The prolonged, incessantly obstinate steps continued, a young man's soles walking forward continuously, not pausing in uncertainty, nor haughtily walking in hubris, rather, being too average to an unusual extent.
The sound of his ordinary footsteps echoed in the seemingly empty space, with none the presence of living beings other than himself.
The steps were almost seemingly measured, as if everyone held the weight of the world, yet from the young man radiated no aura, neither peaceful, not threatening, almost as if his presence....
Simply didn't exist.
The footsteps were continuous for the worth of a while, with no sound in the realm other than the moderate and soft ripples occurring in the water canals engraved into the grey beautiful, yet lifeless, marble floor, and the sorrowful howls of the wind.
Above, the silhouettes of towering white turbines pierced the fog like spears offered to a forgotten grey sky. Their blades turned slowly, not with mechanical urgency, but as if mimicking the rotation of some unseen, ancient mechanism, one beyond any preposterous God, one that marked not time, but judgment.
The colossal turbines spun as if in mockery of motion itself, their rhythm neither constant nor random, defying pattern. Each revolution stirred not just the air but something deeper—like thoughts that were not his own gently pressing against the walls of his mind.
The wind, though aimless, whispered in tones that seemed not born of air but of memory, forgotten names, abandoned prayers, the echoes of truths never known.
The fog was not merely thick, it breathed, expanding and contracting like the lungs of a slumbering deity.
Beneath his feet, the marble was unblemished—sterile in its perfection, unnerving in its silence. It bore no seams, no origin. As though the floor had not been built but rather revealed—uncovered from beneath reality like an old truth best left buried.
He walked forward. Not because he chose to. But because to stand still was to invite attention.
The air shifted. Not cold. Not warm. Just… present.
A vibration without sound. A presence without weight. The kind of thing a Seer might glimpse before losing their tongue to uncontrollable laughter, or a Shepherd might attempt to name before their mind was flayed apart into ritualistic gibberish.
Despite walking forward, there was no feeling of arrival—only the persistent sense that forward, backward, up, and down had all become the same. Almost like the very notion of direction had been judged unworthy in this realm.
Click, click, click, click--
Halt.
The young man's footsteps came to a stop and gaze far away. His left pitch, black eye observed the limit of his journey, his right white eye verifying its integrity.
The grey marble floor came to a certain point, as if a steep cliff. Beyond that was neither dark nor clear water that could be seen down clear but blurry, a paradox of thought, the distance enough to snatch the life of a man in ignorant reverence before touching the water, destroying his skull upon contact out of impact.
Black and a few strands of light pink locks flew in the air as if humming in agreement with the wind's mantra, sprawling across his forehead. Yet he paid it no heed.
The turbines, almost as if an illusion were not placed upon the land, but placed far, far away in the vast infinite ocean, as if it had been itself powered by the ocean of water.
But what grabbed his attention were the turbines not, rather, it was the far sea.
As the fog thinned in patches—never entirely parting, merely tolerating vision—something immense loomed ahead. Not a structure. Not a mountain.
Bones.
Pale, glistening under an unseen light, they arched through the landscape like the ribs of a long-dead god, fractured in places where reality itself seemed reluctant to form around them. A spine—if it could be called that—pierced upward from the ocean and disappeared into the mist above, too tall to fathom, too wrong to belong to anything mortal.
These were no fossils. They had not aged. They had not eroded.
They were preserved—worshipped, perhaps. Or feared.
Even the wind turbines bowed around them, their blades slowing as if in reverence, or submission.
Sigils shimmered faintly across the bones' surface—shifting, not etched, but alive, like thoughts bleeding from the marrow of something that had dreamed in a language never meant for human comprehension.
A whisper grazed his mind. Not words. A sensation—something between memory and madness.
The bones did not rest.
They waited.
For what?
For whom?
The man's gaze that was neither indifferent, cold, logical, or even empty, simply blankly staring at the far structure of a behemoth of a creature far, far away.
As if he had never seen it, the young man's eyes turned to a particular wooden-like object that was reclining upon a fragmented piece of marble. It was the first damage he had seen of the intricate marble floor, a testimony to its non-omnipotence.
Yet, instead of panicking, the young man's quiet demeanour was enough to unnerve most people in this alarming situation.
Even his thoughts were very quiet. In fact, he had no thoughts by this point.
His mind was like a stubborn rock. It was hard on the outside, but hollow inside.
The young man's eyes blankly stared at the wooden puppet with no features on the ground, lifeless as if its puppeteer had cut its strings from it.
The wind blowed the young man's hair in front of his face, yet he made no effort in sparing it his care.
He waited for it as usual.
