Golden eyes stalk flickering shadows on a storm-laden day—a cloudy, grey haze smothering May.
"Golden Rule: Eyes of ill, fade to yellow and haze. Yellow of heart—Coward Lord of Frenzy, lays claim, its greed a flame."
"Snuffed lives of the sickly smudged ilk, so their souls full and ripe crack a fruitful birth of old; the forgotten ones."
...
A disturbingly short time ago. In a land uncomfortably close by... A secret slipped, and it robbed the world of gold; not that of minerals, but its symbolism.
In it's gluttony it drowned the world in yellow, and it loved every minute of it. Which is how some had come to say:
"The Loving and Devouring are all the same things."
-N.A.V
A few feet from where she had landed, the air warped.
Energies bled into existence, slithering across the empty road like ink dropped in water, corrupting everything they touched.
The Outer-Existial flickered—its form struggling to manifest, as if reality itself rejected it. One moment, it was almost there, its presence undeniable; the next, it unraveled, vanishing like an afterimage, wavering in and out of the world, appearing in the spaces where the streetlights dimmed, vanishing as they flickered back to life. Appearing to disappear. Born to die.
Her throat tightened as she gulped, forcing herself to breathe, steeling her nerves. Her fists clenched, nails pressing into her palms, trying to dig out fear from her foundation.
She was no stranger to the rhythm of battle, and knew the viciousness of it. Which was why she felt something was... Off.
She couldn't place a finger on it; but something was strangely missing. Something essential to battle; a certain dehumanizing aspect of it.
She took a cautious step forward. The voices—murmurs of a world beyond this one—rose in frequency.
The entity remained still, and watched her.
It had no pupils, yet it followed her every move, tracking her like a predator. Even when she moved, its gaze lingered on where she would be—predicting, anticipating.
But that was the only familiar aspect she could discern from the entity. Everything else about it seemed to diverge much from her current knowledge of Outer-Existials; seeming almost like a weirdo amongst the weirdos.
"What's up with this one?" she muttered under her breath. "These things keep getting stranger everytime I see them."
She took another step forward, narrowing her eyes.
"You're smaller than the usual ones," she said flatly. "I've seen a lot of your ilk. You're the most human-looking of them all."
The rain pounded harder. The winds howled.
"But that changes nothing. Today, I die, or you die. Just as it's always been."
A smirk, bitter and humorless, crossed her lips. "Monsters killing monsters."
Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the battlefield in a blinding instant. The street was empty save for her and the flickering entity.
She raised her hand as darkness coiled around her fingers, pooling together like liquid void.
With a pulse of energy, her weapon materialized—an Onyx-Longsword.
Blacker than the night itself, it seemed to devour the dim light around it, making the surrounding darkness appear pale in comparison.
Within the translucent blade, stars and constellations shimmered—ones unseen by mortal eyes, belonging to no known sky. Gold and sapphire runes pulsed along its surface, forming what Arcanists and Mages called an incantation, one of alien origin.
They glowed, illuminating the underside of the crossguard with a warm, radiant light.
The hilt was dark navy, delicate in design, laced with veins of gold.
She tightened her grip, the metal cold beneath her fingers.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain drummed against the pavement, drowning the world in its downpour.
She exhaled slowly and steady, as she assumed a battle stance, feet firm against the wet ground, blade lined up for a clean strike.
However, the entity did not move. It flickered. Once. Twice. Then, it shifted.
Not forward. Not backward. But away.
The distance between them grew—not by movement, but by absence. It was still watching her, still facing her, yet every time she blinked, it was further than before.
Never out of sight.
Never beyond reach.
Lingering just at the edge of her vision, like a shadow at the corner of one's eye. A presence that refused to be ignored.
Her grip on the sword tightened. The entity wasn't retreating. It was leading her somewhere.
The realization sent a chill down her spine. She swallowed her hesitation and took a step forward.
Then another.
And another.
The creature did not flee. It simply… waited. And so, she followed.
Confused by the entity's odd behavior, she paused, watching its flickering form shift through the rain.
"This is most certainly a trap."
The thought settled into her mind like a stone.
This wasn't a normal Outer-Existial. She could tell. It was too still. Too deliberate. The others she had fought were erratic, instinctual—forces of destruction that moved without thought. But this one… It was watching her.
She furrowed her brow. "It's masking its rank. I can't sense its intent. That's dangerous."
A stronger gust of wind lashed against her, whipping rain into her face.
She sighed.
Even knowing it was dangerous, she couldn't let it roam freely. She had seen what happened when creatures like this went unchecked; the loss, the tears, the cries of bloody murder.
