Where the Dead Things Bloom: [56, 57, 58, 59] (Patreon)

56: The Inescapable Debt

"RUN!" Nessy's voice cracked with fear as her nose twitched frantically.

Without hesitation, we took off down the endless aisles, our footsteps echoing through the vastness of the Supercenter. The raptors moved with impressive speed, their digitigrade legs propelling them forward in powerful bounds. Nessy raced ahead of everyone, her paws clacking against the polished floor.

I tried to keep pace, but my human legs weren't designed for running this fast. I gradually fell behind, my lungs burning as I pushed myself to maintain visual contact with the others.

"Wait!" I called, gasping for breath.

Ahead of me, Nessy skidded to an abrupt halt, her claws scrabbling against the floor as her momentum carried her forward. The Strand sisters followed suit, their talons digging into the linoleum as they stopped.

In the aisle ahead stood a figure that made my blood run cold.

A pradavarian humanoid lynx, her body constructed entirely from rusted metal and iron scraps, blocked our path. Corroded gears visibly turned beneath patches of missing plating in her torso. Her face was a grotesque mask of dented metal, with a multitude of headlight eyes that glowed with cold fury. She wore a blue employee vest, hanging loosely atop her jagged metal frame.

Just as Nessy smelled, the lynx too had found a way to traverse the store, somehow got employment here, rearranged her shape all for the purposes of reaching her prey.

Most disturbing of all was the faint humming sound emanating from her palm as she raised it, pointing directly at Nessy. At the center of that palm, I could see what looked like a powerful electromagnet, glowing with an unnatural blue light and crackling with an electric current.

"No..." Nessy whispered, her ears flattening against her head. “I… please, don’t… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to kill your babies, I swear! I…”

The hum intensified to a piercing whine.

What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion.

A single nail—rusty, bent, and warped shot to the front of her palm. Then, super accelerated by magnetic force, the nail blasted from the lynx's hand with a deafening boom. Before any of us could react, it tore through the air and punched through Nessy's head, entering just above her left eye and exiting through the back of her skull in a spray of red.

Nessy's expression froze in shock and pain. Then, she crumpled to the floor, her body folding in on itself like a marionette with cut strings.

I froze in horror and shock, too far away to do anything.

"NESSY!" Krysanthea's agonized scream echoed through the aisle.

The raptors didn't hesitate. In a blur of scales and feathers, they launched themselves toward the metal lynx, talons extended, faces contorted with rage. They rushed as one to the defence of their fallen alpha.

The lynx simply raised her other palm and reloaded her right hand. The humming intensified.

More iron nails—dozens of them—shot forth in rapid succession, cutting through the air with lethal precision. Katerina was the first to fall, three nails punching through her chest and throat. Her momentum carried her forward a few more steps before she collapsed, golden eyes dulling instantly.

A nail caught Kaledonya in mid-leap, piercing her skull. She was dead before she hit the ground.

Kirra and Krysanthea met similar fates, their bodies jerking as multiple projectiles tore through them. 

Kristi lasted the longest, her higher level letting her survive longer. Her final step brought her within a meter of the lynx before a final nail found her heart, and she collapsed in front of her fallen sisters in a heap of bloodied scales and feathers.

In the span of perhaps five seconds, everyone I cared about in this world was dead.

I stood frozen, unable to process the carnage before me. The lynx's glowing eyes fixed on me, her metal face expressionless. She raised her palm again, the magnet at its center humming to life—but she didn't fire.

"Why?" I let out with a choke.

I instantly knew that if I moved, if I showed any sign of aggression, a nail would punch through my skull as well. But in that moment, death seemed almost preferable to the hollowness expanding inside me. "Why did you do this?"

The lynx's metallic jaw creaked open. Her voice was a grating sound of metal on metal, yet distinctly feminine.

"She killed my nestlings," she answered simply, unblinking headlight eyes glaring at me.

I swallowed, my gaze drifting to Nessy's crumpled form. The husky looked so small in death, her fluffy tail still beneath her, her bloodied muzzle partly open.

"It was an accident," I said. "She... she was just looking for me. She didn't mean to destroy your nest!"

The lynx tilted her head, metal creaking. "Accident or intention, they're still dead. I waited for them to pull themselves back together... They never woke up. They were too small, too young."

"She would have made it right if she could," I said, tears streaming down my face as I looked at my fallen friends. "She was kind… she was good. They all were. They…"

I tried to find the words, drowning in despair. 

How did Nessy not foresee her end with Scrutiosmia? Why didn’t she… choose a different path? Why the fuck did she run ahead of everyone, headed straight towards her death?!

I had no answers to my questions, only silence and the grinding of iron gears from within the metal lynx.

"It doesn't matter. The debt is paid,” she said.

She lowered her palm, the humming dying away. "You're not on my list, human. You can go."

I looked at the bodies scattered across the aisle—Nessy, Krysanthea, Katerina, Kaledoniya, Kirra. My pack. My friends. The only people who had made this broken, fucked up, System-infected world bearable.

“Go where?” I asked more to myself than the lynx.

“Wherever it is you wish to go,” she said. “Don’t attempt to hostile me, or I will end you as I have ended many in my way.”

I slid down to Nessy, grabbing her, wishing for my Reconstitution to fix her, to heal her, my eyes filling with more tears of despair.

Her fur was still warm, but the spark that had made her so vibrantly her was gone—extinguished faster than I could even do anything. 

I looked up at the metal lynx, my vision blurred. "Who…?" I let out, my voice hollow. "Who will you hunt next? Another innocent person who accidentally crossed your path?"

The lynx's headlight eyes flickered, mechanical pupils contracting as she regarded me. Her metal jaw ground against itself as she processed my question.

"No one," she replied. "The debt is paid. The one who destroyed my nest and killed my younglings is dead."

