The touch. The feeling of Alice's embrace. This moment could've gone a lot better, but instead, all he felt was her tears running through him.

'You need to trust in the person whose eye is the darkest, darker than yours.'

'But there are none.'

'Let their eyes gaze upon you, if that were the case.'

"Guillerme!!! Why did you leave me for so long? Aaahh!!" She wiped her tears on his cold skin, embracing him.

Zabulus couldn't move. If this was truly the waking world, then, all his powers, all his potential, none were given to him at all. No. Everything that he had within him, he no longer...

"Aaahhh-!! Aaaaa-!" Laz screamed.

"Laz!" Zabulus pushed her off him, gentle enough to not hurt her. He managed to do it quickly, but for some reason, he felt sick about everything around him. So he called for the thing that made him feel sick the most, a man who's mind was nothing more than sexual fantasies and nothingness filling it. He was a being now driven by pure instinct and orders; no will of his own. Just how disgusting can things possibly get?

"Laz..."

He lay on the ground motionless, his breath ragged as his body shivered.

"How...how...did I-...go...from the snow to here?" He spoke his first proper words in what felt like an eternity.

"Laz..."

"Huh?! Oh... Y-yeah... that's right... Zabulus I'm-I'm sorry for— Hrgh...?"

He blinked and didn't notice. "Gh...nngh... kh.." His throat closed as a substance he didn't remember swallowing slithered its way through it...

Zabulus pierced Laz's throat, but somehow, he lived.

"L...o....r...." He managed to blurt out, staring at the empty room. His face was so peaceful... it's as though he was asleep. The scene around him didn't exist, his face had faded.

"Ghk!" Zabulus stuck his hand into the hole he made, slowly inserting both of his left forearms inside where Laz's larynx used to be. As if something was missing from him. As if the internal organs didn't really matter, there's no other possible way. His throat didn't exist anymore, but still, somehow his heart beat at its regular pace, pumping and making the veins push more liquid out, as if the brain was going to die, even in an infinite space of nowhere and nothing. But it seemed like there's some of Laz's 'flesh' missing, because Laz didn't scream, neither did Zabulus hear.

Eventually, his left hands reached the sinewy walls within. Something pulsated between them, he pressed his palms forward and curled the tips of his fingers, pushing aside the bits of mucus membranes.

Then he went through the diaphragm, twisting and turning one of his forearms in, pushing them down and bending the bones in unnatural directions to get enough strength, as well as pulling the second out. There's also the lack of blood in this whole process...

'Oh? A sign... of life?' He heard someone's whisper echo through the emptiness.

"Damn. Was it worth it, for Laz." He felt a bit lighter now. His face burned. "Worth it..."

"Hey! Hey! Guillerme, what are you doing to Lazzy here?" She seems to still confuse Zabulus for Guillerme. Unaffected by this sequence of events.

Her best friend of a thousand years, right in front of her eyes, disappearing right in front of her eyes. Not existing anymore. As if she never could have known, as if everything about them was a figment of his imagination... but it didn't feel as real.

Slowly... the arms reached the acid within, the insides melting. It was now, or never...

"Guillermeee... why are you ignoring me?!"

Her eyes wide and hollow, staring into his as he cried tears of blood, flowing from the corners like a torrential flow.

Ksssss- A sound dug itself into the room with a flash.

Her nails digging into her temples as her palms tightly clutch tightly around her head, her blonde hair stained crimson in a flash as crimson pours down her ears. She fell, falling over as she screamed for another and another time, she screamed and bled because her memories had all but left her in that moment. But her mind remained intact all the same.

'Why would she cry? What happened here? Did I do this to her?! How will I apologize? How will she even understand why I would even attempt such a thing as he is already half-way... already dead? Why would he attempt such a thing?'

'Guillerme! You bastard! Bastard! Why!'

She passed out, unable to speak.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

His senses blurred once more, as Zabulus returned to his senses. 'Had she caught me, that creature could have eaten me. And now you're ruining my... OUR work, aren't you?'

'Why did you kill Laz you fucking dumbass?! Why did you cut out his organs? Just... What was the point? What was your purpose!? Are we a failure? What happened here?! Why didn't she feel or remember anything?! JUST WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!' In a full rage, perhaps culminating from that other entity, he felt. No longer could Zabulus be allowed to live, Guillerme thought.

That being stood across the room, watching. 'Ah... What a sight, now you're being true to your nature as you are an abomination in all senses. Let's hope the king of the world doesn't fail in his own mission once again, eh? But you know... you are already a pure king!' it taunted, 'You don't neeeeed things such as guilt, you know what they say... 'Ones guilt won't purify oneself'! So... Tell me, ■■■■■, are you gonna ask me to follow the orders of the puppetmaster?'

"Puppetmaster?" Zabulus whispered to the monster in his reflection.

'Ah... Now he takes it easy... first off.' The mucus, blood and acid and other disgusting bodily things washed off of Zabulus' arms. 'Now then, I know you didn't expect to see me so early... but I won't be here long, promise!'

