Misshapen, fractured bones oozed through the torn fabric of reality, pouring out in a grotesque, monstrous birth. Patches of flesh clung to
Misshapen, fractured bones oozed through the torn fabric of reality, pouring out in a grotesque, monstrous birth.
Patches of flesh clung to them like disease. They tumbled over each other, a mass of squirming limbs and unfinished creations of god. Some were large, swollen with age, their fingernails a dirty blue and curling. Others were childlike—thin, brittle fingers clawing at the air, twitching like spiders.
'Victims,' Zack thought, horrified. 'These were its victims. Now part of it.'
They spasmed and grasped mindlessly, climbing over each other like a nest of starving rats. Then came the mouth. Not on its face—it had no face. It tore open across the bloated swell of its belly, a gaping, jagged wound lined with crooked, mismatched teeth. The gums were black and weeping, twitching with rot. From deep within, a tongue slithered out—too long, too thick, too human. It flopped against the gnarled hands like a dying, suffocating thing.
Zack couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
The nearest hands were peeling. Skin sloughed off in sheets, exposing tendons that wriggled and pulsed like worms in open muscle.
Some bore rings—wedding bands, jeweled signets—trinkets of past lives. Others were missing entire fingers, chewed, torn, and the stumps jagged and wet.
The monster lurched forward, and for instance, Zack was back in his old classroom.
Chairs scraped, desks crashed, and screams erupted all around him.
Students clawed at the walls. Some vomited. Some wept. A few stared blankly, paralyzed faces twisted in disbelief and terror.
The air reeked of death. Of bile. Of ruin.
Zack choked. His heart skipped, then lost all rhythm.
'No,' he thought. 'Not like this.'
He wanted them to understand. To see what he saw. But not like this.
The hands wrapped around him. Fingers digging into his shoulders, neck, and chest, sinking deeper.
That massive, grotesque tongue lolled from the creature's stomach-mouth, twitching in anticipation and slapping against jagged teeth.
Zack felt cold and clammy as his vision began to dim.
'It's going to swallow me. Add me to its collection. I'm next.'
He couldn't scream.
He couldn't blink away.
Zack gasped, snapping upright.
The monster was gone.
The classroom was quiet.
No screeches nor screams, just the rasp of his breath, ragged and broken.
Dozens of eyes stared at him: Blank. Pale. Silent. Then... a warm trickle.
Zack looked down.
A dark stain spread across his pants.
'Again.'
Laughter didn't echo this time—only silence; Heavy and pitying silence, while outside the window, something moved.
'Wait.' Zack's breath caught mid-sentence. 'Hasn't this happened before...?'
BOOM! An explosion erupted with no fire or smoke—Just sound; Thunderous, endless, and Wrong. Cracking the very fabric of reality in its wake.
Zack's world vibrated.
His teeth rattled in his skull. The walls around him warped and cracked, as if the alley itself couldn't withstand the sheer force of this... truth!
His knees buckled, and, for the first time in what felt like hours, his mind was his own.
The screeches were gone, not silenced—Drowned! One reality overtaking another.
It took Zack a moment to realize why: The blast had ruptured his eardrums.
He could see the monster's mouth—twisted, gaping, and shrieking—but heard nothing. And for a second, he was glad.
Until the stench reasserted itself.
Rot. Acid. The heat of wet, festering meat.
The stench clung to his throat, heavy and suffocating. His lungs bloated with a swamp of maggot-infested decay.
He gagged, retching on nothing.
'I wish I couldn't smell it,' he thought, and just like that, the rot vanished.
The bile. The burning. The half-digested death in the air... all gone.
His chest rose clean and free. Cool air filled his lungs.
And something inside him whispered: "Run. You're free now. Run."
But Zack ignored the voice.
Because he could see them.
His allies—caught, struggling, dying.
The monster's countless arms dragged them toward its gaping maw, their faces contorted in silent agony, limbs bending at angles that defied nature.
'They fought for me,' he reminded himself. 'They almost died for me... Now I fight for them.'
Zack's foot slammed into the ground, hard enough to crater the pavement, and in that single breath, a sword tore into existence.
It wasn't summoned. It wasn't gifted. It was as if it had always existed.
