1st of March, 1920 AD.
A middle age appearing, well-dressed man called Matthias Wentz walked through the long dimly lit corridors of his extensive mansion, the space inside expanded by an ancient relic of his family brought back from the new world not long after the witch trials. His short raven black hair elegantly combed back, the faint candle light reflected in its glossy dark surface, a dense moustache that connects with his trimmed beard extending onto his cheeks and naturally well-shaped jawline contributing to his rather handsome looks.
As he continues his way staying on the long carpet he bought during one of his travels to the colonies of England, stops at a mirror, looking at his reflection while fixing his neatly folded collars of his white shirt under the dark suit and robe decorated with brass ornaments of an ancient lost magical language humanity once possessed before the Great Sin. His deep blue eyes focus on himself until in the edge of his vision he notices a dark figure standing in one of the doorways, the faint lights seemingly snuffed out by the gaping darkness, but as he turns his head in the direction of the figure it disappears, the part of the corridor where it stood still decorated by the dim warm light of the candles.
Matthias ignores the figure still lingering at the edges of his vision after continuing looking all over himself in the mirror, to find a crease and flatten it. Most people would feel some sense of dread, or a morbid curiosity to check the thing, but not Matthias who have been plagued by it for weeks now. At first he thought it was some kind of demonic or aberrant entity that latched itself to an ancient relic he brought back from his very recent trip to the southernmost colonies of the British Empire, but after he made some wards and protections that usually scare those away, he came to the conclusion that it must be something else.
After he went through each relic, some belonging to ancient spellcasters related to his family in some form, some being the relics of native witch doctors and shamans who still practice their arts to this day without the fear of persecution, or at least does not care about it. But as he finished analyzing the last of the relics he came to the same conclusion that it is neither of those. Then the nightmares started to get more intense, stuck in his mind for days even after they ended, stacking, nightmare upon nightmare that would drive the feeble minded insane. But not Matthias who have suffered extensive tortures in the past by the hands of the Witch Hunters, got cursed by warlocks delving in the forbidden arts of abyssal magics, cursed by eastern spirits while he was trying to satiate his hunger for knowledge.
After finally fixing his noble outfit, he heads to the main hall stepping on the stairs, the figure still at the edges of his vision, seemingly following him eating away the light all around him. The moment he reaches the top, the scenery of the open second floor changes to a vast desert with a reddish dark starless night sky offering a faint light, parts of ancient ruins peeking out from under the sand, a cold warmness hitting his face as finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere, calmly looking around, the figure no longer hiding in the edges of his vision.
As Matthias starts walking straight forward something slithers under the sand, the faint wind slowly reveals pale dark skinned figures of all kinds. Some with hulking bodies, their faces almost boar like, brutish with tusks sprouting from their lower lips, others with once a majestic, beautiful figures blessed with a smooth skin many would dream of, emitting an ethereal hue that warms those who looked upon them, now only emitting a darkness that brings a cold calmness mixed with a slight anxiousness that often comes with the unknown. Their whispery chanting notifies Matthias that he is not alone, turning back to the figures rising from the sand, their empty dark eyes staring straight into his soul, beckoning him to join them for the hundred time at least.
Then a mass of darkness form in the space between them forming into a tall skeletal figure missing his body’s lower part, cloaked in shadows swallowing the light all around its outlines, nimble monstrous skeletal arms grow out from its shoulders, red veins appear on its exposed chest while the darkness that it risen from spreads connecting to all the figures beckoning Matthias with their monotone voices, his mental fortitude slowly decreasing, thoughts of giving in surfaces in his mind as he stares at the thing in the middle, its cold dark presence radiating through his whole being.
Matthias starts taking his first step towards it, but with his last inch of consciousness bites his cheeks inside then his tongue, the surge of pain gains back his senses noticing a tendril like fleshy shadow apparatus exiting from the back of each figure seemingly coming from the darkness enveloping the sand under them. He starts channeling his inner mana through his being, or at least tries but the usual warm feeling of the mana coursing in his soul veins is absent, making him realize that he has no power here and instead decides that for now the best course of action is to run.
