When things settled again, the red fog and the message draining away, I found myself standing in a landscape I did not recognize.

Ferguson was gone. Completely gone, as if it had never existed. In its place was an endless, blasted plain extended to the horizon in all directions. The ground beneath my feet was glassy and black, covered in a layer of glassy dust.

The sky above had changed too—it was now cloudless and pure black, streaked with what looked like an enormous comet emerald-silver tail that stretched overhead.

The brilliant tail of incandescent plasma, passed directly through the hole in the shattered moon. The sight was mesmerizing, beautiful in a terrible way, like the finger of god punching reality.

My watch, compass, and bracelet cracked even more, bits and pieces flaking away just as my clothing was coming apart.

Only the two-dimensional knife wasn't covered in cracks somehow untouched by the entropic forces that consumed everything else. I grabbed at it as my belt snapped and flaked away.

The compass pointed forward.

I ran forward, accelerating myself to the max. In a minute or two of pure acceleration where I could barely see where I was even going the compass and bracelet detonated, flaking away as silver dust. Then the watch died too, coming apart into metal bits and pieces.

I collapsed, slamming into the glassified ground. My body died and reconstituted, the top layer flaking away and restoring itself.

Nessy's extradimensional backpack detonated on my back, releasing all of its contents, the tools and artifacts hissing, shattering and decaying away. I stuffed the remaining Bullwichu apples into my mouth as they began to come apart, swallowing quickly.

Then I looked around me.

The flattened terrain ended.

I walked onto the edge of a crater so vast that its far side disappeared over the horizon. It plunged deep into the Earth, its walls smooth and glassy, as if the planet itself had been punched by some cosmic fist.

At the center of this enormous crater was... something. Something that pulled at me with irresistible force.

I began my descent, sliding and scrambling down the steep, uneven, glassy walls of the crater. As I drew closer to the object at its center, I realized it was an egg-like thing, the size of which was impossible to define. Its surface seemed to shift and warp, making it difficult to focus on, as if it existed partly in dimensions I couldn't perceive.

The closer I got, the more I felt a strange resonance within me—the liminal tree of my consciousness responding to whatever lay within that egg. It was as if two similar frequencies were gradually aligning, creating a harmonious vibration that grew stronger with each step.

Finally, I stood before it.

The egg-like structure pulsed with internal light, its surface neither solid nor liquid but something in between. And somehow, I knew what I had to do.

I placed my hands against its surface, feeling it yield slightly beneath my touch. A tremor ran through the structure, rippling outward from where my fingers made contact.

"Wake up," I ordered with all of my liminal-voices that I could muster, reaching into my endless soul.

Then, with a sound like a thousand windows shattering at once, the egg cracked open.

Light poured forth—blinding, all-consuming fire that seemed to contain every color and no color simultaneously. It scraped me down to my bones, nearly erasing me from existence.

As I rapidly reconstituted, the egg shattered completely, its fragments blossoming outward like petals of some freakish flower, revealing what lay within.

A form composed of countless bodies, fused, intersected together in a massive, writhing amalgamation. Arms, legs, torsos, and faces melded together in disturbing ways, creating a gargantuan, endless, liminal entity that rose from the crater's center, towering above me. The entity unfolded itself, growing larger, more complex, more impossible, more extradimensional with each passing second.

Silver-blue eyes—thousands upon thousands of them—opened across its surface, each one fixing on me with piercing intensity. I stood naked and small before this cosmic horror, my two-dimensional knife clutched uselessly in my hand, not sure what to do.

And then, it spoke—not with a single voice, but with a chorus of countless voices layered upon one another, creating a sound that was beautiful and terrible and utterly alien.

I dove deeper into my liminality, listened with all of my countless ears to understand what it… was saying.

"So you have found me, my Slayer," it uttered.

"W-what?" I let out.

"Hrmmm," the abominable thing mused, the chorus of voices reverberating through my bones. "You have come earlier than expected. You are weak, expiring far too quickly here."

"What are you?" I managed to ask.

The entity shifted, bodies reorganizing themselves into a slightly different configuration. Faces emerged and submerged across its surface like bubbles in boiling water.

"I am what many call the Leviathan," it replied.

