It happened when Nero decided to take a nap.
The morning had been long, filled with chess gas and quiet conversation, with the weight of future plans pressing against the edges of their peaceful bubble. Using his newly evolved God’s Eyes, even for that brief mont to glimpse Khione’s information, had drained him more than he expected. The chess matches that followed—intense, focused, demanding—had finished the job.
His eyes felt heavy. His limbs were leaden. The bed was warm and soft, and Khione had murmured sothing about stepping out for a mont, leaving him alone in the quiet room.
Nero lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling for a long, drowsy mont. His thoughts drifted, formless and slow, carried on the current of approaching sleep.
I wish to understand, he thought, the words forming sowhere deep in his consciousness. I wish to understand all the mysteries surrounding . Who am I? What am I becoming? Why is all of this happening? I sincerely wish to know.
His eyes closed.
And the world shifted.
---
Clang. Clang.
The sound reached him first. Harsh. Grating. tal against tal, or tal against stone. It was an ugly noise, the kind that made the back of his neck prickle with irritation.
Clang. Clang.
It continued, persistent, scraping against his ears like a file against raw wood. Nero’s brow furrowed, even in the depths of whatever this was. The sound was wrong. The whole situation was wrong.
He opened his eyes.
And froze.
The sight before him would haunt nightmares for lifetis.
Blood. Everywhere.
The ground beneath his feet was not ground at all—it was a carpet of crimson, thick and viscous, squelching softly with every slight movent he made. The sensation traveled up through his legs, a sickening, wet warmth that made his stomach turn.
He looked up. The sky was the sa. A vast, endless expanse of red, as if the very heavens had been drained of their color and filled with gore. No clouds. No sun. Just that terrible, oppressive redness pressing down from above.
Is this hell?
The question ford unbidden in his mind. There was no other word for it. This place, this vision, this waking nightmare—it could only be described as hell.
But it wasn’t just the redness that made it so.
Weapons littered the ground, half-buried in the blood-soaked earth. Swords, rusted and chipped, their edges dulled by ages of disuse and decay. Spears, snapped in half, their shafts weathered and splintered. Axes, their blades pitted and broken. Shields, dented beyond recognition, their painted symbols long since worn away.
And the bodies.
Countless corpses lay scattered among the weapons, in various states of decay and dismbernt. So were humanoid—n and won who might once have been warriors, now reduced to bones and tattered flesh. Others were... not. Creatures of impossible shapes and sizes, beings that defied description, their twisted forms frozen in the final agonies of death. So were as large as houses, their massive rib cages rising from the gore like the hulls of sunken ships. Others were small, barely more than skeletons, their origins impossible to guess.
The stench was overwhelming. Blood, old and fresh, mixed with the sweet-sick sll of decay, with the tallic tang of rust, with sothing else—sothing ancient and wrong that had no na. Nero covered his nose, but the sll seed to bypass his senses entirely, seeping directly into his soul.
What is this place?
An unfamiliar space. A surreal nightmare that couldn’t possibly be real. Above him, the sky wasn’t just red—it was broken. Great cracks ran through the firmant, as if so unimaginable force had literally slashed the heavens apart, leaving jagged wounds that bled crimson light into the void beyond.
But the problem was...
I feel like I’ve seen this before.
The thought hit him with physical force. Despite the horror, despite the impossibility, despite every logical part of his mind screaming that this place couldn’t exist—it felt familiar. The blood-soaked ground. The broken sky. The scattered weapons and countless corpses. He had seen them sowhere. Sohow.
How could sothing be both utterly alien and deeply familiar at the sa ti? The paradox made his head spin, but the feeling was undeniable. This place was in his blood. In his bones. In his soul.
He looked around, trying to make sense of it, trying to find sothing—anything—that would give him context.
And then he saw it.
A massive boulder stood amidst the carnage, rising from the sea of blood like an island of solidity in an ocean of horror. It was out of place—a single, unremarkable rock in a landscape of impossible nightmare. But it drew his eyes irresistibly.
