TM: Vengeance of the Indomitable and Crazed Shades

A wordless world.

The silent sky, its tiny, weeping eyes, yes, that is it...

Forgotten lives, its red sight. Why must you suffer -- alone beneath the quiet night...

Stars whisper, ah, tales of sorrow and grace, echoes of lost dreams in such a darkened space.

In shadows where even shadows blend and flee, oh you who seek solace in the silence, why not set your spirit free?

Echoing graced void of motion, no more was it, a sad song, a child's weeping dream... the only sound now just a low breathing.

He, a boy, a little boy who sat in the cold, cracked ground beneath, his knees pulled to his chest. He wasn't crying no more-he had run out of tears long ago. Small, fragile, like a crumpled piece of paper discarded in a corner, forgotten.

The world around him, far away, it had grown distant and indifferent. The faint echoes of life carried on, but now none of it touched him anymore.

The weight of the sky seemed to press down on his small shoulders, like a giant firm hand pushing him further into the ground.

He had stood once and again, yes he did try to rise against the heaviness of it all, but every step forward, like walking into a wall of quicksand, pulling him deeper, sinking him lower...

Now he just crouched, crumpled, his head resting on his bony knees, too tired to move, too broken to care.

Slowly the shadows in the corners of his mind grew longer, darker, creeping toward him like cold fingers, inching closer with each passing moment.

He could feel them swirling around him, right at the edges of his vision, hungry and endless. The void whispered to him, soft and inviting, promising relief from the crushing weight. It stretched out before him like a vast yet empty sea, black and silent, its waves lapping at his feet.

He didn't fight it anymore. There was no point. The battle had been lost before it began. Life, his cruelty, sharp edges cutting deep into his small heart, leaving scars that could never heal.

Tsh, you had no strength left to stand, no will left to fight... yet still, you did not cease... what a fascinating little monster...

The void slowly swallowed him... no fear, no sorrow, no regret... just pure emptiness.

His small body seemed to melt into the darkness and for the first time in what felt like forever the weight lifted. There was no more pain, no more struggle, just an endless, quiet nothing.

The boy's eyes fluttered shut, surrendering to the abyss as his body crumpled into the darkness...

In that sad and lonely moment of surrender...

*Slish...* Something broke the silence, the boy's head shot up, turning from one side to the other, chills traveling up his spine...

The silence he finaly embraced, did someone wish to take even that... was he not worthy even of the end...

'Slithering...?' No, screams and weapes, echos of pleas, everything inside stretched out into the endless dark, silent sounds, the wailing voice of the void.

But thanks to the emptiness that invited him, like nothing happened, in the silent world his peace came soon again... an unatural pull, his reddened and empty eyes closed once again.

"Joy... for it is I..." But in truth, just as the void's quiet nothingness began to close in around him and screamed, something else also stirred.

A low, deep tone, like the rumble of distant thunder. Slow, deliberate, ancient in its resonance.

The boy's eyes flickered open again, though he could see nothing as darkness still clung to him, vast and empty, but now it wasn't silent screames.

A movement in the void? Something enormous, something unseen but present, its existence both felt and feared.

Slithering through the darkness, a formless shadow in the formless dark, circling him like a predator its pray...

Fear encroached... but 'It' didn't strike.

The boy's breath hitched in his throat as the thing moved around him, a presence too large to comprehend, coiling and uncoiling, like a great beast, but without flesh or even form. It was the void itself yet also a true beast alive.

"Hm, look at you..."

"Such dark and lonely eyes, what are you really, an empty husk... or a fucking God?" With the deep voice's echoes he tensed up, expecting the end and pain to come swiftly now, expecting to be devoured by the endless dark.

"Such pity... disaponinment..."

Yet the voice-low and rumbling, it did not bring harm. It did not speak of his end, nor did it wish for him to be swallowed whole by the quiet. Instead, it spoke, edged sentences, drawn by the very unseen dark.

"You who weren't born for or from, why would you lower yourself?"

"The very existence of sin... Destiny, such facade, hiding away... are you fear? Disgusting, trying to fool anyone and everyone..."

'...' The boy remained still, listening as the sentences unfurled in the world , wrapping him in their strange, comforting embrace.

He undrestood nothing... it werenet the words that comforeted him... Just the simple notion... He wasn't alone anymore.

The void had not come to claim him, instead, he felt... something like the weight being shared, the world, no longer as oppressive.

He didn't understand why, but he could feel it, this voice, this great shadow, didn't want him to disappear into the quiet.

It wanted him to listen, and so, crumpled as he was, beaten down and drowning, the boy listened, just as quietly as the void was before.

