A thousand miles away, in a house of unwitting sleepers, a man lay in a room with no doors or windows and waited alone in the dark.
He lay atop a single bed, an intricate wooden bedframe carved from a dark, almost fire‑tinged wood, his head resting upon a feather-filled pillow, a thin woollen blanket drawn across his chest, the colours of autumn soft. The room was no prison, not unless he wished it – the floor was smooth‑polished cedar, the walls stone and mahogany, and beyond the foot of the bed rose a modest desk and bookshelf. The air did not move, save for the shallow rise and fall of the man’s breathing. There was no light, no noise. The man lay with closed eyes and restless twitches, his world naught but darkness and the smell of faint sweat and cold wood.
Try as he might, he could not sleep. He yearned for sleep, but sleep eluded him. It was a stranger now, no longer treading comfortably across his threshold, repulsed by his vile deeds and the inkling horrors swimming beneath his mind.
Suddenly, from across the other side of the sealed room there came a creak – a muffled footstep against the floorboards. The sleepless man’s eyes shot open.
“Leviathan,” he whispered. He rose from his bed, staring out into the pitch-black darkness, and swung his legs out over the wooden floor. “Leviathan.”
No answer came. The man stumbled to his feet, taking one cautious step and then another, fumbling blindly out with his mind. He sensed no change, no shape or presence, but that was the way of it, the abyss of His true nature. The man made a small motion with his hand and a seat of liquid timber rose to waist height beside him from the floorboards. He collapsed down, sitting staring into nothingness, his face mere inches away from what he knew was empty wall. The man leaned forward, holding out a trembling hand, trailing the barest trace of his fingertips over a section of solid stone, causing an opening to unfold, a square cavity atop the floor, four foot by four foot. A pinch, and a slab of stone nearest the centre crumbled, shivering like liquid until it reformed into unnatural wood. The man clicked his fingers, and the wood caught ablaze.
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Fire flickered up and danced before him, stinging his eyes, throwing tongues of light and shadow dancing across the room. The man glanced up to where smoke rose from his fresh-forged fireplace, and motioned disinterestedly with a downturned palm. The fumes ceased, billowing no longer into smog that would inevitably choke the sealed room but changing, after they rose past some certain invisible point, to droplets of snow, floating down through the firelight and settling harmlessly upon the ground.
The man shuffled in his chair and glanced over his shoulder behind him, to see a shadow which had not been there before.
“Is it time?” he whispered to the interloper; the cupbearer; the only friend to his cause. Guide them when I am gone, he pleaded – see that it is done.
The figure in the firelight remained silent, unmoving.
“I am done,” the man murmured, “Everything is ready. The third pillar. They will clash. There’ll be necessity. And then…” He breathed out, his chest shaking, staring up at the snow-specked glow, not daring to look behind. “And then I’m ready.”
He turned, spun around suddenly, and the entire world rippled in tune with the fever in his mind.
“Say the word and I will send them. Speak, and I will know it’s time.”
From a place no one could perceive, the blue-eyed boy stood silent, watching the insane man breathe unnatural air in his cold, impossible sanctum; watched him cling to hope too terrible to speak. Watched the final piece of the puzzle, who knew everything and nothing, whisper flickering pleas for his abyssal, excruciating terror. A salve for his harried, broken soul. A lie for the inescapable truth.
“Soon,” the boy whispered: “Soon.”
The man’s heart raced.
End of Part 1