Chapter Twenty Five.

Attention.

Host synchronization rate increased.

New synchronization rate: 100%

Recompiling… Success.

[Cosmic Awakened Soul] Sub-Traits unlocked:

[Astral Body]

When the flesh fails— discard it. Like a pupa emerging from a cocoon you have shed your ties to physicality and manifest your soul directly into the world. Bend reality to your will as the supreme embodiment of Cosmic Law! Note: The universe was not meant to harbor unbound souls, and will resist your presence— continually attempting to pull you into the River of Souls and complete the cycle. Resisting this pull requires an incredible power source.

[Anathema][?]

[ERROR]

[E̹̗̠̱͞R̩͉R̰̱̮͘O͕͖͟R̼͍̖̩͕̖͎]

[̶̛E̶̵͢͞҉R͘R̸O̵̕͢͏R̴͟]̷̛

…

I snorted at the crackling whine of the interface sizzling out in my head. It wasn’t necessary for this. Anathema was a simple concept on the surface— like destruction magic was anti-physical, Anathema was anti-meta. It was burning the background concepts behind the universe, a fire fueled by causality and possibility. And it was killing me.

A dull ache spread out from my chest where the spear had punctured my soul and I rubbed at it absently with a jagged crystalline hand. The breach was surprisingly small— if the concept of size even applied here— but it let out a tiny flicker of flame. Like the wick on a lantern of anti-light, I watched in dread fascination as a little bit of me was burned off every second to maintain my existence. The fight earlier had seen it flare up impossibly high, reaching out to try and burn those arrogant pricks who’d tried to condemn me. But that had cost… a lot.

It wasn’t something I could pin down specifically. Like that hollow feeling when you’re really depressed, it was pervasive and yet muted. My memories were all tinted greyscale now the further back I went, and most of my early childhood was just a formless blank. I wasn’t happy about it but the emotion was distant— muted, just like everything else.

I pulled my hand away and stared at it for a moment. The rough edges and smoke-leaking fissures covered an oily blackness that seemed too deep like I could reach into myself endlessly and not find the bottom. Concentrating for a moment, I frowned at the appendage until it rippled— folding in on itself continuously until it looked like a black glass sculpture of a human hand. The change spread quickly down my arm to the rest of me. In a few minutes, I went from a towering (and intimidating) abstract of a person to something almost… normal. The details were soft and a little vague— almost like a glass mannequin— but I hadn’t felt more human since I’d come to this world.

Which was pretty ironic, I thought, as I looked out at a landscape devastated by my fury. In some places the ash had fused from the heat, in others, it floated oddly as Anathema had eroded the concepts behind it. The area around me was twisted and broken for kilometers into esoteric shapes and bizarre disobedience to nature that screamed of pure chaos.

Feel closer to human than ever, never been farther from it.

Space shuddered close by and I turned towards it curiously. The air wiggled in place for a moment before Murgui appeared, a pensive frown on his face as he examined me. I couldn’t help but shake my head— my domain had improved drastically with this evolution, but it only served to further highlight just how masterful the ancient Nomad’s manipulation of reality was.

“Made right choice, friend.” He said, after a while.

Did I?

I had been angry at that ‘Emissary’ or whatever she was for a long time. It had never been something specific— mostly guilt by association with my original kidnappers/murderers— until Veris told me about the other ‘chosen’ and their ultimate fate as celebrated heroes. Then my dry anger had shifted into a kind of resentment that became crystal clear now in hindsight.

Why didn’t you save me?

Such a selfish thought, and probably pointless, but there it was. Knowing what she was now and what her job had been, it just didn’t seem fair that I had to give up a cool adventure with people I know just because I had the audacity to want to live. The darker things got down here, the more I’d found myself idly wishing that somebody— anybody— could get me out. Instead, when I finally run into the Emissary, she’s trying to kill me because me being alive probably made her look bad or something.

I’d actually felt the tiniest flicker of hope when I first realized what she was. Just an instant of thought that maybe she was there to take me back to the surface and this was all a misunderstanding. All the fighting and shouts of “abomination!” were just a simple mistake, we’d laugh about this later! Amazing, the delusions we’ll cling to when we’re desperate.

What happened next was… bad. At least when I’d lost my mind fighting before, I could blame it on my transformation into a [Corrupted Blight Pit]. This one was all me. I’d never thought I would find myself willing to slowly beat someone who was relatively powerless, and then almost burn them alive with Anathema just because I was pissed. But in the moment, that Emissary had come to symbolize everything I hated about coming to this place. What bothered me most now was how little I cared about it.

Murgui had been slowly creeping forward while I’d been thinking and I couldn’t help but sigh resignedly at the mix of sadness, anxiety, and caution all battling against naked curiosity in his eyes. I held my hand out toward him, palm-up, and said, “Knock yourself out, dude.”

With a happy smile, he hopped forward and grabbed my hand in all four of his, twisting and turning it to get a better look. After several minutes of poking and prodding, he backed up and gave me a quick nod. “Neat!” He said, and then moved to start ‘fixing’ all the laws I’d broken in the area.