The wall opened itself as a single black, crystalized branch grew from its center. The black form solidified and the edges glowed orange, burning with flames. The fires moved swiftly to burn the white rose above as well.

wshhhhhh. It made that hissing sound, moving faster and faster. Like a flamethrower or jet turbine, it began to gain more speed as the branch's thick roots moved with the tip of the thorns, almost resembling something else.

"What is this... what, where are we? This isn't- Where's Alice?!" Guillerme confusedly asked to no one as the darkness around them seemed to close in. "Am I losing consciousness? It hurts..!"

As the flame had extinguished, the black branch, only blackish grey and blue with some bright orange parts, looked at the boy, seemingly understanding him as its branches and roots both swirled around the stem, creating an inferno in their wake.

"Oh." Guillerme mouthed out.

The two voices could not hold on any longer as their lips moved with different patterns, the words spoken being:

'To all the world, which contains me and nothing else. To all the world, which hates me and nothing else. I will kill. You are me, and I am me. I, you and we. All three. This is a creation made of hate, by those that want the destruction and hatred.'

The voice changed and Guillerme found his self within this creature, this strange being, this... Tree. he heard its thoughts, he heard his thoughts, he heard every souls' thoughts.

He was slowly being subsumed by it... this, this thing... was it the same thing that Zaigo saw?

The thing... which was... his metaphysical body and psyche. Acting as one, as consciousness derives from the mind.

Idalia's thoughts in Guillerme's body. They were as follows: 'Alice, this person... They are so, similar. A replacement? Not my creator, this thing? This fake that wears a mask of death. No... that's not it... why can't I understand?! Zabulus... Brother...' She said, "BROTHER!" She screamed from within the tree, subsuming her too.

Guillerme panicked, but there was nothing he could do.

He didn't even fight back against Zabulus, so why is this happening?

Was this happening because... he didn't fight back?

"My fate. I think this was inevitable... no. The fact that it will inevitably be, and it should have been was all for me, wasn't it?" He asked aloud to nobody, he couldn't see clearly anymore, but he could hear Alice crying for Laz? For herself? Or crying hollow?

In the tree that is considered sorrow, in the tree that is known as mindless self-hatred, rose-tinted by a delusional world, what is this? Is the pain not fleeting? Is this not my suffering, that which can never end and will remain until eternity or the day I decide to let it go?

What is happening?

A spider and its miniscule spiderlings weaving themselves across the entire universe and its mindscape, spreading its web into the other two that stand above theirs. Weaving webs that look like these creatures of this dimension... that is...

A lie.

The spiderwebs created a sort of caging surrounding the tree, three or two hundred million spiders each had eight legs that looked to resemble that of an animal, a fox, a dog. Each leg ended with a spike, poking and prodding into the bark. The thin wires that seemed to dig their way through the inside of the bark and out.

The spiders crawled and crawled, but they did not kill. No they did not.

It was as though these things that have belonged to Guillerme were just not important. Or were too easy a prey...

The branches spread and wrapped around the bodies in their grasp. Idalia's left shin already becoming a part of the wood, feeling the pulsating and solid, yet flexible and tough mass around her, as if the matter could be broken apart from just the slightest touch.

What is happening......?

Less things made sense as Zabulus, Alice, Idalia and Guillerme asked themselves that question. Fancy words didn't fit the occasion, nor did their appearance help, the voices, the scents of blood and other bodily fluids and that rancid and horrid smell of fresh and rotting, mouldy and mildew-covered limbs that could not hold a candle to the decay and the pungent, suffocating musk.

A party of disgust was what unfolded here. Alice vomited. Guillerme and Idalia are being subsumed. Zabulus was still deep in thought. Laz was a corpse. And the thing... it... was a tree.

No words were spoken any longer, mushrooms! Blue skies! Rainbow colors!! A circle of green, no, two. Three! Four! Sixteen of various sizes! Sponges!!! Oh how their colors meshed, no... mixed, and flowed together, into shapes...

My body was being mutilated!!! But it was actually just my imagination!!!

Everything... Every single... Thing, every being, every concept, every idea, every word that was ever spoken was removed! Replaced and erased, twisted and turned and done into an ouroboros of such abstract proportions that the art and the depiction was the startpoint from whence it was being rendered and the start of it was now a bisogone and long lost from history!

Yes, a land without walls... but the walls existed, the barriers of society had faded away!

How jolly was it all? It was O so jolly!

How jovial was it? It was O so jubilant!

How grand was this? It was O so dashing and serene and sassy and lyrical and flowing with glee and delight, it was simply just O! So! Grand!

Was it indeed something grand, however, when the mind began to shatter? No, surely it was a priceless jewel worth an amount that exceeded that of which not even the richest being in all the world could imagine!

Everyone is the same! They are a one person and yet everyone! There is only us, a group of minds as the spider would do, yes, a wonderful way! Forget the gods. Forget the man. Forget everything except each other, because everything was real!