"He saw this world's rot,"
The being said, gently, almost kindly. "And he made a choice. A choice against the world. Most who open gateways don't have a cause... but your brother? He had a reason."
Kaelix wiped his mouth. His hands trembled.
"So... what? He died for that? Just to birth a monster like you?"
"His body was the vessel," the being replied. "The doorway through which we passed. It could not contain both us and him."
Kaelix's lips quivered. "Then he's dead?"
"Correct."
Kaelix stood. Slowly. His legs barely stable. His mind even less so.
The being continued, offering a hand. "But you don't need to die. We recognize the mark his love left on you. It preserved you. We offer this: leave. Go where you will. And when the world has changed, when its lies are erased, you may return. You may be—anything. Even a god."
Kaelix didn't answer.
He stared at the dirt.
At the stain of vomit, bile, and grief.
Then he looked up.
His voice was raw. Hoarse. Broken.
"Then what's the point? Why would I leave... if my brother's killer is right here?"
The being flinched. Its form glitched—just slightly.
"You fool," it said, voice colder now. "Your brother chose this. He opened the Tome. You saw it yourself."
Kaelix's gaze did not waver.
"You wear his face… talk like you know him… You don't get to speak for him. You keep telling me this was his choice. But that's not him. That is not Nick."
His words came slowly at first but rose in intensity, like a growl.
"He wouldn't throw me away like that. He wouldn't throw his life away like that. He wouldn't throw his future away like that."
Kaelix wouldn't belive it. His brother? That soft kid that even hesistated to shoot him in fucking video games? He would do this?
"So either you're lying to me with these things you are showing me… or he's gone because you killed who he was."
"Either way…you're not him."
Kaelix's gaze hardened as he stared down at this beautifully horrifying entity before him. Fear ran through his veins begging him to just run and hide, but anger, madness, and desperation all held him down like an anchor.
"I don't care if I have no skills, no strength, no purpose it whatever that bullshit is. Because my brother is in there and I'm not leaving until I rip something human out of whatever the hell you are!"
He clenched his fists.
The being recoiled slightly, genuinely offended.
"You speak as if you have anything that matters. As if you're capable of anything at all. You are a nobody, Kaelix."
It vanished from in front of him and reappeared atop the stage.
"Very well. Your choice is made. And as I said—I never cared for fulfilling deals."
"It's not like it could be enforced against me anyway."
It raised its hand.
Behind Kaelix, the once-frozen Adversaries—twisted, malformed, horrifying—shuddered to life.
One by one, they turned their heads.
Their hollow, mutated eyes fixed on him.
And then, they charged.
They moved like broken puppets strung together by a force that had long since forgotten the art of grace. The Adversaries lunged the moment Kaelix stood his ground, their motions a jarring, spasmodic clash of too-smooth and too-erratic, limbs twisting at impossible angles, torsos jerking as if responding to commands out of sync with time itself.
Kaelix ran.
He didn't think. His body simply reacted, sprinting through the ruined hall that suddenly appeared, ducking under the rising seats that glitched back into formation, dodging the first one that crashed through a levitating podium with enough force to shatter it into warped shards. Its face—no, the suggestion of a face—twitched, half-formed, flickering between a snout, a smile, and something like a sobbing child.
He bolted toward the aisle, but another one was already leaping, landing sideways on the walls like gravity didn't apply. Its clawed hands scraped across the tiles, sending sparks flying, and Kaelix barely rolled aside before it would've taken his head off.
He could feel it now.
The wrongness.
They weren't just trying to kill him. They were trying to unmake him. Each time one swiped and missed, reality itself seemed to blur—like the world had to reset its understanding of what should be where. But they didn't miss for long. The third one landed a glancing blow, sending Kaelix tumbling, his ribs cracking against a reconstructed chair. Pain flared through his side, but adrenaline screamed louder. He scrambled upright, only to find himself surrounded.
They closed in, and for a brief moment, he thought—this is it.
Then, without warning, he surged forward, ducking under one's reaching limbs. He tackled it—not out of strength, but desperation—and they both collapsed into the aisle. It twitched violently underneath him, glitching between textures of flesh, cloth, and raw bone. Kaelix slammed his fist into its twitching face, but it was like punching thick rubber. It snarled, and in a burst of speed, threw him off.
They descended on him like a pack.
He fought. He screamed. He kicked. He tried to be the protagonist. But he wasn't.
They were faster. Stronger. Smarter. They didn't tire, didn't hesitate, didn't falter. One of them slammed him against the stone steps, and he heard his shoulder crunch. Another clawed across his leg, severing tendon. Another ripped across his back. His vision blurred as blood pooled beneath him, as agony screamed through his body.
And then he saw it.
The horror beyond the physical.
As one of them stood over him, twitching like a broken marionette, its features shifted. Lips. A human eye. A mole on the cheek. It was forming faces. Pieces of people. Echoes of the original students or staff it had once been. He could see a familiar tie. A student council badge. Part of a smile.
These things were people once, even if he didn't know them personally.
They had been students.
Staff.
Victims.
And now they were monsters.
And soon, he would be one of them.
