The reawakening was a betrayal. Vacem's consciousness returned to him not as a gentle dawn, but as a violent slap of reality. The scent of decay, the clammy humidity, and the incessant, maddening squelch of the fleshy ground were all horribly familiar. He was back. The crushing death in the vacuum of space, the vision of a dying Earth-it all felt distant now, a fever dream born of a mind already on the brink. Yet the name, Yabaneth, lingered, a cold, sharp shard of truth buried deep in his soul. He had died, he was sure of it, and somehow, he had been returned to this living nightmare.
He walked along the sanguine shore, the vast, viscous ocean of blood stretching out under a sky of perpetual bruises. He had no direction, no purpose. Surrender had become his only goal. He walked to drain his energy, to find a fatigue that this place seemed to deny him. He had walked for what felt like miles, hours, his boots sinking slightly into the soft. pulpy ground with each step. But his muscles didn't ache. His lungs didn't burn. His body, a vessel of flesh and bone, was a stranger to him, seemingly immune to exhaustion.
On the edge of this coast, the terrain shifted. The fleshy ground rose into hills of congealed meat and immense, petrified bones. These were not just rocks; they were the ribs and femurs of some unimaginable, long-dead titan, covered in a thin layer of pulsing, almost translucent fat. Perched upon these gruesome formations were giant, twitching creatures. They resembled barnacles, but were made of hardened flesh, their surfaces covered in a sickening pattern of small, fleshy knots. They twitched and writhed in a strange, silent rhythm, a grotesque symphony of involuntary muscle contractions.
Vacem walked towards them, a morbid curiosity overcoming his despair. He reached out to touch one. The surface was slimy, yet firm, giving way slightly under his gloved hand. The creature twitched violently in response, a low, guttural hiss escaping from the small holes that dotted its shell. The hills themselves seemed to be alive, a slow, deliberate breath pushing through their bony structures, a constant, low thrum that Vacem could feel more than hear.
A different hiss, more immediate and sharp, cut through the air behind him. It was a sound that didn't belong to the rhythmic horror of the coast. Vacem, who had been clinging to the last threads of his sanity, slowly turned his head.
Little by little.
Little by little.
A little bit more.
A dark figure leaped from behind a mound of bone and flesh, a blur of motion, and crashed into Vacem. The blow to his head was sharp and sudden. The world went black.
Vacem regained consciousness with a gasp, but found he couldn't move. He was no longer on the bloody beach. He was suspended in a damp, cavernous space, his wrists and ankles bound by blood-red filaments that were sticky, slimy, and disturbingly warm. They felt like living things, pulsing faintly as they held him fast.
A shadowy figure of a man appeared before him, its form obscured by the gloom, but its silhouette was hauntingly familiar. The figure's posture, the way it stood, the subtle tilt of its head... Vacem's mind screamed the name even as he spoke it.
"Michel?... Is that... you?" Vacem's voice was a weak, broken whisper.
The shadow moved closer, its presence a cold weight in the air. "Why you... why did this happen..." The voice was Michel's, but it was not the cheerful, boisterous sound Vacem remembered. It was a distorted, hollow tone, heavy with a grief that felt impossibly vast.
Vacem, a wellspring of regret and desperation rising within him, spoke with a choked voice. "I... I... I didn't understand it would be like this... Please help me... I'm... alone... I am alone... Why... why must it be me..."
The shadow of Michel moved back, its form a silhouette against the perpetual gloom. "Vacem... from the start... I've been uncomfortable with this.... thing. I-"
"The moon's orbit is off. The accident. This damn place... I... I just want to go back to reality.. I'm tired of all this... But... everyone doesn't allow me to get tired..." Vacem interrupted, the words tumbling out in a rush of exhaustion and frustration. His face, though hidden by his helmet, felt heavy with a fatigue that his body refused to experience.
"So... you want to go out?" The figure replied, its hand raising to point at Vacem, its fingers elongating into grotesque, shadowy claws.
Before Vacem could answer, the figure suddenly let out a deep, guttural shout that echoed through the cavern, a sound that was both Michel's and something else entirely. "THEN GO!"
Vacem's body convulsed, and he suddenly found himself lying on the ground, the sticky filaments gone. He was back on the fleshy surface, the shadowy figure nowhere to be seen. He groaned, shaking his head, a sickening sense of insanity washing over him. "Have I gone crazy..." He looked down, his helmet's visor reflecting the grotesque, mottled ground. He was alone again.
Then, he heard it: footsteps. A soft, wet squelch, coming from behind him. He flinched, turning around instantly. Just as he turned, a figure swung something heavy, a dark shape against the light. A crushing blow landed on his head, and the world dissolved into black.
"Ugh... where am I?" Vacem's head pounded. He found himself inside a cave, its walls made of the same pulsating flesh. Outside, a storm raged, but it was a tempest of blood-red motes, swirling with a malevolent energy, a crimson sandstorm that tore at the cavern entrance.
From the depths of the cave, someone approached. Vacem, his mind now adapting to the madness, decided to play along. He closed his eyes and feigned unconsciousness, relaxing his body completely. The figure knelt, and Vacem felt something being rubbed on the back of his neck, precisely where he had been hit. It felt cold, but also... strangely healing.
