The sky was a screaming, spiraling abyss.
A singular, monstrous eye stretched across the heavens, its prismatic hues twisting in impossible spectrums, shifting like an oil slick on the surface of reality. At its center lay a black hole—an all-consuming void that pulled at my very essence, threatening to rip apart at the seams.
I pointed my gun at it, my fingers trembling, my body failing.
Blood poured from my lips, thick and hot. My insides burned, my skin cracked as though sothing inside was boiling alive. Each breath was agony, my vision darkening at the edges. But I didn't lower my aim.
I would not bow.
Even as death clawed at my bones, I stood. I stood because I refused to kneel before that thing.
"The King in Yellow," I spat, my voice a raw whisper drowned by the howling winds. "I curse you. I curse you until the end of ti...!!"
The eye blinked.
A soundless roar echoed through the cosmos, and then.
Darkness.
Cold. Crushing. Cramped.
There was no pain, no sensation beyond the suffocating pressure that surrounded . For a mont, I thought I had finally died. Perhaps this was the afterlife, an eternal abyss where my suffering had at last ended.
But then I rembered.
Those who are observed do not die.
That was the King's curse. That was its rule.
Realization jolted through , and I surged forward, pushing, clawing at the unseen walls around . My fingers dug into sothing solid, sothing smooth. Wood. A coffin.
I shoved with all my might. The lid burst open, splinters flying into the air, and I gasped as light flooded my vision.
I was inside a dimly lit room. A massive mirror lood before , its surface reflecting my ragged form.
I stepped forward, barefoot against cold stone, my breath slow, asured.
The woman in the mirror was gaunt, her skin pale beneath streaks of dried blood. Her gold eyes burned, sharp and unyielding, like molten tal cooled into a blade. A ragged cloak hung from her shoulders, tattered at the edges, frayed by battles long since fought.
Her short silver hair was ssy, uneven, strands falling over a face marred with scars—souvenirs of survival.
And then, there were the earrings.
Two miniature swords dangled from her ears, their runes faintly glowing, whispering in a language only I could hear.
A cold, unbreathing, detached face. A face filled with anger.
Karas.
Yes. That was still . The sa face before I was gazed upon.
"Huh, neat."
I turned from the mirror, approached the colossal door at the end of the room, and pushed it open.
The vast space beyond was… wrong.
The sky above was split into three black holes, their luminous accretion disks casting a surreal glow across the expanse.
Scattered throughout the area were countless doors, each distinct, each leading to so unknown place. And stepping through those doors were others.
Not humans. Not all of them, at least.
A towering three-ter-tall man lumbered forward, his body riddled with pulsating tumors, tentacles writhing from beneath a tattered cape.
A wolf-headed humanoid, its fur streaked with silver, let out a low growl, its golden eyes surveying its surroundings with a hunter's instinct.
A being of pure exotic geotry moved without movent, its form shifting like an optical illusion, folding and unfolding within itself to resemble the vague outline of a man.
And then there was another.
A monstrosity erged, its torso a gaping, vertical maw stretching from stomach to skull. Rows upon rows of inhuman teeth lined its body, each one jagged and uneven, twitching as it breathed. Every inhale and exhale caused the massive orifice to expand and contract, as though the entire being existed solely to consu.
I stepped forward, only to halt as I sensed soone approaching.
A hairless man with sharp, angular features and geotry lines carved across his face. He smiled, voice far too friendly for this kind of place.
"Tell ," he said, his voice disturbingly light, conversational, as though we were simply two strangers eting in the middle of nowhere. "Do you notice a pattern among those gathered here?"
I turned my head slightly, gold eyes narrowing as I swept my gaze across the crowd.
"Yes," I replied in good faith. "Every single one of us possesses sothing unique. A special essence in our souls." I turned to look him dead in the eye. "A requirent."
His smile widened, an amused glint in his gaze. "Sharp eyes."
The bald man stood slightly taller than , his face lined with strange, intricate geotric scars that seed more like engravings than wounds. Etchings of sothing old. His eyes were dark pools, endless and unreadable.
I tilted my head. "Are you from Carcosa or Earth?"
He laughed at that, a quiet chuckle rolling from his throat. His posture was relaxed, too comfortable for soone standing in the presence of creatures beyond mortal comprehension. "Ah, origin is such a fragile thing here. Don't you think it's aningless?"
I acknowledged his sentint with the barest nod. It wasn't an answer, but it was enough.
And then, without hesitation, I asked, "Can you regenerate?"
The mont hung between us like a blade poised to drop.
The man blinked. "Huh?"
He barely had ti to register my words before I grabbed his arm and tore it from his shoulder.
The wet, ripping sound was imdiate. Flesh and sinew snapped apart, bone crunched under my force, and a fresh spray of dark blood arced through the air.
He staggered back with a sharp inhale, eyes going wide in genuine surprise.
Around us, so of the gathered figures turned, their attention drawn by the sudden act of violence. So watched with quiet interest; others rely sensed and then dismissed it as trivial.
I didn't give him ti to process.
In the sa instant, I let the severed limb drop, my hands already moving—shaping, forging, commanding. Eldritch power surged through , raw energy folding into form, collapsing into purpose.