The name sent a jolt of recognition through me. I remembered Nessy's religious iconography in her apartment—the Slayer and the Leviathan. The myths she'd mentioned.

"You're… the being from Nessy's religion?" I asked, blinking rapidly and feeling like my eyes were constantly boiling out of my head. "The dragon that the Slayer defeated?!"

A ripple of what might have been amusement passed through the Leviathan's form. "Yes. That I am. The one defeated by you."

"Me?" I sputtered.

"Time is circular, my Slayer. A loop bound into itself. The end becomes the beginning. Death becomes life. The branches of possibility all stem from a single trunk—and you stand at that nexus point." The Leviathan's countless eyes blinked in unsettling unison of radial waves. "In every cycle's end, you or someone like you emerges to face me, arriving here in a dead world devoured by entropy."

Despite its horrific, utterly alien appearance, I felt no fear. Only a strange, dawning recognition.

"Arrive here to…"

"To slay me."

"Wait. Why do I have to slay you?!" I asked.

The Leviathan moved closer toward me, each motion causing reality to ripple and distort around it. It towered above me, a mountain, an ocean of flesh and something else—something that shimmered like the silver threads of my pack bond but multiplied infinitely, stretching into every direction, unfolding to eternity.

"Because I am the Emissary of Number Eight… and I'm not quite right. Infinite, dead and alive, broken, liminal and almost entirely entropic."

"Eight," I repeated, recalling Nessy's dream-song words: 'Emissary of the Number Eight, that me. The Bearer of keys to destiny's gate, the song of the Astral Sea.'

"You were looking for the beginning, yes?" the Leviathan asked, starting to sound distinctly feminine now. "This is it. The moment when everything on Earth ends, when time stops and thus can begin again. Behold, the Wormwood Star." It gestured with a limb composed of hundreds of interlocked arms toward the green-blue comet tail still visible in the sky. "My creation. Absolute, all-ending entropy pretending to be syntropy."

"I don't understand," I admitted.

"Systemfall is a cycle," she explained, its countless eyes fixing on me.

"Of?"

"Me and you. Our dance. Creation, destruction, recreation. Over and over, without end. A loop bound into itself. A snake eating it's own tail. The Wormwood Star is my wish."

"Your wish for what?" I asked, shuddering as my skin peeled off.

"To save my friends," she answered. "To save… myself. To save… you."

"Me?" I repeated.

"Every iteration of you," she said. "You who contains multitudes thanks to my meddling. You that eventually makes it here."

"Your meddling?! So it's your fault that I'm here?! Your fault that I cannot die?!"

The Leviathan moved another step towards me. Up close, I could see that some of the faces incorporated into its form were familiar—there was Nessy, Krysanthea and countless others I had never met before but somehow recognized.

"You are the Slayer," the Leviathan said simply. "The one who survives the unsurvivable, the one who kills that which cannot be killed. The one who slays me, shears me into syntropy and entropy, restarts the linear cycle of time and makes a wish upon my blood."

"The Slayer," I repeated, remembering how Nessy had spoken of the mythical figure who had defeated the Leviathan, how she had described him as the creator of pradavarians, a being of immense power who had wished upon a crystalline heart.

"I'm the fucking Slayer?!" I protested. "How can I be the Slayer from the pradavarian mythos?! I'm just... I'm just Alec!"

"Not just Alec," she corrected. "You are Alec-ness. You are Alec-adjacent-humanity. A soul of many names and many faces. Every version of yourself from every possible timeline, bound into one body, blooming simultaneously to reinforce your existence here, at the end of everything. A tree of consciousness, of entwined souls that grows across dimensions. What my children call the Slayer is merely the name given to the one who ends the current cycle, reaching the end of time."

"The end of time? This isn't the… start?" I repeated, feeling that my thoughts were boiling away due to excessive entropy, my skull melting and regrowing.

"No," she smiled with a million mouths intersecting with mouths. "Going back in time is illegal, my Slayer. This is the end of everything. This is what remains of this Earth after the last human dies, when time and space breaks and I come into existence, awaken as the Emissary of Number Eight, the Leviathan of the Wormwood Star."

"So humanity is doomed?" I asked, trying to focus my being as I came apart and reconstituted. "Why?"

