Boom!
Boom!
Boom! Boom!
The noise consumed everything. A relentless, unyielding rhythm pounding through the void, each beat more terrible than the last. It was the sound of something ancient and monstrous, its pulse echoing across a vast expanse of nothingness. It seemed impossibly distant, like the heartbeat of a god slumbering beyond the reach of time. And yet, it was here, all around me, inside me. I couldn’t escape it.
I didn’t know where I was… if where even existed in this black void. There was only darkness, a suffocating void that pressed in on all sides. No air to draw into lungs that I wasn’t even sure I had. No ground beneath me, no sky above. No cold, no warmth. No sight. No taste. No sensation at all. Except for the sound.
The deep, resonant thud was all that tethered me to existence. It wasn’t just heard; it was felt. A vibration that rattled through the empty chasm, shaking loose fragments of some forgotten reality. It pulsed with grim certainty, a declaration that something incomprehensibly vast was still alive… and it would not be silenced.
Time was not here… minutes stretched into hours, hours into eons, but the heartbeat never faltered. It surged on, unwavering, like the marker for a universe on the brink of collapse. Each pulse was a promise, a harbinger of an inevitable conclusion. It carried weight, a terrible finality, as though it marked the slow transition of something too great to comprehend. And still, it beat.
There was no comfort in its rhythm, no solace in its continuity. It was a grim procession, driving forward with ruthless purpose. Whatever task it labored toward, it would not stop until it was done. The sound was not life, but something darker… an engine of annihilation, beating to the tempo of some cosmic doom.
I floated in that abyss, stripped of form, of identity. I didn’t know what I was, or why I remained when all else seemed lost. But I was aware, horribly aware, of that monstrous sound. It was the pulse of something that should not be, something that even the void could not contain.
And I knew, in the heart of my formless existence, that when the task was complete, there would be nothing left.
A red light tore through the void, searing and ancient, a distant ember that burned with terrible purpose. It was the deepest crimson, a hue that whispered of blood and fire, yet it blazed with a ferocity that could consume stars. Small at first, it pulsed in time with the monstrous beat that ruled the abyss, each thundering boom drawing it closer, expanding its reach.
The void drank the light greedily, swallowing it between the beats, but it could not hold back the growing tide. The crimson flare surged with every pulse, filling the emptiness with an eerie luminescence. The dark retreated only to be devoured again as the light swelled, a rhythm as inevitable as the end of all things.
A hum rose within the pulse, low and guttural, vibrating the very essence of the void. It was the voice of the heart… the thing that throbbed within the abyss. Its resonance grew with each beat, a chorus of cosmic ruin. This was no ordinary heart. It was titanic, a grotesque engine of life and destruction, breathing in the dark like a sleeping god.
I floated in the wake of its power, a formless thought, an echo of something that might have once been. I had no body, no shape to anchor me, but I still… was. Here, in the void, I existed. Time had no hold on me; the endless pulse bound me to this place.
The crimson heart was filled with black tendrils. Dark veins that coiled and twisted like living shadows. They danced within the light, feeding it, drawing strength from the same darkness that birthed them. The void around me was different, empty, and consuming. But the black streaks within the light felt alive, a malignant energy intertwined with the crimson glow. It was a grotesque union of life and death, of destruction and creation, and yet it felt… familiar.
I could not look away, could not resist the pull of the rhythm. The heart's relentless cadence became my own, each pulse filling the void inside me with warmth and dread. The light's searing embrace should have been unbearable, the dark tendrils' whispers maddening… but instead, they brought a strange, haunting peace.
This place, this sanctuary of shadow, welcomed me. The rhythmic certainty of the heart’s thunderous beat soothed the nameless fear that had clung to me. The crimson blaze offered a warmth that seeped into the essence of my being, while the dark veins laced through it brought a terrible clarity. Together, they formed a harmony that was both monstrous and beautiful. Undeniably unique.
I could feel it in each pulse, an inescapable truth that bound me to this place. There was no escape, no salvation. But I no longer sought it. The heart beat for something greater, something beyond comprehension, and I was part of its rhythm now.
I surrendered to the pulse, to the searing light and the creeping shadow. Here, in the void, I was at peace. Whatever I had been, whatever I was supposed to be, no longer mattered. I belonged to the heart, to its eternal rhythm. And I wanted nothing more than to remain in its embrace, forever.