"And the others?" I gestured weakly to the raptor sisters lying motionless around us. "What debt did they owe you?"

“They hostiled me like many beings of this vile place,” the lynx said. 

"So…" I looked up at the metal creature through tear-filled eyes. "You just... go back to whatever life you had before?"

“Yes,” she answered. “I will return to the highway.”

“Why?” I wasn’t even sure why I was conversing with Nessy’s killer. 

Maybe it was a need for closure, a way to cling to my slipping sanity, my brain trying to locate some way to undo my packmates’ deaths.

“I am married to her,” the lynx replied. 

“To… whom?”

“The highway,” she said. “We will make a new nest. Protect it better.”

My eye twitched. 

“And what if the people whose friends you’ve just killed come seeking vengeance?!” I growled. “Where does it stop? You've created new debts. New pain. New reasons for others to hunt you down."

The lynx tilted her head, gears grinding. "Others may try. They will fail. I have learned many new things searching for the dog, and got stronger. Nothing here can stop me."

"Maybe," I conceded, taking a step forward. "Or maybe not. Maybe someone will find a way."

“Is that someone… you?” The metal creature's eyes brightened with warning, her hand humming. "You said you would not hostile me."

"I'm not," I said, my voice steadying. "I'm just telling you the truth about debts. They don't end cleanly. They ripple outward, creating more debts, more pain. That's how the System works, isn't it? Everything has a cost."

The lynx regarded me silently for a long moment, her metal jaw working soundlessly as if processing my words. Finally, she spoke.

"I care not for your... loss," she said. "The dog destroyed my nestlings. I have repaid in kind by extinguishing her."

"And what does that make you?" I asked. "Just another monster in this broken world? Another debt collector?"

“I tire of your circular inquiries, human,” the lynx walked to Nessy. Something ground inside her and what looked like bent and chewed up guns emerged out of her metal innards. 

The weapons clattered on the floor—bent, crushed, and mangled almost beyond recognition. There was one identifying feature though—Nessy's name was etched into the stock of what had once been a shotgun, alongside an etching of a tree with a stick figure underneath it labeled "A+N" inside a heart. Even in her preparations for defense, she'd found a way to express her devotion to me.

With that, the lynx turned and began walking away, her metal body creaking and grinding with each step. I had no words left for her, knew that I could not stop her and would only waste Reconstitution if I tried attacking her.

I simply stood there, surrounded by the bodies of my friends, the limitlessness of the Supercenter pressing down on me from all directions. I picked up the bent gun and stared at the A+N etching for a few minutes.

Still holding onto the gun, I slid onto the tiled floor beside Nessy. My fingers trembled as I brushed bloodied fur from her face. The cheerful smile was gone, her one remaining blue eye unmoving and lifeless. Ahead, Krysanthea lay sprawled, her amber eyes fixed on nothing, feathers stained crimson. The Strand sisters were scattered nearby, their bodies contorted in the positions where they had fallen.

My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. This couldn't be real. They couldn't all be gone, just like that. Not Nessy with her future-sniffing, songs and boundless optimism. Not Krysanthea with her fierce protectiveness. Not even the difficult, complicated Strand sisters who had just become my pack.

I reached out with shaking hands to close Nessy's eye, a sob tearing from my throat. 

“Stats,” I said.

Only my stats came up.

The triangular threadwork of our pack bond had snapped, leaving me untethered and alone in the infinite aisles. 

My pack. My friends. Gone. GONE.

All I had now was myself. My limitless, useless, liminal, slow, weak self.

I felt something stir within me—a familiar sensation of branching awareness, of consciousness expanding outward like the limbs of a tree.

I drowned myself in an ocean of Alec-ness to stop despair from consuming me, trying to think of a solution.

The Spider Watch. The Compass. The Eye-Glass Bracelet. I had destroyed them with my liminal consciousness, but pieces remained. I still had fragments of each in my pocket.

Maybe I could repair the watch, rewind time back to the moment when Nessy was puppeteered by managerial insanity?

With desperate hope, I pulled out the cracked glass eye bead I'd saved from Kaledoniya's bracelet. 

I stared at the glass bead. 

Nessy had used to accelerate herself several times to chloroform me. 

Was this artifact remnant still tied to the husky, still bound to the bits and pieces of the Strand sisters’ souls trapped forevermore in this cursed place?

I had no answers, no way of knowing the truth.

57: Vivianne

As I stared at the cracked glass eye bead in my palm, a skittering sound from above made me look up. 

My blood froze when I looked up.

A car-sized spider constructed entirely of paperclips was descending from the ceiling on a thick strand of interwoven metal. Its eight legs, each comprised of thousands of staples and paperclips linked together, moved with mechanical precision as it lowered itself toward us. Its body gleamed under the fluorescent lights, the metal bent and twisted into a grotesque approximation of an arachnid. Where a real spider would have eyes, this monstrosity had what looked like tiny receipt printers, each one spitting out short strips of paper covered in incomprehensible symbols.

"No," I whispered, stuffing the eye bead back into my pocket and scrambling to my feet. "No, you can't have them! Screw off!"

The paperclip spider paid no attention to my protests. It continued its descent until it hovered just above the bodies of my fallen friends. With horrifying twitching, it began to extend its front legs toward Nessy's lifeless form.

I lunged forward, grabbing the bent shotgun from the floor. "Get away from her!" I swung the damaged weapon like a club, aiming for the nearest leg.

The spider paused, its receipt-printer eyes whirring as they focused on me. Then, without warning, its back seemed to explode open, releasing thousands of smaller paperclip spiders, each one about the size of my hand. They rained down around me, hitting the floor with metallic clinks before scuttling toward me with alarming speed.