I felt my jaw pop into existence just so it could drop before I burst out laughing. Only Murgui could look at something like me and just think it’s ‘neat’, then get back to work. At first, I tried to help put things back together but the moment I started using my powers again he teleported over to me with a squawk and poked at me until I stopped and sat down. I watched him amusedly for the next few minutes until the area had been mostly cleaned up. The laws in the area felt… thinner after he was finished. Like he’d pulled fabric together to cover up a hole burned in cloth. It would be easier to break things down again in this spot from now on, and based on what I could sense this would be the case pretty much forever.

That was heavy. Even through my muddled emotions right now, the implications of using Anathema were unsettling. I could barely wrap my head around how dangerous it was and it was currently burning away at my soul. Fire that could burn concepts, memories. It wasn’t impossible that if I tried hard enough I could burn spacetime itself— at least for a few billionths of a second until I incinerated my soul. What exactly that would entail or cause I had no idea, but the thought felt unsettling and yet… empowering.

I have power now.

Too bad it was useless unless I wanted to kill myself. Briefly, I entertained the thought of rushing back up the pipes with my newfound strength and pitting myself against Dezzahn. If even the angelic assholes had fled in fear then I was pretty sure I could make myself an eldritch barbeque. Just didn’t know if there would be enough of me left afterward to enjoy my victory.

Murgui plopped himself down in front of me. “You see, yes?”

I nodded slowly.

“Yeah, Anathema is dangerous.”

He snorted back at me. “Dangerous! Void is dangerous. Big monsters dangerous. Anathema is apocalypse given form. You live long enough and worlds get cold— die. Stars go out, particles drift and Void consumes all. But someday comes back, is reborn with new life. Anathema ends that. Enough end-fire and all universes go out forever, [Laws] too burnt for life.”

Poking my chest, he said, “You think you just burning memories? No. Burning fate. Burning destiny threads built from thousands of lifetimes and burning threads from thousands more in possibilities. Memories getting weaker because there is nothing left of you to attach them! You are Awakened, or you would already vanish from all worlds— past and future.”

“Oh,” I responded lamely.

“Yes, ‘oh’. Would have tried to stop you sooner, but Anathema too dangerous— even for me. You will be ok, friend. Have new problem, but lucky for you it has same solution! Just less impossible now.” He stood up and took a wide stance, bracing himself against the air before grunting with effort. His hands trembled, looking like he was trying to peel back a particularly stubborn chunk of invisible wallpaper before it broke free with a final heave.

Cocking my head in confusion, I didn’t understand at first until I looked at the horizon. There, previously hidden from view, was a city. Megalithic towers and ziggurats stretched impossibly tall in the distance, the blue-white glow of wardstone giving it an icy, ethereal air. The reversed curvature of the heart-ward let me see the true ridiculous scale of it all— it was a city made for billions.

“Great City of Achorai, was called Nar’Illien. Meant ‘City of the Blessed’. Built to carry all Achorai free from fate. Last survivors called it Nar’Ichoul— City of Suffering.” His gaze was painful as he looked out at the pristine city. “Hid it. Keep them safe, keep others safe from them. Didn’t matter much, nobody came…”

The wonder of the city deflated a bit from the loneliness in Murgui’s tone. I put a hand on his shoulder and just stood with him for a minute. He gathered himself up after a bit and turned away.

“I am… barred… from entry. Cast out for betrayal. I will stay here, wait for you. Go to the Descending Tower— big one, right in middle— and take it to end. Space is… weird there, will make sense when you see. At the um… end, sorry… is hope of the Achorai, can make you new. Should fix you!” Regaining some of his usual excitement, he bobbed his head after he finished speaking.

I gave him an incredulous stare. “So… I can just waltz right in then? Nothing dangerous? What actually am I even looking for? Gonna need a lot more details, dude.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed at his vague ‘quest’ directions and spent the next few minutes detailing the city’s layout to me. The Achorai had built the city like an enormous wheel, with major thoroughfares being the ‘spokes’ going directly from the oversized walls to the tower at the city’s center. All I’d have to do was get through the gates— the walls were enchanted to aggressively prevent flying over— and head straight down the main road. It would actually take me all the way through to the ‘top’ of the tower, although Murgui insisted that calling it the ‘top’ was somehow inaccurate. There I would find—

“Are you serious!?” I blurted out.

Murgui cringed and shrank back. “Yes, friend. They sought to transform, transcend fate. Take something from outside and make it part of them— take themselves out. So they took something from out… and brought it in.”

A Void Leviathan.

A literal eldritch god. An ancient beast from the emptiness beyond the stars. World-devouring cosmic power. The Achorai had captured it, killed it, and then taken a piece of it to the heart of the tower. The flesh was undying and— according to Murgui— essentially invincible. He had no idea how they’d managed to accomplish any of this, but little things like impossibility were apparently no match for the determination of the Achorai. Murgui told me he watched as they tried to make it part of themselves, and to their eventual horror, succeeded.

“City ended in minutes, I… couldn’t see. Possibilities disappeared. Leviathan like you— from beyond fate. Could still hear them, were celebrating at first but then… screams. Gates shut, ones outside disappeared, or… ended after. Then nothing. Wanted to help, tried to help so hard but couldn’t. They are… not dead, suffering still, just silent now.”

I looked out at the city, the impressive spires now looking so much more foreboding. Somehow I was supposed to get in there. Shuddering, I barely heard Murgui’s final instructions.

“When you reach the end, eat it.”

Wait… what??