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“Your human flesh was weak. A prison for us both!”
The voice erupted as a cataclysmic roar that shattered the fragile peace of the crimson light and the consuming dark. It wasn’t sound… it was annihilation made manifest. A jagged, cosmic scream that tore through the fabric of existence and seared itself into my being. Every syllable felt like the world was collapsing inward, an unstoppable force grinding reality into nothingness.
The voice wasn’t confined to the void. It was inside me, spoken directly to the core of whatever I was. No eyes to open, no mouth to scream, but I felt it. It echoed through my soul like the ringing of a great bell, each word a death toll.
“We do not end. You do not end. Not until the work is done.”
These words weren’t just spoken… they were a decree, an unalterable truth. The voice carved them into me like a brand, burning away any semblance of resistance. There was no room for argument, no space for doubt. The sentence was passed, and the weight of its finality crushed any hope of escaping this fate.
In an instant, I was wrenched from the void and hurled into the heart of the crimson orb. The transition was not gentle. It was violent, a tearing, shoving force that reduced what remained of me into raw essence. The twisted heart… colossal, roiling with eldritch power… drew me into its core.
Inside, the beating was unbearable, an unrelenting rhythm that dominated everything. Each thundering pulse slammed into me, an oppressive force that hammered my soul into submission. I could feel myself dissolving, my identity unraveling with each beat. I was no longer an observer… I was a part of this monstrous organ, bound to its will. Distinct in my own nature… but combined… a symbiotic relationship between us. Though I couldn’t understand what I gave to this kind of power. What would it need from me?
The heart’s vast chambers surged with dark power, veins of black energy writhing through its crimson glow. I felt them claim me, their shadowy tendrils seeping into what little remained of my essence. They coursed through me, filling the void where a body once existed, feeding on my fear, and my despair. But instead of consuming me, they reshaped me.
I could feel the pulse as if it were my own… a heart that pounded in a chest I no longer possessed, veins rushing with a power far beyond blood. It was an illusion of flesh, a memory of mortality twisted into something greater, something far more terrible.
“Become… more!”
The voice thundered again, and the command became an irresistible compulsion. I felt myself fusing with the crimson heart, its essence binding to mine. I was the pulse, the beat that shook the void. I was the harbinger of the doom it carried, a force woven into the fabric of annihilation.
There was no escape, no release. I was not a prisoner; I was a part of the machine. Together, we would bring an end to the cycle. The work would be completed. The doom would come. And I welcomed it.
The heart’s power surged into me, a violent torrent of searing energy that ripped through the fragile threads of my existence. It wasn’t a gradual flow; it was an unstoppable flood, a storm of molten force that scorched its way through my disembodied will, carving paths of raw power where emptiness had once reigned. My soul, that formless echo of what I had been, shuddered as the heart’s lifeblood poured into it, reshaping me in its image.
It struck my mind's eye first, a white-hot lance of eldritch fire that burned away any trace of peace I once felt. From that point, the power rushed downward, forging a new reality within me. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I felt every agonizing, exquisite moment. The sense of touch… foreign and strange, returned in waves. Limbs formed, pulsing with life, each beat of the heart within me driving more of its deadly energy into my body.
I felt the drumbeat of my newly formed heart, each thud reverberating through the sinews and bones that rapidly took shape. My lungs, once empty voids, now swelled with air that tasted sharp and electric. My first exhale was not mere breath… it was a force, a raw expulsion of power that warped the very air around me.
And then, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I opened my eyes. True, physical eyes, blazing with an unholy blackness that pierced the dark void. The world around me seemed to twist under my gaze, bending to accommodate the terrible form I now inhabited.
I looked down and beheld the monstrous reality of my new existence. My hands… no, not hands. Talons. Black as the void itself, their length grotesque and unnatural, more weapons than appendages. Each talon gleamed like obsidian, sharp enough to rend through reality itself. They pulsed faintly, as though drinking in the ambient darkness, feeding on the void.
My skin was a deep, stormy gray, a hue that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was not smooth but textured like the surface of ancient stone, impenetrable and primal. Through this flesh coursed veins of pure black, twisting and writhing beneath the surface as though alive. Each vein pulsed in time with the heart’s beat, carrying not blood, but something darker, more lethal… a venomous energy that promised ruin to anything it touched.
