The clicking did not stop.
It devoured the silence like a ravenous beast, burrowing deep into their skulls, resonating within their bones, gnawing at their very being. This noise—this presence—was not merely sound. It was a force pressing against their thoughts, clawing its way into the fragile web of their existence, trying to carve itself into their very souls. It vibrated through the towering trees, vibrating through the infinite expanse of night, thrumming through them, through their veins, as if the darkness itself was alive and seeking to claim them.
Rei gritted his teeth, sweat dripping down his temple in thick beads. His body swayed, barely able to stay upright. Each tremor of his limbs was an echo of the unbearable weight of the clicking sound, a sensation so intense it made his bones feel hollow, his very blood sluggish. Beside him, Erasmus stood unmoving, but his hand gripped his cane with white-knuckled force, his fingers trembling despite his efforts to hold steady.
Then, from the blackened trees, the Crawling Dirge emerged.
They had no eyes. No mouths. No faces—nothing but the dreadful, grotesque silhouette of their existence. Only legs.
Thousands upon thousands of them, twisted and gnarled like the limbs of a spider, each jointed and sharp, coated in wiry, bristling hair that twitched with unnatural rhythm. Their bodies, vast and monstrous, were the size of houses, yet their legs extended in every direction—sideways, backward, upwards—as if movement itself had become something not only inevitable but living. They clung to the colossal trunks of the trees, swarming like parasites, creeping along the bark of a body too vast to even comprehend. And still, they clicked.
The forest itself seemed to shake beneath the weight of their presence. The ground trembled with a deep, resonating pulse that came from the monstrous things—leaves rustled violently, the air vibrating with the relentless sound of chitin scraping against the blackened trunks of the trees. The immense forest, each tree so towering their tops were lost to shadow, seemed to bend and sway under the weight of the Dirge, the sheer number of them pressing down upon the world like a suffocating blanket. There was no sky. No stars, no moon, no boundary between what was known and what could be understood. There was only an endless ocean of crawling, twitching limbs, unfathomable and horrific.
Then, the clicking changed.
It was no longer random. No longer erratic. No longer a mindless rhythm. It carried intent. It became deliberate. A rhythm. A pattern.
A message.
And at that moment, when Erasmus understood, when he felt the message seeping into his mind, it was almost more than he could bear.
The sound burrowed deeper, pressing into his skull, wedging itself between his thoughts, forcing its alien meaning into the cracks of his consciousness. His vision blurred, his senses overloaded, as the sound began to shift into something that was no longer a mere noise, but a presence, something ancient, older than thought, older than language. It was not human. It was not meant for the human mind. It was an idea far beyond understanding.
And that was the moment when the nausea hit.
It was as if his mind were unraveling, as if his very sense of self was slowly being peeled away, layer by layer. His legs buckled, and for one horrifying instant, he wasn't sure if he was still Erasmus at all. Was he still a man, standing here, with Rei beside him, struggling to make sense of what was happening? Or had he become something else? Something lost in the endless clicking?
Rei's voice cut through the haze. "Focus."
Erasmus inhaled sharply, his breath ragged. He clenched his teeth, his knuckles whitening against his cane, feeling the tremor in his limbs. His body screamed for release, his mind stretched thin by the alien sound, but this was not the time to break. Not now. Not when they were so close to falling into the abyss.
They needed to escape.
But the Crawling Dirge were closing in.
—
Erasmus closed his eyes, a thin trickle of blood running down from his nose, staining his lips.
He had no weapons. No offensive abilities. He wasn't built for this kind of fight. These creatures weren't something to be struck down—they were a force. And Erasmus had learned long ago that power in this world came not from the blade, but from the mind.
He didn't need to fight. He needed to understand.
And so, he let go.
In an instant, his consciousness split.
One part of him remained tethered to his body, grounded in the chaotic reality of the moment—the raw, searing agony of the relentless clicking, the pressure of the Dirge's legs moving around him. His physical body remained locked in place, swaying on the edge of collapse. But another part of him, a part far removed from his mortal flesh, detached. It floated above, detached from the overwhelming gravity of the nightmare below.
For the first time since entering this cursed realm, he saw himself from the outside.
There he was—his own form, standing beside Rei, surrounded by the monstrous swarm of the Crawling Dirge. The world stretched in all directions, limbs twisting and turning in ways that should not have been possible, converging and diverging in horrifying, unnatural motion. The forest was not merely a place. It was a living, pulsating thing, an entity in itself, and the Dirge were its skin, its flesh, its bones.