And 'it' did not disappoint.
"You did not"
"You did not"
"You did not"
"You did not"
"You did not"
Time stopped. No, neither time nor space existed here in first place, how could he forget this?
His glued gaze did not move even after hearing the thunderous boom of hundreds of the same carbon-copy voice resounding in the whole realm.
"Not, did you?"
Sloppily standing up with the hands dangling loosely besides it, did the wooden doll stand up looking up without eyes to the young man who did not answer, just looking at it.
If it was anyone looking at this, they would have laughed at the ridiculous view. Afterall, it was a sight to behold, not seen everyday.
But the young man was different.
It wasn't that he acknowledged its power, it was that 'it' itself was a mystery that did not make sense, even to him.
"Not you did"
The wooden doll, as if growing disinterested in him, moved its non-existent gaze from him and looked in the far distance, where the turbines and the skeleton of the behemoth resided peacefully, as if the world was merely created for them both.
Wrong.
It was merely created for the wind turbines.
The wooden doll looked back at the young man who was looking it without speaking a single word.
"Passed"
The moment those words came out of its mouth, the location they were at shifted to a place the young man was familiar with.
A childish lit playroom with colorful objects in the room appeared. At first glance it was normal.
However, upon focusing, there was something greatly wrong. For one, outside the windows was not the familiar lovely flowers, grass, and cheerful people speaking.
Rather it was the empty, cold void, colorful dots twinkling in the far, far distance. Stood at the door was a black humanoid figure with no identifiable features. The young man ignored the odd presence and walked besides it.
The humanoid creature was not humanoid at all. Upon looking at its side would one realize it was made of trillions of black needles that created its shape, the vicious needles poking out as if at the first sign, ready to tear any material to something less than minced meat.
Ignoring it, the young man walked besides it, his hands reaching out to a doorknob posing besides the being.
SPLURT!
The moment he took his eyes off the odd being and reached for the door, his severed hand fell to the ground, with blood gushing out from his radial and ulnar artery along with the palmar arches.
Yet, he did not react ever so much as even a flinch, as if he had been inflicted by worse before. His seven transparent hearts did not fail him, his red, hemoglobin-rich blood began pouring yet his gaze went back to the entity that was responsible for this.
The ink needles had rearranged themselves once more into a humanoid shape, changing their direction to now be facing him directly.
The moment his gaze left it, the 'thing would move'.
Maintaining eye contact, he slowly turned the doorknob, and it opened, a flashing light momentarily blinding him.
Yet as the atmosphere calmed down, his eyes found himself in a supermarket from the 2000s. Yet it was infinite.
Without warning, the infinite supermarket's lights started to shut down from afar before the lights began to darken, coming closer and closer until the market completely went dark.
Glub, glub, glub.
Holding his throat, the young man began drowning, his hands reaching out to the sudden shift in scene the moment he had fallen, reaching out to the light. He fell into the poolrooms, filled with 3d white cement objects posing like ancient Roman gods. White light seeped into the cracks of the bright poolrooms, yet the young man's plea's were left unanswered.
"You passed" For the first time, the sound of 'it' was proper.
Once again, the man found himself in hundreds of places, an infinite void space of slides appearing in the sky as if they were being drawn and generated from practically nowhere, running frantically up an infinite staircase in the midst of potentially infinite other staircases intertwining, running in !!, an infinite red corridor with entities chasing him. Landing on the seashore of a black sea with sunbathing chairs, a dark sky, and violent rain. A deserted Island.
He went to HEAVEN, a false heaven to make mockery of heaven, GRAVE, a grave for every death without being an actual grave, glitch scape, Void ++, Rainy, Tree, ℵ₋₁, ω-1, Γ0, @ẞÞ.
Most important, Epistemic Humility. The Final Trial.
Infinite others passed, passing the quadrillion mark, displaying and replaying the suffering the man experienced. His pain, thoughts, everything.
Yet, despite seeing this all, the young man's expression did not change. He remained stoic. The suffering he went through--- had killed the concept called 'fear'. No, the term 'concept' had be thoroughly removed from his mind in the first place. That was the reason the man was unable to react to anything. He had forgotten every single concept in the world.
Because of his immeasurable amount of deaths that even numbers failed to calculate, failing even to calculate using the term infinity, his normal state was death. Thus, death and life lost their initial value. His understanding of death and life became one.
"Stop here"
The scenes stop at a green lively hill looking down upon a cheerful and beautiful sandy beach. The ocean was gorgeous. Red, yellow, blue, and green simple houses resided in the distance as the man scanned the unfamiliar location in thought.