I swung wildly at the approaching swarm, managing to crush a few with the shotgun and my boots, but there were too many. They leapt at me from all angles, their tiny paperclip legs sharp as needles as they latched onto my clothing, my arms, my face. I staggered backward, crying out in pain as their metal limbs pierced my skin firing staples at me.

While I was distracted by the smaller spiders, the massive construct continued its grim work. With vile efficiency, it wrapped Nessy's body in a cocoon of paperclips, lifting her from the floor. I watched in horror as it did the same to Krysanthea, then to each of the Strand sisters, securing them in metallic shrouds.

"Stop!" I cried, still batting desperately at the smaller spiders crawling over me. "They're mine! My pack! You can't take them!"

The giant spider ignored me, continuing to cocoon my friends' bodies. Once it had secured all five of them, it began to retract its strand, ascending back toward the ceiling with its macabre cargo.

I tried to follow, to somehow reach the retreating spider, but the swarm of smaller arachnids overwhelmed me. They forced me to the ground, their combined weight pressing me against the cold tile floor, stapling my clothes and fingers to the tiles. I could only watch in despair as the car-sized spider disappeared into a vent in the ceiling, taking with it the last physical connection I had to my friends.

Eventually, the smaller spiders retreated, skittering away into the darkness of nearby shelves. I lay on the floor, bleeding from hundreds of small puncture wounds, staring at the ceiling where my friends’ bodies had disappeared.

I was completely alone.

No Nessy with her nose to guide us. No Krysanthea with her sharp claws. No Strand sisters with their raptor instincts and knowledge of this damned place.

Just me. A human from another dimension, lost in the infinite, labyrinthine expanse of a sentient shopping center that defied all logic and reason.

With considerable effort, I tore through my clothes, freeing myself from the staples. I pulled myself to my feet, wincing as the wounds from the paper clip spiders stung with every movement. Blood trickled down my arms and face, dripping onto the already stained floor. I looked around at the empty aisle, at the bloodstains where my friends had fallen, now the only evidence they had ever existed.

What now? Where could I possibly go? The Superstore stretched in all directions, an endless maze with no exit that I could perceive. 

Without Nessy's magic nose, I had no way to navigate its infinite departments, no way to find the soul fragments, no way to get back to our RV. I didn’t even know how to get back to Bedshire as we’ve made far too many turns during our run to get away from the Magnet Lynx.

“STATS,” I snarled once again.

| Name: Alec Benoit Foster

| Species: Linear Human (Liminal Soul)
| Level: 3 | Core Affinity: Reconstitution
| Health: 82/100%
| Reconstitution: 67/100%
| Strength: 14
| Agility: 4
| Dexterity: 12
| Vitality: 36
| Charisma: 9
| Foresight: 2
| Intelligence: 37
| Wisdom: 30

| Skills: [Reconstitution], [Pack Leader], [Depictomancy], [Syntropic Fusion]

| Domain: Fort Pack LV 2
| Pack Members: Alec Foster (Leader)

The Fort Pack and my own lonely name stabbed at my heart. My pack was gone. The bond broken.

Or was it?

I closed my eyes, focusing inward on that sensation of liminal expansion of self. If I was truly a tree of Alec-ness, with branches extending beyond the confines of simple linear existence, perhaps I could use that to figure out where to go next.

I concentrated, pushing my consciousness outward, feeling it branch and multiply. In my mind's eye, I became not just one Alec standing in a bloody aisle, but a hundred, a thousand, a million Alecs, each one perceiving reality from a slightly different angle, each one catching glimpses of threads and connections invisible to normal sight.

I opened my eyes—not just the two physical ones on my face, but countless invisible eyes spread across my branching consciousness. The world around me remained the same, and yet not the same. 

Overlaid on the physical reality of the Superstore, I perceive… something.

Off-colored threads, barely visible but there, converging into a single line that led away from me.

I started walking, following the faint line.

Bulwichu. It had to be… the RV. The domain, the one thing that still remained from my pack.

With renewed purpose, I followed the crystalline thread, leaving behind the bloodstained aisle and the memory of my friends' final moments. Each step was painful, both physically from the spider bites and emotionally from the weight of my loss, but I forced myself forward, clinging to the only direction I had.

I didn’t heal the spider bites fully with Reconstitution, distracting myself with the stinging pain.

The thread led me through a wild array of shelves—past shelves stocked with absurd products, through aisles that defied spatial logic, down escalators that branched like gargantuan trees and sometimes moved in multiple directions at once. Several times I lost sight of the thread, only to recover the connection by pushing my perception outward again, branching my awareness to catch glimpses of its faint glow.

Hours passed, or perhaps days—time had little meaning in the Superstore's endless expanse that didn’t make a distinction between day and night. 

Eventually I repaired my festering, scabbed cuts with Reconstitution, but the awful memory of the lynx's attack, of watching my friends die one by one, remained fresh and raw, haunting me and refusing to let go.

Something vital snapped within me as I walked on and on, feeling dead, empty inside and… yet I was still alive, still moving forward across the endless shopping terrain.

At times freakish things tried to attack me, but each time I was able to get away thanks to Reconstitution fixing what otherwise would have been mortal wounds.

Eventually, I completely lost track of how many times I reconstituted, snacking on Bulwichu’s glass fruit that I discovered within Nessy’s backpack on my back. I used the fruits to chase away hunger, tiredness and death with Reconstitution.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of dying and coming back and walking, I rounded a corner and spotted it—our silver Airstream RV, parked incongruously in the middle of an aisle labeled "Vehicular Storage Solutions." 

Bulwichu's crystalline form was visible through the windows, her branches seeming to droop without the presence of Nessy to tend her.

I approached slowly, afraid that this might be some cruel illusion created by the store to torment me further. But as I drew closer, the connection strengthened, the thread between me and the tree glowing more brightly. This was real. 

Our domain had survived, even if its inhabitants had not.