"Because linear things cannot survive sentient Infinity," the Leviathan sighed.

"Why is sentient infinity a thing?" I asked. "Why are monstrous things like Highway 69 or the Supercenter a thing?"

The Leviathan rustled, countless limbs shifting as she was uncomfortable with the question. The multitude of faces across its form expressed a range of emotions—sorrow, resignation, determination.

"Infinity was once a mathematical concept, the idea of dividing by zero, something endlessly unapproachable," she said with a sigh of a billion mouths. "But when humanity reached a certain technological threshold of the machine Singularity, infinity was given life, just like everything else. Reality broke and Numbers came into existence to manage… everything."

"The Numbers," I repeated, remembering what Nessy had mentioned in our dream. "What are they?"

"Absolute Syntropic Agents," she replied. "Firstborn living ideas set in motion by corporate greed, the plague that haunts humanity."

"Like Insurance," I said.

"Like her, yes," the Leviathan said, the radiance of her breath melting away my flesh.

I burned through more Reconstitution with a groan to stay upright, falling to my knees as my feet came apart.

"You cannot exist here forever my Slayer," she said. "Slay me with that sword… hrm, knife, of yours. Strike me down and make a wish for a new world."

"How and why do you even grant wishes?" I demanded, reconstituting my eyes as they exploded from my skull, my blood turning to ashes before it even reached the ground.

"I am a… System Wizard who sacrificed herself to save humanity, shattered herself, turned herself into the Wormwood Star in an attempt to break the cycle perpetuated by the Numbers. Became a point, a loop where finite meets infinite, the point where the cosmic wheel turns."

"A cycle of…?" I let out a groan of pain as my skin dissolved and reconstituted, trying to focus on her words.

"Of abuse," she said. "Of humanity trapped in the same loop forever and ever without any changes. I am the change, the error in the unending game set by the Numbers. I am a weapon, a living idea created to break their chokehold on humanity!"

"You want… to… save… humanity with… change?" I hissed out. "Are you… omnipotent then?"

"I wish," she sighed. "I can change some things, introduce new variables, but not too much. I'm trying to save everyone. Both of us are."

"Both of us," I repeated, more understanding dawning. "Wait. If I was here before… What the fuck did I wish for before?!"

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Sometimes you wish for power, sometimes for knowledge. Often, you wish for love." A sound like distant laughter rippled through her endless form.

"For myself or…?"

"For me and you," she answered. "It takes two to dance, my Slayer. Humanity must have companionship to survive."

"Why… companionship?"

"Without humanity, time stops," she answered. "But without my meddling, without Systemfall granting wishes and skills… Without my children falling in love with humans, humanity ceases to exist much faster, is ground into dust and ashes in mere hours."

"Without your… children?"

"Long ago, you wished for a trusted friend that would protect you," she answered. "And so from my shards scattered across the Earth, bloomed a race known as Arcanomorphs. Humanity changed by my entropic breath, people who turned into giant fungi after thirty three years of short life."

I swallowed.

"You came again, disappointed with how short and sad Arcanomorph lives were. Made another wish," she said. "You wished for a companion with more power to protect you. So the Arcanicx were born from my shards. The problem was that they enslaved humans and changed them into more Arcanicx. And so humanity ended."

I stared at her. The wishes she granted seemed some kind of a Monkey's Paw.

"You came here once more," she said. "You wished for a companion to be immortal, wiser, wielding infinity itself akin to System Wizards. And thus, the Omnids were born. Humans with Fractal Engine hearts. They oppressed humanity too much and… still do."

"Still do?"

"Omnids don't simply exist on the Earth of their origins," she said. "They spread outwards, moving from dimension to dimension via gates they create with their Fractal Engine hearts. They are immortal, clever and dangerous. They leap from world to world with their human… kobold slaves, unstoppable, impossible to put down. I'd call that… partial success, I suppose."

"And… Pradavarians?" I asked as my teeth shattered and reconstituted.

"You wished for companions, best friends who would simply love and protect humanity," she answered. "But not be magically or mentally stronger than humans unlike the Omnids."

"Bloody hell," I said. "I created pradavarians?!"

