Clark whispered into Nerv’s ear without taking his eyes off the scene:
“Explain to them what you saw…
but keep your voice low.
I don’t want us to draw its attention.”
Nerv nodded slowly, then turned toward the others to begin explaining what Clark had seen.
But before any of them could move…
A massive black hand slipped into the room.
It did not resemble a human hand in any way.
It was covered in something strange and viscous, with dark strands slowly hanging from it, as though it had never been made of flesh or skin to begin with.
It moved past them slowly.
Everyone froze in place.
Their eyes widened, while Ben unconsciously took a small step backward.
As for Clark, he felt his breathing grow heavier.
He tried to remain calm, but his chest began rising and falling rapidly, his eyes never leaving the thing as it passed before them.
The hand did not turn toward them.
It did not stop.
It simply continued past them at an agonizingly slow pace, as though their presence meant absolutely nothing to it.
Everyone remained silent until the hand completely disappeared from their field of vision.
Only then did Clark move slightly closer to Guanda and whisper:
“Guanda…
give me a pen.
Quickly.”
She looked at him in confusion, but she did not ask why.
She simply opened her bag, took out a pen, and silently handed it to him.
The hand vanished completely, disappearing deeper into the apartment and leaving behind a heavy silence.
Clark looked at his friends, then calmly gestured toward the entrance leading into the other hall.
“Move from here…
quietly.”
Everyone began moving in silence, while Clark remained by the edge of the doorway for a few moments, watching the area cautiously.
The entity itself had not appeared yet.
They had seen nothing but countless black hands emerging from below and slipping throughout the place, as though something enormous lurked in a depth their eyes could never reach.
Clark stepped away from the doorway for a moment, then glanced behind him.
He froze.
The door they had entered through…
was gone.
There was no trace of the Fallen Gate anymore.
Clark drew a deep breath, trying to steady his disturbed breathing, then returned to his friends.
Everyone moved silently until they reached the other hall.
Clark grabbed Ben’s hand and stopped him for a moment, then leaned closer and whispered:
“When I throw the pen, I want all of you to run immediately.
Run a long distance straight ahead, and don’t stop no matter what until you hear my footsteps pounding hard against the ground…
The Fallen Gate is gone…
but I don’t think it’s gone forever.
This place is constantly changing.
If my analysis is correct, it will appear again.”
Ben stared at him in shock and confusion, then said:
“And you?”
Clark answered calmly:
“Don’t worry about me.
Just do as I say.”
Ben kept staring at him for a moment, then nodded.
“All right…
stay safe.”
Clark released his hand, then turned toward the entrance again.
He was still holding the pen between his fingers.
And he knew that the moment he threw it, there would be no room for retreat.
His friends disappeared from his sight one by one, while Clark remained where he was, holding his breath with difficulty.
The black hands passed beside him, slow and heavy, without stopping for him.
Clark cast a quick glance toward the far end of the room, where his friends had moved, then tightened his grip around the pen.
He began thinking rapidly.
“The moment I throw the pen…
they’ll disappear and move quickly forward.”
He looked at the hands wandering through the place.
“And when the pen hits the ground, the hands will rush toward the source of the sound.”
He took a deep breath.
“As for me…”
He looked toward the opposite passageway, where identical apartments stretched endlessly without doors.
“I’ll use that moment to run after them at full speed through the apartments themselves.”
He clenched the pen tightly.
He did not know whether his plan would work.
But he knew one thing:
If he stayed where he was for too long, the hands would notice him at the first sound he made, and they would not give him a second chance.
Suddenly, Clark threw the pen toward the opposite end of the room.
The pen struck the floor and rolled a little before coming to a stop.
The hands stopped.
They froze in place for a moment, and then terrifying sounds erupted from the abyss, deep and distorted, as though something enormous were moving through the depths of an endless void.
Then all the hands lunged toward the pen.
Ben whispered:
“Go!
Quickly!
It’s distracted!”
Everyone burst into a sprint at full speed.
Clark ran between the rooms as the hands moved behind them toward the source of the sound.
He ran as fast as he could, as though he were in a race where he had only one chance to survive.
He looked to his right, where the rooms stretched one after another, then to his left, where the narrow passage and the black abyss seemed to swallow the light itself.
He whispered while running:
“This distance is good enough…”
Then he gritted his teeth and said:
“Now…
I’ll slam my foot into the ground with all my strength.”
Clark slammed his foot hard against the floor.
Then he stopped abruptly.
It wasn’t because of the hands.
It was because of something else.
A spirit.
It was standing in the middle of the passage before him.
It looked strangely weak, almost transparent, as though it might vanish at any moment.
A pale gold and faint blue light mingled within its body, blending together without any clear boundary between them.
Clark stopped completely.
His friends had stopped as well, only a short distance behind him.
The spirit did not move.
It simply stared at him.
Then it slowly tilted its head, as though trying to recognize him.
Clark stared at it for a long moment.
He did not feel fear.
Instead, he felt something else…
A strange sense of wonder.
Then another step.
Until he stood close to it.
He slowly raised his hand.
After a moment, the spirit raised its own hand as well.
The tips of their fingers drew closer…
Then touched.
