not unchanged.
Sothing inside him had stirred.
Sothing… ancient.
For a brief second, he rembered sothing before his birth.
A silence so deep it echoed.
A pact.
A choice.
He didn’t understand it.
But the tower did.
It had shown him his true na.
And nas… held power.
By the seventh floor, the fog returned.
But this wasn’t mist.
It was language.
Sentences floating through the air like ribbons.
They wrapped around his limbs, trying to bind him, speak through him.
One phrase cut deepest: “He walks not to ascend, but to rember.” That truth struck him like a blade.
He wasn’t climbing toward power.
He was descending into what he was ant to be.
A harbinger?
A guardian?
A destroyer?
The tower didn’t care.
It only guided.
When he reached the ninth level, sothing changed.
The walls broke away.
And stars blood.
He stood in space.
Alone.
But in the distance, an outline shimred.
A being.
Its body was composed of uncountable eyes.
Limbs that stretched across constellations.
It didn’t move.
It didn’t breathe.
It simply was.
Aiden fell to one knee.
Not out of reverence.
Out of sheer pressure.
This was no test.
This… was a eting.
The Outer Gods had finally noticed.
A voice bood—not in the air, but inside his bones.
“You approach the Tower of Nas and dare to carry one.
Why?” Aiden raised his head, bleeding from every pore.
“I seek to understand what I’ve beco.” “Foolish.
You are not becoming.
You are rembering.
You were one of us.
Until you chose them.” Aiden’s heart stilled.
The being floated closer.
Its form never clarifying—only growing more distant even as it neared.
“The na you wore was ant to be forgotten.
Yet here you are, climbing back into it.
Why?” He stood.
Bloodied.
Weak.
But certain.
“Because I refuse to be only what you made .” For a mont, everything froze.
Ti itself paused.
Even the stars dimd.
Then, laughter.
Cosmic.
Cold.
“Very well, Child of the Bleeding Void.
The war will resu.
And you…
may be the beginning of the end.” The vision shattered.
And Aiden stood alone again, atop the Tower of Forbidden Nas.
Behind him, a staircase of mory.
Before him… a door.
Silver.
Breathing.
Marked with seven forbidden sigils that even his Akashic Insight could not read.
The door lood.
Its silver surface pulsed in rhythm with sothing ancient—sothing alive.
It wasn’t tal.
It wasn’t magic.
It was sothing in between, woven from the unspoken pacts that once held reality in place.
Now, those pacts were broken.
And this door was bleeding.
Veins of starlight coursed through it, leaking a shimr that seed innocent—almost beautiful.
But Aiden knew better.
He’d seen what beauty looked like when it lied.
The sigils on the door writhed as he approached.
Seven in total.
Each one a law.
A chain.
A mory the universe had buried so deep that not even the gods dared speak their nas aloud.
They weren’t just seals.
They were warnings.
“This door must not be opened.” A voice.
Not his own.
Soft.
Feminine.
Filled with sorrow.
Aiden turned—but found no one.
Just the mory of soone he couldn’t rember.
Soone… he might’ve once called sister?
“Turn back.” The voice whispered again, closer this ti, curling around his thoughts like a silken blade.
“You will see things no soul was ant to see.” Aiden stepped forward.
“I already have.” The door responded.
Each sigil flared in a different color—one by one.
Red for rage.
Blue for ti.
Gold for betrayal.
White for death.
Green for birth.
Black for the void.
And violet… for truth.
Together, they ford a perfect circle.
Aiden placed his hand upon the center.
And the universe blinked.
The world collapsed around him.
Not physically.
But foundationally.
It was like watching the code behind reality glitch—symbols unraveling, re-writing, then forming sothing else.
A new dinsion opened.
But this wasn’t just another plane.
It was… a pre-plane.
A blueprint of existence before the laws were written.
The sky was white.
The ground was a flat sheet of nas, endlessly repeating across every surface.
He stood in the Domain of Forgotten Creation.
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