{Author's Note: If you listen to music in the background while reading, for this chapter to truly feel the vibes I felt while writing it, listen to: Mitski - Liquid Smooth (Official Audio)}
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[Ding.]
[Contract between 'Cole Deimos' and '@%)!+$^' has been partly breached in '@%)!+$^' disadvantage.]
[Additional charges will be added upon 'Cole Deimos']
"Huh? Additional charges?"
Cole asked out loud to himself, surprised at the holographic text in front of him as he recalled the moment the shadow told him that Cole would be paying a 'whole lot' this time.
Throughout the shadows of the giant forest of Skyleaves, Cole's vision blurred, his limbs growing leaden as the smoke shadow's laughter curdled in his ears. Darkness swallowed him whole, and he tumbled into a fathomless abyss.
"Let the show begin, kek!"
***
"Kgh…" The next moment he opened his eyes… The next moment he awoke, he was beneath the worn rafters of his house back in Elyndor, sunlight streaming through tattered curtains, painting dancing dust motes on the air into a beautiful color of gold.
Sitting at the small dining table, he was.
"Sniff~"
The scent of baking bread wafted from the kitchen not even two full steps away, and a familiar voice hummed a lullaby.
"Cole, darling, lunch is ready!"
There, the kind mother–Ann– stood, her beautiful brown hair seeming slightly blonde under the rays of the sun.
A warmth bloomed in his chest, a comforting warmth he had long forgotten about for months now.
His mother, alive and vibrant, a sight he hadn't witnessed since the Eclipse swallowed her existence.
"M-Mom?"
He stood up instantly, the chair he was sitting in falling back as his legs shook with disbelief, and with a run into her welcoming embrace, he wrapped his arms around her.
"Mom–?" he croaked, tears stinging his dried eyes for the first time again since the Celestial Eclipse.
Her smile held a flicker of sadness, "Yes, darling, it's me. You're finally home, and so am I."
"B-But how?"
"Hmm, I wonder now, how?" Bringing her index finger to her lips as she looked up in wonder, she said, and then, a disturbing smirk spread on her face slowly.
Next, a menacing voice slipped from her lips. "I wonder how. Hehe."
The warmth and the recent past Cole had forgotten, instantly returned under sun-drenched haven.
"W-What?!"
Pssp—
Whispers coiled around him just like the tendrils that stretched out from the ground, no matter where he turned his face towards to, he could hear words.
Memories flickered: his mother dying right before him, the gnawing hunger, the encroaching darkness at the edge of town, and how he was swallowed by the essence.
A voice, smooth as oil, slithered into his ear, "This… isn't real, Cole. A mere illusion, made up for your pleasure. A taste of what you could have had, if you hadn't..."
"Hadn't what?" Cole gasped, the sweat overtaking him under the grasp of coils.
"Hadn't made your foolish bargain!" the voice hissed in his mother's tone, making Cole feel a cold fear in his stomach. "Look closer, my dear boy."
As the voice echoed, the idyllic facade began to splinter. The sunlight grew sickly yellow, the floorboards warped and rotted, the bread on the table grew moldy and crawling with maggots.
His mother's smile twisted into a grotesque caricature, her eyes hollow black pits.
"A… Aaah?"
Panic clawed at Cole's throat.
He tried to stumble back even though tied up, the world around him morphing into a nightmarish parody of his past. The whispers swelled, a cacophony of accusations and regrets.
'Ew, that kid is here again?'
'What do you want?!'
'That damned devil!'
"N-No no! Not my fault, it wasn't my fault!" Cole retorted against the voices and faces that were projecting blame on him.
"I had a family, and you dared to kill me!"
"I– I had to–"
"Then what about me, huh? What did I ever do to you?!" A voice he recognized shouted against him.
"B-Brander… Y-You betraye–"
"Still trying to justify your actions, Devil of Destruction?" A calm voice interrupted Cole's words again.
"W-What?"
It was the guy with the mustache whom Cole severed his head with a surprise attack.
"You're a devil. You've taken our lives for your own benefit. You must be punished–"
"S-Stop!" Yelling out, he grabbed at the invisible energy, the vines that were keeping him tied exploding and giving him freedom.
Each decision he'd ever made, each life lost, each sin committed, reverberated through the warped landscape.
He ran, desperate to escape the suffocating miasma of memories, but the house twisted and turned, hallways looping back on themselves, doors leading only to more despair.
Exhausted, cornered, he collapsed, the whispers erupting into a deafening roar.
"Huff, huff, huff… J-Just what did I do!?" Cole yelled out in desperation, clutching at his head as he cowered, holding himself into a ball after falling on his butt.
Then, silence.
He cracked open an eye, expecting the grotesque parody of his home.
"Huh?"
Instead, he found himself back in the castle dungeons, the smoke shadow looming over him, amusement curling its smoke trails.
"Welcome back, Cole," it rasped. "Did you enjoy your little...vacation?"
A cold sweat drenched Cole.
The warmth of the dream, the terror of the maze, they clung to him like a shroud.
He understood now. The smoke shadow hadn't merely shown him an idyllic past; it had exposed the rotten core, the festering guilt that poisoned his very existence.
His lip shivered as he tried to speak, "B-But–"
"Now," the smoke shadow chuckled, "for the main course."
It snapped its fingers, and visions flooded Cole's mind. "Kgh?!"
"W-What!?"
"A–ARKGGGHH!"
Visions of horrific truths, of cosmic horrors beyond human comprehension, of the delicate balance of existence teetering on the brink.
[~EM@$ktH&RN~]
[~N$X?@S~]
"N-NO KIRGHYAA!" He screeched, lost in the visions and words flashing across his unstable consciousness.
Each revelation chipped away at his sanity, shattering his perception of reality. He saw the universe as a cruel game, humanity mere pawns in an incomprehensible dance of entropy. His own purpose, his choices, seemed utterly meaningless in the face of this cosmic nihilism.
[~N@fRD~]
[~!Li()S~]
Fwoom~
[~@rTg^#*h!~]
Everything was glitching, nothing was making true sense to his own puny and ignorant mind.
[~F&26TORS!@$#?~]
[~L%C^#445@rS~]
He screamed, clawing at his own head, grinding the skin of his temples with his nails in a desperate to shut out the visions.
This was something he wasn't supposed to see.
This was something he wasn't meant to see. Not yet.
This was something he wasn't able to properly witness.
This was knowledge he couldn't absorb yet.
This was… the crushing weight of forbidden knowledge.
The smoke shadow watched, its amusement tinged with a hint of respect as Cole staggered in place, his body convulsing as his screeching voice died out.
For in that moment, Cole had truly embraced the darkness.
He had glimpsed the abyss, and the abyss had stared back. The boy who had survived the apocalypse was gone, replaced by a husk haunted by forbidden truths and maddening visions.
That's what it was supposed to be.
But no!
This wasn't Cole's End… But a twisted Rebirth.