A weapon.
The air humd as a shotgun-like eldritch firearm materialized in my grip, its form shifting with spectral light, black runes twisting across its surface.
I moved without thought, pivoting on my heel, leveling the barrel toward one of the foreign creatures lurking at the edge of the space.
And then, I pulled the trigger.
The roar of the weapon shattered the mont.
A concentrated blast of energy exploded forth, a spiraling mass of crimson and black that howled through the air before slamming into its target.
The creature never had a chance despite its vile intention.
The eldritch projectile tore through its body, ripping it apart from the inside out, reducing it to little more than shredded, smoking remnants.
The stench of burning, unnatural flesh filled the air.
Then, the bald man sighed, glancing down at the bloody stump where his arm had been.
"Ah," he murmured, his tone carrying no pain, no distress—only mild exasperation. "You could have just asked."
Even as he spoke, his flesh began to knit itself back together.
Muscle fibers regrew like vines twisting back into place, bone restructured itself from nothing, and within monts, his arm was whole again. He flexed his fingers, rolling his wrist with casual ease.
He wiggled his fingers. "Neat trick, right?"
I ignored him.
I had already moved on.
Sothing huge had shifted nearby.
A five-ter-tall entity lood ahead, its presence pressing against the very fabric of this space. Dark, shifting wings unfurled from its back, their countless layers moving like oil over water.
Its head was a shifting void, a swirling mass of cosmic matter, speckled with distant stars that blinked in and out of existence.
When it spoke, the very air around it quaked.
"How rude."
The words were not rely spoken—they resonated, echoing in a way that was both audible and felt within the marrow of my bones.
I exhaled slowly, the eldritch gun still held steady in my grasp. My gaze did not waver.
I pointed it at him.
"You're ruder."
A shift. The weight in the air thickened. The entity's wings curled slightly, like the slow stretch of sothing ancient.
But before the mont could snap to the next act of violence could take place.
Sothing happened.
The sky ruptured.
It wasn't a crack. It wasn't a simple tear.
A colossal rift ripped across the heavens, devouring the black fabric of existence like a wound festering open.
From within that infinite void, sothing descended—a hand.
No, to call it a re hand was an insult to the horror of its arrival.
It was monstrous, a limb of obscene proportions, stretching down from a place beyond understanding. It possessed ten fingers, each one as thick and vast as a cosmic pillar, each digit twisting with the grotesque semblance of knuckles and shifting bone. Flesh-like, yet not flesh. Bone-like, yet not bone. It was anatomy stolen from the gods, forged from an anatomy that should not exist.
And it reached for the black holes.
The abyssal voids trembled. Their glowing accretion disks flickered, spinning erratically as the gravitational pull around them buckled under an unseen force. Like insects ensnared in the grip of sothing far larger, they were seized—each one caught in an impossible grasp.
The sky itself quaked as the hand wrenched them apart, separating the three celestial demons from each other to bring forth a new world.
It was an event of unimaginable magnitude. The black holes—those ultimate devourers of light, those cosmic executioners—were peeled away like fruit, their horizons torn asunder as if they were nothing more than fragile ornants, their existence sundered by an unfathomable will.
And behind them.
A new sky.
It was violet, deep and endless, a cancerous bloom spilling across the firmant like an infection.
The colors bled into the world, rewriting the fabric of reality itself, tainting the edges of existence like ink soaking into paper. The air soured with its presence, the very atmosphere resisting yet succumbing all the sa. This was not re replacent.
This was consumption.
And from within that abyssal hue.
Sothing stirred.
Sothing erged.
A god of holes.
It was not a being. It was an absence given form, a paradox of matter and void. Its body was an amalgamation of gates, of wounds carved into the skin of the universe, each opening spiraling infinitely, leading to places that should never be seen.
Each part of it shifted, warping between shapes that defied aning. One mont, it was a towering monolith, a structure that should never breathe. The next, it was an abyss in the shape of a beast, its entire form a yawning chasm lined with doors that opened into oblivion.
With every pulse, it invited passage.
With every movent, it defied understanding.
Yet despite its incomprehensible nature—
Its voice was clear.
"You have all been chosen."
The words were not spoken. They were etched into the world itself, imprinted into the marrow of reality, vibrating through every soul present.
A divine decree.
A sentence without appeal.
"You will be sent to the past. To a ti before your worlds crumbled."
The gates that made up its form twisted, their spiraling vortexes widening, revealing glimpses of countless tilines—worlds on the brink, monts frozen in ti, tragedies yet to be undone.
"You may act as you wish—save lives, take them, shift fate."
The passages within its body shuddered, flickering through endless realities, revealing horrors, salvations, and destinies yet to be unraveled.
"The choice is yours. But know this…"
The openings that made up its being pulsed, each one whispering with voices from the depths of existence.
"…Your actions will define the new future."
I felt like I'm starting to go insane.
"Go forth."
The command unmade .
There was no pain. No sensation of breaking, no sharp transition from existence to absence.
I simply crumbled.
Dissolved into dust.
The last thing I saw was the violet sky—spreading, devouring, rewriting the world as I vanished into nothingness.
And then, once more.
Darkness.
"... What in the—"
A brand new world.
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