Chapter Five :The Hand of Despair
He did not blink.
He could not.
For to blink would be to lose the shape of what descended — and to lose it would be mercy.
From the vault of the heavens, a hand emerged. Not of flesh. Not of bone. But of radiant decree. Its fingers stretched across the sky like pillars of judgment, each crowned in flame, each rimmed with the light of stars that did not belong to this world. Seven halos orbited its wrist — not symbols, but sovereigns — burning with a cold, unyielding brilliance that made the sun seem like a candle in a tomb.
The Tree, vast and ancient, began to sink.
Its roots curled inward, not in death, but in submission. The earth did not resist. It opened like a wound. The city, already broken, trembled as the colossal trunk descended into its heart. The flames that had once danced along rooftops now bowed, flickering in reverence. Smoke rose not as chaos, but as incense.
And the hand — that terrible, slow-moving hand — reached.
It did not grasp with violence. It gathered. Each halo, once sovereign in the sky, slid into its palm like a bracelet of fire. The light dimmed in its clutch. The stars bent. The heavens folded. And the hand, crowned in seven, withdrew.
No thunder followed. No roar. Only silence.
A silence so deep it felt like the world had forgotten how to breathe.
He watched.
And in watching, he felt his mind begin to slip.
Not in panic. Not in madness. But in erosion. A slow, creeping unraveling. His thoughts frayed like old cloth. His breath became distant. His chest burned — not with heat, but with revelation. His vision fogged. His limbs numbed. His soul — if it still clung to him — felt as though it sought escape.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to forget.
But the memory had already carved itself into the marrow of his being.
The hand had not simply taken light. It had measured. It had judged. And in its retreat, it left behind not ruin — but subjugation. Mental, spiritual, eternal.
He felt his brain decay.
His sight blurred.
His chest hollowed.
And just as the last halo vanished into the sky, just as the Tree was swallowed whole, something pulled him.
Not a rescue. Not salvation.
A recoil.
A thread, buried deep within the architecture of his mind, snapped taut and yanked him back. His body convulsed. His breath returned. His thoughts — fractured and bleeding — clawed their way to the surface.
He gasped.
The light was gone.
The hand was gone.
The halos were gone.
But the fear remained.
Blazing. Unyielding. Eternal.
He had survived.
But survival felt like theft...