Well…”
A pause.
“You’re undeniably fucked.”
The boy stared at the creature holding him.
For several seconds, he simply hung there.
Then his expression hardened.
“Yeah…”
He clenched his fists.
“I figured that part out.”
The creature’s mouths opened.
Not one.
Not two.
Hundreds.
Some stretched across its torso.
Others appeared along its arms, its shoulders, even across the shadowy hands gripping him.
They all smiled.
Then they spoke.
Every mouth whispered something different.
Some spoke in languages the boy had never heard.
Some whispered his name.
Except…
He didn’t have one.
Others simply repeated the same word over and over.
“Wanderer…”
“Wanderer…”
“Wanderer…”
The boy’s eyes widened.
“What the hell are you—”
The creature suddenly hurled him.
BOOM!
His body slammed into a marble pillar.
The pillar cracked.
The boy dropped toward the floor—
—and barely managed to catch himself.
His fingers dug into the marble.
He coughed and looked up.
The old man was gone.
Not moved.
Not hidden.
Gone.
The darkness around him was completely empty.
The boy slowly stood.
“Okay…”
He glanced around.
“That was creepy.”
Silence.
Then a voice whispered directly beside his ear.
“Found you.”
The boy spun around.
Nothing.
A tentacle suddenly burst from the floor.
He jumped backward.
CRACK!
It slammed into the spot where he had been standing.
Another emerged.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The marble floor erupted as black, writhing limbs tore through it.
The boy sprinted.
Tentacles crashed down behind him one after another.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
He threw himself sideways as one tore through the wall.
Pieces of marble flew past him.
He hit the ground, rolled, and immediately scrambled back onto his feet.
“WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS PLACE HAVE TENTACLES?!”
The mysterious voice laughed.
“An excellent question.”
“THIS ISN’T FUNNY!”
“I disagree.”
A tentacle swept across the hallway.
The boy ducked beneath it.
Another came from above.
He jumped.
It missed his head by inches.
He landed awkwardly and kept running.
The darkness itself seemed to move around him.
The walls stretched.
The ceiling disappeared.
The marble beneath his feet became impossibly long, extending farther and farther into the darkness.
The boy glanced backward.
His stomach dropped.
The creature wasn’t chasing him.
It was simply standing there.
Hundreds of meters away.
Watching.
Its body had become enormous.
Its crown was floating above it.
Its face was nowhere to be seen.
Then the creature raised one hand.
And snapped its fingers.
SNAP.
The entire abyss changed.
The boy stopped.
The hallway vanished.
He was suddenly standing beneath an enormous red sky.
A black ocean surrounded him on every side.
There was no horizon.
No land.
No sun.
Only two enormous crimson spheres hanging in the distance.
The boy stared upward.
“…What?”
The voice became unusually quiet.
“That…”
For the first time, the boy could hear something resembling fear in it.
“…isn’t supposed to be here.”
The boy’s expression changed.
“You know what this is?”
“No.”
A pause.
“But I know what it isn’t.”
The ocean suddenly began rising.
Not like a wave.
The entire ocean simply lifted upward.
The water climbed into the sky.
The boy watched in disbelief as the black sea formed an enormous wall above him.
Then—
It collapsed.
“RUN!”
The boy didn’t need to be told twice.
He sprinted.
The ocean crashed behind him.
He ran across the strange black surface as the impossible wave chased him.
The boy’s legs burned.
His lungs screamed.
But he kept moving.
Something enormous moved beneath the surface.
A shape.
Too large to comprehend.
Two pale eyes opened beneath the black water.
The boy looked down.
“OH, COME ON!”
A gigantic appendage erupted from the ocean.
He jumped.
It swept underneath him.
The boy landed on it.
For one brief moment, he thought he was safe.
Then he realized what he was standing on.
It wasn’t an appendage.
It was a finger.
A single finger belonging to something so enormous that its body disappeared beyond the sky.
The finger moved.
The boy was launched into the air.
“AAAAAAAH!”
He flew upward.
The red sky rushed toward him.
Then he saw something floating above the clouds.
A city.
Upside down.
Thousands of impossible towers hung from the underside of a colossal black structure.
And between them—
People.
Hundreds of thousands of pale figures standing silently along the rooftops.
All staring at him.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Why are there people up there?!”
The voice answered quietly.
“They aren’t people.”
The boy swallowed.
“…Right.”
The figures suddenly turned their heads toward him.
Every single one.
At the exact same time.
The boy’s stomach dropped.
Then they jumped.
Thousands of pale figures began falling from the upside-down city.
Straight toward him.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
He twisted his body in midair.
One of the figures reached for him.
The boy kicked it away.
Another grabbed his robe.
He tore himself free.
A third came from behind.
The boy grabbed its arm and used its momentum to throw it away.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
They kept coming.
The boy fought desperately as he fell through the crimson sky.
He punched.
Kicked.
Dodged.
Twisted.
Every movement became instinct.
He had survived the wood people.
He had survived the eldritch creature.
He had survived the fall.
He wasn’t dying here.
Not now.
“GET OFF ME!”
He kicked one away.
Another grabbed his leg.
He slammed his fist into its face.
It vanished into black smoke.
The boy blinked.
“…Okay.”
He looked at his fist.
“That was new.”
The voice laughed.
“You’re adapting.”
“I’m trying not to die!”
“A commendable hobby.”
The boy grabbed another falling figure and threw it downward.
Then something appeared above him.
The old man.
Except it wasn’t the old man anymore.
Its ivory tunic was gone.
Its crown had grown into an enormous black halo.
Its body stretched endlessly upward and downward.
Its limbs were impossibly long.
And where its face should have been…
There was nothing.
Just darkness.
The creature looked down at the boy.
Or perhaps—
The boy suddenly realized—
It wasn’t looking at him.
It was looking through him.
The creature spoke.
But this time, its voice didn’t come from its mouth.
It came from the sky.
From the ocean.
From the falling figures.
From inside the boy’s own mind.
“Little wanderer…”
The boy froze.
“You have wandered very far from where you were meant to be.”
The boy gritted his teeth.
“I don’t even know where I’m supposed to be!”
The creature tilted its head.
A sound like distant thunder rolled across the sky.
“Exactly.”
The world shattered.
Not metaphorically.
The sky cracked like glass.
The ocean split apart.
The upside-down city broke into countless pieces.
The falling figures froze in midair.
Everything became fragments.
The boy fell through the cracks between realities.
And somewhere in that endless collapse, the mysterious voice spoke one final time.
“Hold on.”
The boy looked around wildly.
“To what?!”
A brief silence.
“…Good question.”
The boy’s eyes widened.
“You don’t know?!”
The voice laughed.
“No.”
“THEN WHY DID YOU TELL ME TO HOLD ON?!”
“Because it sounded reassuring.”
The boy screamed as the entire world disappeared beneath him.
And then—
Something caught his wrist.
The boy stopped falling.
He looked up.
A pale hand was gripping him.
The old man was hanging above him.
But this time…
There was no face.
Only a vast, empty darkness beneath the crown.
The boy stared at it.
The creature stared back.
Then, slowly…
It began pulling him upward.