The drawing room, ever-shifting in its grandeur, pulsed with an almost imperceptible rhythm.
The walls breathed in tandem with the void, as if they were stitched together from the sa unseen fabric that made up Black Daffodil herself.
It was nothing unusual, at this point.
The aforentioned Black Daffodil sat across from , her faceless void resting upon interlaced fingers, her gown an ever-changing shimr of indigo, swirling with constellations that refused to remain still. The air around her was thick with amusent, but there was sothing else, sothing heavier lingering beneath her usual playfulness.
She seed to be very curious about my true feelings regarding the god's corpse.
I didn't wait for her to speak first about it. "You already know how I feel about it."
Black Daffodil tilted her head, the motion as fluid as ink dispersing in water. "Oh? And how is that, I wonder?"
I narrowed my eyes. "Horrible. The exposure, the sheer presence of it. Standing before that thing—its corpse, its absolute finality—it was like staring into sothing that shouldn't exist. It felt like it was rewriting from the inside out, whether I wanted it to or not."
It was an odd thing for her to reconfirm, considering she experienced everything I did. Every thought, every sensation, every emotion that flickered through —she felt them all as if they were her own.
Black Daffodil let out a soft chuckle, tapping a single finger against the armrest of her chair. "You do have quite the range of control, Narcissus. Even as your subconscious screams, you can still manipulate your emotions with such precision. I know you're trying to mislead even yourself… just to see if you can ss with ."
I smirked. "I don't deny that. I still don't trust you entirely, after all."
She let out a dramatic sigh, placing a hand over where her heart would have been. "Oh, how cruel! And here I thought we had grown so much closer since last ti."
I felt like that incident worsened our relationship more than anything.
I gave her a flat look. "You still enjoy teasing ."
She giggled. "I don't deny that either."
Despite her theatrics, there was a gravity in her presence that told she wasn't here just to play.
Black Daffodil's amusent was a mask, a veil over sothing far more significant.
"Divinity is… a complicated thing," she finally said, her tone smoothing into sothing more contemplative. "Its presence is subtle, yet absolute. A thing like that god's corpse—untethered, final—it should not be sothing a mortal mind could comprehend."
I leaned forward slightly. "And yet, here I am, comprehending it just enough to know how wrong it feels."
Black Daffodil nodded. "That's why its existence will shape everything moving forward. The re act of encountering it has consequences that extend beyond what you or I can see."
Sothing about the way she said that sent a cold weight sinking into my chest.
There was a very subtle yet important implication behind her words and the way she said it.
A truth that she vehently possessed yet hid it away from , sneering from the background of the periphery.
"…Explain."
She tilted her head again. "This kind of knowledge is dangerous for a mortal mind. For you however, it might change your whole view of today's encounter."
I scoffed. "Since when has that ever stopped you?"
She chuckled, the constellations on her gown flickering like distant dying stars. "A fair point. But I felt a little bit cheap as of the current." Black Daffodil said that as she was pondering, as if sothing just ca to her mind. Quite an adorable thing to witness for an eldritch entity. "If you want an explanation, I'll need sothing in return."
I exhaled through my nose. "What do you want?"
Her void-like presence leaned ever so slightly forward, a gleeful lilt in her voice. "Let's do that again—"
Before she could finish her sentence, I cut her off. "No. I'm not doing that." I smiled a gentle and totally-not-angry crescent. "Feel free to ask anything but that."
She made a small noise of disappointnt, sinking back into her chair with a childish pout. "Hmm, what a sha… but the fact that I can still ask you for favors at all is already a victory in my book."
"Speak of your inquiry."
Black Daffodil humd in thought before clasping her hands together. "I want you to craft a cutting tool made out of entropy. Just like the one you and Charis forged before~!"
I didn't hesitate. "That can be done."
She stilled for a mont. "…You're not going to ask why?"
I shrugged. "I already know why. It's a catalyst."
She let out a delighted laugh. "For what, exactly~?"
I ran a finger along my jaw, tapping it idly. "For cutting my own face."
Black Daffodil's laughter ca to a halt, replaced by sothing quieter, more intrigued.
