The boy stared at the legion of wood people in all its horrifying glory.
Thousands upon thousands of wooden figures crowded the mountainside, their round bodies packed together so tightly that the snow beneath them had all but disappeared.
Their hollow eyes remained fixed upon him, filled with that familiar, ancient darkness.
Then he felt it.
Their collective killing intent descended upon him like an enormous boulder, crushing his senses beneath an invisible weight.
The air grew heavy.
His instincts screamed at him to flee, while every fiber of his being warned him that remaining here would be a catastrophic mistake.
The boy didn’t hesitate.
He turned around and ran.
With every ounce of strength his relatively small body could muster, he sprinted across the snow-covered mountainside.
Behind him, the legion surged forward.
Thousands of tiny wooden feet pounded against the frozen ground, producing a rhythmic clattering that echoed throughout the mountains.
They pursued him with an almost desperate intensity, as though allowing him to escape would be an unforgivable offense.
“SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!
I DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD BE THIS BAD!”
The boy ran harder.
As far as he understood, the wood people were strong but weak, intelligent but stupid.
Their abilities were absurdly contradictory, and their behavior had always struck him as bizarre rather than genuinely threatening.
He had underestimated them.
Terribly.
A sharp whistle pierced the air.
The boy instinctively ducked.
A spear tore past his head, traveling so quickly that he barely registered its movement.
Another followed, grazing his shoulder and tearing through his fur-lined robe.
A thin line of blood appeared across his skin.
Then came another.
And another.
The legion had begun throwing everything it could get its hands on.
The boy zigzagged across the mountainside, dodging spears that struck the ground around him with enough force to shatter the frozen earth.
One embedded itself in the snow inches from his foot.
Another scraped against his arm, leaving a shallow wound.
“WHAT THE HELL?!”
His heart hammered violently against his ribs.
His breathing grew ragged, and his legs burned as he pushed himself beyond his usual limits.
He had never run so desperately in his life.
A dreadful realization settled over him.
Was it really this serious?
He wanted to scream for help.
He wanted someone to appear out of nowhere and tell him that everything would be fine.
But there was nobody.
The gods were dead.
The angels were dead.
The demigods, the heroes, and the countless beings who had fought in the ancient war were all gone.
The world had been left to rot in the aftermath of their destruction.
Whatever remained here was little more than an accumulation of divine remnants, twisted into grotesque forms by the lingering power of a conflict that had ended millions of years ago.
Eldritch horrors.
Abominations that had inherited the power of dead divinities without inheriting the slightest semblance of their former glory.
And now, apparently, the boy had managed to anger an entire legion of them.
“WHY DOES THIS SHIT ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?!”
He continued running.
Gradually, the rhythmic clattering behind him began to fade.
The boy glanced over his shoulder.
The legion was falling behind.
His expression brightened.
“Hahaha!
You little guys aren’t fast at all!”
He laughed as he sprinted across the snow, a little of his confidence returning now that he had managed to create some distance between himself and his pursuers.
Perhaps he could escape after all.
Perhaps the wood people were only dangerous when they had the advantage of numbers.
Perhaps—
His laughter abruptly died.
Something had changed.
The killing intent behind him had not weakened.
It had deepened.
What had once felt like the hostility of thousands of individual creatures was suddenly transforming into something singular, something so vast that the boy’s instincts struggled to comprehend it.
He felt as though an enormous eye had opened somewhere behind him.
An eye that had been closed for an incomprehensible length of time.
And now, it was looking directly at him.
The boy slowly turned his head.
What he saw shattered every remaining trace of confidence.
Deep within the legion, something red emerged from the void.
A tentacle.
It was enormous, its surface coated in a slick, crimson substance that resembled living flesh.
A faint aura of dread radiated from it, spreading across the mountainside like an invisible stain.
Then another tentacle appeared.
And another.
And another.
Within moments, the space above the legion had become crowded with writhing appendages.
Tens of thousands of blood-red tentacles unfolded from empty space, twisting and coiling as though they were reaching through invisible layers of reality.
There was no discernible source.
No central body.
No opening in the earth.
They simply appeared, as though the world had suddenly remembered that something was supposed to be there.