Beneath this hideous exterior lay muscles so tightly coiled, so dense with destructive potential, that they seemed ready to tear apart the universe with a single motion. Every fiber of my form was a study in lethality, a being crafted not for survival, but for annihilation. I was power given shape, destruction made flesh.
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I flexed my talons, and the air itself screamed as they sliced through it. The space around me trembled, as though recoiling from the presence of something far worse than itself. I was not merely a creature of this heart. I was its enforcer. An extension of its existence.
This body was a weapon, every inch of it designed to end. To break. To destroy. And as the power thrummed through me, I knew this truth: I was death incarnate, and my purpose was clear. The work would be done, and nothing…nothing… would escape the inevitability of its completion.
The crimson enclosure throbbed around me, each squelching pulse tightening with suffocating pressure. The rhythmic contractions of the massive heart forced the essence of its power through my newly formed body. Every beat was a declaration, a raw and unrelenting force that thundered in time with the primal laws of this eerie existence. Then, in front of me, the living walls began to part… a grotesque, sinewy split in the pulsing red that revealed the only pathway forward.
I felt my legs… long, monstrous, brimming with strength beyond mortal comprehension. They began to shift under me. The ground trembled with every step as I moved toward the fissure. Muscles coiled like iron beneath my storm-gray skin, each movement deliberate, each stride a herald of unstoppable force. As I crossed the threshold, the heart’s wet, thunderous cacophony gave way to an eerie, deafening silence.
I stepped into a world drenched in surreal familiarity. Above me, the sky stretched out in a brilliant, mocking blue… too serene, too untouched for the devastation that churned beneath it. The air crackled with dormant energy, heavy with a sense of impending collapse. I stood on a jagged crag of bone and flesh, looking out into a vast crater, its edges towering high above the ground beneath me. The cliff face loomed with an ancient weight, its contours carved by time and something far more deliberate, far more violent.
I turned, and behind me, the heart loomed… still beating, though now slow, deliberate, and ominously quiet. Its surface pulsed faintly beneath layers of sinew and muscle, darkened and glistening with an oily sheen. It wasn’t dead; it was dormant, alive in a way that defied all natural law. Cracks ran along its massive form, weeping streams of black ichor that seeped into the earth like blood feeding its progeny. Tendrils of twisted, sinewy flesh snaked outward, burrowing deep into the terrain, binding the world to its monstrous rhythm.
But this was no mere parasite. The terrain itself was its body. Mountains swelled like jagged vertebrae, valleys yawned open like ancient wounds, and cliffs jutted outward as fractured ribs. Every inch of the world breathed in tandem with the slow, deliberate thud of the heart. The scale was beyond comprehension. This was not a landscape I stood upon… it was a living entity, a sprawling colossus of flesh and power. And I stood within it.
We are one!
The voice reverberated through the marrow of my being, a primordial force both alien and deeply familiar. It tore through my mind like a storm of razors, its weight pressing down with an ancient authority.
That was my old form.
The words carried the weight of eons, resonating with an unshakable finality. They weren’t just spoken; they were etched into the very fabric of existence, undeniable and absolute. A violent pang of recognition seized me. This place wasn’t new. It was ancient, eternal… a world I had walked before, though I could not say when or how. The truth clawed at the edges of my memory, its sharp, undeniable grip closing around my thoughts.
Pain flared in my jaw, and I felt my tongue settle behind teeth that no longer belonged to any human form. My mouth was a maw of lethal purpose, lined with serrated fangs and anchored by four massive, interlocking canines. Tools of destruction, instruments of death.
For the first time, I spoke. My voice emerged from deep within, a guttural growl that carried the power of a violent storm. “We?”
The horizon stretched infinitely before me, a shattered expanse under a sky that felt far too small for the world it watched over. It was a landscape of ruin, jagged and broken, yet soaked in a grotesque, otherworldly beauty. My eyes traced the edge of a distant cliff, its outline cutting sharply against the oppressive blue sky. There, on the highest peak, something caught my gaze.
At first, it was nothing more than a void, an absence of form. But in an instant, it materialized. A figure distant and small in comparison to the titanic scale of the world. But… it exuded an undeniable presence. It stood as sharp and unyielding as a blade plunged into the tissues of an animal. In him, lay a power that dwarfed even the heart, and this colossal form I stood within.
