Gently laying Ben's lifeless body against the shattered remnants of the nave, Karan slowly stood up from the blood-soaked ground. The cathedral—already in ruins—was completely unrecognizable, reduced to a hollowed-out shell of jagged stone and twisted metal.
A massive, jagged chasm now gaped in the center of the room, plunging straight down into the dark, subterranean cavern where the profane ritual had been held. Twisted rebar and cracked marble hung precariously over the edge, bleeding dust into the abyss.
Dragging his ink-soaked legs across the uneven debris, Karan stepped toward the edge of the sinkhole and peered down into the heavy darkness.
Standing on the precipice of the shattered ground floor, Karan stared down into the cavern, his crimson-violet eyes anchored towards the glowing remnants of the underground ritual circle.
He kept the sight in his burning gaze for a long, silent moment before his heavy eyelids began to drop.
"Tch!"
Clicking his tongue in sheer exhaustion and annoyance, Karan turned his back on the destruction. He was far too drained and physically devastated to care.
Above all, he was already done with his business here.
Dragging his ash-crusted heels over the wet stone, he left the ruins behind.
But before his boot could strike the ground for a third step——
Stab—
"Kargh!"
Warm blood abruptly flooded his mouth, violently spilling over his lips. A searing, white-hot hook of agony tore upward from the center of his chest.
Looking down, a towering, emaciated arm had phased straight through his back. The ribs were unbothered, his clothes untorn, yet a phantom wrist protruded from his sternum—its grimy, rotting fingers buried deep within his chest cavity, firmly clamped around his frantically beating heart.
'W-when?!' He immediately grabbed at the skinny limb.
Bzzzt—
His blackened hand phased entirely through the boney flesh. A violent flutter of white static erupted against his palm, sending a localized, freezing shock up his arm.
"Cough!" He hacked, his knees growing weak. His world violently glitched, sharp, jagged lines of white noise severing his vision.
'Tch! Tch! Tch!'
Sharp, wet clicks crawled directly into his inner ear. A long, skeletal snout, brimming with jagged fangs and tusks, extended from the blind spot of his peripheral vision, hovering inches from his face.
'Still wielding my power with such fragile naivety? When shall you let go of this childish compassion and empathy, Karan?'
"Kuarg!" A sharp pang of burning pain pierced his frontal lobe. A vicious, mocking smile bloomed in the back of his mind.
The reality before him tore away like wet paper, spooling into a brain-burning spiral of overlapping dimensions. Through the bleeding static, impossibly tall trees pierced the heavens, their leaves casting a haunting, neon greenish-blue glow across his retinas.
'Why do you keep doing this to yourself—to me?'
The violet threads running around Karan's limbs began to hiss like vicious serpents. The flesh beneath them turned a strange hue of burning violet, peeling back like burnt parchment.
'I claimed the shell of an incompetent fool. I severed myself from the truth simply to make you whole...'
Karan clenched his jaw until a molar cracked. His fingers curled into tight fists, veins popping all over his body like steel wires. But despite his frantic efforts, his paralyzed body refused to obey. His burning vision blurred as his fingertips began to flake away, dissolving into hot, gray ash.
'To carve away your eternal agony. To grant your soul the slumber it has begged for across a thousand Karmic cycles... Why must you persist in trampling my goodwill beneath the filth of your own defiance?'
Slowly, both his hands charred and dissolved, scattering into the wind like the ashes of the dead.
The monster smirked at Karan's broken, exhausted helplessness.
'But alas. Since you are so violently against accepting me, I shall do the same to you.'
It lazily tightened its grip, its cold claws digging deep into his cardiac muscle. Swiftly, the beast yanked its lanky arm backward, violently pulling Karan's beating heart out through his back.
"Cough!"
Losing all the strength he had left, Karan's legs gave out. His charred, ashen knees slammed against the uneven stone, scraping heavily as they splashed into a puddle of his own blood.
Pat—!
A single drop of moisture hit the puddle, creating a series of violent ripples that disturbed the perfectly still sanguine surface.
It was a tear. But his own eyes were bone-dry.
Looking down into the rippling crimson with unfocused gaze, his reflection was nowhere to be found. Trapped within the liquid mirror, a shadowed boy barely stood on the ground, his legs trembling. His face was obscured in darkness, but the sharp silhouette, the angle of the trembling jaw, and the desperate glare were hauntingly identical to Karan's own.
Looming over the figure was a beast draped in the hide of a majestic deer. Its white fur was heavily matted with gore, a sinister red light bleeding from its massive antlers. It stood on its hind legs like a twisted, feral man, its jaw hanging unnaturally wide. Its skeletal frame was stretched taut, the long snout slicked in a warm, sticky ooze
The monster's claw was penetrating through the figure's chest. In its tightly clenched claws was a furiously beating heart.
'Now, pay the price for wielding my power so childishly.' The entity squeezed the heart in its grip until it popped like a bloodied balloon.