With trembling hands, I reached for the door handle. It turned easily under my touch, and I stepped inside.

Officer Lavros was there. 

“Alec!” She jumped up from the couch, aquamarine eyes wide, copper-orange-gray tail wagging. “You’re back! Thank Slayer!”

She stared at my distraught expression and blood-stained, ragged outfit for a moment, the smile sliding off her face.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

“I’m… alive,” I answered simply.

“Alec… Where are the others…” she began, glancing through the RV’s window.

“Dead,” I answered. “They’re all dead.”

The foxgirl choked, sliding onto the couch and burying her face in her hands.

I walked to Bulwichu and stared at the slime-tree branch now fully connected to it, shimmering with emerald leaves.

The bulbees pulsed with blue and dark violet.

“Fix this… please.” I said. “You have to fix this. You’re our domain. You… are us, our hope, our friendship… our vibes, the heart of our pack!””

I taped the remnants of the watch and compass and beads one by one to the crystal tree using the duct tape that was sitting on the metal and glass-root floor next to the tree, left there by Nessy.

The bulbees pulsed back with red, gold and silver.

“The bracelet accelerates,” I said. “The compass directs. The watch rewinds time. Absorb their powers, add them to your own… amplify and magnify them. Rewind time. Lead me back to my friends! Help me find a way… a path forward that can stop the Magnet Lynx from killing them all… please!”

The bulbees pulsed back with red, gold and silver, but there was no other response. The tree did not reply to me, for it had no mouth.

With a heavy sigh, I slid down against the trunk, feeling the weight of my grief and despair crushing me. I reached into Nessy's backpack, dug inside it and somehow pulled out her phone. My fingers trembled as I typed in the login password—my birthday. 

Of course that's what she would use.

The phone unlocked, revealing a home screen wallpaper of the three of us—Nessy, Kristi and me—sitting by the campfire outside the RV, enjoying our bacon. We looked happy, oblivious to what fate would bring.

I flipped through her photo gallery, each image like a knife to my heart. 

There were hundreds of pictures, many taken secretly while I hadn't been looking—me drawing, me sleeping, me talking to Kristi. Others were the selfies we'd taken together for ‘vibes’, her fluffy face pressed against mine, both of us grinning wildly, us licking Kristi. There were the photos of all of us—our makeshift family that had been ripped away in mere seconds.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I swiped through each memory, each captured moment that would never come again.

"Alec? Do you know a way out of here?" Officer Lavros asked, breaking the silence. Her voice was small, fragile with shock. She was young, about my age, likely recently made an officer.

I looked up at her, blinking away tears. "No," I admitted. "I don't.”

She moved to sit beside me, her fox tail curling around her legs. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should have been there with you all. Maybe I could have done something."

"You would have died too," I said, the bluntness of my words making her flinch. "The Magnet Lynx... she killed them all in seconds. There was nothing anyone could have done."

"What happened exactly?" she asked, her ears lowering in sorrow.

I told her everything—from Nessy’s coffee insanity to my time loops, to our journey to Bedshire, to Nessy waking up, to our fateful encounter with the metallic lynx. As I spoke, the images played again in my mind with terrible clarity—Nessy falling, the raptors charging, the metal monster's emotionless execution of them all.

"They were so brave," Lavros said, her voice cracking. "Even at the end."

"They were," I agreed, looking back at the phone screen where Nessy's smiling face beamed up at me.

We sat in silence for a while, two survivors adrift in an endless retail nightmare. 

Eventually, Lavros reached out and placed her paw on my shoulder. I turned to her, and without thinking, pulled her into a hug. We clung to each other—two strangers united by shared loss and the desperate need for something to hold onto.

"What do we do?" she asked against my shoulder.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I just... I… just… I don't know. I’m hoping that… our domain can grow a new watch… maybe somehow rewind all of this.”

“All of it?” She asked.

“All of it,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Maybe it can rewind me back to when I first put on the watch?”

“Um. If you go back to the moment when you put on the watch, won’t the lynx just kill them all again?” The fox asked.

I opened and closed my mouth. Then I minimised the gallery of Nessy-taken photos and spotted a note folder on the home screen.

“Alec, read me!!!” it was called.

58: Her Music

I opened the note. The note app loaded the text.

"Hi Alec," it began. "If you're reading this then I died and you lived... which was sadly an inescapable inevitability at this juncture. Sorry, I should have told you but I wussed out and didn’t want to make you sad and ruin our vibes. This happened because I am finite and you are not. Know this—I did sniff a way, a sideways way of sorts out of this mess. But... it will undo many things or perhaps nearly everything. Everything, including what I did looking for you. Everything, except for you and our lovely RV domain..."

My hands trembled as I continued reading, my heart pounding in my chest.

"I've been having dreams, Alec. Dreams of rainbow wings and a white citadel by the North Sea. Dreams where I'm not just a dog-girl mechanic, but something, someone more. An Omnid girl with a Fractal Engine heart. An idea that stretches across worlds. A triangle we made. Vastness. Us. Our trio. Me, you and her, who is also me… just a different me who took a different path. And in these dreams, I've seen many deaths and many possibilities—branches of time like the branches of your soul-tree."

I scrolled down. The note continued:

"I only had a week or less to spend with you. I tried to make the best of it, to spend as much time with you as possible. Sadly, our relationship was doomed to end because the lynx was going to find me sooner or later, catch up to me. She’s very high level, very capable, stronger than all of us. But… she is not stronger than you can be if you keep going. I know that you can keep going, because you are our tree, because the Magnetic Lynx cannot end you like she can end me. I do hope that Kristi is with you. If she’s not… which is very likely because she’s a dummy who rushes headfirst into danger, then you have to save her too.”

I scrolled down, my breath catching.