The boy stared in disbelief.
“…What?”
The tentacles descended.
One pierced a wood person’s torso.
Another passed through an empty eye socket.
Hundreds more plunged into the legion, impaling the wooden creatures and lifting them into the air.
The wood people did not resist.
They did not scream.
They simply hung motionless from the crimson appendages, their round bodies swaying gently in the frigid wind.
Then their bodies began to change.
The wooden surfaces softened.
Their limbs stretched and twisted, bending at angles that should have been impossible.
Their torsos swelled, and the hollow openings in their bodies widened into gaping cavities.
Something wet and glistening emerged from beneath their wooden shells.
Flesh.
Layers upon layers of it.
The wood people began to fuse together, their individual bodies losing all distinction as the tentacles dragged them into an enormous, writhing mass.
Wood merged with flesh.
Flesh merged with flesh.
Limbs tangled together, torsos collapsed, and hollow eyes appeared across surfaces where no faces had existed before.
The legion was no longer a collection of individual creatures.
It was becoming a single organism.
A grotesque amalgamation of thousands upon thousands of bodies, bound together by crimson tentacles that seemed to extend into infinity.
The wood people had become one.
And the thing they had become was looking at him.
The boy’s vision blurred.
A sudden, unbearable pressure seized his head.
Blood trickled from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as his body staggered beneath the invisible assault.
He clutched his skull, gasping as he felt something being dragged out of him.
His soul.
It felt as though an immeasurable vacuum had opened inside his chest, pulling at the very essence of his existence.
His thoughts began to unravel.
Memories scattered through his mind, losing their meaning as they were swallowed by an overwhelming tide of incomprehensible terror.
He could not understand what he was seeing.
No.
Perhaps that was the problem.
Somewhere deep within his mind, something understood perfectly well what stood before him.
And it was terrified.
That thing should not exist.
The thought surfaced without warning.
Something that ancient was never meant to be witnessed.
His mind desperately searched for an explanation.
A god?
No.
A demon?
No.
A forgotten divinity?
No.
Every answer collapsed before it could fully form.
The creature was an anomaly, an error in the structure of reality itself.
It was something that did not belong to the world, something that could not have originated from the hands of the gods.
It was not a creation.
It was a contradiction.
And the mere act of perceiving it seemed to violate something fundamental within the boy’s mind.
He immediately looked away and squeezed his eyes shut.
A bloodcurdling scream tore from his throat, echoing across the snowy wasteland and reverberating through the hollow mountain.
“AAAAAAAHHHHH!”
He stumbled forward, nearly falling as he desperately forced his legs to keep moving.
“I CAN’T DIE HERE!”
His voice cracked.
“NOT LIKE THIS!
A VIRGIN BOY LIKE ME CAN’T DIE LIKE THIS!”
He continued running.
“Although… I mean, it’d be pretty cool to go out like a legend—”
He abruptly stopped himself.
“NO!
NO, WHY THE HELL AM I THINKING ABOUT THAT?!
JUST RUN!”
He pushed himself harder, desperately trying to outrun the creature while fighting the madness and corruption assaulting his mind.
The world seemed to distort around him.
The snow beneath his feet occasionally appeared to move in the wrong direction.
The wind whispered words he couldn’t understand.
Somewhere behind him, he could hear a low, wet rumbling that seemed to vibrate through his bones.
He refused to look back.
“Come on, think!
THINK!
How the hell do I get out of this?!”
The creature was getting closer.
He could feel it.
Its presence pressed against his back, an unbearable weight that made every instinct in his body scream.
He was running out of time.
Then, suddenly, an idea came to him.
A reckless idea.
An utterly ridiculous idea.
But it was the only one he had.
The boy glanced toward the edge of the mountainside.
An enormous abyssal chasm stretched below, its depths concealed by absolute darkness.
He had no idea how deep it was.
He had no idea what awaited him at the bottom.
And he had absolutely no guarantee that he would survive the fall.
But the alternative was considerably worse.
“I might not survive this…”
He swallowed.
“…But, hell.
Here goes nothing!”
The boy planted his left foot against the frozen ground.
CRACK!