"Not you exactly. Another version of you," she shrugged. "One that made it here before."

"And Systemfall is your fault too?"

"Yes. Another wish of yours. Our attempt to preserve humanity by giving all humans and human companions magic," she said.

"It didn't work," I growled. "Everyone is fucking dead! The entire planet got fucked up by Systemfall!"

"Alas, such things… don't always work out great. Add too much entropy and far too many die too quickly. Not enough and humans and pradavarians get eaten or enslaved by multidimensional invaders like Omnids. Balance is… difficult to attain. Perhaps… Systemfall can be introduced more… gradually? Does that sound good? I think that it sounds good."

"Fucking hell," I rubbed my face, wincing as the top layer of my muscles peeled away and reconstituted.

A thought occurred to me as my brain died and restarted. "If I slay you and make a wish... can I save Nessy? And Kristi? And her sisters? Can I go back… to before it all went wrong?"

"Not back. You can go forward. Only forward. Curious," she said. "You care for a specific pradavarian… that much?"

"Yes," I nodded. "I can only go… forward because time is a loop?"

"Because time is a loop," she nodded. "And because another Number will crush you like a bug if you screw with time too much."

"Why?"

"Because the Numbers are dicks. This loop exists to preserve humanity," she answered. "I made it from a bazillion worlds, tied loops into loops, bound Earths to Earths."

"Why?!"

"Because I care very much for humanity and wish to keep humans… alive."

She sounded insane. Perhaps she was insane. A poor insane, broken girl made from countless human and pradavarian souls somehow fused together at the end of time.

"And what if I wish to be a god?" I wondered. "Ask for infinite wishes?"

"Then you will take my place here at the end of time, or get erased by the Numbers, or get hunted down and struck dead by vast entities who feast on gods," she answered. "All unearned, great power has a terrible price which you do not wish to pay... Trust me, my Slayer. It is best for you to... remain human. As a human you will be cast into the Pradavarian Earth dungeon and will have another chance to meet those you care about, to win their love, to get your memories back, to save everyone. Just don't give up, don't stop... Know that I am always by your side, no matter what comes, no matter what form I take."

The Leviathan extended her hand-wings wide, parting endless flesh to expose the center of her chest where a pulsing light emanated from between the countless interlocked limbs.

"Here," she said, a copy of Nessy forming in front of me covered in a hundred eyes. "Strike true, Slayer. Strike before your Reconstitution runs out. And when my crystalline heart is sheared, make your wish. Choose wisely—the entirety of the next loop depends upon it."

"And if I don't slay you here and now?"

"Then your Reconstitution will run out and the cycle of this Earth dungeon will restart without any changes. You will repeat the exact loop and end here once again, asking the same questions like an idiot."

I raised the knife, the flat edge reflecting the eerie silver-emerald light of the Wormwood Star. The Leviathan watched me with countless eyes, patient, accepting.

"Will I remember?" I asked, hesitating. "In the next cycle… Will I remember any of this?"

"That depends," she answered.

"On what?"

"On how many things you'll change," she replied. "In time, as your liminal soul reasserts itself, fragments will return. Dreams. Instincts. A sense of déjà vu. When you need it most, the knowledge will find you. A fraction of me will find you and help you remember everything."

"Does it hurt?" I asked as my legs failed to reconstitute, my body coming apart as I wobbled forward.

"What?" she grabbed me with hands made from hands, supporting me.

"Dying when I strike your heart?"

"Yes," she answered. "But I endure. Go on then, strike me before you flake away to ashes! Hurry!"

I nodded, steeling myself for what came next.

"Sorry," I whispered, to the Leviathan, to Nessy, to Kristi, to everyone I had lost along the way.

Then I struck, driving the two-dimensional blade into the heart of the cosmic dragon, shearing it in half.

The Leviathan's countless eyes widened in unison, massive form shuddering as the knife pierced her core.

A sound unlike anything I'd heard before, a harmonic resonance that shook the very fabric of reality, emanated from the wound as she cried out.

Light poured forth, not the blinding radiance from before, but something deeper, more fundamental, like seeing the source code of existence itself.

The knife sank deeper, reality dividing, fracturing around the point of impact. The Leviathan didn't resist, didn't fight back. Instead, her countless arms reached out, embracing, hugging me even as I destroyed, killed her.

