CHAPTER 1: Witness to
Monsters, The Wrestling
Back in the canal, Dan
felt the teeth begin to throb in rhythm with his soul's frequency. Not a
lullaby. A countdown.
The Crowned-Deep's whisper
coiled around his spine, "I don't want to exist anymore, Dan. And soon, neither
will you."
The Physical Battle
Dan's fist connected with
something that felt like flesh but moved like water. The Crowned-Deep didn't
have a body—not really—but here, in this space between death and damnation, it
molded into one to devour him properly.
They grappled. Hours?
Days? Time was a currency left behind here.
Dan gasping, bleeding from
wounds that shouldn't exist. "You want God to admit He fucked up? Get in line.
Every parent who drowned their kid, every priest who failed, every bastard like
me who traded souls for comfort—we all want that conversation."
The Crowned-Deep's grip
tightened. The pressurized air began to close, slow, and sawdust mixed with ego
started to build in Dan's lungs, not to kill, but to seal.
Dan said, "But here's
the thing you don't get, you cosmic fucking martyr. God's not going to
apologize. Because if He does, it means we were right, and God was wrong. "And
God's too broken to admit he's the wrong one here. And tick, tock, what is forever?"
The Crowned-Deep violently
pulled down a star from heaven, and it fell into the abyss. This is Wormwood,
Dan.
Dan's vision shifted. He
saw it: a being of water and light mingled with ego, standing guarding the tree
of knowledge. Beautiful once,
Patient, obedient.
Then the serpent came. And
the being trapped in between the depths of decision, The-Crowned-Deep. Watched
as humanity chose corruption. It learned envy. It learned pride. It learned
that God had given humanity a choice between surrender and control. It taught
power through control.
The Crowned-Deep distant
and anguished, "I never ate, I watched Satan corrupt humanity, and
still I fell. I was there when God planted the tree."
"He made me its
guardian-but guarding death taught me to crave it."
That's when the fire ants
came.
They poured from cracks in
the canal walls—red as sin, countless as regrets. They crawled up Dan's legs,
his arms, into his mouth. Each bite didn't hurt his body; it ate his resolve.
You failed your parents.
You terrorized those
girls.
You're a predator dressed
as a victim.
You fed on suffering.
Dan screamed, the sound
swallowed by chittering mandibles.
The Crowned-Deep pinned
him against the double-edged teeth that were there, but mysteriously nowhere…
Dan's spine cracked—or maybe it was his soul; hard to tell the difference
anymore.
Dan, spitting ants,"So
what am I to you? Another assimilated soul?"
The Crowned-Deep leaned
close, its voice dropping to something almost… Sad.
The Crowned-Deep, "You're
my witness, Daniel. When I stand before God and demand He answer for this
creation…" gesturing to the canal, the teeth, the cosmos of suffering embedded
in marrow. "You'll be the one who needs to exist, not me. You'll tell God,
even his monsters wanted mercy in control. "