"You really don't dismiss that idea as much anymore, do you?"
I let out a slow breath. "Seeing the god's corpse made think about things. It made more pessimistic about… myself. I've been considering it as a last resort. A survival option."
Her silence was an answer in itself.
Even she understood what I ant when it ca to surrendering oneself to an inevitable fate.
Then, after a beat, she spoke again, her voice lilting with amusent once more. "That corpse stirred sothing in you, didn't it?"
"I didn't deny it."
Black Daffodil straightened, her presence shifting like the turning of celestial gears, the constellations on her gown aligning into patterns I could almost—but not quite—decipher. The mont felt suspended, like we had stepped beyond the flow of ordinary ti, into a space where her words alone dictated reality.
"Then, per our deal… listen closely." Her voice carried weight now, not the usual lilting amusent, but sothing asured, sothing ancient. "The existence of that god's corpse is unique, beyond the confines of mortal comprehension. It does not conform to conventional ti and space. In this mont, in this world, in this tiline, in this singular iteration of Carcosa… it exists, and only here."
The realization crept through like a slow-growing frost.
Black Daffodil continued, her tone shifting as though she were peeling back layers of reality itself. "Imagine an endless expanse of Carcosas, each one a reflection, a possibility, a path unfollowed. Infinite variations of this world, of its histories, its choices. There are Carcosas where you never stepped into the depths, where you never laid eyes upon that corpse. There are Carcosas where you never even existed. But amidst all those mirrored echoes, only one Narcissus has seen what you have seen. Just one. And it's you.
"There may be hundred different Narcissustalking to their Black Daffodils at the sa referenced ti and axis, but there will only be one of them that knew and saw that very specific god's corpse."
I inhaled sharply, a sensation tightening in my chest.
"…Do all gods' corpses work like this?"
She regarded for a mont, and though she had no face, I felt her amusent return—distant, knowing. "Ah, that's a complicated question. It depends on their existential height."
"I see…"
She leaned forward slightly. "At one point, Divinity is not simply power. It is a state of existence. The greater the divinity, the more it transcends multiplicity.
"Most beings—mortals, lesser deities, even so eldritch entities—are scattered, fractured across the endless tides of fate. They exist in many forms, in many places, all at once. But those that ascend beyond a certain threshold? They beco whole. Singular. Their existence no longer bends to the whims of probability or alternate possibilities."
Her fingers traced idle patterns along the armrest, the constellations on her skin shifting like ink in water. "You see, Narcissus, the corpse you beheld belonged to one such being. A god so absolute that it could only ever exist once. No echoes. No fragnts. No copies scattered across the branches of fate. That corpse is not just the only one in this Carcosa. It is the only one in all of them."
I swallowed. "And what does that an?"
She let out a soft laugh. "It ans that this tiline—your tiline—is now changing its direction to a wholly new and completely different direction. Distinct and unique. Whatever paths once ran parallel to this one have diverged, or perhaps… they never existed at all."
A terrible, spiraling thought began to form in my mind. "So… this tiline is now an anomaly?"
Black Daffodil's voice dipped lower, silk-soft and dangerous. "Oh, much more than that, darling. It's a seed. A singular, self-contained branch of fate, sprouting into uncharted territory. And like all things new and unaccounted for…"
She leaned closer, as if imparting so grand secret.
"All of them are watching."
I gripped the armrest of my chair. The weight of her words sank like stones into deep water.
The Narcissus of this tiline—the sitting here right now—was now separated from every other possible Narcissus, and possibly the rest of what other living Daffodils are experiencing.
The act of witnessing the god's corpse had severed from all other tilines, all other possibilities.
This world, this reality, had been detached from the greater web of fate.
A brand-new tree of ti and consequence, sprouting in complete isolation.
I swallowed hard, trying to grasp the sheer scale of it.
Even with all my knowledge, even with everything I had seen, I couldn't fully comprehend what this ant.
Black Daffodil leaned back, her amusent tinged with sothing deeper, sothing ancient. "Everything from the future will bite back at where it started. Now that the anchor has been planted, every possibility, every decision from this point onward… will spiral."
There was no undoing this.
No going back.
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