The moment I accepted the Dark God's terms, darkness tore me apart.
There was no power.No control.Only revulsion.
The darkness did not descend from the dark god , nor crawl from some abyss beyond me.It spilled from within.
That meant I was the source.
That meant I was disgusting.
Pain followed—limitless, obscene—but pain no longer mattered. Only vengeance did. My breath collapsed into my chest, heavy and broken. I coughed, and darkness poured from my mouth as if my lungs were rotting. It leaked from me in waves, choking, endless.
I fell.
Yet I never felt the floor.Nor the blood.Nor the tears soaking the ground beneath me.
My eyes wept shadow.My blood evaporated into nothing.
I lost my hands.Then my legs.Then the idea of my body itself.
The court vanished.The room vanished.
Or perhaps I am the one who vanished .
Was the Court of Corruption swallowed by darkness…or had I become the darkness?
I screamed, though I no longer felt my lips move.
Where am I?I don't have time for this.Corruption—where are you?
No answer came.
No one ever came.
Time lost meaning. My existence was being devoured—not by the Darkness , but by the rage and grief coiled inside my heart. I wanted to accept the darkness. I wanted to accept myself.
But I couldn't.
How could I embrace something so pitiful?
I had disappointed everyone.
My father—who held onto me after what my mother did to him. I failed him. I turned him into a monster. And despite everything, part of me believed he tried to accept me. But his eyes… his eyes were always filled with pity and rage. Never love.
Lucifer—whose eyes carried grief deeper than hell itself. He looked to me with hope.
And I failed him too.
Look at me now , Begging a damned god for assistance .
Jester—always beside me. His laughter silencing my thoughts. His hands reaching for me when I couldn't stand. And now he had left me here to rot.
Of course he did.
Who wouldn't?
Sylphia.
The one I failed most.
I should have let her die.
What I hated wasn't their words.
It was their eyes.
The way they tried—and failed—to hide their disgust and petty towards me .
The darkness laughed.
"Are you finished?" it asked.
"That darkness is yours, not mine, Sammail."
Then—
A hand appeared.
Pure crimson light tore through the void, reaching for me from afar.
"Accept your inner evil," the darkness commanded."Embrace it. Embrace yourself."
The hand drew closer.
Closer.
But I had no hand to reach for it.No mouth to scream.No body at all.
I had nothing.
Just as the Judge said.
"Then create them," the darkness whispered."The Judge is wrong. You have us."
Who are you? I thought.
The thought became a voice.
"We are you," it answered."And you are us.Where you fall, we fall."
The red hand stopped before me.
"Take our hand—so we may take yours.""Accept us."
My body returned.
But it was no longer what it had been.
but these hands were mine.This flesh was mine.
That was enough.
I reached.
The world shifted.
I was drowning in a black sea, sinking deeper with every heartbeat. I clawed for an anchor—anything to keep me from vanishing.
But the anchor was beneath me.
Far beneath.
What kind of anchor drags you deeper?
I smiled.
Then I would sink completely.
When I touched it, the anchor became a hand.
The crimson hand dissolved into darkness identical to my own.
"You are us now," the void laughed.
Agony detonated.
I screamed beneath the sea, shattering it from within.
—
Sammail's body became a cocoon of living shadow.
It breathed.
Each breath spread corruption, swallowing the court. Darkness felt more alive than the fading slaves, more alive than the trembling Judge, more alive than Sylphia's crimson eyes screaming in terror.
The slaves who once laughed now begged for death as darkness devoured them.
Sylphia screamed his name.
The darkness answered.
The cocoon shattered.
Silence fell.
From it emerged twisted horns, weeping as if alive.Eyes of red and black burned through the void.White hair gleamed like a wound in reality itself.
Sammail laughed.
Then—
Jester laughed with him.