"Fuck. Fuck. FUCK." The Angel of Trees warped through Desolace's decaying tapestry, a frantic green smear against the grey. Each teleportation felt like tearing muscle. Sweat slicked its bark-like skin, smelling sharply of pine sap and terror.
Its breath rasped, a saw against rotten wood. Heart? If it had one, it was hammering against its ribs like a trapped bird. "Why?" The plea was a dry leaf skittering on stone.
"Why here? Of all the infinite voids, the rotting cracks, the forgotten graves… why here? He could've-" It skidded to a stop mid-thought. Realization dawned, cold and heavy as a tombstone. "Oh…"
"Yes." Kek's voice wasn't heard; it was imposed. It vibrated in the Angel's core, resonated in the hollows of its ancient soul. Absolute. Unquestionable.
"That is the reason. He must do it. Only he can."
Defiance was dust. The Angel stopped warping. Stopped running. It stood before… a Tower. Impossibly tall, piercing the bruised Desolace sky like a spear aimed at heaven's corpse. The air around it tasted stale, old, final. Like the inside of a sealed tomb.
The Angel reached out, fingers brushing rough, cold stone. A jolt ran through it. "Ancient…" it murmured. Then the knowledge hit, a psychic slap. "OLDER THAN ME?! WHAT?!" The recoil sent splinters flying from its fingertips. Primordial Bricks.
The unfathomable stones the Thrones themselves had stacked at the dawn of everything. The foundation of creation. Disbelief choked it thicker than Desolace's gloom. The structure seemed to inhale, drawing the faint light from the air.
A moment of hollow stillness. A decade of isolation here flashed by, not peace, but numbness. The solitude it craved now felt like ash in its mouth. Wasted time. Even an Angel's eternity could feel barren.
It had made friends… fragile things… now gone. Reduced to whispers in the void. "All because he showed up…" The thought curdled into bitterness. That bastard Knight. But the bitterness withered instantly under the crushing weight of Kek's command. Orders were law. The fabric of reality bent to it.
Then… pressure.
It hit like a physical blow. The air thickened, tasting of ozone and old blood. Reality itself flinched. A silent flash, blinding white, yet utterly soundless, and he stood there. No displacement. Just… presence.
"Well, well, well." E.K.'s voice was glacier-smooth, edged with dark amusement. Arms crossed, hood shadowing his face, but the sheer weight of him pressed down on the clearing. "Who do we have cowering in their pants today?" A short, sharp laugh escaped him, the sound of ice cracking over deep water.
The Angel forced a chuckle, dry and brittle as dead twigs. "Heh… hello, E.K.! Good to, uh… see you?" Fake. So obviously fake.
E.K.'s head tilted slightly, gaze flicking to his own empty shoulder. Another low chuckle. The Angel seethed internally. Mocking me. Damn him.
E.K. took a step forward. Slow. Deliberate. Boots crunching on gravel that hadn't existed a moment before. The Angel didn't run. Didn't plead. It simply… sat. Collapsed onto the dusty ground, back against the impossibly ancient bricks.
Resignation was a cold stone in its gut. Why was I afraid? The question surfaced, genuine and sudden. He's just… him. It shrugged, the movement weary. E.K. mirrored it, sinking into a crouch before the Angel, a dark monolith against the Tower's bulk.
Silence. A full minute. Heavy. Suffocating. Broken only by the faint, mournful whistle of Desolace wind through unseen cracks.
E.K. leaned forward slightly.
"So, Angel."
His voice cut the quiet like a knife. "The Walker. What's it really digging for in this dump? Kek whispered in your ear. Spill it."
The Angel flinched. Those purple eyes, even shadowed, felt like scalpels probing its mind. "Okay, okay!" It held up trembling hands.
"Purpose. It… it wants to erase Purpose."
"Purpose?" E.K.'s tone was flat, dangerously calm."Yes, purpose."
E.K. barked a laugh, harsh and sudden.
"Thought it was gunning for infinite power? To become the next Kek?"
The Angel nodded frantically. "It is. With that power… it doesn't want to rule. It wants to… unmake. Erase the very concept of Purpose. Everywhere."
E.K.'s amusement vanished. His stillness deepened, becoming predatory. "Nihilism made manifest? Turn everything into… this?" He gestured vaguely at the desolate landscape.
"Yes... It wants to make everything into Desolace."
"Fine. Grim. But why me? Kek snaps his fingers; it's gone. Pzeo unravels its will. Steronu pulps it. Executioners turn it to cosmic dust. Why drag the retired loner back?"
The Angel squirmed. Kek hadn't authorized this part. Was this another test? Another cruel twist? "Well… because…" It pointed a shaky finger directly at E.K.'s chest. "…only you… can bring the Eternal Light… to the Eternal Darkness you carry."
