Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Void (Part One)
The chapter begins with Karl, who was falling into the dark void, desperately trying to grasp the demonic book that seemed to have seduced him and taken control of his mind. The red moon continued to glow intensely, and its light began to reflect words that shimmered in the crimson twilight it created, illuminating the void. Strange words started to appear. The first one glowed and read: "Karl, do you know why you are falling into the void?" Karl looked around in confusion as he fell, then muttered, "No... no." Then came a second question: "Do you know why you killed your daughter?" Karl: "I didn't! I didn't! I didn't! Aaaaaah!" Then came a third question: "Do you know where true fear resides?" This time, Karl carried the answer within him. He said, "Yes..." and entered the blood-red moon...
Kazia appeared from the darkness and said to him, "You're wrong, Karl. Fear is everywhere, and the truth is everywhere, but you are the blind one. You and your filthy kind." Kazia struck him with her staff until he bled and passed out, continuing to fall.
Karl was falling, falling endlessly, without a bottom. The void around him stretched infinitely, but gradually, a strange light began to pierce the darkness. A deep red hue, like a bleeding sky, started to reflect on the void, forming shapes and words that pulsed with life, bleeding from the light of the blood-red moon.
Then, the scene unfolded before him...
Karl didn't know if he was floating, drowning, or suspended between life and death, but what he saw made him forget his fall entirely. A sea stretched beneath his feet, but it wasn't an ordinary sea. It was a mass of dark, undulating blackness—a mixture of sinful waters, shattered dreams, and the souls of the lost. Its calm was unnatural, a heavy, terrifying silence, as if the ocean was holding its breath, waiting for something dreadful to come.
Then, the silence shattered.
From the depths emerged... something.
At first, it was just a massive shadow, growing and expanding until its features became clear to Karl. A giant, fish-like head, but far from any fish known to man. Its skin was wet, rotting, resembling an ancient sea corpse with glowing ember-like eyes radiating pure hatred. Its jaws separated, revealing rows of sharp teeth stacked like a maze of death blades.
But it wasn't alone.
The massive body merged with dozens of twisting, octopus-like arms, crawling and moving as if they had a will of their own, searching for something to devour, to crush, to drag into eternal darkness. Some floated in the air as if sniffing the scent of fear, while others emerged from the water, smashing what remained of old wooden boats, tearing them apart as if they were worthless toys.
Above it all, in the black dome that was no longer the sky, the blood-red moon shone, reflecting its light on the entity, as if announcing its rebirth. The moon itself dripped blood, sending signals into the void, into nothingness, into something Karl was never meant to see.
But it was too late.
This was "true fear."
This was Degon.
Kazia descended from the sky and delivered one final blow, sending him plunging into the black sea, which transformed back into the void, and he continued to fall once more.
The fall was eternal.
There was no air, no ground, just an endless fall into nothingness. The darkness of the void consumed Karl, his thoughts, his senses, even his screams. But it wasn't a fall into nothingness... it was a fall toward something else. Something that grew closer the deeper he fell.
And suddenly, it stopped.
Or so he thought.
He opened his eyes to find himself standing on a smooth surface, like frozen water but not ice. It was something else, a reflective material like a distorted mirror, reflecting the image of a world that shouldn't exist.
He raised his head, and his breath caught.
Before him stretched a massive gateway, as if the universe itself had bent to form a portal into the unknown.
The walls around him weren't walls but a living tapestry of colors, twisting and writhing, breathing as if they were ancient beings not made of clay or fire. Shades of purple, turquoise, and iridescent blue blended with glowing threads of pink and crimson, as if light itself had lost its natural form and become liquid, flowing through the void, seeping into the organic fabric of this vast hall.
The air was saturated with a strange energy, a mix of tranquil numbness and deep terror. This was no ordinary place... it was a gateway. A gateway to something beyond human understanding, something that had been waiting for him since the beginning of time.
And in the center of it all was the gateway itself.
A towering opening, glowing with unnatural light, as if it were a tear in the fabric of reality. From within, a cold turquoise light seeped, pulsing slowly like the heart of a slumbering entity from the primordial ages.
Then, in the absolute silence, watercolor-like hues began to emerge from the ground, blending the colors of the rainbow, the twilight, and the nebulae into a magnificent painting no human artist could ever create. Waves of liquid color began to enter his mouth until they started pouring from his mouth and eyes, forming a waterfall.
Karl kept falling... falling endlessly, without a bottom, as if time itself had lost meaning, as if gravity was nothing more than a lie invented by minds too feeble to comprehend the void. But this time, it wasn't a fall into absolute blackness. It was a fall toward something... toward a world he was never meant to see.
Kazia was with him, but her voice wasn't human. It was a whisper echoing in the void, seeping into his skull as if it were part of him, a thought separated from his consciousness and made real. She grabbed his wrist, pulled his collapsing body, and whispered, "Look... this is our entire world."
And in an instant, the scene exploded before him.
A breathing sky... light glowing from nothingness.
He raised his head and found himself staring at a sky that wasn't a sky. There was no sun, no stars, just a vast dome above him, a mix of sacred light and absolute void. A white, burning sun, like a wound in the fabric of reality, sat at the top, emitting rays that weren't just light but sounds, words, cosmic lullabies in no human language. This sun was sacred, pure, but at the same time, it radiated a light that carried the illusion of control, the illusion of absolute knowledge. Above it was written: "The Realm of the Gods."
Below it was an inverted pyramid of light, like a window into another dimension, pulsing with energy the human mind couldn't comprehend. Inside the pyramid, symbols moved, pulsed, as if trying to escape their eternal prison. This wasn't just light; it was something alive, something that thought, something that watched. Above it was written: "The Realm of the Nameless."
The Cursed Lands... the universe folding in on itself.
Karl began to see the world forming before him:
I saw something that no mind in the galaxy could ever comprehend.
End of chapter