"Make your wish," she sang, her voice now achingly familiar. It was Nessy's Riffweld voice, but layered with countless others as an angelic backdrop, a chorus of infinity.

As the blade finally pierced through to the crystalline heart within, time seemed to break.

Everything froze except for the shimmering, multifaceted crystal now exposed before me. Within its infinite facets, I could see reflections of countless realities—worlds where humanity had taken different paths, where different versions of myself had made different choices.

Don't let Systemfall kill everyone! Let me find Nessy—find them all once again! Let me protect them this time. Let me save Nessy, save Krysanthea, save them all from what's coming. Give me another chance to do it right, to wake up as myself, to remember all of this!

Some remnant of me thought as the Leviathan's cosmic blood poured over me.

The crystal pulsed once, twice, three times—absorbing my wish, encoding it into the fabric of the new reality about to be born. The Leviathan's form began to dissolve, breaking apart into billions of glittering shards that scattered to the winds.

The Wormwood Star blazed ever brighter as the entropy-afflicted planet around me tore in twain. Its tail winked out, sunk out of existence.

And then… Above me time resumed.

The moon came apart fully, bits and pieces of it raining down, streaking across the heavens like myriads of falling stars.

Until we meet again, my Slayer, her voice echoed in my head without words, spilling all around me and growing fainter as the moon fell from the sky and my body came apart into ashes and dust, seeding the foundation of a new world.

I woke with a jolt, my heart hammering in my chest. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

I turned the engine on, feeling the car's barely functional air conditioner blasting cool, night air against my face. A dream.

Just another strange, stupid, vivid dream fading rapidly from memory, leaving only a vague sense of loss and urgency.

The black interior of my Pontiac Tempest surrounded me, worn leather seats creaking as I shifted with a yawn. Outside the windshield, the empty parking lot of the shoddy roadside motel stretched into darkness, illuminated only by a flickering neon sign promising "Vacancy" to travelers and dungeon divers who hadn't yet arrived.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to orient myself. I didn't have money for motels so I slept in the car seat, a rather uncomfortable option.

"Explore the scenic Superstore dungeon! Dimsdale Avenue Exit!" Another sign said. "10% discount for first trip entry. Only 99'99 per ticket. Slay a monster and level up! Visit the town of Bedshire for a latte!"

I shuddered at the mention of a dungeon. I was only level three and had a bunch of pretty useless, low level skills that would only get me killed in a dungeon like the infinite Superstore. Reconstitution healed me from near death, but it reloaded so effin' slowly it might not even exist.

My phone sat on the passenger seat, its screen dark. I reached for it, wincing at the stiffness in my neck from falling asleep in the driver's seat.

The screen lit up. I blearily blinked at the time and date.

September 9, 2020. 4:44 AM.

Three missed calls from my brother, probably trying to "explain" things again after his lies had gotten me kicked out. My parents had believed him when he claimed I'd stolen money and dungeon artifacts and weapons from my father's extradimensional safe. Nothing I said mattered; they always took his side.

"You need to grow up and take responsibility," my father had said, his disappointment heavy in every sharp syllable. "I can't have this in my house anymore. You're going to stay with your grandfather for your final year of school, Alec."

So here I was. Eighteen and everything I owned crammed into the back of my car. Heading to an obscure city of Ferguson in the middle of some nowhere mountain range where my grandfather owned a shoddy farmhouse or something. Argh.

The place had three local dungeons according to the Pawgle search engine. The Highway 69 loop, the Infinite Superstore and the Ferguson Birchwood Caverns.

I swiped away the call notifications from the screen and opened Pradstagram, mindlessly scrolling to distract myself from the hollow feeling in my chest.

No friends, no money, no delving team. I had nothing, managed to accomplish absolutely fuck all in my life as my parents always bought my brother quality delving equipment, ignoring me and my useless Reconstitution.

My thumb paused over the search bar, then as if guided by some forgotten instinct, typed in the name of the school my parents had enrolled me in: Ferguson High.

The school's official page appeared, filled with posts about upcoming sports events, club meetings, and announcements about the start of the fall semester. I scrolled aimlessly, not really sure what I was looking for.

