The eighty-six immortals, hiding in limbo. Hiding from their sins.

I was close to the end of my journey, to the point where it all began.

There were four rings guarding their bastion. Two were operational, inhabited by heroes who complied with their rule, who overcame all the challenges of the one true labyrinth that spanned across countless and unimaginably colossal, but still finite, with one exception, realities.

Long-desired order and peace, long-desired end of the journey. The final and ultimate reward.

I used to think, it was all built upon the perpetual sacrifice of everyone beneath them, but I was wrong. The four rings were self-contained.

I used to think, their only fault was isolation from the nightmares of the outer realms, but they had always fought to slow down the everlasting genocide, without taking any lives.

Their ideology was different than the one I used to have, when I still cared. When I knew that one death at the higher layers of the labyrinth was salvation to numbers that couldn't be inscribed in any book.

These days, I'm indifferent to what happens down there. These days, I'm tired. I only want it to finally end.

Since the fall of the fourth ring, nobody new was allowed into the innermost ring, and since the beginning of all time constructs in this reality, none ever penetrated the walls of immortals' bastion.

But that was before their stone guards trapped me in the walls of 'Radiance'. That was before I was one of the few, who slew a false god. That was before I escaped to the territory of the infinite witch. That was before I climbed higher than anyone, in a vain attempt to rescue her. Before I was the last person, who had ever made it back. Before the last gates to her kingdom were closed to these, who weren't one of her psyche.

A long time has passed there, it was possible that I was now the eldest mortal creation in the labyrinth. Yet, nothing infinite could be brought outside of the witch's secluded realm, I regretted it. I was a mere passerby, but the time was not wasted. It was by a mere chance, yet the knowledge gained there was enough to bring immortals down to their knees.

I knew that I had to go to the quarantined zone, to learn of the anomaly known as the Tainted Gray. Even with immortals' infinity engine, they're incapable of monitoring everything simultaneously. They can only attempt to freeze or slow the whole reality in time, hoping they would be capable of analyzing and preventing the growth of the 'tumors', which were in simple terms, creations or incidents beyond their understanding.

One of such incidents was the 'Tainted Gray'. In an instant moment, all that existed in lower layers, turned into alien gray creatures and matter. The whole labyrinth, except the three rings and the immortals' station. All the life, gone. It was neither magic nor tech. The infinite witch, or rather, one of her countless projections, speculated it could be extra-worldly entities, but no breach was ever found. They've tried sending their probes there, but it was in vain. Everything would become 'Gray' upon mere contact with anything, matter, arcane, or incorporeal. No exceptions.

By the time I was free, the whole reality was purged by a new type of consecrated weaponry. All, but the fourth ring, which was still protected by end-tech at that point. However, the anomaly still suffered enough damage to remove some traces of it, giving birth to new, untraversed passages.

I was on their blacklist, under constant monitoring. Even If I were to use the body replacement to lose them, they would just stop the time and find me. Even If I were to sleep in the lower layers for years until I am no longer considered a threat, their alarms would warn them once I climbed high enough. Even now, I knew, that my mind already had been probed and the secrets of infinite witch were out there.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But they misunderstood their nature. They paused the reality, they tried to decipher the conundrum, but they couldn't let the infinite engine run forever. They misunderstood the time it took for me to become free. After all, they couldn't measure or track the infinite, the territory of the witch was the only area not under their control.

I became an anomaly, but by their own rules, they would not kill me. At that time, with all their knowledge, they knew that I'm not a threat. They made sure of it, erasing or stealing all the body parts and artifacts that weren't essential to my existence.

I did not need them. All I needed, was to take a risk.

I always risked, my whole existence was nothing but the result of risk.

I was a statistical error of enormous proportions. An impossible survivor.

They expected me to jump into the fourth ring, they even rebuilt my body to serve as their probe. Why? Perhaps, hunger for answers. I was less of a threat, than what happened at the time.

I saw it, the frantically teleporting afterimages of a gray humanoid, appearing and reappearing outside of its glass prison. It looked like it tried to get out. If I were to be touched by them, it would be the end of me, and perhaps, by a minuscule chance, once again, of the unprotected sections of reality.

Yet, I came closer.

Who trapped it there, why?

If they could, they would've stopped the time there. They would deactivate the probe... but that could equal murder, and they didn't want to stain their hands. If they could, they would take my freedom, but they also didn't want to risk that my death would be due to their fault.

It had to be my own decision. In this place, by their own design, they wouldn't control my fate.

I saw it, consoles and floating orbs, and a fountain - like a sea of stars. It all wasn't of labyrinthine origin. Yet, it was untainted. Who made it, was it the Tainted Gray or something yet to be discovered?

I did not know, and I did not bother to learn. My thoughts and intentions were permanently unraveled, but the decision arose from the edge of my consciousness.

I stepped in, waded in the black fluid until it reached my waist, chest, and neck, until my entire body submerged in it.

It was as If I was in a gray, underground tunnel somewhere beneath the earth. Its walls were made of thousands of gray arms, all reaching at me, but always barely a centimeter away. In my ears, there was a static signal and the place smelled like smelted iron.

At the end of a tunnel, there was a crimson light. I entered a sphere with no gravity, inside was an orb of organic matter, with many tentacles and a single red eye, continuously burning into red dust.

I floated closer, until my arms stopped next to the socket in the creature's skull, which was filled with this strange sand. Inside, I saw a place where the stars, unlike ours, were born. Stars made out of writhing worms with glowing white spots running parallel to their body.

There always was only one option.

To move forward.

Inside, I noticed countless corpses of the tainted gray, but darker, like devoid of their natural color. When the worms were feasting on them, it was like the bodies, while still probably dead, became younger, until they turned into fetuses resembling a blot of gray ink, then a mass of cells, and finally returned back to corpses of original bodies, and the process was repeated, until soulless corpses were reduced to nothing.

I couldn't accept what it appeared as. Time travel didn't exist. It was always tricks with parallel worlds, or enormous machinery building the stage for its puppets. Perhaps, the same mechanism applied here, but on a different level.

It was as If the impossible happened, what were the odds? Could it really be, could I really retrieve all that was taken away from me?

There was risk involved, but I've always gambled with my life.

When I allowed the worms to start devouring me, it was If my own memories were being consumed. I saw myself floating back through the burning eye, sequentially forgetting every second of that event, then walking through the gray tunnel, and forgetting it.

I was losing memories, but I was still aware. It was as If my intention of not letting go at the time, was still present, independently. I returned to the moment when they made me their probe, then to the time they deconstructed my body.

I took a deep breath and reemerged from the black liquid, all of the lost memories resurfaced slowly, my mind gradually repaired.

It was a miracle. Everything, but the stolen artifacts and armory, was back to its unblemished state.

I did not believe in fate, yet it felt like this whole place, was prepared exactly for this very moment. My eyes lifted, and I saw, the gray creature inside the glass had died. A single slimy worm feasted on its body.

Perhaps, now, I had a weapon.