The earth fractured beneath the force of his step.
He pivoted sharply to the right, abandoning the mountainside and throwing himself over the edge.
For one brief moment, he hung in the air.
Then gravity seized him.
The boy plunged into the abyss, his body rapidly swallowed by the darkness below.
Above him, the enormous creature came to a halt.
Its colossal mass of fused flesh remained motionless at the edge of the precipice.
Thousands of tentacles writhed across its surface, while others extended toward the surrounding mountainside.
One particularly enormous tentacle slowly reached over the chasm.
It hung there, suspended in the frigid air.
Then its tip curled downward.
The creature seemed to be peering into the darkness.
Watching.
Waiting.
The boy, meanwhile, was falling at an alarming rate.
His body felt weak, his muscles trembled uncontrollably, and his battered soul seemed barely capable of holding itself together.
Yet somehow, he was alive.
He had survived an encounter with something that should never have been seen.
A wave of satisfaction washed over his face.
A weak smile appeared on his lips.
I did it.
I actually fucking did it.
He had escaped.
He had somehow survived.
And although he was now plummeting into an abyss of unknown depth, he couldn’t help feeling that this was preferable to being swallowed by that monstrosity.
His relief lasted approximately three seconds.
Then he looked up.
His smile disappeared.
The tentacles hanging over the chasm had begun to detach from the creature’s enormous body.
One by one, they separated and fell.
But something strange happened as they descended.
Their crimson surfaces began to harden, becoming smooth and rigid, almost like diamond.
Their colors gradually shifted from blood red to a muddy brown, while their shapes contracted and rearranged themselves.
The tentacles became wooden limbs.
Their flesh hardened into round torsos.
Their ends split into arms and legs, emerging from hollow openings in the newly formed bodies.
Finally, two empty eye sockets appeared.
Within moments, each falling tentacle had transformed into a familiar figure.
A wood person.
Round body.
Stubby limbs.
Hollow eyes filled with ancient darkness.
The boy stared upward in absolute disbelief.
“…No.”
Another tentacle detached.
It became another wood person.
Then another.
And another.
Thousands of the creatures began falling into the abyss, their wooden bodies tumbling through the darkness like an endless rain of nightmares.
The last remaining tentacle lingered above the precipice.
Its tip swayed gently in the wind.
Then it withdrew into the hollow mountain, disappearing into the cold darkness from which it had emerged.
The boy’s entire body went rigid.
A cold chill crawled down his spine.
“H-how…?”
His voice trembled.
“H-how the hell did I get this wrong?!
I thought they were just… WOOD!”
He stared at the descending figures.
“NOT A FUCKING ELDRITCH FLESH HORROR!”
His scream echoed through the abyss.
A multitude of thoughts flooded his mind, each one worse than the last.
He had thought the wood people were strange creatures that inhabited the snowy plains.
He had thought their bizarre behavior was simply an oddity of the ancient world.
He had even thought that destroying them was enough to make them disappear permanently.
But now…
Now he understood that he hadn’t been fighting the wood people.
He had been fighting pieces of something else.
And that something else had just revealed itself.
The light above him began to shrink.
The circular opening at the top of the chasm grew smaller and smaller until it resembled a distant window in the sky.
Then even that faint light disappeared.
The boy was swallowed by complete darkness.
He could no longer see the mountain walls.
He could no longer see the sky.
All he could feel was the icy wind rushing past his body and the countless wood people descending after him.
Then one of them came diving toward him like a falcon.
Its wooden body twisted through the air, a spear clutched in its stubby hands.
It aimed directly for his chest, moving with terrifying precision.
The boy’s instincts reacted before his mind could catch up.
He reached out and grabbed the spear.
With his other hand, he snapped off a small piece of its shaft and drove the broken fragment into the creature’s hollow eye socket.
The wood person jolted.
Its body burst apart.
A torrent of darkness spilled from its shattered form, swirling around the boy before flowing away into the surrounding blackness.
The boy barely had time to breathe.
Another spear came hurtling toward him.
He instinctively reached out to catch it.
THUNK!
The weapon pierced his palm.
Its momentum carried it forward until the sharpened tip stopped mere inches from his face.