"There was no straight path to save Kristi or her sisters. I sniffed this too. Number Two, Insurance is too strong, too old. She does not return souls. She does not let people out of her domain, once she seals the way out, there is no way back home for a finite, linear prad or human. She takes and keeps things and people, forever, fucks with those who leave her store. The Strand Sisters’ debt cannot be repaid. This was going to be their last trip regardless of what I tried. You have to survive, get stronger and then you have to return to Ferguson. Leave Bulwichu parked inside the Superstore to preserve her so that you can find her again. Go on foot to Ferguson. It won’t be pretty. I trust you to do this for us. There, use the watch to go all the way back to the beginning of everything. Spin the dial as far as it can go. Don’t be afraid. You will carry Systemfall with you wherever you go, survive death and absolute entropy because you are liminal."

My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the phone.

"I am dead and partially bound to the Supercenter because I used her artifacts. This path forward is my gift to you, Alec. I trust you to catch me before I topple the dominoes and anger the Magnet Lynx. It’s up to you to save all of us. A chance to try again, to do it better. Just know that whatever version of me you find in that new timeline... she might not remember the 'us'. Not right away. But she will sniff the ‘us’ and become me. In time. After you show her your drawings and Bulwichu. Because some things are constant across all possible worlds, all possible paths. Like how I'll always find you. Because I love you. Always and forever."

The note ended with a simple line that broke my heart anew:

"Thank you for being my tree. For giving me roots in a world gone mad. Whatever happens next, remember I chose this path. I chose you so that you can save me, save us, save everything. ~ Your Nessy.

P.S. I recorded all of my songs for you on this phone as a Pawsome Playlist. The phone, like you, has a battery that cannot die. Don’t cry and listen to ‘em n’ get motivated n’ stuff, you butt. Leave the phone in the RV playing the songs and flipping through the photo gallery when you depart, ‘kay? The selfies feed the bees, keep the vibes alive."

I stared at the screen, tears blurring my vision. Even from beyond death, she was so sweet, caring about me and also keeping secrets from me to protect me.

I slammed my fist into the metal floor. 

“Go back… to the beginning?” Officer Lavros asked as she had read the note along with me. “Like… before Systemfall? Is that… possible?”

"I don’t know, but I trust Nessy. It's a way forward," I sighed, running my fingers through my grimy hair. "I don't know how long it will take for a new watch to bloom, but it's something to hold onto, something to work towards. You in?"

Officer Lavros nodded, her fox ears twitching slightly. We sat in silence for a while, the weight of everything pressing down on us.

“Hey,” I asked her. “Sorry, what’s your first name? I can’t keep referring to you as Officer Lavros.”

"I'm Vivianne," she said. “Or Viv.”

. . .

Days passed, then weeks. 

Viv and I settled into a routine of sorts. 

The Bulwichu tree continued to grow, its crystalline branches extending through the RV's interior, but there was no sign of the artifacts reforming.

We ventured out into the Supercenter's endless aisles to scavenge for food and supplies. Viv proved to be an excellent hunter, her pradavarian fox instincts giving her an edge when tracking the strange creatures or living things that roamed the store.

I tried to get her to join my pack, but the System refused to add her, responding with a stupid, snarky excuse the same way it rejected the Strand sisters’ pact.

"What even is that?" I asked one day as she returned with something that looked like a cross between a chicken and a floor lamp.

"No idea," she admitted, showing her fangs. "But the meat parts taste like chicken, so a chicken-lamp, maybe?"

The Bulwichu tree grew taller, stronger, its roots spreading throughout the RV as I kept the selfie and the Pawsome playlist playing from Nessy’s phone. Bulbees gradually multiplied, forming a protective swarm that attacked anything that came too close without our permission, chasing away predators.

Viv and I became more than just survivors—we became professional hunters. We tracked and killed the monsters that roamed the Supercenter's infinite expanse, partly for food and supplies, partly in an attempt to get stronger. 

We fought side by side, learning each other's movements, developing a wordless communication that made us deadly efficient. I died countless times, my Reconstitution bringing me back again and again, while Viv relied on her speed and cunning to stay alive.

I listened to the playlist Nessy made for me over and over, praying, hoping that I would someday be able to get her back.

Days flew by in the endless shopping aisles. The only constant was our hunt and the slow, patient growth of the Bulwichu tree.

One day, Viv fell ill. 

Whatever had infected her moved quickly, her fox-like features growing gaunt, her fur losing its copper luster. The store had  somehow gotten inside her, gradually changing her fur and nails to the texture of tiles.

"It's alright," she whispered as I held her paw. "We knew this would happen eventually."

"I can fix this," I insisted, desperation clawing at my chest. "We just need to find the right medicine, or—"

"Alec," she cut me off, her voice gentle but firm. "Some things can't be fixed. Not everyone can reconstitute forever like you. Just… keep going, yeah? For all of us. Until the end. Keep going… get that damned watch to grow or whatever and undo all of this. Promise?"

“Okay,” I answered, blinking tears from my eyes. “I… promise.”

. . .

She died three days later, slipping away quietly in her sleep as her body calcified into plastic tiles. I carried her immobile, plastic body to the garden section, where god knows how many days ago I had created a memorial for Nessy and the others. I buried her beneath a twisted tree that grew flowers shaped like tiny crystal moons, placing her now empty ranger’s pistol atop the fresh mound of earth.

I stood there for a long time, surrounded by graves, the weight of solitude crushing down on me. First Nessy, then Krysanthea and her sisters, now Viv. 

Everyone I cared about, everyone who had made this hell bearable, gone.

"I'm still here," I said to the empty air, looking up at the flickering patchwork of lights overhead. "I'm still fucking here, you fuck… and I’m not going to stop till I get them all back.”

