The room that was not a room. It was a space defined less by walls and more by a profound, unsettling sense of enclosure. The air hung thick and heavy, tasting of forgotten mories and unseen colours. Light, when it deigned to appear, did not emanate from any source, yet it pooled in viscous puddles across a floor that slanted in two directions at once, a phosphorescent pattern glowing on surfaces that were simultaneously flat and deeply ridged, depending on where one's gaze dared to rest. The walls breathed, a slow, inexorable tide. The grain of the wood swirled into hypnotic, ever-changing mazes. To stare at it was to feel the architecture of one's own thoughts begin to liquefy and run.
In the heart of this shifting gloom, furniture perford a slow, silent ballet of impossible forms. A high-backed chair, its silhouette carved from negative space, would elongate its spindle legs, stretching them to a needle-fine point as it swayed, before collapsing in on itself with the liquid grace of a dying swan, resolving into a low, crescent-shaped divan upholstered in what might have been crushed velvet or solidified shadows. A wardrobe stood against a patch of relative darkness, but in a beat of a heart, it had beco a towering bookshelf, its shelves creaking under volus that seed to breathe, their spines pulsing with a faint luminescence.
A table of petrified wood stood in the middle. Its surface, swirling with galaxies trapped in amber, would ripple, its four legs lting into a single, gnarled root that plunged into the paradoxical floor. Around it, four astral bodies of celestial objects projected into human shapes. Four Ergents, their forms wavering at the edges like heat haze, their gestures are a tapestry of anxiety and panic.
The boy, whose form was overlapping with a rain of molten glass, now stood as a youth with dark hair and eyes the colour of a forge's heart. His fingers twitched, a nervous tic that sent silent shockwaves through the shimring air.
"What can we do?" Fulgor, the lightning-struck moon, responded. His human form was a middle-aged man, with a face that was all sharp angles and a grim set to his lips, and his arms were crossed over his chest, a clear sign of his displeasure and frustration. His voice, a low rumble, was laced with the crackle of static. "We can't stop a Venerated Ergent!"
"But this is absurd!" Oriole exclaid, her voice a high-pitched birdsong of panic that was as beautiful as it was distressing. Her eyes were wide and pleading, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. "He can't just do that!"
"He already did," Carmine spoke in a soft voice, a veil of crimson silk hiding a red-hot blade of ire underneath. Her human form wavered, her flowing hair growing brighter with the colour of fresh blood, and her eyes were a deep, dark red, like the heart of a dying star. "And we can't do anything about it."
"So that's it?" the boy, Obsidius, asked, his voice trembling with a mix of anxiety and disbelief. "But what about the rules! Y-You can't just forcefully intrude into the Simulacrum like that!"
"There are rules for us," Carmine corrected him, her words a soft whisper that cut through the silence of the not-dark not-room like a shard of glass. "The Venerated ***************** doesn't seem to care about them anymore."
"But it's still really, really bad!" Oriole insisted, her hands now balled into fists at her sides. "At this rate, he's going to ruin the scenario! Who's going to take responsibility for that?! What about the Subrged Ones?!"
Carmine raised her brow for a mont, looking genuinely concerned. It seemingly cooled her anger, and her appearance returned to a more placid state, her hair now a gentle cascade of dark red, the colour of a sunset, while her eyes beca the hue of a dark, still lake.
"That's a very good question," she said, her voice now calm, her words asured. "Can His direct intrusion into the Simulacrum negatively affect the Subrged Ones?"
"P-Potentially!" Oriole yelped, but it was clear to see that she was clutching at straws now. "It could have unforeseen consequences! It could even damage the Simulacrum itself!"
"That's not going to happen," Fulgor said, a hint of disdain in his tone. "I an, I understand that the Venerated Ergent is acting out of line, but he's not crazy!" When he didn't receive the agreent he was expecting, his eyes turned a bit wider, and he repeated himself with a little more anxiety. "He's not crazy, right?"
"The Venerated Predator Moon was always rather... direct in His approach to problems," Obsidius noted, shrinking back both taphorically and physically as his human form wavered, a shimr of the endless rain of molten glass visible through his skin for a brief mont.
"Which could an he'll break things if he's left alone!" Oriole continued to insist with ardent fervour. "We have to do sothing!"
"Like what?" Fulgor shot back and then let out a frustrated sigh as he paced across the non-existent floor of the not-dark not-room. The shifting patterns of light and darkness warped and twisted around him, as if in response to his agitation. "We can't stop him! We can't even talk to him! Who even knows what he's doing right now!"
The room lapsed into a heavy silence, the four of them standing frozen, their forms wavering and shifting in the non-light.
"A-Actually, I can check..." Obsidius proposed and waved his hand, not even waiting for Carmine's approval.
The table in the middle rapidly shifted into a pedestal made of sothing akin to black marble and polished to a mirror sheen. It then started to emit a low hum, the kind that makes one's teeth ache, and the surface shimred as if it were made of water. From it erged a strange, constantly shifting polyhedron, a geotric shape with countless facets, each of them glowing with a different light. The shape was slowly spinning, casting long, distorted shadows across the already twisted room.