That was the real risk and so, she followed.
For although the creature seemed rather docile, if not a tad weird from the usual Outer-Existials she's faced, its nature, like the rest of its kin, was fundamentally opposed to hers.
For she used Ether, physical energy. Which, for all intents and purposes, served as a way to manipulate her environment and the forces at play around it.
While her opponent was a Cogni user, which was the energy of thought, or in other words, metaphysical/conceptual energy; meant for the creation, manipulation, and unification of ideas in tangible reality.
And so the danger in fighting these kinds of creatures was the ways in which Cogni and Ether would interact. How they would annihilate one another on contact, making combat difficult for both parties in any normal circumstance.
The Outer-Existial never turned toward her, never moved any faster than necessary. Its flickering body phased between light and darkness, slipping through street corners and deserted alleys like a shadow unbound by the rules of reality.
Occasionally, they passed Arcanum Automobiles—sleek, rune-powered vehicles that hovered just above the wet pavement.
Each time, the entity would pause.
Not long. Just enough to glance at the cars, its faceless form tilting ever so slightly.
Was it curiosity? Fascination? Disgust? She couldn't tell. It lingered only for a moment before pressing forward, but the act itself made her frown.
"A monster with feelings; imagine that." The phrase sparked a memory. "The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings."
She let out a quiet chuckle, tracing lazy circles in the rain with her fingertip. Too bad the author of that phrase turned out to be a murderous, shape-shifting Ooze of all things. Gods rest his soul.
The silence stretched between them.
She didn't mind silence, but the tension in the air was thick enough to drown in. She exhaled sharply, speaking her thoughts just to break the weight of it.
"Good gods, what I wouldn't give to curl up in bed right now. The sound of rain outside, the scent of damp earth in the air..." She inhaled deeply, savoring it. "Even the smell is nice."
She smiled at the thought. Then sighed.
"But instead, here I am—outside in the middle of a storm, following a creature of unknown horror into what is almost certainly a trap meant to kill, toil, and maime my very soul.
She laughed bitterly and shook her head.
"You get your body mangled on a Monday. Lose hope on a Tuesday. Fall into despair on a Wednesday. Get your soul gouged out on a Thursday. Steel yourself for next week on a Friday. And then—" she grinned, eyes glinting with dark amusement, "steak on Saturday, and noodles on Sunday."
For the first time, the entity glanced back at her as it nodded.
Just once. A simple gesture. And yet—her breath caught. Something in her chest tightened.
The moment itself was short, but that one act bridged some cavernous gap in her heart.
She suddenly saw the entity slightly differently, and although her guard kept steady and her distrust of the creature did not fade whatsoever, she could not ignore the humanizing aspect of that nod.
That one act had changed something.
The storm roared on, unrelenting. Time stretched. It felt like hours had passed, though she knew it hadn't.
Then, finally, the creature stopped and turned to look at her.
The muscles in her feet grew tense in anticipation ready to pounce at the slightest misstep, but then a murmur emerged from the entity, it said chillingly:
"???? ??, ??????" [(8)(5)(12)(16) (13)(5), (16)(12)(5)(1)(19)(5)]
The sound crawled through the air, warped and distorted, like something spoken through the gaps of reality itself.
The moment the words reached her, nausea twirled her around as the world tilted. A heavy sickness coiling in her guts, pressing down on her like unseen hands. She gritted her teeth, struggling to keep her balance.
They were strange, those words. Those unfamiliar, almost nonsensical words. Somehow she felt were not all together rubbish.
She nearly collapsed under their weight, knees buckling as if crushed beneath an invisible force. But she caught herself mid-fall, her sword acting as an anchor.
For just a moment—beyond the madness clawing at her mind—she heard something.
Not a whisper. Not an echo.Not a fear.
A voice, tired, aching, and burdened by something…
Her breath hitched. "I heard something… I know I did. The gentlest melody I have yet heard." Shaken, she straightened, using her sword for support. "Am I crazy…? Am I going crazy? Surely it couldn't have come from the—"
She turned.
The entity was still there, its flickering form growing dim. The streetlights around them settled into a warm, steady glow, signaling its imminent departure.
Her brows furrowed. "Uhhh... Was that... Was that you?"
