We advanced among the smoldering remains of the demons. Their flesh left no real corpses, but sticky stains on the ground and a stench that clung to our throats like tar.
The air had grown thicker. Not from heat or lack of oxygen. It was... something else. As if space itself were resisting being crossed. I moved first. Not because of formal leadership, but because I was the only one who seemed to remember every corner of the temple.
The columns that rose around us were all too familiar. The markings running across their surfaces weren't simple decorative engravings. They were language. Part of me knew exactly what they said. Part of me preferred not to translate it.
"Is this xenos?" Emil asked, pointing to a relief depicting a figure with multiple arms raised to the sky, eyes closed as if in prayer.
"I don't think so," I replied, without stopping.
I lied. It was my doing. I remember that crazy attempt to contact any existence to overcome loneliness. It wasn't successful.
We passed through a curved corridor. The walls, once pale stone, were now blackened, as if something had slowly burned away reality itself. In certain places, the symbols vibrated slightly, as if breathing.
One of the soldiers got too close to one of the inscriptions. A whisper emerged from it. I didn't hear it, but I felt it. And he, no doubt, did too.
He stood still. Pupils dilated. Mouth half-open. Alone.
—Back. —My order was direct.
The man stepped back awkwardly, as if waking from a dream. I watched him for a few seconds. His breathing was rapid, his pulse visible in his neck. But he showed no signs of possession yet.
The next chamber was wide and round, with a ceiling so high it vanished into darkness. In the center, a collapsed pedestal. The surrounding slabs were covered in what had once been structural writing.
Now they were scribbles. Spirals. Madmen's tongues.
"There was something here," Emil murmured.
There was. And there still is.
I knelt beside one of the carvings. I stroked the stone with my fingertips. Cold, but not dead. This place still held energy. An energy that responded to me. The memory tried to burst forth, but something inside me sealed it before it could take form.
I got back up just to look around, this part of the place I wish I had forgotten, here my deepest acts of madness were played out in every corner, and something here had been absorbing their vestiges, this was no longer my creation but a nest.
—We won't stay here. This isn't a temple anymore. It's a nest.
Behind us, something scratched the wall.
Everyone turned instantly, weapons raised. Nothing. Just stone. But the marks had moved. Subtle, barely distinguishable lines.
—Move forward and don't look back.
"Where to?" Emil asked, his face pure terror.
"Out the door," I shouted as I searched desperately for her.
A sound interrupted the attempt, this time not a scratch. It was a slow, heavy, rhythmic step, as if something were allowing itself to announce its arrival, without fear, without haste.
We all stopped. The soldiers' visors pointed down the narrow corridor we'd come from, but they found only darkness.
Darkness… and something more.
A figure emerged. It didn't run, it didn't roar. It walked with the solemnity of a priest in a procession. Its silhouette seemed human at first, but it was too tall. Too… thin. Long arms that almost touched the ground. A face covered by a black helmet, with no holes, no eyes. Rusty cables and chains hung from it, like external organs.
—Don't shoot… —I shouted, but it was too late.
One of the soldiers opened fire. The bullets hit the creature, shattering parts of its armor with sparks and metallic echoes. But it didn't fall. It didn't even stagger.
He only raised a hand. Then the lights failed. One after the other. Not suddenly, but as if a liquid shadow slid over each one, extinguishing them as soon as it touched their surface.
My vision, enhanced by hundreds of modifications, held up.
I saw the creature point at the soldier who fired.
And he screamed. He screamed as if his soul was being ripped out through his pores.
He ran. Not back. Not toward us. He ran to the nearest wall and started banging his head against it. Once. Twice. Three times. Skull against stone. Until his body fell.
Not from death. But from laughter, a high-pitched laugh, like that of a child who has just heard the best joke in the world.
"Back up. Close formation," I ordered, summoning my sword again.
The creature took another step.
Then it split.
Or at least, it seemed that way.
Shadows emerged from his back, taking on vaguely humanoid shapes, mimicking our movements, our voices… even our faces. One of them approached me and spoke in my voice:
—You shouldn't have come back, Mother.
Cut. But it only pierced the illusion. But the effect didn't dissipate completely. It just flickered, like interference, and then smiled again.
The fight had begun, but this time bullets and swords wouldn't be enough. This was an echo of something older. Something my blood remembered, even though I didn't want to remember it.
I turned my face, and for a moment, I saw the destroyed pedestal in the distance. Whatever had been there… wasn't dead. It was just gone.
Or had he woken up?
"Hold on," I said, as I moved forward.
Because if no one else could face it, I would. Because this abomination... was mine too.
I didn't have to think about it. As soon as I saw that impossible shape emerge from between the ruined pillars, I knew what it was. I felt it before it fully revealed itself, before the shifting symbols began to glow with that reversed, cold, and unnatural light.
It wasn't just any demon. It was me, or at least something that had been a part of me before I decided it shouldn't exist.
"Back," I muttered without thinking, raising a hand to stop the soldiers. It was too late. One of them screamed and disappeared in a trail of torn flesh. The second opened fire, but the bullets simply tore through the creature as if its body mocked logic.
