Chapter 40
The ground beneath him was not earth, but a web of dried veins, cracked like the skin of a mummy left in the void for millions of years. The earth pulsed slowly, bleeding black ink that writhed like serpents, rising as smoke that took the shape of human fingers trying to escape. And above this frozen hell, the wheels moved…
The creature was not a bicycle, nor a rider… but a fusion of curse and motion, as though someone—or something—had tried to craft a vehicle but used corpses instead of steel, limbs instead of wheels, and madness instead of design. Its bulging eye did not see—it was a mix of pleading and rage, as though aware it was trapped in a body that should not exist. Its mouth stretched too wide, its jaw dislocated yet never falling, its tongue covered in deep fissures from which came not words, but the gurgling of burning souls.
Its hands were not hands, but remnants of limbs clinging to the wheel, as though trying to free themselves but stuck forever. Its legs were horrifyingly thin, nerves exposed, writhing as though alive on their own—as though the creature was merely a vessel for endless torment. As for the rider—if it could even be called that—it was an extension of the catastrophe, its head swollen like a leather sack filled with something squirming inside. Its arms were unnaturally long, ending in slender hands holding trumpets that made no sound—only whispers… whispers in a language that meant nothing, yet made Bruno's heart pound violently, as though his body wanted to flee from within itself.
Then… the wheels moved toward him, slowly, but they were not rolling on the ground… but over time itself. With every rotation, the world around them shrank, warped, disintegrated—as though the creature was not moving, but rewriting existence in the worst possible way. Bruno could no longer move, could no longer breathe, as though the air itself refused to be part of this scene.
The wheels drew closer… the whispers grew louder… and reality was never the same again.
Then, he fell once more—this time, the void spat him out, discarding him, returning him to the witches' forest from which he came. And before him, an unbelievable sight unfolded—one that inspired hope and reassurance. Or so he thought.
It was the three witches he had seen at the beginning. Bruno had assumed they were just ordinary women, so he stumbled toward them with a hopeful smile, seeking their help. They were walking in the opposite direction, their backs turned to him, until he approached them.
As Bruno staggered closer, his heart pounded with a mix of hope and dread. Before him stood three women—or so he had initially believed. Their bodies were unnatural, rotting masses of withered flesh, swollen in some places and withered in others, as though dragged from a grave soaked in mud and decay. Their bones jutted out from beneath their stretched, ulcerated skin, while tangled clumps of hair hung from their hunched shoulders like dead snakes.
The one closest to him had a grotesquely distended belly, pulsing slowly as though something moved inside, and arms stretched unnaturally long, as though ready to coil around any victim foolish enough to approach. Her face was a nightmare in itself—her mouth torn in half, revealing jagged, decayed teeth, while her sunken eyes oozed a foul black substance, like wounds that had never healed.
Behind her stood another woman, her exposed skeletal frame jutting through her rotting flesh, her tattered clothes soaked in a revolting, viscous fluid. Her long, hooked fingers dripped with a slimy substance, as if she had just emerged from an ancient swamp of corpses. She watched him with a twisted grin—half of it was mere bone, while her flayed skin hung in thin, ragged strips.
As for the last one, she no longer seemed like a creature at all. Her entire body resembled a forgotten corpse, decayed, with mold wrapping around her as though she were part of the forest itself.
Her tangled hair was filled with tiny skulls—some of them belonging to children—lodged within its strands like abandoned offerings. Her eyes were nothing but empty hollows, where small, unidentifiable creatures writhed inside the sockets, emitting a faint glow, like light seeping from the depths of hell.
Bruno stood frozen, his breath trapped in his throat. He now realized that these were not ordinary women—they were creatures born from the womb of an ancient nightmare, beings not of this world, but from another place, a place ruled by darkness, decay, and eternal despair.
Then they spoke in a terrifying voice, their eyes darting like lightning, searching for the path to salvation.
*"You seek a way out, don't you, boy? Hahahahaha! Unfortunately, there is no path for you—only one road leads to our mistress, the Great Witch of the Cosmos! Hahahahaha!"*
The ancient witches pushed him with their skeletal, ghostly hands toward the black hole in the ground—a pit from which there would be no escape. Before he could even comprehend what was happening, he was falling once more into the Nowhere, into the Land of the End.
Bruno fell... and fell... an endless descent.
The darkness consumed everything, but suddenly, the void around him pulsed with a faint gray light, as if space itself were breathing. Before him now, the entire scene was a hellish tableau painted in black ink upon the canvas of reality.
Bruno was not standing on familiar ground—he was suspended in a boundless void. The earth beneath his feet was nothing but a pale, cracked expanse, like dead skin, littered with scattered bones, some crushed under an unseen weight, others still twisted in the shapes of their final agony. The air around him was thick, but it wasn't real air—just a mixture of ash and black dust, swirling in the emptiness like the breath of the unburied dead.
The walls—if they could even be called walls—appeared as twisted, melted shadows, forming an unstable labyrinth of pulsing darkness, like a living thing breathing. There was no clear light, only a sickly glow emanating from the void itself, an eerie color between silver and gray, like ancient light trapped here for millions of years with no way to escape.