At the exact millisecond the boy's heart was crushed in the reflection, the beast mirrored the motion, violently pulverizing Karan's severed heart in its rotting grip behind him. The boy in the blood was instantly engulfed in a cocoon of pitch-black flames, just as Karan's legs up to his knees completely crumbled into dead dust.
Losing his balance, his eyes rolled back, and he fell face-first onto the cold stone.
Inside the absolute darkness of his mind, a sterile, synthetic frequency pierced the silence. It wasn't a voice of the gods or a monster, but a cold, auditory transmission echoing through his neural pathways.
'Critical trauma detected. Complete cardiac absence. Massive systemic failure imminent. Cellular necrosis expanding beyond eighty-nine percent.'
'Lethal psychological degradation imminent. Denials bypassed. Manual override initiated.'
'Re-engaging the primary limiter.'
As Karan's eyes started to lose focus, a soft, ethereal light bloomed through his body. A feminine figure, dressed in pristine white, manifested through the glow, her face obscured by the gentle radiance.
Above them, the looming deer-skull monstrosity hissed. Its hollow, crimson eyes narrowed in deep, instinctual annoyance at the glowing figure.
'Tch!'
With a guttural click of its jaw, the beast sneered, its form unraveling like smoke as the oppressive golden radiance burned through its outline. The glitching void started to collapse, and the vicious smile dissolved back into the depths of his consciousness.
The woman knelt before Karan. With a touch as soft as morning sunlight, her fingers brushed against his cheek, melting away the chaotic agony of the bloody battle with a silent, profound maternal love.
A blinding, golden luminescence erupted from his marrow. Microscopic, metallic threads aggressively surged from his charred stumps, rapidly weaving together like a hyper-accelerated loom. Spinning raw, glowing collagen out of thin air, they violently wove a pristine, furiously beating heart, forcing a deafening pulse back into his lifeless veins. Calcium crystallized with sickeningly fast, sharp cracks, reforming pristine white bone. Red muscle fibers violently knitted themselves over the framework like weaving silk, instantly sealing beneath flawless, unblemished skin.
Looking at the figure before him, his eyes barely focused, "Ma...?" was all he could mutter after mustering all his remaining strength.
The figure before him smiled warmly. Along with her presence, the ethereal luminescence finally faded into the dark, leaving behind a gentle warmth that lulled Karan into a brief, shallow rest.
In the blink of an eye, Karan lay completely whole on the blood-soaked ground, breathing in slow, perfect rhythm.
The Cathedral above him fell into a dead, heavy silence. Then, from the bottom of the chasm—
Rumble— Rumble—
The sound of shifting debris echoed up through the chasm. The crushed debris of the ritual circle shifted. A pale, scrawny hand tore through.
Dragging his broken body out from the grave, the bald fiend stood alone in the dead cave. His robes were shredded, his left arm hanging at a sickening, unnatural angle, his lower jaw dangling loose from its natural position.
Snap—! Crack—!
With a sharp movement of his hand, he aligned his dislocated joints with sickening precision.
Slowly, he brought the leather-bound grimoire before him, tracing the stitches with his foul, soot-stained fingers. A low, bubbling chuckle began in his throat, vibrating upward until it tore through his bruised vocal cords in a manic, shrieking fit. "Kuhahahahahaha—!!"
Throwing his head back, he stared up through the jagged hole of the collapsed ceiling.
The night sky was perfectly empty. The moon hung serene and undisturbed.
But the Architect's eyes were completely ruined. The jaundiced sclera were heavily webbed with burst, bleeding capillaries. His pupils were blown wide, unblinking, thick tears of black blood leaking down his hollowed cheeks. As he stared upward, a thick, burning violet smoke began to hiss directly from his ruptured pupils, bleeding into the cold night air.
He raised a trembling, filth-stained finger, tracing impossible, maddening geometries against the empty clouds. He was staring at a phantom abyss—feeling a crushing, localized gravity that wasn't there, tasting a primordial malice in the air that only he could breathe.
"He is real! The Lord! He blessed me with his almighty presence! He is real!!!!"
He saw the cosmic eye overlapping his random geometric tracings in the sky.
Drool spilled from his smiling lips as the empty air vibrated with newfound fear and hysterical screams echoed into the quiet night.
He bowed his head over and over again, violently smashing his skull against the ruined stone. The sickening crunch of breaking bone echoed through the cavern as wet clumps of flayed scalp and shattered skull fragments flew through the air. He painted the jagged debris in a thick, gory red, his ruined face completely splitting open to expose the dark, pulsing matter of his own brain,
A thick, suffocating violet smoke hissed straight from the exposed gray matter. Writhing like raw muscle, the heavy miasma violently forced the jagged edges of torn flesh and bone to surge outward, fusing the gaping wound shut with a sickening crunch.
His skull sealed flawlessly shut, just a fraction of a second before he slammed it into the stone all over again, frantically worshipping an empty sky.