There is silence, and then there is the murder of silence. What I stood inside was neither a void nor a dream—it was silence dissected, devoured, and made to kneel. It was as if sound had once existed here, rebelled against what it saw, and was executed without mercy.
I stood before him again.
But this time, I understood something I hadn't before.
My lips curled into a smirk—slow, involuntary, something between defiance and despair. It wasn't mine. Not fully. It belonged to a version of me that had bled out centuries ago on a battlefield I never remembered walking.
The throne loomed above me.
It was not built. It was bled into being. A spiraling monument of anti-reason, forged from entropy and laced with the shattered bones of logic itself. It hovered—not like a bird or a spirit—but like a truth too heavy to fall.
Obsidian spires twisted around it like the claws of a god that had failed to hold onto reality. They pulsed not with energy, but with memory—dark, agonized memory that didn't belong to me but screamed through my veins regardless.
And then… his voice.
"…So."
It did not echo. It possessed. Like a tongue licking directly across the soul.
"You wear my burden lightly, boy."
"You mistake survival… for permission."
The words didn't hit—they replaced. They replaced thought, heartbeat, time.
I drew a breath that didn't come from lungs. My body was here, yet irrelevant. My mind, trembling, stood firm.
"Is that what you think?" I replied, my voice surprisingly calm. "That I'm here seeking forgiveness?"
"You're here," he said, "to remember your place."
The throne cracked—not in sound, but in certainty. Reality around it frayed like an old flag caught in a storm of forgotten gods.
I smiled wider, almost pitying.
"Forgive me. I didn't realize I had a place. I was under the impression… I'm carving it myself."
Then came the laughter. If it could be called that. A dozen throttles voices laughing from a hundred mouths that didn't exist. Echoes in reverse, mirth woven through agony.
Something was watching me. Not someone—something. Eyes blinked into existence along the throne's surface. Some wide with hunger, others weeping black light, all staring into my marrow.
"What are you?" I asked, throat dry.
"I am what's left of you… when everything human is taken— And you still crawl forward. Smiling."
A pause. As if the throne itself was exhaling.
"You fear death. But deeper than that… You fear the question it leaves behind."
"The unknown. The unanswered. The unopened door."
"You fear me."
I didn't flinch. I didn't lie. Fear is part of the architecture of humanity. I had merely chosen to weaponize mine.
"Then let's trade, great being," I said. "You speak in destinies—I speak in detours. Show me the path… and I'll count the steps before I build a new road."
His presence shifted. Not movement, not motion—just change.
"You think this is a negotiation?"
"You think cleverness matters here?"
"No," I said.
"I think I'm inevitable."
The laughter again, but this time sharper—crueler.
"You are a child gripping fire. And you haven't yet smelled your own burning skin."
"And you," I said, my voice low, sharp, "are a shadow that cannot cast light. You see only ends. I see moves. And I still have some left."
"You sit on a throne of extinction… And still, I step forward. Not because I don't fear you— Because I do."
A moment passed, long enough for an empire to rise and fall in my chest.
He spoke again. Slower. Heavier.
"Every Sunday… you will return. You will be pulled into this realm—this unplace— where silence screams and meaning dies."
"Ask. Learn. Or drown."
I nodded once. It was all I could do.
"Then I'll bleed the answers from the unknown, one question at a time."
There was a truth in his presence I couldn't understand, but felt pressing against me like a future I hadn't yet earned. I lifted my head.
"One more question."
"Proceed."
"Why me?" I asked. "Why waste eternity on someone like me?"
His answer came like prophecy soaked in poison:
"Because I am beyond time. And you… are just beneath it."
"Where I stand, time is a lie. I am past, present, and future. You cannot waste what I no longer possess."
And then, softer—almost like the memory of a wound:
"I have seen others like you. Flickers. Sparks. Brave fools who danced with inevitability and tried to rewrite fate. They burned gloriously… and died without echo."
For a moment—just a breath—there was a flicker in his voice. Something ancient. A scarred reminiscence. Regret? Pity? Or perhaps admiration dressed as contempt.
He continued:
"But you smile differently. Your defiance is not blind—it is surgical. I mock it… but I recognize it. I, too, once rebelled against the script I now enforce."
The shadow of the throne swelled. It became a second sky. A wound in existence.
He continued:
"The Forest of Ebonveil waits. And destruction… is no longer a threat. It is the script. But scripts… require actors. And actors, by nature, improvise."
I stepped forward—not in courage, but in comprehension.
"Then let me be the glitch in that script," I whispered. "The flaw that erases perfection."
Visions returned. Cities decaying into ash without fire. Children holding knives made of bone. Humanity shivering beneath a sun that refused to rise.
I clawed at my head. Something gave way inside. A memory that didn't belong to me spilled open—bleeding the color of ancient grief.
And beneath the echoing images, I heard his voice once more—not loud, but absolute:
"Should you stray from the path I offered, mortal… that vision shall become memory. And memory… becomes history."
I will prepare," I said. "Starting tomorrow—"
But the world snapped.
No warning. No sound. Just… absence.
And I was hurled backwards. Time caught me like a net spun of knives.
I sat up in my room, gasping like a newborn that had died once before.
One sentence echoed in my skull. One final command—a bell tolling in reverse:
"Ensure the first step you take into that forest… falls on a Sunday morning."
I stared at the ceiling, breath shallow, hands trembling.
I had asked for answers.
What he gave me was a beginning.