A deep rumbling once again.

A blink. Amber eyes. An expression of surprise. Disbelief. I was empty. I was anguished. I was unsure. The gears in my head spun violently…but were cycling a machine with no purpose.

Another blink.

A blue sky. Two suns. Clouds. Chatter. Chains.

My reality. I wished to reject it. Hypocrisy. Earlier due to my psyche filled with hope, with the importance of myself…with the happiness I had stolen from others…I accepted reality.

Now that it inconvenienced me. I was rejecting it.

A failure. A mistake.

I got up. Emptiness was the first to come. It filled me with Nothing. To the brim. It caused the gears in my head to disappear. For the machine with no purpose to cease being a machine. My thoughts floated around freely. In an empty space. Filled to the brim with Nothing.

Apathy.

It was a desperate attempt to fix the situation I slightly understood. Shock couldn't even begin to explain the emotions I felt. Or maybe I didn't feel. It was more like I was disassociated with everything. Like I wasn't really me. Like I was watching my life from a TV screen.

It was all an escape.

My mouth would be dry if I wasn't out of my body. I felt my mind suppress my worry with statements like “It'll all be okay, It's probably not him.”

It was laughable how pathetic I was.

So much so that I didn't notice the music playing throughout the surroundings. The only sound that broke me out of my trance…was the rattling of the chains.

How had he seen me…does this mean I'm outside of time right now? This is the life of the man I killed?! I grabbed at the chain desperately trying to shake it off.

Nothing came of it.

Soon I was walking towards the other link of the chain. The cacophony of music and otherworldly languages filled my ears. I didn't quite know how to put it together in my head that I was in a foreign world.

The music continued loudly. The plaza I was in was clearly filled to the brim with demi-humans of all shapes and sizes.

The chain hung loose.

In front of me the wolf had grown, now a teenager. He stood taller than me, and was pleasantly dressed. He was also accompanied by a white haired wolf demi-human. It was…beautiful.

They danced in the plaza. A gracious dance. My hunched over position watched them. My melancholy once again invaded my rationality. “Let me out!” I lashed out at the chains. The rattles drowned out the noises of anything else.

It made no sense. How was I here?

Was it the apple?

I dug my hand into my mouth. Disgusting noises filled my hearing as I forced myself to vomit. It didn’t even make me gag. I screamed. Hollered. The dance the two performed a dance that graciously contrasted me. My anguish was overwhelming. I rejected the fact this was real. I fell to my knees and banged my fists against the ground.

I could tell this was all going to lead up to my sin.

To my shame.

An unimaginable pain.

Unsurmountable.

A pain that could never be emulated. More than I had ever felt. Even as millions of thorns pierced into my body. It was inferior to my own…disappointment. My own self-loathing. Survival was key, sure…but the truth was.

I was a liar.

I lied to myself. I believed my own lies. So much so that I started to feel disassociated from everything. Before I met Fright…I was ready to die. I did not value connection. I did not value faith. Nothing. The world around me was closed off by a firmament of attachment issues and risky situations.

My world was small. So much so that I thought that maybe I could go along and never be met with grief.

Now I grieved.

I felt disappointment above all because what I hated most had come true. I had lost sense of myself. I had committed an unforgivable sin, and excused it. Even if in these stupid monologues I admitted my guilt. Even if every lie I ever told was believed by everyone…it did not change the truth.

I had lied to myself. In turn I lost my self-respect.

Then I lost the ability to love.

The glimpse of it I had seen. The motherly and womanly love of a triumphant mother who won even after death. The father who showed weakness in front of others, even crying, yet able to confront his fears and eventually face the challenge of raising a child alone. The resolve in a medical hero’s face, even after convinced of failure.

All these emotions…

They weren’t mine.

I had simply taken them for myself. To make me feel better about everything. To convenience myself. All of it was to give myself an impression. To give me something to believe in. Conviction. I wanted it all. Yet I wanted a shortcut.

I thought that if I became emotionless.

That if I became soaked in apathy.

That if I never faced my fears, my hatred. My suppressed trauma. My anguish.

I would be strong.

It was all a lie towards myself. I acknowledge I am to some extent painfully self-aware. Yet even while knowing the reality of this lie I believed it.

I lost my love towards myself.

My respect.

My confidence.

My attachment.

I was pathetic beyond relief.

Tears streamed down my face. It was a still expression however. They just fell. It was not a dramatic cry. It wasn’t an anguished cry. A cry for help. A cry of change. A cry of longing.

It was simply gravity pulling the tears from my face.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Nothing more.

My hyperventilating stopped. I had been destroying my hands and body even if they were phantasmal by forcefully attempting to remove the chain. It wasn't an injury, it was just a horrible pain. Nothing was comparable to the pain I would feel soon though. When I saw my true sins. Even in the midst of all these realizations…I was no main character. I was no hero.