The entity's form flickered, its voice hoarse as it spoke one final time:
"[(9) (4)(15)(14)(20) (8)(1)(22)(5), (13)(21)(3)(8) (20)(9)(13)(5). (16)(12)(5)(1)(19)(5) (6)(15)(18)(7)(9)(22)(5) (13)(5). (16)(18)(5)(16)(1)(18)(5) (25)(15)(21)(18)(19)(5)(12)(6) (6)(15)(18) (2)(1)(20)(20)(12)(5).]"
The nausea came again—stronger this time, nearly unbearable. Her stomach churned, her body rejecting the very presence of the entity's voice. She clenched her jaw, pressing a trembling hand to her lips, forcing herself to endure.
Then—
The entity moved and she instinctively stepped back, heart pounding—
But it did not attack. Instead, it… sat. Cross-legged with its hands outstretched. Leaving itself vulnerable.
She blinked. "What…?"
A creature of the Outer Mirror—soulless, monstrous, eldritch—was sitting before her like a meditating monk. As if offering peace.
The woman frowned at such a sincere gesture; coming from a creature seen as so foul and soulless. It was unheard of, after all, for creatures from the Outer Mirror to display any emotionsthat weren't twisted and corrupt.
The sight of it made her want to turn her head away, to ignore its seeming plea, to hate it indiscriminately like all Outer-Existials for all the pain, suffering, infliction, and slaughter they have wrought across existence. Her existence especially.
However, in her heart, beat something strange, some odd bond between the creature and her, luling her in, and although she tried to push it away, she felt that feeling tug at her, drawing her closer.
Gritting her teeth she slowly and cautiously reached out to touch its wispy hand, and found herself nearly phasing through the entity's form, her other hand tightening its grip on the hilt just incase.
To her surprise inside the distorted shadowy mass she felt something as their hands finally met.
Then, fluidly, the darkness around the entity fell in strips, almost like clothing, revealing a heart-shaped facial structure with high cheekbones and a gently tapered chin that made it look all the more symmetrical.
The figure had a rich medium-brown skin tone and a warm complexion. Its hair was long and styled into dreadlocks that nearly reached its shoulders and covered some of its face, obscuring many of its delicate features.
Her eyes were wide with shock as she looked at the entity in silent awe; not sure what all of this could mean. Her mind ran through hundreds of scenarios trying to ration her next moves carefully.
Her grip on her sword loosened as the rain receded from her immediate surroundings seemingly distorted by the entity's fading presence. In this way, the entity was almost like a momentary shelter for her.
In the silence of this brief contact, reality seemed to fracture around them, as space and time broke in their immediate surroundings; warping reality and leaving empty spaces of snowy static.
She looked around her, then back to the entity, its presence completely fading away, as that softness disappeared from her grasp.
Now, alone in this broken spec of reality she somehow felt lonely. Although only having met the entity but briefly she felt bothered to see it leave somehow.
"And just like that the universe has made me the butt of its joke, yet again." She took a deep breath and exhaled, "At some point I'll have to applaud you universe, you have a very unique sense of humour."
With the creature's disappearance so did her temporary shelter. Her eye returned to its grey colour, and the rain fell once more.
And with that, she snapped back to her senses. A grim realization settled over her. She was standing at the epicenter of a burgeoning Spatial-Fract.
A tear in reality. A door left ajar. A wound from which Outer-Existials bled into the world.
She had read the theories—Arcane and Scientific alike—but none had yet uncovered why these rifts formed. The how was still debated. But one truth remained:
Where a Spatial-Fract appeared, so did bloodshed.
With no time to hesitate, she launched herself back—propelled by a feat of superhuman agility—making distance between her and the rift in a single jump. As she landed, she tightened her grip on her sword, fingers wrapping with cold finality around the hilt.
Her heterochromic eyes, still heavy with the ghost of sadness, hardened into something sharper.
Determination.
She knew what came next.
"This isn't good." Her voice was flat, clinical. "Normally, I'd call for backup right now, but..."
Her expression darkened. "I left my communicator at home."
A tired sigh barely made it past her lips before the storm swallowed it whole.
She shook her head. "I guess I've leaned on Solace and Cassie too much lately. Maybe this is the universe's way of reminding me."
Her lips curled into a bitter, knowing smile.
"When you court death, you do so alone."
At those words, the sword in her grasp stirred. A deep-blue energy bled from its core, pulsing outward in slow, eerie waves.
The stars within its translucent blade shuddered, their ancient light flickering violently—one by one, turning from gold to an abyssal blue.
An omen? Perhapse a promise? Who knows...
However the sword did not glow; it devoured. The space around it darkened, as if light itself feared its edge.
Her face cold and expressionless.
It seemed she was resolved and ready to kill or be killed, backup be damned.