Above, there was no sky—only a ceiling of heavy black mist, shifting slowly, sometimes forming agonized faces screaming soundlessly, other times stretching into long, grasping arms that reached downward as if to seize anyone daring enough to enter this place. Within those grim clouds were narrow fissures, as though space itself had been torn open, revealing glimpses of other realms beyond—places not of this world, perhaps not of any world humanity could comprehend.
A terrifying structure floated in the void—a gate unlike any other, a corroded mirror framed by death itself.
Two skeletal beings, ancient beyond history, sat atop the mirror, their bones unnaturally elongated, their tattered robes revealing grinning skulls veiled in the shadows of death. One wore a crooked crown, like a forgotten fallen king, while the other shrouded itself in ragged cloth, a sentinel of oblivion. Between them rested an ancient, decaying hourglass, its grains falling slowly, as though devouring time itself.
But what was even more horrifying... was what lay beneath them.
That mirror was no mere reflective surface. It was an open black hole into the abyss—a swirling black vortex, spinning endlessly, emitting a sound beyond hearing, yet whispering into Bruno's mind, telling him something terrifying he could not yet understand. Its twisted contours resembled watching eyes, while skeletal fragments clung to its edges, as though trying to climb out... or perhaps preventing something from escaping.
Then—a laugh.
A crackling sound, like the creak of a rusted door.
The three skeletons' jaws moved, their hollow eye sockets erupting with green fire as they spoke:
"Welcome, companion... This is the path to your salvation. This is your gate—to witness horrors beyond comprehension."*
Before he could process the words, bony hands lunged toward him, shoving him straight into the heart of the mirror—into the writhing darkness, into the embodiment of nothingness.
Then—he found himself floating in space, amidst violet stardust. The void itself was bathed in a strange, otherworldly purple hue, as if born from millions of stellar explosions. Before him loomed a massive black hole, encircled by a colossal violet ring.
As Bruno floated helplessly in the void, an irresistible force pulled him toward the black hole. It wasn't just a hole - it was something far more terrifying... something alive. The black vortex wasn't empty space, but an eye, a vast lidless eye staring at him from behind the very fabric of the cosmos. Around it, the violet halo twisted like smoke rising from an eternal pyre, flickering and pulsing like the breath of something awakening from a long slumber.
The purple stardust swirled violently as he was drawn closer, forming ghostly shapes that reached for him with spectral fingers. The black hole's event horizon rippled like liquid darkness, its gravitational pull warping Bruno's very perception of reality. Time stretched and compressed simultaneously - he could see his own past and future unraveling before him in fractured glimpses.
The eye blink.
And in that impossible moment between blinks, Bruno understood - this wasn't destruction he was being pulled toward, but transformation. The black hole wasn't a cosmic predator... but a womb. A screaming, lightless womb where universes were born.
The last thing he saw before crossing the threshold was his own reflection in the monstrous pupil - not as he was, but as he might become. Then spacetime itself tore open with a soundless shriek, and Bruno knew no more.
Then, the unimaginable occurred.
The black hole was no longer as it had been. It began to expand, to transform, taking on a form that belonged to no reality Bruno had ever known—as though it were a fragment of a nightmare born before time itself. The vortex ruptured, its boundaries dissolved, and from it emerged an indescribable entity—a headless humanoid figure, its skin like parchment inscribed with lost histories, riddled with shifting shadows and black stains that moved like hidden eyes observing all.
But the most terrifying aspect was its head... or rather, the absence of it.
Where a head should have been, there was only an extension of the cosmos itself—a miniature galaxy rotating slowly, stars igniting and extinguishing in eternal cycles, as though the vacuum of space had been crushed into a single point and replaced with this being's mind.
Its limbs were not mere limbs, but tangled roots of bone and withered branches, pulsing as though possessing their own life, coiling around a decayed skull—perhaps belonging to someone who had dared to gaze upon this entity and ended up as part of it.
The void behind it was no mere backdrop, but a black sky teeming with countless points—some stars, some eyes, others tiny portals to places beyond human comprehension. The air—if this place had air—was thick with faint whispers, as though the stars murmured secrets of a cosmos that should never be known.
And then, Bruno saw, encountered, and understood.
He saw Ercantha in her true form—a form even I cannot fully grasp or describe—but it was a fusion of horror and beauty beyond mortal reckoning.
Then, in a voice with no discernible source, Ercantha's call resonated:
"Do you know why you came here, Bruno? You did not come to save your brother. You came because you are alone. Because you never found a friend in the world of humans—that pitiful, hollow existence. You turned to your brother, hoping he would be your companion... but even he ignored you. And do you know why I killed your mother? Because she was the one who made you incapable of friendship in your childhood. Poor Bruno... you have reached a level of intelligence where no human can ever be your equal. The only place you belong—the only place where your story can end—is here."
Bruno's jaw hung open, his eyes wide and bleeding, his body trembling as multiple wounds split across his skin—his nose, his ears, his scalp—all weeping blood. He had glimpsed the truth. He had seen what should never be seen.
Then, Ercantha exhaled—a single, soft breath—and he was flung backward, his body crashing onto an ancient witch's broom suspended in space, among countless others like it.
He now knew.
He knew the one true truth of the universe.
AřķαŋțĤα
End of chapter