Even that’s familiar.
The boulder. He knew it. He had seen it before. The shape of it, the way it sat against the broken sky, the way it seed to pulse with a silent, waiting presence. It was a mory just out of reach, a dream half-rembered upon waking.
His gaze lingered on the boulder. And slowly, gradually, he beca aware that he wasn’t alone.
Soone was sitting on it.
The figure was perched atop the massive rock, its form silhouetted against the crimson sky. They were dressed in dark clothing—a long coat, perhaps, or robes—that seed to drink the red light rather than reflect it. Their face was hidden beneath a cascade of dark blue hair that fell like a curtain, obscuring every feature.
Just looking at that broad back made Nero’s fingers tremble.
Fear. Cold, primal, bone-deep fear surged through him. Not the sharp fear of imdiate danger, but sothing deeper—the dread a prey animal feels when it senses a predator too powerful to flee from. His body reacted before his mind could process, muscles locking, heart pounding, breath catching in his throat.
And yet, despite the fear, despite every instinct screaming at him to run, to hide, to close his eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening—his feet began to move.
Step by step, he approached the boulder. He couldn’t stop himself. It was as if his body had been taken over by so force beyond his control, drawing him inexorably toward the figure on the rock.
The squelch of blood beneath his feet was the only sound as he drew closer.
Closer.
Why am I doing this? The thought was frantic, desperate, but his legs kept moving. Why can’t I stop?
He was close now. Close enough to see details—the frayed edge of the dark coat, the way the dark blue hair stirred despite the absence of wind, the subtle tension in the broad shoulders.
He stopped at the base of the boulder.
Swoosh.
The figure turned.
Their eyes t.
And Nero’s world collapsed.
Those eyes were red. Not the warm, familiar red of his own Crimson Gaze. This was a different red—darker, deeper, more ancient. They glowed with an inner light that seed to pierce through him, through flesh and bone and soul, reading every secret he had ever hidden, every fear he had ever buried, every hope he had ever dared to nurture.
Chills exploded down his spine. Goosebumps erupted across every inch of his skin. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
The figure stared at him with those terrible red eyes, and Nero felt like a mouse before a serpent, like a deer before a wolf, like a candle fla before a dying star. This was not an extrely high-level monster—he knew that with sudden, absolute certainty. It was sothing else. Sothing worse. Sothing that made monsters seem like children’s tales.
"What... what in the world...?" The words escaped him in a ragged whisper.
The figure’s eyes narrowed slightly. Studying him. Assessing him.
Then it spoke.
[Not yet.]
The voice was not loud. It was not deep. It was... everywhere. Inside his head, outside in the bloody air, resonating through the broken sky. It carried the weight of ages, the weariness of eons, the patience of mountains.
"W-what?" Nero managed, his voice cracking.
[Not yet.]
The figure repeated, and this ti Nero caught sothing in those ancient red eyes—a flicker of sothing almost like... concern? Impatience? Anticipation?
[You need to reach the next step. Grow stronger if you wish to live.]
The words made no sense. Next step? Not over? What did any of this an? Nero opened his mouth to ask, to demand answers, to scream his confusion into that terrible red face—
[Go back.]
The figure commanded, an absolute command.
And the world vanished.
•••
Nero’s eyes snapped open.
He was in the inn room. The ceiling above him was the sa familiar white. The curtains let in soft afternoon light. The bed was warm beneath him.
For a long, terrible mont, he lay there, gasping for breath, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. Sweat soaked his clothes. His hands trembled uncontrollably.
A dream. Just a dream.
But as he lay there, trying to convince himself, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been more. That the figure with the dark blue hair and the terrible red eyes was still out there, sowhere, waiting.
And those final words echoed in his mind, a promise and a warning wrapped together:
It is not over yet; the ti is to grow stronger.
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