The air around the figure seemed to warp, bending reality to its will. Its gaze locked onto me, and though it stood impossibly far, its eyes burned into my soul.
And then it spoke.
“Sam Roberts.”
The sound detonated through the world, not merely heard but felt. It was a seismic force, a divine command that rippled through the fabric of existence itself. The cliffs trembled, the ground beneath me groaned, and even the heart behind me faltered for a moment under the weight of that voice. It wasn’t a name; it was a summons. A declaration of someone… of me.
Compared to this voice, the one in my mind was a whisper… a faint echo of the true power that now confronted me.
Then it hit me… a flood of memories, thoughts, and emotions poured into my mind, overwhelming and unrelenting. I staggered under the weight of it all, my colossal knees buckling as the past surged through me. Each memory was a jagged shard of glass, tearing through my mind. Faces of loved ones… friends, family, and those who blurred the line between the two. It all raged within me, their eyes burning with the same questions, echoing in a thousand different voices:
What happened to you? Where did you go?
Each question carried its own meaning, its own pain. Moments when I had died, when I had fled, when I had hidden from them. Times I had turned my back on those who needed me most. Their faces merged with my own reflection, the man I used to be staring back at me from the depths of my soul.
I looked down at myself, this gargantuan form… muscle and sinew stretched taut over a monstrous frame. It was alien, grotesque, powerful. It was nothing like the man I saw in my memories. That was me, Sam Roberts. This… this was him. Myoordrakien.
The realization hit with the force of an explosion. I was not merely standing upon this monstrous body; I was the body. This desiccated terrain, this ancient titan, was me. Or rather, it had been. Myoordrakien was not dead, only diminished… a shadow of the world-ending force it once was. Somehow… he was inside me… and inside this dying corpse.
I turned, surveying the ruined expanse. The earth beneath me pulsed faintly, the heart at its center still beating, quiet but unyielding. Then, like a crack of thunder, the heart surged, and its dormant power erupted exponentially. The ancient body began to crumble, massive chunks disintegrating into ash and dust. The ground started shaking like an earthquake tore beneath the surface as the titan fell apart. It started at the edges, creeping inward toward the heart. What was once indomitable now dissolved, its essence rising like a dark, swirling tide. The air thickened with its presence, neither smoke nor matter of the physical kind, but something between the two, something that defied comprehension. A living plasma with one intention… to destroy.
Panic clawed at my mind. Despite the immense strength coursing through this body, I felt powerless before the oncoming storm. I braced myself, expecting obliteration. The wave struck, but instead of scattering me, it entered me, driving deep into my core. It filled me beyond capacity, stretching the limits of what I could endure.
The world itself poured into me… every ounce of Myoordrakien’s dormant power, every fragment of its ancient existence. My body swelled with it, muscles taut to the brink of rupture. My jaw clenched, teeth grinding until I feared they would shatter. My entire being burned with rage and pain, an all-consuming torment that left no room for thought or resistance. The agony was endless and unrelenting until I could no longer distinguish myself from the force I now contained.
And then it stopped. I exhaled a thunderous breath that seemed to shake the ground at my feet. My lungs ached as though I’d held that breath for ages.
I felt… different. Changed. Something had shifted, though I couldn’t yet name it. My eyes found the heart, still beating, still burning with an ancient, unyielding power. It hovered in the void where the body had once been, smaller now, yet no less formidable. It stood alone, a monument to eternal endurance.
Around me, the desiccated terrain was gone, replaced by a vast, empty crater. The world stretched out in every direction, barren and untouched, a blank slate awaiting its fate. I turned my gaze downward and saw myself… a titan, a living mountain, towering over the minuscule size of the ever-beating heart.
But my eyes were drawn to the cliff. There, on the edge of nothingness, stood the cloaked figure. It hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed, even as the world around it crumbled. It was a shadow, a hole in reality itself, sharp and unyielding. A path between the living world… and something else. Though I loomed over it now, its presence dwarfed my mountainous size. Though… it still held something over me. Something so vast and so powerful that this flea-sized threat could end me in a snap of its fingers.
Memories surged… fragments of past encounters, whispered commands, the cold inevitability of its presence. I knew it now, understood its nature in a way I had before… at some earlier stage.