The boy’s eyes widened.
For a brief moment, he could only stare at the spear trembling in his injured hand.
Then the pain struck.
“UGHHH!
MAN, ISN’T THIS A LITTLE TOO MUCH?!”
His fingers spasmed around the shaft.
His vision blurred, and his consciousness began to slip away.
The pain was unbearable.
His body was exhausted, his soul was battered, and his mind was struggling to resist the lingering influence of the creature above.
He was losing consciousness.
Not now.
His jaw tightened.
Not fucking now!
Summoning the last remnants of his strength, he seized the spear with his uninjured hand and pulled it free.
The pain was so agonizing that it dragged him back from the brink of unconsciousness.
He nearly screamed.
Instead, he gritted his teeth until his jaw ached and forced himself to remain alert.
He had no time to waste.
The boy twisted his body in midair, turning onto his stomach so that his back faced the descending legion.
He straightened his body, bringing his arms close to his sides and extending his legs behind him.
Then he began to dive.
He needed to reach the bottom before the wood people caught him.
“Come on… come on…”
His voice was little more than a strained whisper.
“Just a little more…”
He accelerated into the darkness, his body cutting through the air as he desperately tried to put distance between himself and his pursuers.
Minutes passed.
Each one felt like an eternity.
The cold wind roared in his ears.
His injured hand throbbed with every movement, and the pain spreading through his arm threatened to overwhelm his remaining concentration.
But he kept going.
Then, at last, he saw it.
The floor of the abyss.
A vast expanse of jagged stone emerged from the darkness below, its uneven surface rapidly growing larger.
The boy’s heart lurched.
He was approaching the ground far too quickly.
He needed to slow down.
Immediately.
He twisted around in midair, turning to face the descending wood people.
They were closing the distance.
Their hollow eyes remained fixed on him, and their spears were already raised.
The boy grinned despite the pain.
“HEY, DICKHEADS!”
The creatures continued descending.
“COME ON!
COME ATTACK ME!”
The wood people responded instantly.
Thousands of tiny arms drew backward.
Then the legion unleashed its attack.
A storm of spears tore through the darkness, their sharpened tips creating a dense curtain of weapons that blotted out the boy’s view of the creatures above.
He raised both arms to protect himself.
The first spear tore through his fur-lined robe.
The second grazed his shoulder.
The third struck his forearm, while several others passed close enough to leave shallow cuts across his body.
He twisted and turned, trying to minimize the damage as the barrage continued.
The sheer number of projectiles made evasion impossible.
He could only endure.
His robe was shredded in multiple places, and his body was covered with painful scratches.
The impact of passing weapons sent him tumbling through the air, threatening to disrupt the careful position he had established.
Still, he refused to give up.
Finally, the barrage subsided.
The boy lowered his arms and gasped for breath.
Then he noticed something embedded deeply in his arm.
A spear.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His expression twitched.
He grabbed the shaft and yanked it free.
Pain shot through his arm, but he forced himself to ignore it.
He couldn’t afford to lose his concentration now.
The ground was getting closer.
He turned toward the abyss wall and extended his uninjured hand, clutching the spear tightly.
If he could use it to create friction against the stone, he might be able to slow his descent enough to survive the impact.
It was a desperate plan.
But desperate was all he had left.
The boy shifted his body toward the wall.
The jagged stone rushed past him.
Closer.
Closer.
Until he finally reached it.
He thrust the spear into the mountainside.
KRRRRAAAACK!
The weapon struck the rock, carving a jagged groove into the ancient stone.
Fragments of stone exploded outward, scattering through the darkness.
Several pieces struck the descending wood people, knocking them off course.
The sudden resistance jolted the boy’s entire body.
His injured arm screamed in protest.
But he held on.
The spear scraped against the wall, slowing his descent by a fraction.
Then another fraction.
The boy clenched his teeth and pressed the weapon harder against the stone.
“Come on!
Come on!”
The ground was still approaching.
But his plan was working.
He was slowing down.
For the first time since leaping into the abyss, he felt a faint glimmer of hope.
Then the spear began to bend.
A sharp cracking sound echoed through the chasm.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Wait—”
SNAP!
