Palm raised to their beloved home, he began to siphon the continuum. His thuum trailed into silence as the final note of his incantation reached the void, the sound swallowed by the weight of Carcosa’s ambiance. The air around him grew thick with shimmering, iridescent light, the very essence of Lacon’s continuum streaming forth in a stream of impossible color. His body, battered and scarred by lifetimes of battle and knowledge, now pulsed with raw, uncontainable power. The sigils carved into his flesh flared brilliantly, the lines and curves—so many wards—achingly trying to retain the force of it all, each line cracking open to reveal glistening, spectral veins beneath. It was a sight both magnificent and grotesque—the rows of craft, the bodily grimoire, bursting at his seams.

The air hummed with a frequency that pressed against the mind, rattling thought into incoherent fragments. Amun’s eyes, clouded yet filled with a resolute calm, shed the tears of finality. His lips curled into a faint smile, serene amidst the chaos engulfing him.

The first spectral strip tore free from his shoulder, luminous and ephemeral, like a ribbon made of condensed stardust. He watched with his elevated sight as it floated on an unseen current before being drawn toward Adrestia, wrapping itself around her like a blessing of fate itself. Then another strip followed, and another, peeling from his body in rhythmic succession. Each piece carried the essence of Lacon—the collective memory of its landscapes, its histories, the songs of its people, and the undying hope that clung to its battered soul. The strips shimmered as they bound to Adrestia’s form, merging with her essence and weaving into the sinew of her spirit.

Adrestia knew the difference between an act of violence versus whatever this craft was that landed on her from her compatriot. She sensed finality but power in the boon. The threat of Hastur upsetting Amun’s craft was too great; she must pull hard on the vine lasso and keep the spectral deity grounded!

“NO!” Hastur averted from the volley of fiery rain toward Adrestia’s direction. She squatted behind a mound of stone, taking cover from the assault. She had taken a few hits but had delivered tenfold on the menace. She whipped out from the shelter, having weathered the firestorm smoldering a bit, hooked flail sending forth the long barbs into the tattered robe. She called for the strength of the terra, the bedrock of Lacon, to hold her footing, yanking the elemental of entropy back to her. She called for Gaia’s grasp, complete and encompassing in vine and trunk, holding him back from Amun and whatever the wily warlock was up to.

Amun's body trembled as the ritual reached its fever pitch, yet his expression remained one of peace. The latticework of energy that consumed him was a dance of dissolution, a sacrament that unraveled him thread by thread. His arms, now translucent, extended outward in an almost cruciform gesture, embracing his end as the culmination of every decision, every betrayal, every scar he had borne. The pain was excruciating, yet transcendent—a burning release that lifted the weight of existence from his soul.

Like an entombed pharaoh, so many wraps, so much time given to lives lived and died, failures that brought new opportunities to learn, knowing in an echo’s remnant that this must go on, the pursuit of knowledge no matter the cost, no matter the supposed heresy, would all culminate at a final point as lovely as this. An apex, a triumph of sorts, for it had been a long journey here indeed.

As the last remnants of him disbanded, a sigh escaped his lips, more an exhalation of spirit than breath. His final expression was not of agony but of profound relief, a release into the latticework of his own making. The spectral threads dissolved into Adrestia, brightening her form until she glowed with the entire continuum of Lacon, a vessel transformed by the sacrifice of one who had given all.

With a flicker and a whisper to Abe, “the cycle has ended and so does fear. Gods, it is full of stars,” Amun was gone—scattered into the light that now enveloped Adrestia, his essence bound to her as an eternal echo. The silence that followed was both harrowing and reverent, as if the universe itself had paused to witness the martyrdom of the warlock who had defied even gods for the sake of hope.

Amun’s form was gone, and Adrestia was renewed.

Lord Hastur was bound to her, stuck to his Carcosa, pinned, but for a moment.

Lacon had been stripped; its citizens would mourn the loss of the continuum. Things would dim and lose luster. Their minds would calcify a bit, but they would go on.

Adrestia would give the Oduum what they were migrating back for; they would search for their meal no matter where it lay. She gleamed of stars and suns, the pearlescent flows around her limbs shone undeniably epic. She was new again, wrought of the Architect’s design, poised and deadly.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

She turned to the one who had hijacked her ascension when she was most vulnerable there in the hollows—cowardice. She faced a fear that was praised by those greasy yellow monks on that night, their hungry hands taking of her what they willed, for his worship, vile. She would purge this festering sore that held sway over existence, a false judge. She would give the inevitable Oduum their meal.

The cry she emitted was high and beautiful; she held the warrior’s pose, arms outstretched, and exhaled it all. Amun’s ribbons that had grafted to her lit in azure and blinding day in that dark Carcosa. The beam bore upon Hastur, coating the creature, imbuing him absolutely with the entirety of Lacon’s continuum, its histories, its triumphs, and the deaths that mortared so many stones in building a legacy. All dumped into this dark being, coating, energizing, and creating a great beacon, so bright.

It drew a greater being's attention. Hastur felt madness and was inebriated in the power, not comprehending the danger looming… yet. His laughter filled the grey plains, and the jagged peaks of Carcosa chattered with it, avalanches of stormy plumes rose in his might. He didn’t understand but reveled in the force.

