The smile on Gluttony Keph's face was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. It wasn't a promise of death. It was a promise of consumption. Of being unmade and added to the collection.
"Run,"
Kephriel—the real Kephriel, the one still standing beside me—breathed, his voice stripped of all its usual arrogance, raw with a fear I'd never heard from him.
We ran as fast as we could.
There was no direction in the void. We just fled from the epicenter of that horrifying presence. Behind us, Gluttony Keph didn't immediately give chase. He let us go. I could feel his gaze on our backs, a cold, hungry pressure.
"Faster!"
Kephriel snarled, but there was a strange strain in his voice. I glanced over. The blue glow of his chains was sputtering, fading in and out like a dying lightbulb. He looked... so much weaker.
"He is not chasing. He is draining my power! A vortex... pulling everything in... I can barely... hold form..."
The truth hit me. Gluttony Keph wasn't just a predator; he was a black hole. His very presence was absorbing all spiritual energy in the vicinity. Kephriel, a being made of that energy, was fighting just to exist.
Hours bled together. My lungs burned with breaths that gave no oxygen. Kephriel lagged, his form flickering, his movements becoming sluggish. We were running on borrowed time.
Just as Kephriel seemed on the verge of dissolving, he pointed a trembling hand.
"There! A weakness!"
Ahead, a faint, shimmering irregularity pulsed in the endless black. It was a rift—a jagged, unstable tear in the fabric of the void, like a crack in a dam. Through it, I saw the blessed, mundane sight of a rain-slicked street under a flickering orange light. A glimpse of home.
"It's closing!"
I yelled. The edges of the rift were fraying, stitching themselves back together with terrifying speed.
We summoned the last of our strength and dove for the closing tear just as the air behind us grew solid with intent. Gluttony Keph was done waiting.
We fell through the disintegrating rift, and the world slammed back into existence with the force of a car crash, everything shattering behind us.
We tumbled out of mid-air and landed hard on wet asphalt. The air was cold and thick with the smell of recent rain and garbage. A dim streetlight flickered overhead.
Behind us, with a final, pathetic sizzle and a shower of dying sparks, the rift sealed itself shut. The connection was severed. For now.
Silence. Blessed, normal silence.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, gasping real air, my body trembling. Next to me, Kephriel was on his knees. He was solid again, but his glow was faint, his shoulders heaving. He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at his hands, at the dull, barely-lit chains on his wrists. The familiar smirk was gone, replaced by a hollow, shell-shocked expression I'd never seen on him.
He wasn't a god here. He was a refugee.
He looked up, meeting my eyes. The usual arrogance was gone, replaced by a stark, shocking fear.
"He's... he's a universal constant,"
Kephriel whispered, his voice hoarse.
"A sinkhole. My power... it's nothing to him. It's food. That rift was a fluke. A mistake. We're gonna get him here..."
I shook my head.
"No... not without Me... "
...
"Or, i mean...
the hungry me."