The space reacted almost instantly to the new presence. However, instead of an image fluttering and expanding to fill the area, a suffocating sense of loss seeped out to soak every aspect of the area.

Devick spun around, her back already beginning to tingle with bits of chilling perspiration. She couldn’t believe it, the air still retaining that washed-out quality, as though even reality had begun to melt. Her heart pounded. I’m… afraid? Without even seeing the foe?

“Flee,” The monkey urged again.

Devick ignored its words and her own heart's emphatic drumbeat of support. She pulled on her image, allowing stubbornness and malice to blossom in her chest. Flames wrapped around her body, yet the manifestation remained filmy and insubstantial with the horrific aura. The flames resembled paper cutouts rather than any real raging inferno.

On the far side of the room a slit formed in existence. A fat and scaled hand pushed its way through. One by one, those fingers curled around the edge and began to draw space back like a heavy curtain.

What began to filter through the opening, however, was nothing like sunlight.

Next to Devick, the monkey had almost folded in on itself. It wrapped its torso in its furred arms and bent forward, already shivering. Devick reached out through her connection with Randidly and grasped for him. Yet the connection felt dull and sluggish; she didn’t receive any sort of timely response.

From the opening, a head forced its way through. A fat serpent pulled itself forward, long arms connected to a massive body. Its face was a mess of gore; both of its eyes had been carved up and bled fat drops of ichor onto the ground. It’s head swung back and forth, blind and searching.

Then, with a horrific sense of finality, it swung in Devick and the monkey’s direction. Its long tongue poked out of its mouth. Its slouched and lazy posture reminded Devick of an overflowing pile of garbage. And the aura of death it radiated was just like the stench such a presence would produce.

Devick’s eyes began to water.

“We must immediately- you, girl, what are you doing!?”

Devick had stepped forward. The fetid taint in the air strengthened to the point she could barely breathe. She ignored her coughs and plucked up her paper flames into her hands and crumpled them all together, the texture thin and insubstantial and so fucking weak. She couldn’t help herself; she began to laugh. “Me? I’m just… I believe the miracle will happen and he will show up. But we can’t just sit around and wait for it, can we?”

She opened her palms. The folded paper flames had become a crimson chrysanthemum of malice. It seemed on the edge of wilting, its petal wan and unhealthy. The armed serpent opened its mouth and roared.

In the face of its suffocating power, Devick took another step forward.

*****

Randidly felt genuinely stumped. His burdens continued to wear on him, none easing as he persisted.

No ideas came to him, or his mind had gone through too much, or the pain of keeping his body from shaking itself to pieces required too much of his focus. He clenched and clenched to resist letting any more of his momentum be lost, but he could feel himself wavering above a great fall.

The prospect of escaping the Samsara and liberating the Nexus… now seemed so, so large. It loomed above him. His hands were raw and he would need to claw his way up without being able to see the top.

This is the problem with sometimes accepting help, Randidly’s chest felt so tight. Sometimes you need it… but you are the only one here. They… can’t follow me here. Shit.

His images and Nether Core were largely cut off from him, with both energies becoming increasingly unstable. He remained trapped in the Samsara, with no viable methods of escape occurring to him at the moment. His Vessel had been repeatedly brutalized during his time in the Samsara, holding up against the erosion but not possessing enough force to overwhelm the situation.

Even worse, he felt a faint tug through his connection to Devick. His expression hardened as panic surged up through his body-- the lack of an answer became increasingly unforgivable. His hands were trembling. He wanted to do something, but that old sensation of being powerless, those horrific nights from childhood where he would lay in his bed and just stare at the ceiling, filled him.

…but nothing changes if I just stay still. Randidly bit his lip and tasted blood. He flexed his hands and looked around. So… when the hell is this?

He honestly didn’t recognize the surroundings. He stood on a wooden platform inside of a stone building. On the far wall there was an opening to the outside world, showing a sky gripped by a winter storm. Directly in front of him was a young man with a spear, interposing himself between Randidly and a portal on the far wall.

“Stop right there,” The young man spoke with a firm tone, but he was young enough that his voice cracked.

Randidly’s lips twitched. He has a third eye… so this is Tellus? But when-

The young man pounced forward and swung his spear. The attack was surprising for several reasons. First due to the flickering and insubstantial image attached to the spear. After having climbed so high in the Nexus, it was almost comically weak. Even the form made Randidly’s eyebrows shoot upward. He couldn’t believe how inefficient and shaky the stance of the spear-user was. If this was supposed to be a life-threatening memory, it was from a long time ago.

Randidly didn’t even need to use a spear. He jabbed out a finger. The young man’s chest opened up and he stumbled. Blood spattered onto the ground. Yet there was something in the motion… Randidly felt a hitch in his heartbeat, looking at the expression of genuine surprise on this man’s face. Right up until the end, he had been sure that he would stop Randidly.

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The Truth of the memory purred in pleasure at his decisive action.

Randidly Ghosthound kills even innocents who stand in his way.

His skin prickled as the memory blurred around him. Suddenly, he recalled when this was: his escape from the prison on Tellus, that Shal had taken him into in order to get the benefit of time dilation on a Tellus where the Dungeons had collapsed from lack of Aether or were monopolized by larger Styles.

Randidly remembered very vividly how he had fought and fought and fought in the grasslands surrounding the main prison. As he honed his skills, he had returned, rescued Shal, and the two had killed their way out of the prison. He had been wracked by guilt in the aftermath, unwilling to acknowledge it had been a mistake to just kill these unsuspecting guards, unable to rationalize how he was any different than the rest of the System based on his actions.

I guess I still wonder about that question, Randidly’s face contorted. Am I really that different from the rest…?