I wanted to run away and cry. To run away and pretend like I was an emotionless asshole again. To make it easy on myself. To create a personal hell that I knew was bad for me…but continued to live in it for an unknown reason.

Maybe I wasn’t doing it out of purely trauma…or attachment issues.

Maybe I just wanted to be special…maybe if I got rid of this overwhelming grief and my emotionless attitude…I’d just be a regular guy. Maybe everything was just a web of lies. Maybe I had never felt any grief. Any sadness. Was it all just an act?

An empty shell. That’s all I was. A cocoon that would never bloom.

The tears streamed down chaotically. No longer did I care to be quiet and empty.

I closed my eyes. I was unwilling to see anymore. The gracious dancing. The beautiful music. The happiness overflowed from everyone around me. It was hypocritical. I was stressing so much about escaping from reality…but did Nothing to fix it.

I was weak.

The music stopped. The sounds of clothes flowing along with the dance moves stopped. The chain rattles disappeared.

I looked up with teary eyes.

Everyone had stopped dancing.

The music had stopped.

A pair of amber eyes stared straight towards me. Along with the blue eyed female werewolf next to them. A shaky gasp escaped my throat. “W-what?”

No one reacted.

That’s when I noticed. They weren’t looking at me. My gaze shifted. I turned my head to look behind me. I saw the parade. The beautiful festival and decorations sprawled all over the plaza. Everyone looked with wide eyes towards…

A figure loomed above me. It looked down at me.

It was…a woman.

Grey hair. Striking appearance. White eyes…

White?

She looked human. However…an inhumane smile sprawled across her face. Quite literally from ear to ear. It made me feel…inferior. I recognized this feeling. This feeling inhumanity. What was it called again…

A foreign voice began to ring in my head. “R-Ravings?!”

Chaotic sentences. Unintelligible screams. Whispers. Cries. Laughs.

And a single remark.

“A vessel…what a fitting title.” Her smile widened. An insurmountable pressure caused me to yelp.

My pupils began to bleed. Even as a ghost. Blood trickled down my face. The lady looked away from me. Facing the world around her. She was dressed in a chiton. I could recognize its uniqueness. Embroidered with unrecognizable runes. Countless black glyphs spread across it.

Greek…?!

There was no way this thing was human…so it had to be.

“Forsaken.”

A primal fear. That’s what it was. It was studied that humans evolved for millions of years, and continue to evolve at a slow rate. This slow rate was according to the needs of humans. Fears, pattern recognition…all of it was the result of countless experiences being analyzed by the brain, and others inheriting it.

So what happens when you rush this process?

I felt my blood run cold. My heart beat raced. I ached to run.

Forsaken.

Claustrophobia. The chain felt a lot more limiting now that I realized I could not run. I could not fight.

They were the only exception. They had many names. Symptoms of the Vast. Tumors of time. The Messiahs of Chaos. The Plague of Divinity.

The chain rattled as I violently attempted to escape. I growled. My grief merged with my instinct. It replaced everything else. Even the anguish and hate towards myself became part of it. An instinct of primal origin exploded out. This familiar feeling. It was an instinct that wanted me to focus on…

Survival.

Ah.

Uncanny Valley. That was what that feeling of inhumanity was called.

The woman had not moved. That’s why it was hard to notice. However now she was lifting her arm up slightly. The movement she caused…it replaced space. Simply put. Every movement she did eradicated reality around her, and replaced it with the amalgam that had infected her. It was as if she were combining several sauces together. The Forsaken were just that.

Merged experiences, memories, worlds, laws, physics, math.

Everything was merged into an entity. As such…she was foreign. So foreign that anyone could immediately tell she was out of place the second she was looked at. As her arm moved forward and her fist opened as if calling out to something, her silhouette blurred and distorted. At times she was there, and others not. Her face disappeared for seconds, then returned.

Her hair turned brown, and then white, and then grey.

Her body became that of an animal, of an unrecognizable horror, and then of a human.

Only one thing was the same.

The smile.

It was constant.

The only reason I knew all this was happening was because it had happened first hand near my home. It was recorded in human history.

The Forsaken who merged with the ocean. Although all catastrophes caused by Forsaken were different, there were similarities.

Get me out of here!

I got up and attempted to escape as the lady reached out towards Nothing. I ran. The chain drew tight. My body shot down to the ground as the chain prevented me from escaping. It was a dumb try. The lady simply looked towards Nothing, and reached out towards it.

Out of Nothing…

Came something.

A deep settled panic.

People had begun running long ago. Chaos ensued in the plaza. No one dared to approach this mysterious lady. Yet what she had received from Nothing wouldn’t allow them to run. Otherwise she would have chased long ago.

It was a black umbrella.

A black bamboo umbrella. It was embroidered with the same strange runes her clothes were. This time they were white in color…however two details were tangible on it’s surface.