"Shadows crawl, but the light never spoke. You, chasing what never was, drowning in whispers that scream…"

"You... Did you ever see? The truth or just the veil? Broken, aren't we all? But you… no, you wear it like skin. Purpose is a trick, isn't it? A chain you forged, then lost… or did you forget to wear it now or was that also a facade... a mask, Mortality's Mask?"

'...' Clear and echoing words... the same language yet meaning still not undrestood.

"Breath in, breath out… but who's counting? The clock's hands fall silent, yet you chase the ticking. Why? What did you think you'd catch?"

"There's no edge to the abyss, just falling, falling… And you-what are you reaching for? Something real, or just the memory of a touch? No. It's all dust, isn't it? Echoes of things that never happened…"

"You, who seeks what was never yours to lose, why do you still linger? Or have you forgotten… that you were never truly here?"

'I...?' The boy's eyes closed, lost in the maze of words the beast-the void spoke, only for everything to become bright-shining... endless blue, both up and down... sea of oceans, the rays of sun glistening, mirroring-reflecting...

"Now... seems you are finally back, kid..." Witnessing, the tone eased somewhat.

'...' A moment of wordless existence.

'I...' Only to be broken, but by no other than the very being who's yearning.

'I... my name...'

'I... my... name...' Slowly, the face of his reflected it, the very fear of it... words he did not spoke came... yet he heard--yet he breathed.

"But not the whole..." The beast's voice... strangely... Both? Neither?

'I... who...'

"Questions... do you truly wish to hear..." Strange again... very much so... question... answer...

'N-name... my... my name' Empty and stretched, struggling... almost like terror woven by fine dark threads.

"Names… mere sounds in a vast emptiness. They are the echoes of identity we cling to, yet they fade like whispers lost in the void. You grasp at letters, but they slip away, don't they?"

"Who… Who are you asking? The silence? Or the scream that hides beneath it? Identity… like water through fingers… Can you feel it, or does it drown you first?"

'I...'

"You… yes, you… But which you? The one who was, or the one still becoming? You were never meant to know, were you? It's a dance without rhythm, a melody without sound… yet still you listen. Still... you seek somthing that you never asked for yet it still followes you."

'...'

"Lost… no, never found..."

'...'

"You, the mirror shatters but you pick up the pieces, don't you? Hold them… tight, cut deeper, bleed… but what blood? Is it yours? No, is it borrowed... stolen? Everything is borrowed."

"Time? Illusion... Names? Lies we whisper to ourselves, again and again. You… you think you know, but do you? Or is it just the echo? The shadow who is pretending to be whole. It's all slipping, isn't it? Meaning, lost in the cracks, seeping through, forgotten before it was known… What are you holding? What… What did you lose?"

'...' At that singular moment... his eyes opened towards the dark... yet they fell, his head towards the cracked ground... the inability... stripped his power to look at the only one still asking him.

"What... who did you lose!?" Almost... anger... desperate...

'...' No presistence broke it-or could it ever... that very thing... and he knew it still...

"Grasping at smoke, but it's already gone, is it you or I..." Almost like a sigh... but such, it did not last for long.

"You… you were never holding it, were you? Just the ghost of a thought, crumbling like dust between fingers that never touched. What is touch? A lie your skin tells your bones? And your bones… do they remember? Do they ache with forgotten memories or… was it never yours to feel?"

'...'

"You're asking, aren't you? But who are you asking? The silence or the noise? No answer, just questions, spirals turning inwards… collapsing… until there's nothing but the breath you can't catch…" Still low and deliberate... but now it finally slowed.

"Ah… you're still there, aren't you? Lost, but not gone. Always reaching, always searching… But now, it's simpler, isn't it? Just a question. A truth, perhaps? Do you want it?"

"The story… of a man, a boy, a God? Or something else? Maybe all, maybe none. Who are, really? Who will be? And does it matter? You want to know, don't you? What lies behind the veil, beneath the skin of this world you've never truly touched... I can tell you… But, will you listen? Will you hear it... this truth? Or will you turn away, like all the rest?"

'I... my...'

"..." Waiting... almost... giving...

'Story... want...' But not yet! He did not fall still!

"Yes... Yes... HAHAH!" Almost like joy, was it... a strange thing indeed... has he accomplished something, was that its feeling...? For he who never knew... it stayed unanswered. But that is a story of another time...

"If it's so... then... Joy, for it is I, the one who will tell the tale... the tale of who he was... and the one... The one who shall witness it all!"

"He... Oh, who was he? Let me begin, on a dark night... Yes, yet with a full moon's light...

The story it told... A tale of lives, of struggle and pain, of hope and despair. As the voice filled the void, it wove a tapestry... a tapestry of experiences-of existences...

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