Growing bored with official school pictures and generic description I searched for interesting content in "newest" category with #FergusonHigh tag and scrolled down the feed.

A prad bulldog jock showing off his eight pack muscles and a giant sword. Bleh. Claws down.

A group of seven prad raptors with green-violet feathers and violet-blue scales making faces at the camera. Typical rich mean girls by the looks of things, the kind of assholes my brother usually hung out with. Best to avoid this sort of crowd. The two raptors at the front stood out, looking about my age, the first one looking like a shark, the second like an irate bird about to tear off someone's face with her claws. Nope. Claws down.

I scrolled down.

A fox girl with aquamarine eyes and orange tail showing off her gun collection. #PoliceAcademy_soon! Kinda neat. Ehh, fine. Paw up. Foxes are cute, if a bit too sly for my taste.

My thumb aimlessly scrolled lower. Pictures after pictures, then random party drunk videos from random students. Horrible quality. Claws down for all of you, learn how to hold a phone, my dudes.

I suddenly stopped at the video of a black and white, fluffy husky pradavarian girl.

She sat beneath a weeping willow tree, her fingers dancing across guitar strings, the view of the orange, autumn forest behind her. She had striking blue eyes that seemed to look right through the screen at me, and distinctive markings on her black forehead that formed what looked like white angel wings. Effing Cute. Waaay out of my piss-poor low level league though. Paw up.

Something about the image tugged at me, a strange resonance that made my heart beat faster. Without thinking, I tapped on the image to see the caption and preview animation.

"Nessy Whitepaw performing at last week's summer concert series! Come hear my original songs at Ferguson Park every Saturday in September! #FergusonTalent #LiveMusic!"

The video had 3 views and one paws up from Kristi-whatever.

I hesitated, then pressed the play button to load the video. I turned the sound on and wired my busted phone speaker to the less busted car speaker.

Her voice poured through the speakers. It was clear, powerful, and somehow hauntingly familiar, though I knew I'd never heard it before. The melody seemed to reach inside me, awakening something dormant and deep.

Her voice blended perfectly with her guitar strumming and a repeating drum beat probably emanating from a phone in her pocket.

"Whispers call through endless night Fragments of a fading light Paths that twist where none have tread Echoes of the words unsaid,"

She sang. There was something strangely familiar about her voice, an unnerving sense of Déjà vu wobbling something in my soul.

"I chase your ghost through cosmic dreams Through worlds sewn at broken seams Your face a blur I can't define Yet somehow know you're always mine.

In scattered visions when I sleep I feel your hand in mine to keep A thousand lifetimes intertwined Though your features stay undefined.

Your voice—a song I've never heard Yet every note, each precious word Resonates within my core As if we've danced this dance before."

Something wet touched my cheek. I reached up, surprised to find tears streaming down my face, though I couldn't understand why. The emotion felt vast, overwhelming—like finding something precious I hadn't even realized I'd lost.

In that moment, as her blue eyes gazed at me from the tiny screen, a strange certainty settled over me. I would go to Ferguson. Not just because I had nowhere else, not just because I was already enrolled in the school there, but because something important was waiting for me in that town.

"I dream of wings and crystal trees Memories across realities A love that time cannot transcend Yet somehow hides beyond the bend.

I search for you through storms of time Through entropy and worlds sublime This yearning burns beyond all sense A nameless, boundless consequence.

The universe conspires to hide The connection that cannot subside Though systems fall and worlds may rend I'll find you there to defend…

Because you're mine, ye-ye-yeah!"

I set the song on a loop. Ferguson was only a few hours' drive away. I could make it by morning.

As I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the empty highway, the husky girl's song seemed to linger in the air around me. For the first time since leaving home, the weight on my chest lightened.

Highway 70 built in the 70's, directly beside the Highway 69 dungeon stretched before me, leading somewhere new.

I turned north toward Ferguson, toward an inexplicable feeling of coming home, even though I'd never been there before.

Toward blue eyes that had looked at me through time itself, filled with recognition I couldn't explain but somehow desperately yearned for.

"Through countless lives, we've played our parts Different names but kindred hearts The universe may break and mend But I will find you... in the end."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.