The weapon broke.
The sudden loss of resistance threw his body away from the wall, sending him tumbling uncontrollably through the air.
His stomach lurched.
The ground was directly beneath him now.
There was no time to think.
No time to react.
No time to devise another plan.
The boy struck the rocky floor.
CRASH!
The impact silenced everything.
His body went limp.
His thoughts vanished.
And as the last traces of consciousness slipped away, the endless darkness of the abyss swallowed him whole.
The boy’s vision went black.
Darkness.
Complete, utter darkness.
There was no sky above him, no ground beneath him, no wind brushing against his skin.
There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and nothing to distinguish one moment from the next.
And yet, strangely enough, the boy felt at peace.
The darkness was warm in a way he couldn’t explain.
It embraced him without demanding anything in return, offering a quiet comfort that he had rarely experienced throughout his miserable existence.
For once, there was no cold.
No monsters.
No endless struggle to survive.
Just silence.
Am I really dead?
The thought drifted through his mind.
After striking the bottom of the abyss, everything had gone black.
There had been no final flash of light, no dramatic revelation, no mysterious deity waiting to welcome him into the afterlife.
Just darkness.
And, apparently, death slowly clawing its way into his very being.
The boy let out a nervous chuckle.
“Is this it?
Seriously?
I thought it’d be much cooler than this.”
His voice sounded strangely distant, as though the darkness itself were swallowing his words before they could travel very far.
“I mean, honestly, I thought dying meant going to another realm or something.
Maybe I’d meet some mysterious god, discover the secrets of the universe, or get reincarnated as some ridiculously overpowered protagonist.”
He paused.
“…Instead, I get an endless expanse of nothingness.”
He sighed.
“What a scam.”
For a while, nothing happened.
Then the darkness moved.
At first, the change was so subtle that the boy almost mistook it for his imagination.
A faint distortion appeared somewhere in the distance, resembling ripples spreading across the surface of an invisible lake.
The ripples widened.
The surrounding darkness began to separate, parting like an enormous curtain being drawn aside by an unseen hand.
Beyond it, a pale light emerged.
The light flickered.
Then it took shape.
An indistinct scene materialized within the darkness, suspended in the emptiness like a fragment of a forgotten dream.
The boy stared at it.
“What…?”
He could barely make out anything.
The image was blurred and unstable, its contents obscured by a veil of distortion that seemed to resist his attempts to look through it.
Nevertheless, he felt an inexplicable urge to understand what he was seeing.
He concentrated.
Whatever strength remained within his consciousness gathered around the image, pressing against its indistinct edges.
Slowly, painstakingly, the scene became clearer.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“…Is this the past?”
A desolate wasteland stretched before him.
The land was dark gray, its surface scarred by countless fissures that resembled the wounds of some colossal, dying creature.
The sky above was equally bleak, devoid of stars, clouds, or any discernible source of light.
Humanoid figures filled the heavens.
Their silhouettes blotted out the already dark sky, forming an immense gathering that hovered over the wasteland.
Even without being able to distinguish their faces, the boy could sense something extraordinary about them.
Angels.
At least, that was the first word that came to mind.
Their presence carried an indescribable weight, the kind of overwhelming authority that belonged to beings who had once stood above the mortal world.
Yet their attention was not directed toward the wasteland itself.
It was directed toward a single figure seated upon the ground.
A man.
He was hunched forward, his posture resembling that of someone who had grown tired of carrying an immeasurable burden.
Black, jagged armor covered his body.
Its edges protruded at irregular angles, resembling the broken remains of an ancient monument.
An oppressive aura of madness radiated from him, distorting the space around his body.
His hair was long, black, and tangled into thick curls that resembled strands of seaweed.
It hung over his face, concealing his features almost entirely.
For several moments, the man remained motionless.
Then he slowly raised his head toward the angels.
His face remained obscured, but his voice carried clearly across the wasteland.
“Ahh… angels.”
His tone was deep, dry, and raspy, like stone grinding against stone.
“What took you people so long?”
The boy stared.
There was something profoundly unsettling about the man’s casual demeanor.