I returned to the RV. The Bulwichu tree had grown to a size of a medium-sized oak, its crystal branches forming a canopy across the 2.5 meter-high ceiling, bulbees humming softly among its leaves. I reached up and touched one of the branches, feeling its cool glass-like smoothness against my skin.

"Please," I whispered. "I need the damned artifacts, Bul. Grow them already! What’s taking so bloody long? I’m going fucking insane here!"

The tree didn’t answer, bulbees fading with blues and violets and golds.

Many days after Viv's death, I came across a strange entity in the electronics section—a creature made entirely of flat lines and angles, moving through the world as if it existed in only two dimensions. It sliced through shelves and products as if they weren't there, leaving perfect geometric cuts in its wake.

I tracked it for days, studying its movements, learning its patterns. When I finally confronted it, the battle was brutal. It cut through my flesh countless times, my Reconstitution barely keeping pace with the injuries.

But in the end, I prevailed, trapped it in a swampy section of the store where the hard tiles suddenly turned to liquid. As the creature suffocated in the mire and flailed, coming apart into a pile of lines and angles, something remained as my Systemfall reward—a black knife blade sticking out of the floor. Flat as absolutely nothing when viewed from the side, yet impossibly sharp, a round hexagon–textured handle at the base.

I retrieved the knife from the plastic floor mire with some effort and a makeshift grappling hook.

Killing things with the 2D knife became easier. Necessary. The only thing I knew how to do in this endless retail nightmare. I hunted monsters, concepts, entities—anything messed up and hostile that moved through the infinite aisles. 

My experience gradually ticked up.

Eventually, I found a way back to Bedshire thanks to meeting another friendly human-ish employee with a patchwork blue vest.

Bedshire welcomed me as an immortal hunter who kept the worst threats at bay. I took jobs from its residents, clearing infestations, retrieving lost residents, defending their borders. I finally met the Cartographer who vaguely assured me that I was on the right path forward, her hair made from what looked like twisted miniature car GPS screens.

. . .

An uncountable number of days after losing everything, Bedshire fell too.

A swarm of spider monsters made from paperclips and staples overran the town's defenses. I fought alongside the residents, my blade cutting through hundreds of the creatures, but there were thousands more.

"Get to the RV!" I shouted to Jim and the others, but it was too late. The paperclip spiders swarmed over them, consuming everything in their path, firing more paper clips right through everyone with machine gun staccato. 

A paperclip struck me in the heart and a few paperclips went through my skull and then darkness claimed me.

I awoke amidst the shredded ruins with blood all around me. Bedshire, the last outpost of humanity in this infinite nightmare, was gone. The spiders had taken all of the bodies with them.

I hunted the paperclip spider swarm relentlessly after that, tracking them through the aisles inside the RV, killing them by the dozens, then hundreds. It took an ungodly amount of time, but eventually, I located and destroyed their paperclip web nest and cut up the last of them, standing amid a field of twisted metal where the toy section met the gardening department.

After the spider hunt, I returned to the RV to find something miraculous. 

On one of the Bulwichu tree's branches, a small silver spider was forming, its mechanical legs twitching as it took shape. The watch—a new version of the calculator-spider—was blooming.

Over the coming days the other artifacts appeared. A glass bead containing a tiny blue eye formed on another branch, then another, until a bracelet of them hung from a crystalline twig. Finally, a small compass bloomed, its red and blue needle spinning wildly.

I carefully harvested each artifact, holding them with reverence. These weren't just tools—they were my last connection to Nessy, to everyone I'd lost and hopefully a way back to them all.

"Thanks, Bul," I said to the tree, running my fingers over the artifacts. "I know what I have to do now."

I strapped the bracelet to my wrist, feeling its power immediately—the urge to accelerate, to move faster than time itself. I hung the compass around my neck, its pull guiding me toward something beyond the confines of the Supercenter. And finally, I attached the watch to my other wrist, its mechanical spider legs digging into my flesh, binding itself to me.

I was ready to go back to the beginning now.

To save them all.

To try again.

“Bye Bul,” I said to the RV. “I’ll be back for you, okay?”

The Bulbees flashed violet and gold.

I put Nessy’s phone facing the tree and made sure that the playlist was playing and that the gallery of pack vibe images was circulating.

I put on Nessy’s backpack and stepped out of the RV, following the direction of the compass’ arrow.

58: End of Line

The compass pulled me forward with an insistent tug, its needle unwavering. 

The eye-glass bracelet hummed against my skin, occasionally sending pulses of acceleration through my limbs that made the world blur around me. The spider-watch ticked steadily at my wrist, its mechanical legs flexing against my flesh as if impatient to rewind me.

I moved through aisles I'd never seen before—sections selling clouds in bottles, memories in jars, and dreams woven into tapestries. The further I walked, the more the products changed, becoming stranger, more conceptual, less bound by the rules of physical reality.

Eventually, the compass led me to a blank concrete wall at the end of an aisle labeled "Permanent Solutions to Temporary Problems." The needle pointed directly at the featureless surface, spinning in small circles as if confused by the obstruction.

I placed my hand against the wall, feeling nothing but smooth, hard concrete. "This can't be right," I muttered, tapping the compass. The needle continued its insistent pointing.

Frustrated, I took a step back, my hand instinctively moving to the 2D knife at my belt. The blade had never failed me in all my time hunting in these endless aisles. Perhaps...

I drew the weapon, its impossibly thin two dimensional surface catching the light as I raised it. With a swift, practiced motion, I slashed at the wall. The knife cut through it like it wasn't there, leaving a perfect line in the surface. I continued cutting, carving a door-sized rectangle. When I pushed against the section I'd cut, it fell away, revealing a dark passage beyond.

The compass needle steadied, pointing into the darkness.

"Here goes nothing," I murmured, stepping through the opening I'd created.