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He runs straight forward between hundreds of new figures rising from the sand. From the edge of his vision he notices that some are not even humanoid, a large lizard like creature rises that with its texture less four hands or legs on the ground with clear intelligence in its eyes, a large spider twice as large as a cow with a beautiful woman with long pointy ears similar to some other figures he saw earlier, half naked and covered in a pitch black carapace reminiscent of the starless night sky. A tall similarly pointy eared male figure with bat like features on his face the outlines of some armor with a wicked design noticeable on its figure, one of the few amongst the figures who wears some kind of clothing or armor.
After running for what it feels like hours to him, Matthias manages to stray far away from the figures and it, reaching the gaping maw like entrance of an ancient temple, a few steps leading into a wide and tall path filled with a darkness that snuffs out the light reaching into its outer parts close to Matthias. As he walks inside, his curiosity once again getting the better of him, the corridors clad in a dense darkness light up just enough for him to make out enormous hundreds of meters of tall statues, each in a sitting position and a clean featureless body, the only detail they possess is the clothing they wear, some recognizable to Matthias like the one in an attire the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore, one on a stout figure with a Viking like armor coverings its short, yet enormous body made of some dark clean mineral.
He slowly walks through the seemingly endless corridor, the previous warm light slowly turns into a deep neon crimson red light, creating a faint anxiousness in Matthias as he slowly reaches the end of the corridor, stopping at the edge where he arrives a sea of darkness with clean glass like waters, chunks of island platforms floating on its surface. He is pondering if he should continue on or maybe go back where he came from, but decides that the figures and it are probably in the opposite direction and jumps aiming for the nearest small islands, but misses it and he readies himself to get swallowed by the dark waters, but to his surprise he stays on top of it, the hit making him grunt in pain like when he once fallen from a tree branch during his childhood. He walks onwards feeling that is the best course in situations like this, marching on for what feels like hours or even days, reaching a point where no more islands float on the empty dark surface, the sky empty and dark, the whole seascape lit by a crimson faint light from an unknown source.
Then after what felt like a week of walking for Matthias he spots something in the sky or what may serve as a sky in this place. Something that floods him with a memory from years ago, from before the Great War that the world experienced. An old friend of his whose name he could no longer recall knocked on his door talking about a new society of mages, survivors of the Salem witch trials who just returned from the new world. He remembered his friend talking about his dreams, about the visitor where his tone changed to someone’s who just met their messiah, while pulling up his sleeves showing him a magically carved tattoo on his forearm, depicting a tree with several hundreds of roots and branches sprouting in all directions, the same ethereal tree that is in his vision.
On the tattoo tree had a gaping wound on it, that slowly extended into cracks on it, the same way it does, but what the tattoo didn’t depicted or maybe Matthias blocked from his memory, was the enormous tendrils made of the same pitch black gaping darkness that made the skeletal figure, the same one that in that moment he recognized with a laugh being the same figure that was creeping in the edges of his vision for weeks now, the enormous tendril like objects wrapped around the lower body of the ethereal tree pulsing with a faint light bluish light, at least that is the closest thing Matthias’s mind tries to comprehend it.
Then he notices the single long twisty line of a massive tendril penetrating the wound in the tree, Matthias starts laughing hysterically as he gets closer and closer, a force of dread assaulting his whole being, a feeling of inevitability that scares him beyond anything overcomes him, falling on his knees while hyperventilating, he notices that the tendrils choking the ethereal tree extend beyond the sea, deep in the imperceptible bottom of it, spotting small figures that get closer and more visible with each blink, recognizing them as the figures he saw in the desert and in his previous dreams, beckoning him to join them, to experience true freedom from the tyranny of his existence forced upon him.
He bites onto his tongue and inner cheek again, grabbing onto the last of his courage to stand up and run in the opposite direction, far from the tree, far from it and them, instinctively feeling that the sea surface he runs on starts forming into a whirlpool behind him trying to suck into him, forcing whatever it wants from him. He runs not looking behind, the distance in front of him showing no signs of change, looking the same while the whirlpool of the same crimson light dying this place rapidly expands, the footing under Matthias disappearing as he is swallowed up by It.