The sword's handle curved like a crescent moon, fitting his palm like a secret long forgotten. The blade arched forward, slightly curved, cruel near the tip. Five jagged holes were carved along the curve. Not for decoration. For hunger. For blood.
They made the blade wider near the end, more vicious than alive.
It was a single piece of metal: no hilt or guard, nor any separation between handle and edge.
A sword that was all blade.
Every inch of it screamed violence, as there was no room for defense and no technique for parrying—only death. And Zack didn't care.
He wasn't here to defend or deflect. He was here to kill.
The monster turned. Hands still clutching the wounded.
Its head—or what passed for it—twisted toward Zack, only to find him grinning.
Zack charged, the blade carrying him forward, instead of weighing him down.
Every step felt lighter, faster, and boosted by an unseen force, like the world wanted him to end this.
The creature feared Zack.
No—it feared the sword.
Because this wasn't any simple steel, it was a "Soul Artifact" which held a "Concept" so terrifying, so impossible, the monster couldn't comprehend it... Yet it felt. It knew it was going to die.
For eons, the creature had risen with control—a testament to its patience, and a monument to its power—and since the shattering of its soul, it had never encountered an artifact forged from a soul even more fractured than its own. For this was a contradiction to the soul realm itself.
Its existence. An anomaly.
The Concept it carried twisted logic itself, bending reality like a paradox that shouldn't be, and yet was.
Instead of focusing on the blade or the soul hunters slowly snapping back into shape, the monster's instincts flared.
'Target the boy.' It refocused.
Zack carried the most dangerous artifact it had ever seen, yet his will was fragile—a child in the realm of the ageless, untrained, and incomplete.
It should have been easy. Dozens of ghostly hands erupted toward Zack, prepared to rip him apart—
But none made it through the shield.
Strike after strike, a thousand blows rained down, while Zack only managed to take a single step forward.
The barrier didn't shimmer, waver, or crack. Not a scratch, nor a flicker of exhaustion.
A creeping sense of foreboding crawled across the monster's nerves.
'He's stupid. Weak. Untouched.' The monster mumbled in an ancient tongue. 'And he carries a sword with a Concept that can end all Concepts. Even a soul's purpose.'
The fear blurred its thoughts, fractured its calm. The kid was nothing. But the shield? The blade? The Concept? Together, they made him everything. Unstoppable.
For the first time in centuries, the monster lost focus, and in that moment, Zack moved.
He closed the distance. Only a couple of strides now separated him from skewering the monster's heart.
The monster snapped back, folding in on itself—muscle compressing, bone reforming. Its immense body shrank in an instant, pulling tighter into a leaner, more petite frame.
The monster had recalled the shield's weakness.
Untouchable? Maybe. But no shield is perfect.
"Born with flaw." The monster's laugh echoed as a scream.
It wove a new Concept into the air, turning its properties into Syrup.
The alley thickened. The air turned heavy and sticky. Each breath Zack took dragged like molasses.
The invisible Syrup clung to his hair, limbs, and feet.
It fought every twitch, every breath.
Suddenly, he was no longer one stride away, but four. And under this suffocating weight, even one step seemed impossible.
The monster struck again. Another thousand hits—its fists massive, slow, and deliberate. For this time, it took time and gathered strength, coiling an impossibly dense punch and hurled it forward.
BOOM!
Zack's shield sparked—just once—but stood, unfazed.
"What's power… without control?" The voice snickers in Zack's mind, while stretching a creepy smile in real life, to break his focus on the spell, which the monster didn't know Zack couldn't control.
Its Concept-laced air had slowed the boy, but not stopped him.
Its blows had landed, yet to no avail.
Its body had shrunk to buy more time, while the results stayed the same.
Both of them were stuck in a stalemate, and the thought of losing to a mere kid made the monster's hands tremble.
Behind the boy, the real threats—the ones the monster had so carefully bound—were adapting and cracking free of the superimposed reality.
It was wasting energy and focus on nobodies, and if it didn't act fast, it would become the one to be consumed, not by these children, but by a being older than itself.
After all, none dare disrupt the laws of the Soul King!
———<>||<>——— N.P. ———<>||<>———