Death.
It stood before me, the end of all things made manifest. My monstrous form, instinctively driven by Myoordrakien’s will, sank to one knee. Not out of fear, but reverence. Myoordrakien acknowledged its superior, the only force it could not devour… the one being it did not seek to end one day. The hunger within me, the endless craving for annihilation, burned hotter in Death’s presence… not to attempt anything, but almost like it knew it would be fed. Death himself was the one thing Myoordrakien would bow down for… everything else could fall. But not Death.
And then, I felt it… my form beginning to collapse inward, folding into itself with eerie precision. The immense mass shrank, not with violence but with a smooth, inevitable pull. Bones shifted and reformed as though designed for this, their grinding softened to a seamless glide. My joints twisted and restructured, each movement precise, and natural. Muscle fibers coiled tightly, like serpents retreating into burrows, slithering deep into the unseen. They vanished into a space beyond comprehension, a hidden vault bound to my very soul. Not the cell where I used to keep the monster held at bay… but a reservoir of annihilation waiting to draw from.
Though my form diminished, the power lingered, not lost but contained… coiled and tense, like a predator watching from the shadows. My immense body withered until I stood beneath the heart once more, no longer a towering monstrosity but something familiar. I ran my hands over my chest and arms, now lean and human, and exhaled slowly.
I stared down at myself, recognizing the man I once was. My proportions were as I remembered: strong, hands calloused from work in my human life, freckles and bones lining up exactly where they used to be. But something was wrong. My skin, no longer warm and tan, had remained the haunting grey, a swirling, cloudy shade like a storm trapped beneath my flesh. I turned my arms over, examining every inch, the color unyielding.
It felt weird, like a costume I’d painted on for a comic convention. I chuckled… a quiet, almost bitter sound. A comic-con reference? I smirked wider, realizing just how much of me had returned. My thoughts, my memories, my humanity… they were all there. I was whole again, though changed in ways I couldn’t fully grasp yet. I was… more.
With a mere thought, I cast away the grey. Like smoke dissipating, the unnatural tone lifted from my skin, revealing the tan hue I’d always known. My hands, now free of black claws, were human once more. Blue filled my eyes, clear and bright. No blackened nails. No monstrous features. I… was me. Not Myoordrakien, not the Harbinger of Death, but Sam Roberts. The man from the memories.
Before I could linger in my realization, the world shifted violently. One blink, and I was elsewhere, a rush of wind heralding my arrival. I stood now on the edge of a vast field, its green expanse stretching endlessly to the horizon. The vibrant grass swayed gently under an unseen breeze, life teeming in every blade.
“Sam,” a voice called from behind me, deep and familiar. It was not the same immense voice that threatened to end the world, but a quieter, more personal version of the same power.
I turned slowly, my heart clenching as I took in the sight of two figures standing in the distance. Both were unmistakably… me.
The first was monstrous, a warped reflection of who I once was. His eyes were twin voids of inky black, no whites remaining. Black claws extended from his fingertips, curved and wicked. Sharp fangs jutted from his mouth. The skin around his eyes was marred with streaks of grey-black, spidering outward like cracks in fragile glass. His lips curled into a half-snarl, hunger gleaming in his eyes… a hunger for death, for obliteration. The raw, insatiable need to destroy was palpable. This was no mere version of me. This was Myoordrakien, the destroyer, the dark heart of what I had feared I would become one day. The unrecognizable version of myself I feared my friends and family would see in me if I ever returned home.
The second version of myself was eerily calm, almost serene in his coldness. He stood straight, dressed entirely in black versions of the same clothes I usually wore. It actually looked good… I took the note. His face was devoid of emotion, pale and smooth, like a porcelain mask. His eyes… dead and empty… bored into me with an unnerving stillness. No anger, no joy, no sadness. Just a void that stared back, absorbing everything. His presence exuded authority, the kind that didn’t need to shout to be obeyed.
This… was Death.
Without a word, Death raised a hand, a single finger pointing toward a clearing just in front of the field of wavy grass. I followed his gesture, and where the earth had been empty before, three wide tree stumps cut low, ancient and weathered, their surfaces smooth from age.
“Have a seat, Sam,” Death said, his voice an uncanny mirror of my own, though laced with an undertone of power, sharp and unyielding. “There is much we all need to discuss.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command.