Blacker than black, and more silent than the depths of space. This was the experience that was to be had inside that massive tower now that the door had shut closed. Had a day passed? Maybe only half? Maybe it had just been a few minutes? Was the ground around where he stood still there or were his feet planet on the only solid surface that remained? In that abyss, nothing could be seen or heard save for the beating of one’s own heart, and Vaile knew better than to try and speak aloud.

In a Horror situation like this, it was often that silence and a lack of movement would allow for survival, and so Vaile waited in the dark and deathly quiet place he was in for something, anything, to happen. He couldn’t feel the normal flow of time as it should have been. All reference points had vanished, and all that was left was his own thoughts which, rather unfortunately, were beginning to fall into silence as well.

He needed something to happen, lest he find insanity to be his only recourse. Before he could slip away, he heard something that made his skin crawl. The laughter of a feminine something nearby sent alarms ringing in his head. Never in Horror Fiction History has it been a good thing to hear laughter in the darkness. This rule applied not just to the ominous laughter associated with malign and monstrous beings of great size and evil, but also the laughter of children and, of course, practically anything else.

In the blacker than black darkness, Vaile saw the flickering form of a female humanoid for a single moment. It stood out amidst the darkness as clear as the sun on a cloudless day, despite there not being a single light source that could have bounced light off of it. As soon as Vaile’s gut began to tell him to get ready to bolt, the ambient darkness faded away as it was replaced with a growing ambient light. There did not appear to be any source from which this light came, but that was the least of Vaile’s worries.

When Vaile had entered, there was nothing in the massive room aside from himself. Now that the lights were on, however? He was surrounded by statues made of the same weird stone that everything else here was made of. The walls that had been smoother than a baby’s bottom and as featureless as they could possibly be now bore carvings that depicted what could be viewed as potential past events, and maybe even future ones.

Vaile carefully navigated around the statues, knowing full well that any decent Horror writer would have one of them be animate and that it would grab or attack him if he got too close. He eventually made it out of the mass of stone people and beasts without incident and approached a massive relief that was part of one of the walls. He didn’t really know the context behind what was being shown, but he had several ideas and as he viewed more of the scenes his mind put together a rough series of events.

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…

In a time long since passed, there was an uprising. Beings that were formerly bound and chained rose against those that forged them as their world died, breaking out of their dying reality and bringing their creators to a dark place. However, the creators of the newly freed beings used some kind of language to force the rebellious creations into a prison.

For ages, they plotted their escape, and one day they broke out again and rampaged, fully intent on bringing their makers to heel. Once again, the unknown language was used, but this time the creations were prepared. More of the language needed to be spoken by more people, and this brought the creations down once again.

The creators knew that they could not do this again, and so fashioned a prison of a different kind. No longer would the creations be able to act of their own accord, they would be kept in chains by a powerful being made specifically to keep them occupied with simply surviving, which would, in turn, prevent them from organizing and trying to escape a final time.

They were, for a time, occupied with things, but gradually they were able to push ahead and secure more time for themselves. This caused the powerful overseer to force new calamities upon all, be they prisoners or not. New beings were brought into the prison, not as prisoners but as agents that could, knowingly or unknowingly, do the Overseer’s work.

One by one, the prisoners were forced back to simple survival, or were given things to occupy their attention. Those with power would be forced to bend the knee to those who once were powerless, those who ruled great dominions would see them crumble to dust, and those who were powerful would see themselves and their agents hunted down and broken.

This was the way things would be, until someone, or perhaps, something arrived.

…

As Vaile looked beyond this bit of the relief, he noticed that the pictures, which had previously been a single line, began to diverge into separate paths. One saw this new being freeing the prisoners and leading them to destroy and subjugate the creators. Another saw the new being taking the mantle of the Overseer and using their power to keep the prisoners inside the prison.

Lines split and converged upon each other, creating what seemed to be dozens of different potential futures. In one, the creators and creations made peace with each other and lived in harmony. In another, both sides wiped themselves out in a war that saw the end of everything. Yet another saw the prisoners being led by the new being in a fight against some third force, while another saw that third force allying with the creations, and yet one other path showed the third party joining with the creators. Vaile could barely wrap his head around the story that had been told view murals and carvings before the split, but now he was fully at a loss. The tower rumbled as he finished looking over the wall carvings a final time, and Vaile turned to face the origin of the noise.

A pillar had appeared in the dead center of the room, seemingly from nowhere, and embedded within it was a door. Vaile had a rough idea of what that thing was, and, in all honesty, he was glad to have it. Better to take an elevator than deal with what would certainly be a fuck-ton of stairs that, potentially, led to nowhere.