"Destination your is this" Speaking the words backwards, the sound boomed from the sky as hundreds of glitching eyes suddenly appeared staring at him with intensity enough to literally kill him.
"You worked. Not ready to see. Readyreadyreadyreadyreadyreadyready"
The sound became as bad as glitching static, an odd accent in the words yet, there was an add sense of clarity in them.
"N.... ot... ready?" A broken sentence flowed naturally from the young's man's words. More of a croak. For the first time in an eon, the man was able to speak. To form a sentence. He had went beyond the idea of insanity. Something that would be impossible to understand for any entity, from older gods to Eldricht beings.
"noissiM tsrif ruoy" (Read in reverse)
"Is to find Pandora, your first sister"
"Great one, ordered. Wheel of Veil, a fool's errand"
The broken sentences started making sense. Yet, an odd burning feeling appeared in one of the young man's seven transparent hearts as if he felt a connection. His eyes widened as a rush of memories awakened in his mind.
Yet.. what he felt was not emotion... but rather logic. The logic of the memories he saw were too flawed. He gained not the emotion, because he wouldn't be able to understand them. He wasn't emotionless, not even empty, he was... something else.
His ink black pupil started to dilute in darkness, appearing much lighter than before revealing his black pupil. Yet, that black pupil seemed to divide into a smaller pupil like meiosis, forming a smaller pupil under his original black pupil.
[ Antilogic (True) activated ] A robotic, gender-neutral voice appeared in his head.
[Violation of Logic in the world detected!]
[Interverse detecting anomaly. Scanning...]
[Loading... 10%.....20%...50%...70%.....100%]
[Processing, please wait....]
[Scan failed, rescanning initiated [Y] / [N] ]
[ [Y] Selected ]
[Warning!! Failure in the system! ]
[Interference detected. Failure, failure system. Shutting down. Reboot...]
[Setting up....]
[Mechanism of eight detected. Mechanism: Reality]
[Entanglement travel initiating to Archverse. Violation of Logic code detected Error: 0X09033333KJ4]
[Target: World OIU-PO0]
[Authority: EraZa]
[System set to [Off Permanantly] ]
BADUMP.
The young man lost consciousness immediately.
----------------
The young man sat still, cradling his head in silence as foreign memories whispered into his mind. Yet, curiously, he brushed them aside like dust on ancient stone. The agony once tethered to this liminal realm had faded into a strange affection. He no longer cared where he was—or who he had been.
Lifting his gaze, he took in his new surroundings with quiet detachment.
The chamber stretched endlessly into darkness, its air thick with gloom. Monolithic black pillars rose like tombstones, their shadows split by blood-red light spilling through tall, rectangular windows. That crimson light, cast by the moon outside, bathed the throne in silent judgment.
At the far end of the grand hall sat a man on a throne— or something more than a man. Obsidian hair fell past his shoulders, twin horns curled from his skull like a crown of old sins. His eyes, deep and red as a dying star, stared with unblinking intensity. A magnificent black cloak rippled around him as if alive, veiling his figure in regal menace.
Flanking him were six others—creatures of presence and pride, each radiant in their own strange majesty, yet unmistakably inferior to the one they served.
One among them stepped forward—a pale, sharp-featured man with neatly combed hair, round glasses, and trembling black wings. His voice was calm, but there was a subtle tremor beneath it.
"My liege... the summoning has succeeded. But this—this is a human. The tomes foretold the arrival of an ancient entity. If the families of the Seven Deadly Sins learn of this deviation... there will be outrage. Their ancestors died sealing their knowledge into those texts."
The horned figure said nothing.
He remained still, chin resting on his fist, as if deep in contemplation. His gaze never left the young man—who had already closed his eyes again, his expression unreadable, perhaps bored, perhaps amused.
Just as the silence thickened—
The doors groaned open.
"Daaaddy! I told you to stop making this place so cre—!"
A girl no older than six burst into the room, her small feet echoing across the stone. Her hair matched the man's, long and black as coal, and her eyes glowed with the same infernal red. But when she saw the human, her voice caught mid-sentence.
She froze.
"A... human?"
The air went still. Even the proud generals shifted uncomfortably, casting side glances and swallowing tension. For they all knew his daughter was cold to most people, but when it came to humans, she became extremely hostile.
Because humans had murdered her mother in cold blood.
Her small face twisted—not in confusion, but in memory. In hate.
"You're the one" she hissed.
"You took her from me... I WILL KILL YOU!"
Her shriek cut through the chamber like shattered glass. She lunged, her claws outstretched, tiny long, and sharp fingernails gleaming like blades as she tore through the air with unnatural speed.
Shnnnk!
"Don't--"
Blood spilt.