The passage beyond was narrow, the walls close enough to brush my shoulders as I moved forward. Unlike the brightly lit aisles of the Supercenter, this corridor was dim, the only illumination coming from faint phosphorescent moss growing along the ceiling. The air felt different too—stale, as if it hadn't been disturbed in centuries.

I walked for what felt like hours, the passage occasionally turning or branching, but the compass always guiding me true, pointing the way forward. Eventually, I began to notice a change—a freshness to the air, a subtle breeze carrying scents I hadn't encountered in what felt like years. The smell of earth, of plants, of... outside.

The passage widened, and ahead, I could see a rectangle of gray light. An exit. A way out of the Supercenter's endless expanse.

My pace quickened, hope surging through me for the first time in longer than I could remember. As I approached the exit, I could make out what looked like a set of loading dock doors, hanging crookedly on rusted hinges. A few dying plants and moss hung from the ceiling.

I pushed through the rusted doors, the metal groaning in protest, and stepped out into...

A nightmare.

The parking lot that greeted me wasn't the mundane expanse of asphalt and white lines I might have expected. It was a wasteland—cracked pavement split by jagged fissures that glowed with an eerie violet light, abandoned vehicles half-sunk into the ground as if it had partially liquefied beneath them, their metal frames twisted into freaky, half-melted shapes.

The air felt wrong against my skin—heavy, charged with something that made my hair stand on end. The sky overhead was a sickly greenish-gray, thick gray clouds roiling with internal lightning that cast sporadic, disturbing violet flashes across the devastated landscape.

Behind me, the Supercenter itself looked nothing like the pristine big-box store I remembered. Its walls were cracked and pitted, large sections missing entirely to reveal a gaping darkness within. The sign hung crooked, most of its letters missing, reading only "S- ER-E" in flickering neon.

"What the shit hell happened here?" I asked. “Is this really Nessy’s Ferguson? Is this the right path forward?”

No answer came.

The compass needle wavered momentarily, then steadied, pointing toward the distant mountains—or what remained of them. Where there should have been forested slopes, there were only barren, jagged rocks, their surfaces gleaming with that same unsettling violet light that emanated from the cracks in the ground.

I took a tentative step forward, and immediately felt a burning sensation across my exposed skin. Looking down, I watched in horror as my forearms began to flake, tiny pieces of skin peeling away like ash and drifting into the air.

"Shit," I hissed, the pain intensifying with each second of exposure. I looked around desperately for shelter, but there was nowhere to hide from whatever corrosive force permeated the air.

The fog around me began to thin, revealing more of the hellscape this world had become. In every direction, as far as I could see, was desolation—a blasted, ravaged land stripped of life.

The compass tugged me forward, insistent despite the danger. Ferguson. I needed to get to Ferguson. To find a way back to the beginning, as Nessy had instructed in her final message to me.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I set out across the shattered parking lot, each step taking me further from the Supercenter and deeper into the apocalyptic wasteland that had once been the world I knew.

The road to Ferguson, once a winding mountain path through pine forests, was now a broken ribbon of asphalt cutting through a dead landscape. Massive fissures split the pavement, some wide enough to swallow a car. Strange crystalline growths erupted from these cracks, their surfaces reflecting the sickly light from above in nauseating patterns.

My skin continued to peel away in dry flakes, when I came too close to the violet fissures, the pain a constant burning that Reconstitution struggled to keep pace with. Whatever entropic force saturated this world, it worked against my ability to heal, slowing the regeneration to a crawl.

I walked for hours, the compass guiding me through the desolation. Occasionally, I passed the remains of vehicles—cars melted into grotesque sculptures, their metal frames warped and twisted as if they'd been caught in some impossible heat. Inside some, I could make out the silhouettes of what might have once been people, now just ashen outlines against blackened interiors.

As I approached the mountain tunnel that led into Ferguson, a new horror awaited me. The reinforced steel gates that had once protected the town's entrance had been torn away, the metal peeled back like the lid of a tin can by something possessing unimaginable strength. The tunnel itself yawned open, a dark wound in the mountainside, its interior lost in shadow.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and stepped into the darkness.

The tunnel was a charnel house. The remains of defensive positions lined the walls—sandbagged machine gun nests now stained dark with what could only be long dried blood. Pradavarian bodies lay scattered throughout, many torn in half or missing limbs, their features frozen in expressions of terror and agony. Rangers, citizens, defenders—all dead, all broken by whatever force had crashed through here.

I picked my way through the carnage, the compass guiding me forward. The air in the tunnel was marginally better than outside—my skin still burned, but the flaking had slowed to a manageable level.

When I emerged from the tunnel's far side, I was greeted by silence. Ferguson Valley, once a vibrant, living community, was now a tomb.

The town spread out below me, a patchwork of ruins beneath the sickly sky. Buildings had collapsed or been torn apart, their frames jutting up like the ribs of long-dead beasts. The streets were littered with debris and more bodies—humans and pradavarians alike, their forms twisted and broken. Windows gaped empty in the buildings that still stood, dark eyes staring out at nothing.

I made my way down into the town proper, following the compass's direction. As I walked through the silent streets, I found more evidence of Ferguson's final stand—barricades hastily erected, now splintered and scattered; weapons lying beside the hands that had wielded them; vehicles and buildings crushed as if slapped by some giant hand.

The ranger station had been completely flattened, the rubble spread over a wide area as if the building had exploded from within. Nearby, I found the remains of what must have been Krysanthea's ranger cruiser, its frame compressed into a cube of metal no larger than a washing machine.

I continued through the ghost town, my heart heavy with the knowledge that everyone—every single person I'd met here, every face in every window, every shopkeeper and ranger and citizen—was gone. Erased. As if they'd never existed except as broken bodies left to decay under the alien sky.

Looking up, I saw what was the moon, or what remained of it. 