Then, a sudden, sharp slap across his helmet. The sound echoed in the small cave.
"I already knew you were awake... don't lie to me... it's worse than dying out there..." The voice was low, gravelly, and full of a weary authority.
Vacem's eyes snapped open. He immediately scrambled backwards, his hand gripping the slick, fleshy cave wall for support. The figure was a tall, large man, draped in a crinkled white robe that was stained with dry, reddish marks.
The figure said nothing more, simply approaching him. He raised a hand, aiming it at Vacem's head. Vacem tried to move, to run, but his body was frozen. A terrifying pressure from all directions held him in place, a force so immense he couldn't even twitch. However, just as the figure's hand was inches from his face, the pressure vanished. The figure recoiled slightly, a fleeting look of confusion and agitation on his face.
Instantly, Vacem bolted. He ran, not towards the figure, but out of the cave, into the raging blood storm. He heard a cry of "Don't!" from the figure behind him, but he ignored it. He burst into the crimson maelstrom, and a profound, bone-shattering force tore his body to shreds.
"Huh! What just happened!?" Vacem's gasp was a shock of cold air. He was back in the cave, lying exactly in the position he had first awoken in. He was whole, intact, not a single bone broken. He was completely, utterly unharmed.
Realizing the impossible loop he was in, Vacem, without thinking, tested it again. He quickly stood up and ran back into the bloody storm, leaving himself to be ripped apart once more.
And again, he woke up, back in the cave, lying in the exact same spot. His body was whole. His mind, however, was shattered into a thousand pieces. With no other choice, he decided to follow the horrifying script. He lay still, waiting.
The figure approached him, smeared the mysterious substance on his neck, and then slapped him. "I already knew you were awake..."
This time, Vacem didn't panic. He simply opened his eyes, calm and silent, his face a mask of weary acceptance behind his cracked helmet.
"You've learned, huh..." The figure said, as if he understood the nightmare Vacem had just endured.
"Y-you know?" Vacem asked, his head tilting slightly.
The figure turned his back to Vacem, busy with something Vacem couldn't see. "It is something that a creature like you cannot contain... Vacem."
"H-how do you know my name?" Vacem's voice trembled.
The figure replied without looking at him. "It's on your clothes."
"Yeah, that's right..." Vacen looked down at his nametag on his suit, a relic of a world that no longer existed. "How could I forget that..."
"And... what do you mean if I can't understand it?" Vacem asked, standing up slowly, not daring to make any sudden moves.
The figure paused, then spoke in a quiet, chilling tone. "What he means is... you're... too... fragile... It... can... make you... explode... Boom." The figure's voice dropped to a near-whisper on the last word, and a sense of deep, cosmic dread permeated the air.
The figure rose to his feet and turned to face Vacem, slowly pulling down his hood. He revealed a face of horrifying emptiness, a pale white surface that was smooth and featureless, save for a dozen small, perfectly circular holes arranged in a terrifying, asymmetrical pattern. It was a face that was not a face, a thing that embodied the deepest fears of trypophobia.
"What kind of creature are you?!" Vacem shrieked, stumbling backwards and falling hard onto the fleshy ground. The figure remained silent, approaching him with a slow, deliberate pace. He extended a hand towards Vacem, his fingers long, dark-blood red, and ending in sharp points.
Before the figure could touch him, the ground beneath them cracked. A searing, blinding white light shot from the fissure, instantly consuming the cave and its inhabitants in a brilliant, devastating explosion.
Vacem opened his eyes again. He was no longer in the cave. He was in the midst of the ruins, lying in the open. The cave was a smoking crater. The figure from before was lying nearby, motionless, his body visibly cracked and his robe torn, his horrifying face exposed.
Then, a new figure appeared. It had a large, imposing build, with a pair of immense deer antlers jutting from its head. Its body was a deep, starless black, a void of light. Its face was a flat, featureless plane. This new entity walked towards the fallen figure, a palpable weight of power radiating from it. It grabbed the figure by the neck, its antlered head turning to face Vacem with a silent, terrifying intensity.
Just then, the ground cracked again, and a powerful earthquake shook the entire landscape. A blinding light shot from the earth, and everything exploded.
Vacem awoke again. But this time, he felt his heart hammering in his chest. He was floating in a vast, empty place, a void of profound darkness, without any light source whatsoever.
"What else is this..." Vacem complained, his voice a disembodied thought in the silent emptiness. He gave in, letting himself float freely.
Then, he felt it. A pressure. Not a physical pressure, but a force pulling at his very being from all directions -above, below, left, right, front, and back. He screamed, a silent cry of agony, as his body, a phantom form in this void, was stretched and torn apart until it finally exploded into nothingness.
A chillingly calm voice, disembodied and everywhere, spoke into the void. "I like him... Okay... he's next."
A dark figure looked at one of many floating picture panels. One of them showed Vacem, his form a brilliant, shattered starburst, dissolving into the endless darkness.
To Be Continued...