‘Life.

It is a common belief that life and nature are one of the same coin, however that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Instead life is innately callous to nature.

Life is an expression of stubbornness, a simple hatred to everything pulls it back to eternal inactivity.

Nature on the other hand is an expression of reality untampered. The balance that is formed when everything is to be left unchecked, the lurking rule set in which one must play to survive.

Rules that no sane living creature desires to play by, yet always come crawling back towards.’

-Memoirs of Argus

===

Filth.

It clung everywhere in a once dry room, a once empty room.

Streaks of molten iron started to dry on the walls, as blood and bile long settled onto the floor. Something was done here, and someone decided it had to be here.

A room filled with dread, filled with the broken. It was a room for the dead.

A once faceless room defaced beyond repair. Filled with jars, filled with tools, filled with unholy glee, yet now left untended once more.

And such filth attracts new life.

First was mold, lapping up the residues of life that were once carelessly spilled and left to harden. Then it was insects, wandering about, looking for another crumb of any shape or size.

It was when the rats scurried in, that it became clear that the room was no longer sacred. Every nook was dug into, every promising crevice pulled at. Finally when the jars started to shatter, one by one, the unholy glee waned and curdled.

Though everything slowly withered away, filth only breeds more filth.

That is the rule.

So the mold became overgrown, and the insects endlessly multiplied. However, it was the rats that brought new filth from the outside. A mush of debris marked the first nest. Then another. They kept building from the far wall of the room, carving away at a rotten cabinet.

Rats… They can get anywhere. Places they weren’t supposed to be, moving things they shouldn’t touch. But was it always untouched? Wasn’t there always life beforehand? The specks of life lurking in the dark? The unseen?

So it was the mold that somehow crossed the first line, patterning the walls, seeping into the cobblestone foundation. It was more opportunistic than the cunning rat, and more unchanging as a result.

Soon not a single piece of filth was from before they came, not a single stain left untouched by viscous time.

But in the end, it was the insects that truly brought change.

Carapaces of beetles and cockroaches littered the now empty floor. Their silent deaths built a mountain that sank in the twisted natural order of the situation.

Filth attracts filth.

This stench of death would bring madness to man, intoxicate an unrelenting glee to clean it, to erase it.

But no one came.

So this stench of decay, the unbridled lure of madness transcended the room as it wafted upwards.

===

To understand the room, is to understand what is above it. To what foundation did this room lay for.

Bosovelk theater.

An worndown room full of chairs. An unlit stage full of trash. It was clear that it was no longer just a theater, it was reduced to something less.

So it became filth, and as the rule, it attracted strays.

There sat a destitute vagrant aged beyond his years with his murky black rat’s nest of a beard contrasting to his pale skin. His gaunt hands gripped a flask - it was a cheap liquid that every slum rat scavenged for, a horrid liquid that helped ease their pain. A liquor made for the lowest of the low, paid by the few pennies that old man Bosovelk could ransack nowadays. It was these days that the theater was proven to be as worthless as this old man.

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After all, that’s why he decided to rename himself after this damned theater.

He could only drown his sorrows of his buried past in such a horrible drink, as he indulged in the false courage his concoction brought him. It was simply downed in a single gulp.

“Geh. I am not even buzzed.”

It was truly cheap stuff, it didn’t even kick his throat as he shook the container dry. It was truly the worst batch of moonshine he made, as he was forced to face his sobriety.

“I wasn’t even bloody drunk when I cooked this up. The hell, why did I even try to make a batch with anything but corn? This drivel isn’t even worth a damn penny.”

The horrid reality that he would be sober this night dawned on him.

“Tch, what now?”

Sitting by the stage, he could only lay down and ponder. Rats rain across the buttress by the orchestra pit, doing whatever they damn pleased, not showing an ounce of fear they once showed in the past. A cheap man, with a cheap plan, in a cheap land, ay? That’s how he summarized his current life, as he threw his flask into one of the junk piles.

“It’s that time again, isn’t it? Not sure if it’s worse now that I am starving.”

He could only clench himself, and curse out his pathetic empty flask, as the horrific odor passed by again without fail. Every midnight, this unnerving mist would appear quickly, drowning out the entire building. So he drowned himself in courage till he was pitch black in response.

Outside, the sounds of howling of wind and rain leered and mocked him for what a caged animal he became. As things ramped up and he prepared once again to deal with the suffocating air for the hours to come. It was then that the anomalous stench suddenly disappeared.

“HAH”

It was almost instant, the constant revulsion that haunted his only shelter suddenly let up. It’s once seemingly unstoppable yet unexplainable pattern halted, despite the night being young.

“HAHAHAHA!”

He had no words and so screamed in dark glee, as he felt free. Yet he didn’t know the truth. That he was no longer the same person, despite having the same mind. So Bosovelk slept in his theater hovel for once, truly sober.

===

There were stories about how an entire nation disappeared a couple decades ago. Though it was crumbling at the seams, it seemed to have overcome its issues and was once again back on the rise. It was inevitable due to the rich resources it sat upon - no other nation simply covered an entire continent like they did.

Yet, without warning, everything about them disappeared. It wasn’t just the ruling class, it was also the people. No it went far deeper for it was also the very foundation they stood on that simply vanished.

Their homes, their roads, their mines, and even their sewers.

Almost all of it was gone.

But their culture remained, forever ingrained to those around them. Everyone was weary, the fear of their former might still brought endless concern, but slowly what they started to see was opportunity.

Some vied for control, determining these lands were a wild west - a new frontier on the contrary to clear origins. Others instead scoured the lands to find any traces of the once mighty nation. Simply put, some for the truth, but most out of greed.

What few finds that might’ve initially held value brought untold calamity.

In the end no one knew what happened as the greed of the many chewed away at what few remained. What survived the rush of colonization was deemed useless and simply discarded. An empty plaza in the middle of the desert, a line of cramped apartment buildings left in the middle of a meadow.

A rundown theater in the middle of the forest.

Not that you could ever tell them apart from the failed construction projects of the ever volatile cluster of new settlements that took its place. Life was going to move on, even if nature didn’t want it to.

But nature remembers, and will run its course as a result.

It was these unforgettable moments that sprouted in Bosovelks’s dream, burning blurry and incompressible nightmares into his once content mind.

===

Instead of fear and horror, the old man felt rage. It was pure unadulterated anger towards the nightmare before him, each new vision only accumulating hatred. Dreams corrupted by the wailing of the damned, the creeping of vile abominations beyond what his mind could ever conjure - it was the revelation for a madman. But as he woke up, he could only clench his jaw in grim anger despite his ravaged mind.

It was if his soul simply cared not for the veil beyond his comprehension.

“What the hell…”

He simply stared at his hands, simply unnerved.

“My name… is Bosovelk.”

It all felt alien. His voice, his body, even his mind. Yet it was the mind that consciously defined a person, so he naturally relied on his memories. It didn’t matter how wrong it felt, for his memories were a guiding light that made any of this make sense.

So in an attempt to continue his shattered train of thought, he rummaged for his trusty flask.

“Damnation!”

Bosovelk cursed half heartedly, as he power tossed the bottle after realizing it was empty.

What was he even doing? He felt like a foreigner as he spun around on his dirty bedroll staring at the empty rows of chairs. The oldman only lamented at the realization that he was doing absolutely nothing beyond taking shelter. As his confusion slowly cleared up, frustration started to creep up.

In his rage, a scary wave of calmness overtook him.

Focus.

A once extinguished flame of determination crept into his body, as he took his first steps with unnatural pride.