He was surrounded by an entire host of celestial beings, yet he spoke as though they were late guests arriving at an inconvenient gathering.
The man turned his head.
His gaze drifted away from the angels and toward something beyond the wasteland.
Something impossibly distant.
Something that, in some incomprehensible sense, was also close enough to touch.
“The Creator…”
He paused.
“My father.”
The man’s shoulders trembled.
Then he laughed.
It began as a quiet chuckle, almost restrained, before gradually growing into something far more disturbing.
“He threw me out again.”
His laughter echoed across the barren land.
There was amusement in it.
There was bitterness.
But beneath both lay something that made the boy’s stomach tighten.
An immeasurable resentment.
The kind that had been nurtured for so long that it had ceased to resemble an ordinary emotion.
The man slowly lowered his head.
“Oh, but when I get out of here…”
His voice became softer.
“I’ll remember you all fondly.”
The angels remained silent.
Not a single figure moved.
Their collective stillness made the scene feel less like an arrest and more like a ceremony whose conclusion had already been decided.
The man raised his head once more.
This time, he pointed toward the figures looming above him.
His voice lost its amusement.
What remained was cold, solemn, and utterly devoid of warmth.
“Let there be madness.”
The moment those words left his mouth, the wasteland disappeared.
The angels vanished.
The man vanished.
The light vanished.
Everything was swallowed by absolute blackness.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“…What the hell was that?”
He tried to concentrate on the scene again, but there was nothing left to see.
Only darkness.
The image had disappeared as though it had never existed.
And yet, the words remained lodged in his mind.
The Creator.
My father.
He threw me out again.
Let there be madness.
The boy felt an inexplicable chill.
He had no idea who that man was.
He had no idea where that wasteland existed, or why he had been allowed to witness a fragment of something that had happened in the distant past.
But one thing was certain.
That man was not ordinary.
And whatever he had meant by those final words…
The boy had a terrible feeling that he didn’t want to find out.
Back in the abyss
Silence.
Then came the faint sound of something shifting against stone.
Scattered across a vast marble floor lay the remains of numerous wood people.
Their round bodies were cracked and broken, their limbs scattered across the ground like discarded pieces of furniture.
Approximately thirty meters away, a boy lay motionless.
His fur-lined robe had been reduced to little more than torn scraps of fabric.
His body was covered in bruises, and his limbs rested at unnatural angles from the force of his fall.
For several moments, nothing happened.
Then his eyelids twitched.
Slowly, the boy opened his eyes.
“…”
He stared blankly into the darkness.
His mind was sluggish, his thoughts drifting in and out of coherence.
Where… am I?
He attempted to lift his upper body.
Pain immediately flooded his consciousness.
“—GH!”
His arms gave way, and he collapsed onto the marble floor.
For a moment, he could do nothing but lie there, breathing through clenched teeth.
Every movement seemed to awaken another source of pain.
His jaw throbbed, his ribs protested with every breath, and his injured hands felt as though they had been subjected to a particularly cruel experiment.
Worse still, the corruption left behind by the enormous creature continued to linger within his soul.
It was faint.
Dormant, almost.
But it was there.
A foreign presence embedded deep within his existence, waiting patiently for an opportunity to spread.
The boy closed his eyes.
“…I really need to stop falling off things.”
He lay still for several seconds, gathering what little strength he could recover.
Then, with considerable effort, he planted both hands against the floor and pushed himself upward.
His arms trembled violently.
His vision swam.
Yet he persisted, slowly forcing his body into a sitting position.
The moment he managed it, his stomach lurched.
He turned his head and vomited blood onto the marble.
The thick liquid struck the floor with a wet splatter.
The boy stared at it.
“…Wonderful.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Come on.
Heal already.”
Fortunately, his body possessed a small regenerative ability.
It was hardly impressive compared to the healing powers of the monsters inhabiting this world, but it had saved his life on more than one occasion.
Unfortunately, regeneration required energy.
And he had almost none left.
He took a moment to assess his injuries.
His jaw appeared fractured.
Several bones in his face had sustained damage, including the area around his left eye socket and the bridge of his nose.
His teeth had suffered considerable damage, and he suspected he had lost a few.
