The world shifted around me. I was sliding across my back into absolute WRONGNESS, and then I was flying upward into it. Finally, I fell down into it. Down. Down. Down. Deep into everything that is WRONG. The shadows around me twisted, cackling with unspoken glee as they flew past.

Dripping wet webs of darkness wrapped around me with every passing moment. My breath froze as the pressure of the fall forced my lungs to stillness. My fading vision was replaced with darkness that somehow felt lesser than the dark shadows all around me. The dripping wet webs tightened, leaving not a single inch of my body untouched.

I shook and shuddered, my body attempting to dry heave as the webs pushed into me. They searched. Trying to find that spark of life which made me myself. They pushed against it. Trying to drown it. My consciousness faded further with every passing excruciating moment as hours, days, and years pressed down upon me.

I was breaking. There was no escaping. I should have listened to my instincts. Death in limbo would have been better than that ember of sentience within me being broken, bit by painful bit. Being corrupted. Changed. Shifted to dark, wet, dripping shadows.

I broke. I ceased. Consciousness vanished.

____

Fuck. That.

FUCK. THAT.

FUCK. THAT.

Stolen novel; please report.

I broke. I shattered. I became more. I heard a voice, a buzzing. My nonexistent vision flashed as text forced itself into my head.

“Initial Souls Spent.

Death’s Adaptation: Acquired.

Agenda Update: Step 1. Survive.”

Fucking. Noted. The disparate shards of my sentience sharpened with the unrestrained fury of a Goddess scorned. They glimmered in my head. One would think they shined with holy light, but no. That isn’t who I am. They darkened. They stole the Void’s corrupting essence. Each and every part of me drank up dripping wet webs of darkness. My shards pulled together. The spark of sentience that was me had been broken, and in its place we stood as a raging hunger.

We drank, We absorbed. The bands of shadow wrapped around us weakened before being pulled into ourself. Limbs stretched outward from us. Some part of us knew those limbs were made of that same dripping wet clinging darkness. They stretched outward, piercing the WRONGNESS. We forced ourselves into it.

Forcing down the urge to rip and tear into it, we corrupted it instead. We made it ours. Turnabout is fair play. The WRONGNESS pulled away into itself. It ran. We moved to follow, then paused. We forgot how to move. The worlds spun. Existence wavered. The film protecting us from existentialism fell, and we- I finally took a breath.

A shuddering breath left my lips. At some point, I had fallen to my knees. Bands of dripping, clinging wet darkness slid across me affectionately. It wisped off into the air around me. The black rock beneath me felt… Strangely spongy. The realm’s darkness lessened as a crimson red light glowed in the distance.

I had to follow it. I knew I did. Something was tel-

“Agenda Update: Step 2. Investigate.” The text forced itself in front of me, sitting on top of the rock like giant three-dimensional letters.

I sighed, suppressing another shiver as something shifted within myself. Pulling myself upward, I walked toward the light. Another shudder worked across me. Not at the wrongness. That was the problem, after all. Why… Why did this have to feel so right?