She held it out. Open for everyone to see. On its surface a single sentence in white words lay. Even if I could not understand foreign languages for some reason I knew what was happening. This sentence was translated in a way anybody would understand it no matter who read it.

She began to recite it. No longer did the feminine voice. Countless voices merged into one. One that echoed throughout the whole world. One of godly might, yet of meager tone. It was horrifying.

“A is for…”

Annihilation.

An extremely loud boom was heard, that would’ve deafened me if I weren’t a spirit. Then instantly…

Time stopped.

The world lost its color. Black and white replaced everything. It was surreal. Everyone stood still. Not a single soul moved. Not even mine.

I could only think and move my eyes. They were always the exception…why?

The chain exploded. It literally didn’t even last a second under whatever spell this woman has conjured. It exploded with horrifying force, but even the explosion was delayed. An infinite amount of time would pass before it could actually explode.

Why am I rambling about that right now?

The lady simply rested the bamboo umbrella on her shoulder and stared at the product of her efforts. Not that it had taken much effort for her to do this. So…now I'm dead? I felt a bit of apathy due to my breakdown being interrupted by so much fear.

“What the hell.”

Huh?!

My eyes jolted around. They landed on the duo I had focused on initially. The red furred amber eyed wolf…and his white haired companion. They were the only ones unaffected by the time stop. Even their color remained.

Ah…

Maybe a good detail to add would be the fact that…fire also enveloped both of them. The red fire that the wolf had fought me with once again returned to my vision. Only much stronger. Much brighter. Much more violent.

The wolf was standing still, even while unaffected by the time stop. He looked at his arm. It was combusting. The flame was not affecting him at all.

“Interesting.”

The woman faced the duo.

“I am a bit tired though…I do not wish to fight.”

“Watch carefully. You too…whoever you are.” The woman swung her umbrella towards me…and suddenly we were on a hill. A better view of the town was apparent to me.

It was a beautiful city. Clearly more advanced than wherever I had first arrived…when the red maned wolf was being born. Yet one more detail struck fear deep within me. It wasn’t just the immediate area. One thing was clear.

Right now.

The whole world was stopped.

It was as if all had dropped what they were doing the second that sentence was uttered. A is for annihilation…what a strange sentence.

I could see the plaza where we were standing, as well as the left behind chain that was in the process of exploding.

“It’s nothing personal. This process is a lot more complicated than you think.” What did that mean? The woman talked to the three of us. The duo were both still frozen. Could they move or not?

“Don’t think of going anywhere. I will catch you. I will kill you. Even worse, I’ll force you to merge with me. Now watch.”

The woman vanished. It was instant. Horrifying.

Atop the plaza. Atop the city. The woman floated. Her striking appearance changed constantly. From recognizable to unrecognizable. From ordinary to eldritch. From uncanny to familiar.

Her umbrella morphed and she held it out as it expanded.

Soon her umbrella was no longer an umbrella. Only minutes had passed yet it was on a scale so large it was confusing. The umbrella had morphed into a…cloud?

The cloud loomed over the entire city. Its shadow stretched out towards the outskirts of the city. It soon was so far my eyes could no longer register it. The shadow had one sentence on it. Once again…A is for Annihilation.

The woman had long let go of the umbrella. It simply had merged with the sky. Light should’ve disappeared…but it did not. Nothing was different except the twin suns were gone…and instead a black sky replaced them.

She returned back to the hill.

“Watch.”

She walked towards me. Although I was convinced she could not actually see me or hear me I was still horrified. This horror was proven right instantly however.

Her hand distorted and changed forms countless times as it moved towards me and…wrapped around me.

She was hugging me.

Oh God.

I’m going to die.

Small whimpers were all I heard as I stared in horror at the sight beyond the hug. The second detail of the umbrella or well…cloud…was a simple drawing of what seemed like a human. A tally was above it.

The number read…

“Two-hundred and two…million.”

The woman hugged me tighter as I read the number out loud.

I blinked.

The world was back to normal. The sky was visible once again. The twin suns had returned. The woman had stopped hugging me. Time was still stopped…but everything was fine.

“No!”

Huh?

“No! No! No! NO!”

The red maned wolf exclaimed loudly. What the hell was he screaming about…well I get it I’d be screaming if a woman stopped time and hugged the air all of a sudden. I turned to what he was looking at.

The plaza…was empty.

What.

The woman’s umbrella was back in her hand. She leaned it against her shoulder. Her striking appearance for some reason seemed enhanced. A more terrifying aura followed her as well.

“Goodbye!”

A cheery smile.

Then there was nothing.

That’s when I saw it.

The red maned wolf…and his companions…

Their bodies slowly turned clear. As time slowly returned…a deafening explosion rang out in the surroundings. The loud noise made me flinch, and so did the pair of wolves. The plaza was gone.

In fact the whole city was gone.

A crater replaced it.

Life has been eradicated for the demi-humans of this world…

No…it had been stolen.

Except two.