(Morpheus pov)
For a moment, I was weightless.
Then pain, searing, writhing, absolute. It poured through every fiber of me, like molten iron flooding the veins. My heart spasmed, my lungs tore, my bones screamed. The air itself crushed me. I felt my soul split into a thousand howling shards and then fuse back together, again and again and again—
And then—
Silence.
No pain. No pulse. No breath.
Just… nothing.
For the first time in decades, perhaps centuries I felt peace.
My eyes opened slowly. I stood upright, naked, unburned, unscarred, unchained. The pit was gone. The manor, gone. Even the weight of the world, gone.
Around me stretched a blackness so pure it was alive, a horizonless sea of stillness. No stars. No wind. Not even the faint hum of thought. The air, if you could call it that — was thick, clinging to me like cold silk.
I let out a slow, disbelieving chuckle. The sound bounced off nothing and yet echoed endlessly.
"Did I fail?" I asked the void, my voice small in the vastness. "After all that… did I fail?"
A voice soft, steady, immaculate replied behind me, "Did you want to fail?"
The tone carried no judgment, only quiet understanding.
I turned.
A figure stood there, draped in liquid shadow, its outline barely holding form. It was neither man nor woman — a silhouette of shifting possibility. When it moved, the darkness rippled as if all creation bent slightly around it. Its presence pressed against my mind like gravity.
My lips curved into a grin. Then a laugh bubbled up, quiet at first, then louder — a sharp, broken thing that swelled until it echoed like thunder through the void.
"Of course," I wheezed between laughs, "of course it would be you."
The figure said nothing.
I took a step closer, the grin splitting into something manic, reverent, and utterly sincere.
"It is an honor to finally meet you," I said, lowering my head slightly. "Death. Or should I say…" I raised my eyes again, meeting the blank infinity where its gaze might be. "…Magic."
The figure's form flickered and for a moment, the shadows peeled back to reveal something vast beneath. Not a face, not even a presence — but the idea of one. Creation and destruction woven into the same thread. Life, decay, rebirth the pulse of existence itself.
"They have called me many names," it said. "Death. Magic. Balance. The First. The Last. But I am none of those things. I am simply… Me."
The words weren't sound; they were truth, pressed directly into my soul.
I felt my chest tighten, an ache of awe and terror all at once. "Then… why am I here?"
"Because you tore the fabric to reach me," it replied. "Because you were willing to destroy yourself to touch what no mortal should. You have walked the path to the end of all things, Morpheus. The question now… is why."
I swallowed. The laughter was gone now replaced by a hollow calm.
"To end them," I whispered, "To destroy those creatures those beast! To make them feel suffering!"
"Have they not felt suffering?" Magic asked as it glided around me, "Have they not felt endless suffering since you started your revenge? Have you not starved their worlds, their realms - of life?"
I felt my face form into a snarl, "And? Why WHY DO YOU PEOPLE SAY THAT!" I yelled I could feel my anger getting the best of me, yet I did not care
"Why do you utter those words as if I should have let them treat us like cattle! Humans were nothing!" I hissed moving toward magic, "We WERE NOTHING!" My body shook in rage yet I felt so free, "Treated worse than slaves, and yet you look at me now and ask why I feel like they deserve more? Because if they had it their way HUMANS WOULD BE CATTLE!"
Magic laughed, LAUGHED! How dare it laugh-
"You are one annoying mortal Morpheus, can you fathom the ramifications of your actions? No not yet I suppose. But soon perhaps you will realize and then make a decision, I wonder if your convictions will hold true?"
"I thought I had failed?" I asked softly
"No no; you have succeeded. But yet you do not know what you have succeeded at. I brought you here to see the man that doomed all three realms."
Wait all three?
Suddenly The void brightened — faintly, terribly. Threads of light began to rise from the nothingness, coiling around me like serpents of gold and ash. Each one burned through me, rewriting something deep, ancient, essential.