He clawed at the ground, trying to rise, but his muscles no longer obeyed. Something sharp pierced his thigh. A talon entered his side. His screams became hoarse cries. His vision dimmed.
He wasn't even fighting anymore.
There was no fighting this.
Only the Worldforged could face these things. Only those chosen by fate. Those with Lorerunes. With meaning.
He had nothing. He was nothing.
He was less than nothing, less than average in every way. A background character. A footnote. A number in the casualty list.
He had no strength.
No power.
No chance.
And as his consciousness began to fade, he looked toward the stage. Toward the being that had set them upon him.
It didn't even turn to look at him.
Because why would it?
He didn't matter.
Then came the runes.
Glitching letters began to appear in the air before his bloodied eyes, spasming, warping in and out of existence. They bled through the seams of reality, text that shifted with nauseating frequency—too fast, too chaotic to read, but he knew what they were.
Runes.
Not meant for human eyes. Only the Worldforged and special people could see them. And obviously, the Adversaries could perceive them as well.
Probably even better than most.
This was the sign.
He was being Adulterated.
His soul, his self, being torn apart and rewritten into one of them. The ultimate death. The death of identity.
He was already dead. This was just the final punishment.
He wanted to scream. To fight. To do anything. But he couldn't. Not anymore.
His head hit the ground, blood pooling in his ears, and his fading thoughts reached one last bitter truth:
"Even now… even after I said I'd avenge him… It didn't matter. It never mattered. I was nothing. Just like they said."
And with that, Kaelix slipped beneath the surface of oblivion.
Into the cold, warped hands of the Advent.
Into death.
Or something worse at least.
*****
From its perch atop the malformed altar, the being watched the reshaped world settle beneath it like a puddle of corrupted oil.
It had stopped paying attention to the human—Kaelix, was it?—the moment he screamed something about vengeance. A bold noise from a brittle throat.
No talent. No strength. No will.
Most importantly, no drive.
The creature tilted its head, the skin of its borrowed face rippling like mist over meat. It had seen the boy's truth etched in the mind of his brother—Nick—the vessel who had allowed it entry. His memories were soft and fading, as dreams tend to be when left in the hands of beings not meant to dream.
Still, enough of Nick remained in the echo for the being to understand his sibling.
There had been fire in Kaelix once. Long ago. A defiance that could have, in another iteration, made him a fine Adversary. Not the best, perhaps, but strong in flavor—rage mixed with longing, a rare bitterness it found pleasant.
But now? Hollow. Spent. Whatever he was had been cracked and poured out years ago. All that was left was the crust.
"What a shame," it murmured, voice overlapping with that of children laughing, machines grinding, mothers mourning. A choir of incompatible sounds in one thread.
Still, the being wasn't disappointed. It had crossed the threshold. That alone was success. This Advent had been weak—a minor crack in the folds of this world—but it would serve. Not ideal, of course. It had hoped to emerge in one of the major arteries of civilization, where its name could ripple farther, louder. But this would suffice.
It was young, after all. Only recently born, if birth could be said to apply to something like it. Still climbing the ladder. Integration was nearly complete. Once it finished, the constraints of this Advent would no longer bind it.
Then would come the world's meat. Then, it would feast.
Promotion.
It smiled. A thousand teeth in sequence, all cracking at once.
The Tome in its hands oozed light and shadow, alternating with the pulse of some unknowable frequency. The glyphs spilled from it like spore-laced pollen, infecting the air and soil, warping it to the being's image. The altar beneath its feet turned from glass to chitin to bone to silicon in a rhythm that followed no logic except the one it invented as it breathed.
It had begun to imagine how it would shape the outskirts of this reality when it felt them.
Presences.
Multiple. Massing.
Just beyond the veil of the Advent's shimmering dome.
It tilted its head. The barrier remained opaque, like liquid metal suspended over glass, but the energies pressing against it were clear.
The defenders had come. How… prompt.
Faster than anticipated.
It had expected them later—during the screaming, the pillaging, the devouring of young minds and burning of old names. But they were already here. That, at least, was impressive.
Still, it sensed no true threat among them. No one of actual consequence. Not yet.
Just flickers. Pawns. Protocol.
Then—it blinked, or something like it—and another presence joined the border.
Still.
Quiet.
Odd.
The being's many minds turned inward. It couldn't parse it. It could not tell if it was ethereal, but it was definitely not mundane. Something outside its catalog.
Interesting.
But only briefly.
It turned back toward the Tome—
—and paused.
Where were the Lorerunes?
The nobody's Lorerunes.
Even the weakest mortals had them. Small. Pale. But there. Always there. Proof of existence in the eyes of this pathetic world's cruel system.
But when it had watched the boy die—torn apart, flayed in spirit as in body—it had waited for the Runes to rise like a scent, as they always did.
Yet they had not.
It frowned.
That was… wrong.
It looked again at the pile of Adversaries, still in a frenzy of destruction, clawing and gnashing like rats on fire.
There, at the center—
No. No, that wasn't right.
What it saw made all of its minds recoil.
That was not how death worked.
That was not how nobodies died.
And for the first time since its arrival, the being stopped smiling.
"...What happened?" it whispered.
And the Advent began to shudder.