Where the perfect silver disc should have hung, there was now a shattered ruin, a good third of its mass missing as if something had punched clean through it. The remaining pieces hung in the sky like some grotesque asteroids, slowly drifting above me.

I stood in what had once been the town square, surrounded by death and destruction, and felt my hope beginning to drain away. There was nothing here. Nothing to save, nothing to go back to, nothing that could help me find "the beginning" that Nessy had mentioned.

"Fuck," I whispered, tears blurring my vision as I stared up at the shattered moon. My skin continued to peel away, flakes catching the sickly light as they drifted on the entropic breeze.

With trembling fingers, I raised the spider-watch to my face. 

Right. Time to use the watch. To get back to a time when Ferguson still lived and breathed.

I pressed the red button on the watch's side, activating its rewind function.

[No Save Point Data Found]

The red text flashed across the watch's display, mocking my desperation. Of course—the watch could only take me back to points where it had been present. Points that had been saved in its memories. And this watch, grown from the Bulwichu tree, had never been in this version of Ferguson.

I wasn't giving up. I turned the small metal dial on the side of the watch, watching as numbers appeared on the display, scrolling upward rapidly: 1.00, 2.00, 5.00, 10.00, eventually reaching 99.99.

The watch seemed to strain against my wrist, the spider legs digging deeper into my flesh as if seeking a stronger connection to my bloodstream. It was adapting, changing, trying to find a way to do what I was asking of it.

I pressed the red button again.

A flash of crimson light enveloped me, so bright it momentarily blinded me. When my vision cleared, I found myself standing in the same location—but everything had changed.

The ruins around me looked older, more decayed. Buildings that had stood partially intact were now little more than piles of rubble. The bodies that had littered the streets were gone, replaced by bleached bones scattered among the debris. Alien vegetation—strange, twisted plants with metallic leaves and glassy stems—had begun to reclaim parts of the town, growing through cracks in the pavement and across the ruins.

It looked as if a hundred years or more had passed in an instant.

"Wrong way," I muttered, the despair in my chest growing heavier.

My clothes began to disintegrate now, joining my flaking skin in the entropic air. Even my shoes crumbled, leaving me standing barefoot on ground that burned my soles with every step. The entropy here was even worse than before, as if time itself was unraveling around me.

Gritting my teeth, I raised the watch again. I would not accept this outcome. I would not fail Nessy, not after everything I'd endured.

I turned the dial again, pushing it harder, forcing it beyond its limits. The tiny wheel groaned under my fingers, the metal straining as I forced it past 99.99. Suddenly, with a small snap, the wheel broke off in my hand.

“Fuck!” I swore as the wheel came apart in my fingers.

On the watch's display, the numbers shifted and warped, eventually resolving into a sideways number eight.

"Now or never," I whispered, and pressed the red button.

[SYSTEM ERROR - END OF LINE]

59: My Slayer

The world around me lurched sickeningly, colors and shapes blurring and stretching as if reality itself was being pulled apart at the seams. Blinding red engulfed me. 

When things settled again, 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 an emerald silver, streaked with what looked like an enormous comet 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 its 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 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, flaked away. Then the watch died too, coming apart into metal bits and pieces.

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

The flattened terrain ended and I crawled 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 wasn't 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 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 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.

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 said, 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. 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. "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 of flesh and bone and something else—something that shimmered like the silver threads of my pack bond but multiplied infinitely, stretching into every direction, folding into itself.

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

"Eight," I repeated, recalling Nessy's dream-song in Skyfall: 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. 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?!"

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, and 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 cycle 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 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 humans 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, then 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 though 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 Singularity, infinity was given life, just like everything else.”

"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 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 Slayer,” she said. “Slay me with that sword… hrm, knife, of yours. 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 with a groan, trying to focus on her words.

“Of abuse,” she said. “Of being trapped in the same loop forever and ever without any changes. I am the change, the error in their unending game. The 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… What the fuck did I wish for before?!”

"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 and my children falling in love with humans, humanity ceases to exist much faster, is ground into dust and ashes in days.”

“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 fungai after thirty three years of short life.”

I swallowed.

“You came again, disappointed with how short Arcanomorph lives were. Made another wish,” she said. “You wished anew for a companion with more power to protect you. So the Arcanix were born from my shards. The problem was that they enslaved humans and changed them into more Arcanix. 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. 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 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 pradavarians magic,” she said. 

“It didn’t work,” I growled. “Everyone is fucking dead! The 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, tied Earths to Earths.”

“Why?!”

“Because I care very much for humanity and wish to keep it… alive longer.”

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

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. "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 will restart without any changes. You will repeat the 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."

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

“What?” she grabbed me, 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 and bones! Hurry!”

I nodded, steeling myself for what came next. 

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

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

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 shearing, 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—Nessy's 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—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.

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!”

I shuddered at the mention of a dungeon. I was only level three and had a bunch of pretty useless, low level skills. Reconstitution supposedly 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 glanced at the date. 

August 28th, 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 mountain range where my grandfather owned a farm or something.

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

I swiped away the call notifications from and opened the 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 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 opened Pradstagram and searched for interesting content in “newest” category with #FergusonHigh tag and scrolled down the feed.

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

A group of seven prad raptors with green-violet feathers making faces at the camera. Typical rich mean girls by the looks of things, the kind of assholes my brother 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 foxgirl with aquamarine eyes and orange-gray tail showing off her gun collection. #PoliceAcademy_soon! Kinda neat. Ehh, fine. Paw up. Foxes are cute, if a bit 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 when recording.

I stopped at the video of a black and white, fluffy husky pradavarian girl. She sat beneath a sweeping 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 photo twice to see the caption and preview .gif 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 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—clear, powerful, and somehow hauntingly familiar, though I knew I'd never heard it before. The melody seemed to reach deep 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 I somehow knew I needed to be.

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.”