Adrestia spent it all, veins standing on her skin, the effort expending all she had to sacrifice along with the enhancement of Amun’s boon. For a moment, she thought she could hear his laughter in the crescendo, not an evil wry noise, but very happy nonetheless. The torrent of energy subsided with an aftershock that blew her from her grounding. All she could think to do was to pull the leaf from her blouse and close her eyes for a while, knowing peace in that she and Amun had done what they could to this impasse.

Hastur hovered in his glory, dumbstruck with energies that he did not understand. Entropy knew fullness, a deep crevice now filled and overflowing. Even this ancient, haggard mind needed pause to ponder the meaning.

In Abe’s fantastic astral voyage, so terrifying, he had looked upon the Oduum. It was an effort, but the Architect could place them there now, and they were eager to feed. The absolute night above Carcosa turned its attention on their Harbinger and lusted to taste his contents. The nightline became the great eye, a great empty maw with so many baleen that would thresh the meal, and the source was the Yellow King.

The heavens themselves seemed to darken beyond black, not with the emptiness of night but with an encroaching, visceral density. The stars, once distant witnesses to the struggle below, were consumed one by one, blinking out, vanishing as if snuffed out by an unseen lid. Silence once again swallowed Carcosa, Hastur’s madness faltered in the slow realization… even the dying embers of triumph faltered, caught in a maelstrom of mute awe.

Then, a slow, rumbling throb, a primal subsonic more felt than heard, resonated through the land. Carcosa quaked, shifting like liquid under the immense pressure. Above, the night rippled and cracked, splitting open into a chasm of utter void—a great eye unfurling, ringed not in color but in the blackest ichor, dull and ancient, yearning for a target to consume. This was no eye of discernment or cunning; it was an eye of indifference, a cosmic being whose intellect was lost in the eons of its own incomprehensible existence. It did not see as mortals do; it absorbed, an infinite maw of perception that devoured light, thought, and continuum alike.

Adrestia, battered and luminous with the gift and burden of Amun’s sacrifice, felt the pull before she saw it. The power binding her surged in waves, resonating like a heartbeat in her marrow, vibrating her very essence. She could feel the continuum, not just within her but reaching outward, a beacon too tempting for this colossal being to ignore. The sky quivered as the Oduum’s focus locked onto Hastur, whose form, drunk with energy, now seemed pitiable under the vast gaze.

Hastur's eyes, those countless orbs peering from beneath the tattered yellow, widened in sudden, dawning terror. Some popped like pustules. The godling, who moments before reveled in the stolen might, now shrank as the realization clawed at his perception. The Oduum's dull intellect was slow but inexorable, an inevitability that even a being of Hastur’s ancient might could not resist. It was hunger made manifest, a celestial migration finding its feast.

The very air felt different as the great eye continued to open, the black rim undulating like a tidal wave of void remains. Carcosa groaned in agony, its cyclopean stones bending and splintering under the immense gravitational force, as if bowing to their true lord. The silt and dust rose, drawn skyward in a swirl that danced mockingly around Hastur’s once-majestic form. The Yellow King’s robes flared in desperate resistance, thrashing like snakes, eyes blinking furiously within their folds as if seeking an escape that did not exist, panic surging within him.

The eye loomed, impossibly vast yet curiously devoid of malice; it was simply indifferent, a migratory titan answering an ancient call, incapable of empathy or emotion. To the Oduum, Hastur was not a god to be revered or feared—merely sustenance, an ember to be snuffed and consumed.

Adrestia, weakened but unwavering, stood as a solitary sentinel to this final act. The weight of Amun’s sacrifice thrummed in her veins, echoing in her resolve. She knew what this meant. The continuum of Lacon had been offered, and the Oduum would devour its keeper, siphoning every last ounce until nothing but whispers of what once was remained. A shiver ran through her as the massive, unknowable gaze of the Oduum shifted, registering her presence in its periphery—a brief recognition of the next possible meal.

Hastur’s scream, raw and filled with a fury only a cornered god could muster, shattered the silence as he fled, trailing luminous contrails of power behind him. The Oduum, sluggish in intellect but absolute in purpose, rumbled and shifted, extending its tendrils of void and stardust in pursuit, a slow yet inexorable march.

The night above Carcosa no longer resembled a sky. It had become the unfathomable, star-speckled maw of an ancient, migratory being, consuming all before it, answering the call to feast on the continuum—no matter its bearer. Glee became fright in the Yellow King’s masked face; the decaying jaw sagged and went agape in the delayed realization. Forgetting his fight, forgoing the execution of his remaining foe, his once-pawn Adrestia tossed aside. The great elemental of entropy fled, mustering newfound power as he launched Carcosa away, AWAY as quickly as it could fly him upon… the streak that produced a great comet’s tail behind him.

The Oduum were more than indifferent to chasing a cosmic snail trail. There would be a glorious morsel at its end.

*****

The Architect Abe sat back from the sculpted work, not quite certain where to go next. He was working with a phantom limb, but in his young mind. He was at a loss.

*****

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.” - H. P. Lovecraft