Both eardrums were likely ruptured.
His neck was badly strained, multiple ribs were broken, and his hands and feet had sustained a collection of fractures, sprains, and other injuries.
Bruising covered much of his body, and he could feel the lingering effects of internal trauma whenever he tried to breathe too deeply.
His head was the worst of all.
A persistent pressure throbbed behind his eyes, and his thoughts occasionally seemed to drift away from him.
He couldn’t tell how much of that was physical injury and how much was the corruption still festering within his soul.
“…Ugh.”
He stopped examining himself.
“I don’t care anymore.
I don’t have enough energy for this shit.”
He had more pressing problems.
For one, he was lying at the bottom of an abyss.
For another, he had no idea how to get out.
And if he failed to find a way to escape, his injuries would eventually finish what the fall had started.
The boy took a deep breath.
Then another.
He gathered every remaining ounce of strength within his body and slowly pushed himself onto his feet.
His legs trembled beneath his weight.
For several seconds, he swayed dangerously, nearly collapsing again.
But eventually, he managed to stand.
He looked around.
Nothing.
No sunlight.
No moonlight.
No distant glow to indicate an exit.
The darkness stretched in every direction, swallowing the enormous marble chamber in an impenetrable veil.
The boy narrowed his eyes.
“…Great.”
He turned his head, searching for anything that might resemble a passageway, a staircase, or even a conveniently placed ladder.
Nothing.
Only the oppressive absence of light.
“Ugh.
Just fucking kill me already.”
His words echoed through the chamber.
He almost wished something would oblige him.
At least then, he wouldn’t have to spend the next several hours wandering around in the dark while slowly bleeding to death.
But wishing for death had never been particularly useful.
The abyss was said to be home to all manner of creatures, from mindless beasts to horrors that existed beyond the limits of mortal comprehension.
Perhaps the monster that had pursued him on the mountainside also dwelled here.
The thought made his stomach twist.
He needed to escape.
Immediately.
Even if he managed to return to the snowy plains, there was no guarantee that the wood people would leave him alone.
After everything that had happened, he was certain they would continue searching for him.
He had survived their legion once.
He doubted he could do it again.
The boy exhaled slowly.
“Alright.
One problem at a time.”
He began walking.
Each step sent a dull ache through his body, but he forced himself to continue.
“Man, who knew those wood people would cause me this much trouble?”
He shook his head.
“Hehe.
Who knew…”
He paused.
“…Because everyone’s dead.
Hahaha.
Nobody would know.”
His laughter echoed through the darkness.
For a brief moment, the absurdity of his own joke brought him some comfort.
Then an unfamiliar voice tore through the silence.
“That joke was terrible.”
The words vibrated through the chamber.
Not merely through the air, but through the marble beneath his feet, the bones in his body, and something far deeper within him.
The boy froze.
His head snapped toward the source of the voice.
He instinctively jumped backward, nearly losing his balance as he frantically searched the surrounding darkness.
“WHO GOES THERE?!”
Silence.
Then the voice answered.
“Technically, nobody.”
The boy blinked.
“…What?”
He slowly straightened.
“No, seriously.
Who the hell are you?”
“Who’s asking?”
The boy stared into the darkness.
For some reason, he could practically imagine the speaker grinning at him.
A smug, childish grin.
The kind worn by someone who had just discovered a particularly irritating way to annoy another person and intended to exploit it for the foreseeable future.
The boy’s expression darkened.
“That line doesn’t work here.”
The voice burst into laughter.
It was a peculiar sound, echoing through the chamber in several overlapping layers.
For a moment, the boy felt as though multiple people were laughing at him from different corners of the room.
Then he realized something far more unsettling.
The laughter wasn’t coming from different places.
It was coming from the same place.
Somehow, it simply sounded as though it occupied several locations at once.
The boy’s soul shuddered.
A thin trickle of blood began running from his nose.
He quickly wiped it away.
“What can I say?
I get it from—”
He stopped.
“…Uh, never mind.”
He swallowed and narrowed his eyes.
“Alright, enough messing around.
Who are you?”
The laughter gradually faded.
For a moment, the voice remained silent.
When it finally spoke again, its tone had changed.