The Self That Watches was no omnipotent observer. It did not hold the power to reshape the future, nor to manipulate time. It was merely a perspective—a different point of view. But in that moment, it was more than enough.
From this vantage point, Erasmus saw the truth.
The Dirge did not move randomly. Their limbs did not collide. There was a rhythm to their movement, a purpose. A structure.
A path.
His real self snapped back into place, his body jolting, his senses reeling as the world rushed back to him. He staggered, disoriented, as his mind fought to reconnect, to reassemble itself. His ears rang with the aftermath of the sound, his hands shook violently, and his vision swam in and out of focus as he tried to ground himself again.
But he had seen it. He understood.
"There's a gap," he rasped, his voice raw, clutching Rei's shoulder for support. "The way they move—we can slip through."
Rei blinked, confusion and disbelief written across his face. "You're sure?"
Erasmus wiped the blood from his nose, his fingers slick with the warmth of it. His head ached, a pulsing, insistent throb behind his eyes, but he forced himself to focus.
"I watched from the outside," he said, his pupil-less eyes suddenly sharp. "Trust me."
Rei hesitated. For one moment, there was doubt in his gaze—uncertainty, the flicker of disbelief. But then, with a single sharp nod, he agreed.
The two of them ran.
—
The air was thick with dust, the scent of rotting bark sharp in their nostrils. The clicking rose to a maddening crescendo, a sound so shrill it seemed to shatter time itself. The forest pulsed with the sound, vibrating with the frantic rhythm of the Dirge, each click a heartbeat in an alien chest.
Erasmus led, his body moving instinctively, weaving between the crawling legs, slipping through the narrowest of gaps, his mind constantly calculating, constantly predicting where the limbs would shift next. Rei followed closely behind, moving with deadly precision, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten in the face of survival. They had no time to think. Only time to act.
Every step was a gamble.
A wrong move, and the weight of a thousand spider-like legs would crush them in an instant.
One misstep would mean erasure.
A massive leg slammed into the ground beside them, sending tremors through the very air. The earth cracked and splintered beneath the force, the shockwave warping everything around them—twisting their perception like a funhouse mirror. The impact almost sent Rei to his knees, but Erasmus grabbed his arm, yanking him upright, pushing him forward with a strength he barely knew he had left.
They kept moving.
The clicking became more frantic, more insistent, as the Crawling Dirge began to adapt. They were no longer moving randomly, no longer blindly crawling through the forest. They had noticed the gap. They were closing in, pushing the space between them tighter, as though the very sound of the clicking had taken on purpose. They were hunting.
Erasmus' lungs burned. His muscles screamed. The Self That Watches had drained him, left him reeling, disconnected. The presence, that lingering part of him still observing from the outside, twisted the very fabric of his reality, warping his sense of self. Was he still in his body? Or was he still watching himself? Was the world before him real, or just another layer of perception?
For one terrifying moment, the world flickered.
A disconnect.
A horrible moment when he wasn't sure whether he had moved at all.
But then Rei grabbed him again, grounding him. Keeping him real.
And then—a sudden burst of light.
They were free.
The trees thinned, the crushing weight of the Dirge's presence faded. The clicking receded into the distance, leaving only a quiet hum in its wake, a reminder of the nightmare they had escaped. The air was still, thick with the scent of decay, but for the first time in what felt like an eternity, it was quiet.
The two of them stood there, panting, bleeding, but alive.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. They simply stood beneath the eldritch sky, listening to the wind—alien, cold, and distant—howling through the silence.
Finally, Rei exhaled sharply, his knees giving way as exhaustion overcame him, and he collapsed to the ground.
Erasmus wiped the blood from his chin, his head still pounding with the aftereffects of the Self That Watches, but beneath the pain, there was something else. Something clearer, sharper.
Understanding.
The Self That Watches was not a gift. Not a blessing. It was a tool. A lens through which the world could be viewed differently. But it came with a price.
It had almost cost him his mind.
But it had saved them.
Erasmus closed his eyes for a moment, pressing his hand to his temple, trying to steady himself.
"In this world," he murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper, "you gain power not through strength alone."
Rei glanced up, brow furrowing in confusion, exhaustion still clouding his features.
Erasmus opened his eyes. His gaze was flat, smooth, pupil-less, like marbled stone that had never seen light.
"But by understanding."
Rei didn't respond.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward the twisted, gnarled landscape that lay before them, where horrors yet unknown lurked in the distance.
And somewhere, deep in the endless dark, the Crawling Dirge still clicked.
Not searching. Not hunting.
Simply waiting.