Alaric tried to blink, but the action was meaningless. There was no difference between eyelids open or shut.
He reached out an arm, his fingers clawing at the space where the table should have been, but his hand met nothing but thick, stagnant air.
The obsidian lamp, the window, the half-moon; it had all been swallowed by a darkness so absolute it felt viscous, as if the room had been filled with cold, liquid ink.
Every sound had been muffled, too.
His own breathing sounded distant, like a stranger gasping for air in a tunnel a mile away.
The silence wasn't empty; it was heavy, ringing in his ears with a high-pitched, metallic frequency that made his head throb.
He lurched to his feet. Just simply standing there for a moment and taking a deep breath, a smell hit him. It was a familiar smell, something recent.
He reached out his hand in the darkness trying to touch something, maybe a wall or the obsidian rune lamp.
Alaric's hand swept through the void until his fingertips collided with something that was neither stone nor wood.
It was a texture that defied the order of his room, a sensation that sent a primal jolt of revulsion crawling up his spine.
His palm pressed against a surface that felt like raw, flayed meat, yet it was as cold as a mountain stream in midwinter. There was no fur, no hide, no protective skin, only the slick, corded ridges of exposed muscle.
It felt like the carcass of a great forest beast, stripped of its dignity and hung to drain, yet it was firm and taut, vibrating with a low, subterranean hum that Alaric felt in his very marrow.
As he moved his hand, his fingers dipped into deep grooves between the sinews. The surface was wet, coated in a thick, colorless ichor that felt like old grease.
When he tried to pull away, the substance clung to his skin with a persistent, tacky grip, making a soft, wet sound a shuck that echoed too loudly in the heavy silence.
The structure didn't hang limp like a common side of beef. It felt tensioned, like a bowstring made of living fiber.
He reached higher, his arm trembling, and felt the distinct, hard knots of joints and the smooth, curved arcs of bone. But these bones were not brittle; they felt like wet wood, yielding slightly under his weight before pushing back with a rhythmic, pulsing pressure.
It was as if the room had been hollowed out and refilled with the internal clockwork of a titan. He was no longer in his study.
he was standing in a forest of hanging, shivering anatomy, a labyrinth of meat that seemed to be breathing in the very same rhythm as his own panicked heart.
Alaric gulped, immediately moving backwards, still looking in the direction of the meat which he couldn't see. Suddenly, one finger began to change dramatically.
His index finger began to change in shape; it was no longer even solid. The sensation started not as pain, but as an agonizing lack of weight.
Alaric watched, or tried to watch, as the solid reality of his index finger dissolved.
The bone within his finger didn't snap; it simply ceased to be rigid. A sickening warmth spread from the knuckle upward, and the digit began to droop like melting wax.
It lost its skeletal structure, lengthening and thinning until it whipped through the air with the fluidity of a heavy silken thread.
Where there had been a nail and grip, there was now only a translucent, swaying tendril that seemed to seek out the darkness on its own accord.
He screamed in agony but no voice came, not a single sound produced. It was like his Adam's apple had also disintegrated.
everything was slowly dissolving into itself. He touched his face with his finger and felt nothing. No, he felt something, but his finger went a little inside his face.
This isn't happening, no this ain't real, it can't be real right? It can't be, this is not possible right? This is my hallucination, this is my delusion, nothing more, nothing more!!!
He ran, ran as far as he could, but the room didn't seem to have an end; it was an endless dark void. Nothing happened.
He stumbled on something and fell on the ground, but he didn't hit it he flattened like liquid. He closed his eyes in terror, not a single hope left in him.
Was it inevitability for him? Would everything he did to get what he desired end like this? Betraying, destroying competitors, and building relationships with people who could help him was just a waste.
Everything he did so far was a waste to him now. Those contacts, the betraying, and the destroying of competitors could not save him. No one would even care if he died.
Maybe Kale would be the only one who would be severely affected, not because of his relationship with him, but because he would be unemployed again.
Whose fault was this? Maybe his. From the very beginning his nightmares and his ambitions were the reason. He could use a conduit partially, but only partially.
he couldn't use it at his will. He wished he could have an opportunity to become an Arcanist. But where was Volt? Is he alive? Maybe. But why was he terrified? He broke his character.
Why am I even judging? This is the end isn't it? Everything ended like... like a terrible dream.
Alaric tried to stand up but he couldn't. His body was no more solid, only liquid. Alaric closed his eyes for a moment.
And when he opened them again, he was sitting in the same chair where he was sitting last time.
His eyes widened. Everything was normal again. Something immediately hit Alaric's mind: the nightmares. It means from the very beginning every thing that happened to him after the smoke caused by Volt was just Alaric's nightmare.
Everything, those meats, whatever happened to his body; it was just a nightmare.
Just a nightmare? No, it was not just, it could never be.
He glared at his lap. The same paper which Volt dropped was still there. Alaric touched the paper and unfolded it to read.
Somehow it was not gibberish anymore it was completely normal again. Something was off, not from the paper, but something was off with Alaric.
He glared at his index finger, but nothing had changed. Instinctively, Alaric touched the nape of his neck, but nothing felt wrong.
Alaric observed for a moment, then he focused on the paper.
But Alaric's hair had slightly changed into a purplish colour.
A stray beam of morning light cut through the room, washing over the stark white of the paper until it glowed like a fresh canvas. It didn't stop there.
It climbed higher, brushing against Alaric's eyelids with a gentle warmth. As he looked up, the sun caught the new, violet depths of his gaze, making the violet strands in his hair shimmer like polished amethyst.
"It's morning... so much time has passed," Alaric murmured to himself.
His eyes focused again on the paper. At the top of the parchment sat a woodblock-style illustration, rendered in harsh, uncompromising strokes of black and white ink.
The image was stripped of all softness, leaving only the jagged contrast of a silhouette against a pale sky. It depicted a tall, skeletal gallows standing lonely against a horizon of hatched lines.
From the crossbeam hung a figure, their form limp and elongated, the neck snapped at an unnatural angle that mirrored the way Alaric's own finger had drooped in his dream.
The face of the condemned was a mere blur of charcoal, featureless, yet somehow screaming with a familiarity that made Alaric's pulse thrum against his throat.
The rope was drawn with such precision he could almost hear the phantom groan of the wood under the weight.
Below the grim sketch, the ink transitioned into a rigid, authoritative script. The letters were sharp, biting into the fibers of the paper as if the words themselves were a sentence.
HANG TILL DEATH
Reason for death penalty Having a Bastard and an extramarital affair with a woman of the Eastern Sector.
As the morning sun hit the ink, the black pigment didn't shimmer; it seemed to absorb the light, staying a flat, dead void amidst the glowing white of the paper.
Alaric felt a phantom coldness settle on the nape of his neck the very spot he had checked just moments before.
The purplish hue of his hair, caught in the reflection of the window's glass, seemed to vibrate in his peripheral vision; a silent, colourful testament that while the nightmare was over, the transformation was just beginning.
At the very bottom, centered beneath the miniature map, sat a small, singular sign. It wasn't a name, but a sigil of authority.
It was a wax seal that had been pressed so hard it had flattened the paper's grain into a glassy, smooth circle. Within the circle was a crest: a shattered crown entwined with thorny vines.
The ink used for the stamp was a shade darker than the rest, almost a bruised plum color that mirrored the new, unsettling tint of Alaric's hair.
Beside the seal, a single word was written in a flowing, elegant hand that felt suspiciously like a mockery of the grim text above.
"Finality."