It had been Helen who set him straight, with her serious eyes, skeptical questions, and her default to exertion in the face of emotional confusion. His heart ached to remember her intuitive empathy for him, prickly and sailor-mouothed as she was. That version of Randidly Ghosthound had stumbled out so raw and chapped from the violence of the months spent in the prison. His spear had been dripping blood.

But she had sparred him right back into fighting shape. She looked at him, saw who he was, and didn’t flinch.

If anything, remembering her exacerbated his current state of near-collapse. Because he didn’t have her now. Randidly Ghosthound was alone. The darkest emotion that always plagued him, exhaustion, scrabbled at the edge of his consciousness and gnawed at his tenacity. He felt small. He felt spent. He felt furious, knowing that if he did somehow resolve the issues of his reacting Truths, even if he could condense a Penance and stabilize his Nether Core, Pangu’s Aspect would record every detail of what he could accomplish.

His power, his Truth, would be one more cog used by this mysterious figure to advance an agenda Randidly didn’t understand.

With tired eyes, he refocused on the threats in front of him. The Samsara churned and pulsed. Perhaps Randidly could force his way forward like he always did. But what if that just put an even more powerful weapon in another enemy’s hand? Forcing away that thought, Randidly squeezed his eyes shut for a split second.

I need… to do something…

The memory shifted and settled. Randidly breathed in all the released significance, ignoring the bubbling problems in his Nether for now. He looked around and was surprised to find that the situation hadn’t changed, just reset.

The same memory? Randidly frowned. Is the Samsara running short of ideas?

The young man stepped forward. “Stop right there.”

This time, Randidly didn’t even bother to respond; this young man was not a foe that could threaten him, even with a boost from the Eternity’s attack. When Randidly remained still, the young man’s eyes sharpened. He raised his spear and attacked again with the same ugly slash. In his drained state, annoyance bubbled up from a tiny corner of his heart. It’s a new low I’ve reached if attacks like this can even bother me…

He froze as the thought finished. Randidly focused on his emotional state, burrowing through his growing sense of helplessness and searching for the source of the thought. His Soulspace released an ominous groan. Even that he had to simply allow, fixating on that small corner of his heart… and the insidious connection from the Samsara that had latched onto him, adding this foreign pride into him.

Randidly used his Grand Fate to obliterate the connection. But this just proved the dangers of lingering within the Samsara for too long, even for him. He didn’t have much more time before-

“Ahhhh!”

The young man screamed and fell to the ground, his hands desperately trying to wipe away a few drops of liquid from his body. Randidly felt confused, replaying the physical developments back in his mind. The attack had been just as slow as the first time. Then Randidly noticed that the memory had empowered the edge of the young man’s weapon, giving it a cutting surface that could damage his Vessel, if only slightly.

The young man had inflicted a small cut on Randidly and then been sprayed with his blood. Those few drops of blood possessed enough potent vitality to devour the flesh of this completely average young man. He rolled back and forth on the ground, clawing at himself. As his flesh melted away, it almost looked like the wounds were self-inflicted, a madness of physical form that had finally tainted his mind.

With every scream, Randidly flinched. The obvious agony nudged him, hinting that he was just as harmful as Elhume and Fiero.

Randidly Ghosthound kills even innocents who stand in his way.

Such fucking bullshit…! Randidly felt the cleansing heat of rage flooding through his body as the memory warped around him. He devoured all the significance, he forcefully suppressed the shaking in his Soulspace, and was practically prowling forward as the memory reset again. The young man stepped forward and Randidly felt the overpowering urge to obliterate him. Don’t you dare tell me who I am. I’ll crush-

Wait, what?

The violence of the instinct stilled him, even through the accumulated worries Randidly possessed. Releasing a frustrated growl, Randidly swept his awareness around with his Grand Fate. His worst fears were confirmed: at some point, another one of the strange connections from the Samsara had been made without him noticing. He shredded it, but Randidly had a sinking feeling in his chest.

“Stop right there.” The young man repeated his line and stepped forward. Randidly eyed him but made no moves. What I need is just a little bit of time, a way to regain my mental and emotional balance. To stabilize both my Aether and Nether-

The young man attacked. Randidly sidestepped so fast he probably appeared as though he had teleported, from the young man’s perspective. The clumsy attack missed. For a second, Randidly wondered why the memory didn’t bother to strengthen the young man, but then the screaming began and Randidly had the faintest inkling of the Samsara’s intentions.

The notification that followed drove home the point.

Congratulations! Your Skill Apostate Moirae’s Seditious Touch (GD) has grown to Level 1359!

As the young man screamed and trembled, completely untouched by any weapon but Randidly’s warping touch, Randidly felt the bitterness in his chest swelling and seeping out sourness through the whole of his being. So much hurt; the amount of problems he needed to overcome had become so piled and intermingled he didn’t know where to start.

His mere presence mutated this innocent to develop grey scales and gnarled, bloody characters through his flesh until he eventually died. The Path he chose might very well have been different, but the bloody cost it exacted on the universe was just the same. He had become a monster.

Randidly Ghosthound kills even innocents who stand in his way.

He closed his eyes again. He shook. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down…!

But his imagined heart only began to race more quickly. He lashed out with his Grand Fate and slaughtered most of the worming connections spreading down from the Samsara, but he also acknowledged he probably missed a few in his unbalanced state. Yet he couldn’t find the spare attention to worry, not while his Nether continued to bubble with its unstable foundation and his images-

Before the memory even reformed, the screaming began. Randidly’s awareness went jagged and blinding as his Soulspace split down the middle, finally cracked open by the cooped-up Truths.

Randidly Ghosthound was the one screaming. The only thing hatched from this ‘egg’ in his chest was an annihilating malady of the soul.