I felt my humanity peeling away, one layer at a time.
I took a step, I couldn't help it I had to.
Another.
The shadows parted.
And I reached out my hand.
***
The cavern was silent.
Only the slow, wet drip from the ceiling marked time. Herpo stood at the edge of the black pit where his brother had fallen, the smell of ozone and burnt air still thick around it. His fingers were curled into fists, the knuckles white, his lips trembling despite the effort to keep his face still.
He had not moved in hours.
The black liquid still hissed faintly, roiling like a living thing — a wound in the earth that refused to close. Shadows pulsed beneath its surface, sometimes shaping themselves into limbs or faces that vanished before they could form. Once or twice, he thought he heard voices — whispers in a language no human tongue had ever spoken.
Then the pit began to change.
At first, the liquid grew hot enough that the air shimmered. Then it boiled. Black froth burst outward, splattering the stone. Each droplet sizzled on impact, leaving behind faint sigils that pulsed once and faded.
Herpo took an involuntary step back. His wand was in his hand now, though he did not remember drawing it.
The bubbling became more violent. The pit's circumference started to shrink, pulling inward on itself, as if some invisible hand were wringing it dry. The noise grew sharper, a high ringing that made the stones hum beneath his boots.
And then — the blackness collapsed inward with a sound like a breath being drawn, and out of the void's dying heart, a figure rose.
Morpheus.
He crawled up from the center, his hands scraping the rock, steam rising from his skin.
"Brother…" Herpo breathed, stepping forward.
For a heartbeat, he was ready to run to him — to catch him, to hold him, to confirm that his brother had survived this madness. But then Morpheus lifted his head.
Herpo froze.
He looked— too human.
Still gaunt, still ghost-pale, but the ruby that had been embedded in his chest was gone. His body was bare and slick with some faint, silvery residue that evaporated as it touched air. Across his flesh ran markings — thousands upon thousands of them, each glowing faintly blue-white, each carved in dizzyingly intricate lines.
They weren't wounds. They weren't even runes Herpo recognized. They were something else entirely — living glyphs, pulsing like veins, forming patterns so complex that even Herpo's eyes struggled to follow them.
"Morpheus," Herpo whispered, his voice trembling. "What have you done?"
Morpheus stood fully now, unsteady but upright. His eyes — once glacial blue — were now fractured with color, like shards of gemstone catching the light.
He reached up and touched his own face. His fingers trembled against his skin.
"What…" he whispered. "What have I done?"
And then he screamed.
It was a raw, tearing sound — animal, unrestrained. His knees buckled as his back arched, the glyphs flaring violently bright before flickering in and out like faulty stars.
"Morpheus!" Herpo darted forward, grabbing for his brother's shoulder — but Morpheus flung his hand out in a desperate gesture.
"Stop!"
The air cracked. Herpo's wards flared in reflex as the ground between them blackened into a circle of ash.
Morpheus's eyes were wide now, his chest heaving. "Don't touch me. I'll hurt you— I'll hurt you, brother!"
Herpo stopped, wand trembling in his grip. "What is it? What's happening to you?"
Morpheus staggered backward, clutching his temples. The glow of the runes beneath his skin pulsed violently — his body trembling with every beat.
"It's rejecting me," he hissed, almost choking on the words.
"What is rejecting you?" Herpo shouted.
Morpheus turned toward him, and for a moment Herpo saw not the cold strategist, not the calculating sorcerer, but a man utterly broken — eyes filled with agony and something worse: realization.
"The realm, brother," Morpheus whispered, voice hoarse. "The realm is rejecting me."
And around them, the air seemed to twist. The wards of the manor shuddered as though some colossal force pressed against them from every direction. The cavern trembled, the torches guttered out, and for an instant, the world itself seemed to hold its breath.
Herpo could feel it in his bones — the imbalance, the wrongness that bled into every grain of reality. Whatever Morpheus had become, it was something the world itself could not bear.
"I must work quick."