E.K. froze. Utterly still. The air crackled. "…What?" The word was a low rumble, devoid of comprehension, heavy with dawning, terrible suspicion.
The Angel stared up the impossible spire. Stone fused with solidified starlight, vanishing into the grey Desolace haze. It felt… familiar. A psychic itch. "Tyr…" it whispered, the name tasting of polished silver and cold truth. "His realm's echo?"
"Yes," the Angel confirmed, voice tight. "You must face it. Acceptance. Hardest stone to lift." It gestured weakly at the tower's base, a maw of shadowed stone. "Hence… the climb. To the top. To Tyr."
E.K.'s gaze tracked the vertiginous ascent. Infinite steps spiraled into oblivion. "Tyr? The Mirror God?" His voice was gravel scraped raw. "What's his stake in this?"
"Uhhhh… Ask him. He knows." The Angel shuffled nervously.
E.K.'s face remained a mask of weathered stone. Only the faintest tremor beneath his right eye betrayed the storm within. A slow, humorless smile curved his lips. Cold. Sharp. "Fine. I'll climb your damn tower. Talk to the god in the glass."
"Goo—"
"And you're coming." E.K.'s hand shot out, not fast, but inevitable. It clamped around the Angel's slender neck like Khulain vice. No resistance. Just a choked gasp as E.K. hauled him into the tower's throat.
Silence.
Not quiet. Absence. The hum of Fundus, the whisper of teleportation, the subtle thrum of E.K.'s own adaptive power – all snuffed. The air itself felt thick, dead. The Will of the Absolutes pressed down, heavier than collapsed stars. Even adaptation choked here. Only the echo of their breaths remained. Stairs, ancient and seamless, spiraled upwards into suffocating gloom.
"Standard," E.K. muttered, the word brittle in the stillness.
The Angel wriggled free, rubbing his throat, phantom leaves rustling in his disheveled robes. "Rude."
They climbed.
Step.
Step.
Ten thousand steps. The air grew colder, thinner, tasting of dust and forgotten time.
A million steps. Muscles burned slightly, a mundane agony in this place of dead power.
A billion.
Quadrillion.
The numbers lost meaning. Only the relentless thump of boots on stone, the scrape of the Angel's robes, the crushing weight of the infinite ascent. The Angel had mumbled something about Tyr testing worthiness. E.K. hadn't argued. Truth always demanded a toll.
After a quadrillion and one million steps, a number felt in the marrow, not counted, E.K.'s focus wavered. A microsecond. A chink in the armor.
Fingers. Ice-cold. Spectral. Brushing his cheekbone. The voice slithered into the void left by his power, oily and intimate.
"Why fight us?" Gonk's voice, a perfect, poisonous mimic. "We are you. Flesh of your pain. Bone of your failure. Why seek to carve us out?"
E.K.'s heart hammered against his ribs, a trapped bird. Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him.
"Don't you love us anymore?" the voice murmured. "Stay… stay with us forever…"
"Stay away!" The words tore from him, raw and ragged.
"Why chase the Seer of Truths?" The ghost fingers traced his jawline. "We should be together. In the quiet. In the void."
"No." A gasp.
"But… you promised," Gonk's voice dripped venomous sorrow.
"Just like you promised Heliterna his legs.
Stargazer his eyes.
Ytetra her life.
The hundreds… their breath.
What did you do when the Black Sun flared, E.K.?"
The abyss yawned. "I'm sorry, Gonk… I am…"
"Exactly." Gonk's laugh was the sound of shattering glass in a tomb.
A hand clamped on E.K.'s shoulder, real, warm, unbearably present. The Angel. "Are you al-?"
Instinct.
Pure, adrenalized terror. E.K. spun. His fist, guided by eons of battle reflex and the raw surge of panic, connected with the Angel's face. A sickening crunch. Not bone. Something deeper. Celestial cartilage? The Angel didn't cry out. It simply… folded. Limp. Boneless.
E.K. stumbled, thrown off balance by the force, his boot catching the Angel's slumped form. Momentum took him. He pitched forward. Tumbling. Rolling. A chaotic, bone-jarring descent.
Down.
Down.
Down. A quadrillion and one million steps became a blur of impacting stone, tearing fabric, and the Angel's loose-limbed body bouncing beside him. No power to stop. No way to anchor. Only the brutal, endless fall.
Gonk's voice, a whisper in the roaring descent, laced with cold triumph:
"See? Pain follows. Your only legacy."
"NO!" Desperation choked him.
"Tell that to the dead. Tell that to the broken."
Silence. Not the tower's imposed quiet. The silence of surrender. E.K. stopped fighting the fall. Stopped fighting the voice. The rant, the intrusion, the corrosive truth of his fractured mind… he let it wash over him. Acceptance. Not peace. Drowning.