At that exact moment, a blinding white light exploded inside the room.
Everything around them disappeared.
There was no longer a passage, no rooms, no abyss, no black hands.
Only an immense light that swallowed the entire place before surging violently toward Clark’s friends and pulling them all toward it.
Memories flooded into Clark’s consciousness all at once.
It was not a single memory, but an endless history; scenes, events, laws he had never heard of before, and knowledge of the powers of spirits and things that surpassed everything he had ever known about the world came rushing into his mind with terrifying speed.
He felt as though his head were about to explode.
Then…
The spirit vanished completely.
It had not merely faded away.
His body had absorbed it entirely, as though something inside him had swallowed it without leaving a trace.
He tried to make sense of what was happening, but his mind could not process it.
Then everything suddenly cut off.
For a moment, he could no longer see the room.
Clark opened his eyes.
Before him appeared something resembling a strange illusion.
An entity with a pale face and long blue hair stood before him, the strands falling quietly around its body with an unnatural stillness.
Its eyes were strikingly different; one was glowing gold, as though it held a mysterious light deep within it, while the other was a clear, profound blue, giving its gaze something inhuman and enchanting.
Its body was white and translucent, as though it were made of something beyond imagination…
a presence that did not belong to their world, surrounded by strange golden dragons moving slowly around it, while shimmering aquatic wings extended behind its back, seeming to take shape and disappear in the same instant.
Clark continued staring at it without understanding what he was seeing.
Then he felt a hand grasp his.
He flinched slightly and turned, finding Nerv looking at him anxiously.
She said quickly:
“Clark, come on!
Hurry, we found the door.”
Clark blinked several times, and the scene before him returned to normal.
The entity was gone.
There was only the strange passageway…
and his friends standing before him.
But he could not shake the feeling.
As though he had not seen an illusion, but something that had truly existed for a single moment.
He rushed after his friends at full speed.
At the end of the passage, the door appeared.
“There!”
They had only moments.
But before they could reach it, that thing emerged from the depths of the void.
The terrifying entity appeared in the darkness, its body impossible to define, with no clear beginning or end, and then it released a sound unlike anything any of them had ever heard before.
It was not a scream, nor a roar, nor even a sound the human mind could give a name to.
It was something that made their bodies tremble, and for a moment they felt as though their ears and heads would burst from its sheer intensity.
The black hands rushed toward them at incredible speed.
Clark shoved Nerv toward the door with all his strength.
“Get inside!”
Nerv crossed to the other side, and at the same moment Ben grabbed Guanda and White, pushing them inside before following them.
Clark was left alone.
One of the hands was terrifyingly close to him.
Its fingers reached toward him, then seized the edge of his clothes.
Clark felt a sudden force and nearly fell backward.
And at the last possible moment…
The door disappeared.
It vanished completely, as though it had never existed at all.
Clark fell forward, while a torn piece of his clothing remained caught between the entity’s fingers.
Silence descended.
Clark stood there gasping for breath, then slowly looked at the torn piece of his clothes.
He could think of only one thing:
It had come incredibly close to catching him.
And before any of them could even catch their breath, something else happened.
The number 1 disappeared from above the door.
Then, above every door, a single word appeared, written in glowing golden letters that were clear and unmistakable:
“Chaos”
Suddenly, golden words appeared on the wall before them:
“The punishment resulting from the presence of an unchosen person named Mario and the suppression of Azathoth has been terminated…
Transferring the chosen ones to Chaos.”
Everyone stared at the words, unable to immediately comprehend them.
More words appeared beneath the first message:
“Try to discover the cause of the darkness and end it before your world joins the Chaos.”
Everyone’s eyes widened.
The place gave them no chance to process what they had read.
All the doors opened at the same time.
An invisible force burst from them, beginning to drag them toward the openings one by one.
“Damn the day we discovered this place!”
Ben shouted as he struggled against the force, but his feet began sliding across the floor.
Guanda and White were pulled away first, while Nerv tried to cling to Clark.
“Clark!”
Clark grabbed her hand with all his strength, while his other hand clung to the edge of the bed.
“Don’t let go of my hand!”
Nerv’s fingers slowly slipped from his grasp.
“Clark…!”
Her hand finally slipped free.
Nerv disappeared behind Guanda, White, and Ben through one of the doors, while Clark remained alone, struggling against the force dragging him toward another.
His hand slipped from the bed because of the sweat.
“No…”
He tried to grab it again, but his body was thrown backward.
And before he was pulled in completely, his eyes fell upon the table.
The book.
The book of The Absent God.
Clark’s eyes widened.
He did not know why, but he felt that he could not leave it behind.
He reached for it with everything he had and grabbed the book.
In the next moment, another door swallowed him.
Clark disappeared behind it, separated from the rest of his friends.
Then all the doors slammed shut at once.
Silence.
Moments later, the room itself began to fade away.
The doors…
The bed…
The paintings…
The golden writing…
Everything disappeared from existence.
Even the Fallen Gate itself was gone.
It left not a single trace behind.
As though it had never appeared in the world of the five friends at all.
As though nothing had ever happened.
I hope you will forgive me if there are any errors in my English, as it is not my native language; I will try to improve over time.