As the polyhedron spun, the four of them stared at it, their breaths held in their throats. It was an interface ant to view the state of the scenario, and through it, the Simulacrum itself to a certain degree, but its scope and complexity made it appear a maddeningly incomprehensible display of light and colour to mortal eyes.
A short eternity later, Obsidius let out a nervous hum and explained, "It… It seems the Venerated Predator Moon had already done sothing..."
"Is it... bad?" Oriole asked, though her expression said she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.
"He erased 'Leonard S. Dunning' from the scenario."
"Oh... Oh no..." the girl whispered, her face and stellar rings both turning a deathly pale white at once. "That's really, really bad!"
"It makes sense," Carmine offered a different perspective, though her expression was also clouded. "He's technically an anomaly, and was involved with the first encounter, when the ************ ********** revealed himself, so I can see why the Venerated Ergent would pay attention to him"
"But... But he was erased!" Oriole cried out, her voice like a cacophony of crows over a battlefield. "It's over! Everything is ruined!"
"Don't be so overdramatic," Fulgor scoffed as he returned to the newly ford pedestal. "Sure, as the second Free Actor, his presence led to a series of major and unexpected changes, but it's not like the entire scenario is going to collapse just because—"
"But it will! And not just the scenario, but everything!" Oriole yelled out, her panic mounting to a fever pitch.
It made Carmine narrow her eyes and stare at her with a look that seed to slice through the girl's panicked frenzy, making her flinch.
"You know sothing you're not telling us, don't you?"
The young girl froze mid-motion, her previously frantic appearance giving way to a subdued fright as she turned to face the woman in red.
"W-What makes you think that?"
"You're sounding way too sure of it," Carmine stated simply, her words a velvet dagger. "How are you so certain that erasing an Actor from the scenario would cause such damage to it, let alone the Simulacrum?" Her eyes narrowed even more, her squint like the horizon of an endless sea of ruby with the last rays of the dusk sun peeking over. "Is this related to our guest?"
"Right!" Fulgor exclaid, sounding like he just figured out how to cut the Gordian Knot of the situation. "We could ask him! If he really is an incognito Venerated Ergent, maybe he could talk with the—"
"He isn't, and…" Oriole interrupted him before he could gather more steam, her voice reminiscent of a lonely songbird perched on an empty nest. "There's no way we can find him now. Not anymore."
That made Carmine let out an impatient huff, and she tapped her foot against the ever-changing floor, causing it to ripple like the surface of a lake.
"You really aren't telling us sothing. If you want to co clean, now is the—"
"E-Excuse ?" Obsidius cut in, the weight of the situation overpowering his usual social anxiety, and he pointed at the lazily spinning polyhedron. "S-She's right! The scenario... No, the Simulacrum is reacting. It's like... It's pushing back against the Venerated Ergent's interference."
"What? Let see!" Fulgor exclaid and leaned over the pedestal, squinting so hard at the shining shape that his face began to distort, the lightning on his moon-like surface crackling with renewed vigour. "That... Now way..." He reeled back and turned to Carmine. "Obsidius is right! The Simulacrum itself is rejecting the Venerated Ergent's intrusion, and He's lashing out in response. At this rate, the scenario is going to completely fall apart!"
"Oh no! No no no no!" Oriole whined, while the woman in crimson's countenance turned grim.
"Everyone, calm down." She turned to the boy next. "Obsidius? Give a worst-case scenario."
"Y-Yes..." He reached out towards the polyhedron on display, and it began to spin erratically, its shape going through all the platonic solids in a matter of seconds before settling on sothing resembling a star tetrahedron. "If this keeps up, it will damage the foundation of the scenario."
"What about the Subrged Ones?" Carmine asked insistently, but it took a while for Obsidius to respond.
"Do you... really want to hear the worst-case scenario?"
"Yes."
He swallowed hard, the glow of his surface dimming.
"The entire scenario will collapse, but it won't stop there. The damage will ripple outwards and potentially affect other scenarios that share the sa base setting, and those will collapse in turn, and..."
"And?"
He was quiet for a long mont, a silence so profound that it seed to press in on the others from all sides. The not-dark not-room itself seed to hold its breath, the shifting furniture freezing in place.
"It may damage the Artificial Domain of the Simulacrum itself, and could... no, if it cos to that, it definitely will cast any Subrged Ones in the process of Erging back into the Noise"
Oriole let out a strangled gasp, and even Fulgor looked stunned for a long mont, his barren surface dark and still like a starless sky. The implications of this were catastrophic.
"No..." he finally whispered, his voice a low rumble. "He wouldn't..."
"Does the Venerated Ergent know this?" Carmine asked next, and the boy let his arms down and shook his head.
"I... don't know. I don't think so, but... It's a worst-case scenario. Maybe we're just being overly pessimistic, and he'll limit the damage to the scenario only."
"Only the scenario!?" Oriole exclaid and raised her small hand high, as if preparing to hit him. "Why are you saying that as if that was a good thing?! Are you listening to yourself?!"
Carmine interjected with a firm, "Calm down," followed by a detached, "Even if we presu the worst possible outco, there's little we can do to stop it at this stage."
"Right," Fulgor agreed and crossed his arms again. "What are we even supposed to do here?"
Oriole was about to respond to him, but then...
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