*Back in Kline Village*
Jacob thrashed, fists hammering against the invisible cage, his aura boiling the air and unraveling the village around him, unbeknownst to its unconscious inhabitants.
Jacob hurled his fists against the unseen walls—again, again, and again. The cube pulsed. The earth trembled. The village died quietly, unaware.
Raijin continued to observe from the very precipice of the ominous and destructive aura, his brow furrowed in concern as he contemplated the unfolding events. He reflected on the circumstances that preceded Jacob's mental collapse.
When they reached Jacob's home, Raijin froze. The house was wrecked—walls splintered, silence thick with violence. Blood marked the ground, and scattered limbs told the rest. But it was the jagged message gouged into the porch that made Jacob fall to his knees.
"Jacob—if you're alive—mom, dad—we love you. We're sorry—we couldn't—
Just run. Don't look back.
Please, hide. Don't let them find you.
We love you—we love—"
The last words trailed off mid-stroke, as if the blade had been torn from trembling fingers.
And that was all it took. The weight of those words cracked something deep within Jacob—and the village began to die.
While Raijin pondered the events that transpired and contemplated how he might be able to help, Jacob found himself ensnared within a tapestry of vivid illusions and visions, oblivious to the actions of his body in reality.
Jacob beheld visions of a woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to his mother, poised in the vastness of space, effortlessly annihilating fleets of ships as if slicing through butter. The woman turned and looked directly into Jacob's eyes before letting out a devious smirk. Jacob felt his soul tremble.
In a fleeting moment, he also witnessed scenes from ancient civilizations, where frenzied warriors engaged in relentless combat, exhibiting neither restraint nor regard for their own lives or injuries.
Although Jacob was enveloped in a profound melancholy, the more images he encountered, the more inquiries began to swirl within his mind. He continued to absorb these visions as they unfolded in his imagination, akin to a cinematic experience.
They came faster now—chaos, fire, faces he didn't know but somehow remembered. He wanted to scream, or ask why, or just blink it all away. But the visions wouldn't stop.
Yet, for all the questions that emerged, he remained bereft of a single answer. - A single tear slipped down his cheek—he didn't notice. The visions kept coming.
Elsewhere, Death watched.
Jacob trembled before the image of the woman, her smirk stitched from starlight and old sins. Death leaned slightly forward from his seated position on that random mountaintop, the folds of his hood shifting like smoke in a vacuum.
"Ah," he murmured, amused. "So she remembers."
His grin curved slowly beneath the shroud. Not at the destruction, nor the grief—but at the look she gave Jacob. That flicker of recognition. That echo of something older stirring in him.
Death rested his chin upon steepled fingers. "The blood always remembers," he whispered. "Even when the boy does not."
Jacob began to perceive visions that he should not; Death adopted a grave demeanor upon realizing this, and for the first time, he regarded the situation with earnestness. With a decisive snap of his fingers, he ushered Jacob into a deep slumber, thereby bringing his chaos and devastation to an abrupt conclusion.
As for Death himself, he vanished.
Elsewhere, beyond the domain of time itself-at the edge of All Things Creation
The void stirred.
From the darkness curled a presence vast and ancient, scales like dying suns, a form unmeasurable by mortal geometry. It did not arrive—it was simply remembered. And in the remembering, it woke.
Another presence coalesced beside it—many-eyed, tendrilled, its thoughts so old they whispered in colors forgotten by creation. A harmony of dread and divinity thrummed between them.
Before them, Death stood.
Unmoving. Unfazed. Yet... he did not smile.
"You felt him," Death said.
They did not speak in words, only concepts, vibration, memory. But the meaning came clear:
"One stirs who carries echoes of our blood."
"Too long has it slept in bones unworthy."
"This one may unmake the pattern."
Death's robe stirred gently in the impossible wind. "He is mine now," he said.
The dragon's eye blazed like a collapsing star.
"He is ours when the moment demands it."
Then they were gone—as if they had never been—leaving behind a silence that made the stars weep.
Death snapped his fingers, and both entities reappeared before him once more. They were visibly astonished by such an unforeseen development.
"You antiquated relics have languished in slumber for far too long. I have transcended the realm of power in which you have complacently settled, and I have long existed beyond the constraints of time. I advise you to amend your demeanor when addressing me before I obliterate the last remnants of your legacy. You have grown old and comfortable; do not provoke me into enmity, for I assure you, such a path comes with a price you will be unable to bear."
Death made his statement and vanished.
The ancient Dragon and Cthulhu were profoundly shaken to their very cores. Their immortal essences bore the weight of fractures, and their divinity had sustained a grievous blow as they suffered a mere threat from Death.
They both pondered just how far Death had ascended during their slumber, and a palpable trepidation began to envelop them. These entities had existed for trillions of years, long before the inception of the primordial universe, preceding even Death himself, and they had never encountered such a formidable threat or confronted such overwhelming power, as they had perpetually occupied the pinnacle of the cosmic hierarchy.
These creatures trembled in terror and retreated to an undisclosed sanctuary to tend to their wounds and recuperate from the shock they had endured.
Back in Kline Village
The villagers, finally liberated from the turmoil wrought by Jacob upon their blood, began to awaken. Raijin materialized before the slumbering Jacob and, in an instant, whisked him away from the village before anyone could notice their departure.
Raijin returned with Jacob to the cave from which they had recently departed, harboring the hope that Jacob's master, Death, would possess the means to intervene. Raijin harbored no doubt in his mind, even for a fleeting moment, that Death was acutely aware of the unfolding events.
The denizens of Kline Village were engulfed in terror as they awoke to the staggering extent of destruction and calamity surrounding them. Nothing remained unscathed—walls, streets, even memories lay buried beneath dust and ash. No edifice or thoroughfare could be distinguished from another.
The villagers began to flee in panic, gripped by overwhelming terror and disarray, utterly convinced that an ominous spirit had established its domain within the village and that an unending torrent of misfortunes would relentlessly plague their lives if they stayed.
If Jacob had been in a sound state of mind, he would have noticed, through the keen observation of his surroundings, that there were no traces of Jimmy and the rest of the crew with whom he had embarked on a hunting expedition to the forest outskirts on that ill-fated day. They had all died; none made it back alive.