The playful amusement was still there, but something older lurked beneath it.
Something weary.
Something that had watched civilizations rise and fall, only to discover that the passage of time offered little comfort to those who remembered too much.
“Think of me as a remnant of an Old One.”
The boy went still.
“…An Old One?”
The words stirred something unpleasant in his memory.
His thoughts drifted toward the grotesque creature on the mountainside, the impossible mass of flesh and tentacles that had nearly torn his soul from his body.
A sudden headache bloomed behind his eyes.
The corruption within his soul stirred.
It was subtle at first, little more than a faint ripple beneath the surface of his consciousness.
Then it began to grow.
Slowly.
Insidiously.
Like something buried beneath frozen soil beginning to awaken.
The boy clutched his forehead.
The voice immediately spoke.
“Are you stupid?
Didn’t I tell you not to think about eldritch horrors?”
The boy flinched at the sudden sharpness in its tone.
“Alright, alright!
Christ!”
He forced his thoughts away from the creature.
The headache gradually subsided, though the corruption remained.
The voice gave a dissatisfied sigh.
“Honestly.
You humans are remarkably talented at doing precisely what you’re told not to do.”
The boy glared into the darkness.
“Well, excuse me for being curious!
You can’t just tell someone you’re a remnant of an Old One and expect them not to ask questions!”
“Actually, I can.
I just did.”
“…I hate you already.”
“Excellent.
We’re making progress.”
The boy pinched the bridge of his nose, immediately regretted it, and hissed through his teeth.
He needed to get out of this place.
And as much as he disliked the mysterious voice, it was the only thing he had encountered since waking up that seemed capable of communicating with him.
He swallowed his pride.
“Alright.
Can you help me get out of here?”
The voice fell silent.
Several seconds passed.
Then a soft chuckle echoed through the chamber.
“Hahaha.
Alright, boy.
I’ll help you.”
The boy’s eyes brightened.
“Really?”
“I like your spirit.”
“Great!
Then I order you to teleport me directly to my cave!”
Silence.
“…Sorry.
Can’t do that.”
The boy’s mouth fell open.
“W-WHAT THE FUCK?!
WHY NOT?!”
The voice hesitated.
For the first time, it seemed to struggle with its response.
“Because, as I already mentioned, I’m merely a lost soul that emerged from madness.
I no longer possess the ability to perform supernatural feats at will.”
The boy stared blankly into the darkness.
“…So you’re useless.”
“How wonderfully perceptive.”
“I’M GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE!”
“Possibly.”
“THAT’S NOT HELPING!”
The voice laughed again.
The boy seriously considered throwing something at it, then remembered that he could barely stand and had no idea where the voice was coming from.
After a moment, he sighed.
“Fine.
If you can’t teleport me, what can you do?”
The voice grew quieter.
“I can guide you.”
The boy raised an eyebrow.
“Guide me where?”
“To a teleportation magic circle.”
The boy froze.
“…A teleportation magic circle?”
“Yes.”
His expression brightened so quickly that it was almost comical.
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?!”
“Because you were busy demanding that I perform a task I am physically incapable of performing.”
“…Fair enough.”
The boy straightened as much as his battered body allowed.
For the first time since waking up at the bottom of the abyss, he felt a genuine flicker of hope.
A teleportation circle.
A way out.
A chance to return to his cave, recover from his injuries, and pretend that the past several hours had been nothing more than an exceptionally unpleasant nightmare.
He took a deep breath.
“Alright, mysterious voice.
Lead the way.”
A faint chuckle answered him.
“Gladly, boy.”
Then, after a brief pause, the voice added:
“Although I should warn you…”
The boy’s smile faltered.
“…What?”
“The path to that magic circle is not particularly safe.”
The boy stared into the darkness.
“…Define not particularly safe.”
The voice seemed to consider the question.
Then it answered with infuriating calmness.
“Well, let’s just say that if the things living down here discover you, you’ll probably wish the wood people had killed you.”
The boy closed his eyes.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he whispered:
“…I fucking hate this world.”
The voice laughed.
And somewhere far beyond the reach of the boy’s vision, something in the darkness laughed with it.