I felt the connection deep in my mind. A door that didn't open, but wasn't completely closed either. The voice came, soft, trailing, like a snake slithering down my spine.
"Finally… finally, you look at me again."
I had to make an effort not to lose control. That tone... wasn't foreign. It was another echo of the most prolonged loneliness, the form my sanity took when there were no more possibilities to explore, when eternity ceased to make sense.
"You… shouldn't exist," I whispered, more to myself than to the others. No one understood. No one could understand. This aberration was an idea, an emotion, a thought I had exiled eons ago, like so many others. And now it walked with a form of its own.
"You created me. I survived. How much longer are you going to pretend this isn't part of you?"
He charged at me, and the world turned to noise.
The soldiers shouted. Gunshots. Orders. But chaos was useless against something that didn't obey the rules. Its claws came toward my face, and for an instant, I saw it. Not a creature, not a monstrosity, but another form of me.
A distorted reflection, like a cursed memory trapped in a cracked obsidian surface. It had no face, but I could still see my expression in it: arrogance, hunger, that primal need to be seen, acknowledged, adored. The same need that led me to seal it away for centuries, to pretend my voices were my companions.
She—I—raised a hand and stopped the projectiles still whizzing through the air. The bullets hung, still like insects trapped in amber, before falling to the ground with a hollow sound. The silence that followed was worse than the roar.
"This isn't your reality," I snapped. I didn't recognize myself in the anger in my voice, but I didn't reject it either.
"Not even yours. No more. We share it, don't you see? Everything you were... everything you locked away... Will be ours as much as it is yours."
She took a step. The stone shook. The walls groaned as if breathing. Every corrupted symbol around us seemed to lean toward her. Or toward me. I wasn't sure anymore.
One of the soldiers, young, brave, and stupid, charged toward the figure. He shouted his emperor's name, and for a moment, I felt pity. Not for her. For him. I didn't understand what she was facing. I didn't understand that she was charging against a living idea.
She didn't touch it. She just looked at it.
The boy's body arched back with a crunch that seemed obscenely familiar. It was as if something inside him broke under the weight of her gaze. He fell. He didn't move again.
"How many of these toys are you willing to lose to keep denying me?"
My fist clenched. Not out of rage, but out of determination. I couldn't kill her. Not really. Not without opening another door, one I'd sealed with all my remaining strength back when my sanity still meant something. But I could hold her back.
"I don't have time for you," I said, and moved forward.
My footsteps echoed on the fractured stones. I felt reality tense, as if the world itself were holding its breath. I reached out and let the light of my will—that essence I had learned to shape over centuries of mental confinement—manifest as a spear of pure negation.
"Sooner or later, you'll open the door again," she said, without fear.
—Maybe. But not today.
The spear cut through the air like a judgment. When it impacted against it—against me—the figure doubled back, its form erupting in filaments of darkness and reversed light. It didn't scream. It just dissolved like twisting smoke in a current of wind that didn't blow from this plane.
The temple shook. Not from destruction, but from resonance. As if the structure were remembering.
And then, I felt it.
Not an intrusion, not a violation. More like someone waiting for me to open a window so they could sneak in with a smile.
"It was about time!"
The voice burst inside my mind with a laugh as sharp as it was enchanting, a vibrant boom that didn't hurt, but was still dominant. She had returned from her rest. She had never been sealed.
I'd let her go for a simple reason: she needed a part of me willing to do what I wouldn't do coldly… but without losing control completely. It was a precarious balance. A flame I'd kept in a sealed lantern.
"Gods of the void, how boring it is in there. Is this what I've been missing? Bullets, blood, screams… oh, this is delicious."
—You don't have to lie, I saw the traces of your vibrant actions behind you.
—Come on, it was just so you could sleep peacefully, they seemed to want to wake you up in ways you wouldn't like.
I didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. My body tensed and relaxed at the same time, as if a second pilot had taken control, but without pushing me out of my seat. I allowed myself to close my eyes for a moment. I felt her presence beside me, sharing, not imposing. It was like talking to a sister who knew my every thought… and sometimes I enjoyed them more than I should have.
"Don't take control," I muttered under my breath, knowing he could hear me.
"I don't need to. But you'll let me play a little, won't you? Come on, darling… you've seen what we're up against. This isn't a military march. This is my stage."
I opened my eyes. The rest of the soldiers stared at me in bewilderment. They didn't understand what had happened. They didn't know they had just witnessed a battle not only against the external enemy, but also within me.
The other personality laughed again, softly this time.
"Don't worry. I'll behave myself. Just tell me who needs to be crushed, and how you want to do it."
For a moment, I didn't feel alone.
And that, in itself, was as terrifying as it was comforting.
"Let's go," I said to the group, turning toward the deeper ruins. "We'll never get out of here at this rate."
The shadows retreated. The lights came on. And I kept walking, with a thirst for war in my heart and a smile in my voice that wasn't entirely my own.