RWQ woke up.
Same place as always.
He greeted the ever present void with exhausted eyes and a pounding headache.
"Well, it's been a while since I've felt anything other than anger, so I guess it's welcom- huh?"
As the drowsiness from his sleep wore off, he realized the state of The Umbra. Violet cracks reached the farthest corners of creation, and it seemed like everything was hanging on by a thread.
"What happened...? Wait, 'The Umbra?' how do I..? Ugh..."
As his headache begins to worsen, he starts remembering the events that transpired.
"Void... Unification... Umbral archetype... I did this..?"
The shock of the realization sent tremors through his body. He somewhat remembers what had caused him to pass out, but what happened towards the end is foggy. Something about the legitimacy of his reality?
"Argh!"
His head throbbed at that thought.
"Something tells me that thought is a no go." He said to himself.
"In any case, things have changed."
As he looked around, he noticed that his prison had felt emptier than usual. Setting aside the matter of the violet cracks, the fact that the very "air" had changed is cause for great concern.
And upon looking for longer, he realized that the purple clouds were gone. The ghostly masses of energy that filled this extra dimensional plane.
Sometime during his stay, he began to see them, even though he couldn't before. It was the first new thing to happen in a while, so it made him very excited.
That excitement soon faded however, as nothing followed after. It is now his current conjecture that it was a sign of the umbra seeping into his very being.
But now, he only saw the occasional wisp, maybe a cloud or two.
Where did the rest go?
"Wait... I remembered something about a unification or something?"
Indeed, the word unification came up in his memories.
"If that's the case, it must be referring to the umbra. Then where did it all converge? Well I have a guess, but there's no way right?"
For the first time since waking up, RWQ looked within himself. He gained the ability to sense and use the dark energy after being broiled in it for so long. After a while, the absence of it became strange to him.
And upon looking within himself, his suspicions were confirmed.
"I guess the phrase 'Umbral archetype' makes more sense now."
Within him was what seemed to be a dark and massive well of black energy. The twisting putrid mass churned within him like a sickness, causing RWQ to gag upon seeing it.
It was alive.
He could sense it. And he could also sense that it was staring back at him.
Tearing his eyes away, he sighed, both in exasperation and shock. What could have caused him to absorb so much Umbra? Just what in the hell happened before this?
Holding his head in both hands, he debated wether this is a good thing or a bad thing. However one thing was certain.
"This... Is the chance I was waiting for."
RWQ only knew a little bit on how to use Umbra. Upon discovering he could use it, he had practiced his skill with it for a very long time, thinking it was his key out of this place.
Unfortunately, his Umbra capacity was ridiculously small, which wasnt helpful in his endeavors. In order to use more, he had to bask in the energy, which took an absurd amount of time.
To give you an idea of how much time, he had been here for about 700 years before he stopped counting. At that point he didn't even have enough to manifest anything solid.
However, with such a large amount, something may be feasible.
Holding his hand out, he summoned a massive ball of dark purple energy. Before, it was the size of a joint section, but now, it easily surpassed the size of his body.
He was shocked. He held back as much as he could, and yet...
RWQ smiled. A smile that, by no fault of his own, was crooked, distorted, and disturbing. His body trembled again. This was indeed, what he was waiting for.
His ticket.
His key.
.....
....
...
..
.
A couple of [unknown unit of time] later
This sensation, this freedom. He hasn't felt anything like this in what must have been a millennia.
RWQ flew through the Umbra at an inconceivable pace. His form blistered and burned from approaching the speed of light. But he felt no pain, his mind was far too gone to feel anything of that sort.
Instead, a blissful euphoria washed over him, unlike anything he's felt before. His control over this newly acquired power source was getting better and better. His mastery was increasing almost too fast.
But while he was enjoying himself immensely, he was also thinking about his destination. Looking ahead, he could see a bright yellow ball in the distance. Well, it was slightly green due to blue shifting, but it's whatever.
As he descended on the orb, he felt it was a little smaller than he thought it would be.
Scratch that, a LOT smaller.
"Weren't these supposed to be entire universes? Why are they so small?"
Or was he truly so massive? Looking down at his amorphous, misshapen hands, he thought to himself. Did absorbing all that energy alter his size? How was he supposed get in when he'd just destroy everything?
RWQ struggled over this matter for an extremely long time.
Eventually, he came to a simple conclusion.
If he himself was too big, then he would go through something smaller. RWQ would create an avatar, and leave this body behind. He could return whenever he wanted, and could explore without causing genocide on a universal scale.
He would be weaker, but that's a small price to pay for some company.
With that final thought in mind, he got to it.
Nothingness. Umbra is the subatomic nothingness that fills the gap between all things. The shadowy actor that holds together and keeps apart matter and energy alike.
Everything keeps it's shape because umbra exists. But at the same time, nothing may ever truly interact due to its influence.
To use Umbra, is to bind and separate existence itself.
Utilizing this fundamental law, RWQ would separate part of his soul from his main body. Of course, such an action would be immensely risky, but for him whose mind had broken and mended multiple times, its just a matter of course.
There's no specific way to manifest this power, so RWQ used it in the most familiar manner he could imagine.
"[Create New Save]."
The foggy memories of spending countless nights on the arcade machines came to mind, as well as the immense rage at finding that his save file had been deleted by one of the others.
He would have liked to reminisce more, but his memories were cut off by a mind splitting pain. RWQ felt his very existence being torn apart, yet at the same time, reconstructed at a rapid pace.
Splitting his consciousness in half, he created another him. However this was by no means a simple process. He had to go slowly, otherwise both of them would disappear.
After a long, grueling, and painful process that he almost passed out in the middle of multiple times, RWQ finally found himself in a new, galactically smaller body.
Behind him was a supermassive blob of sinister black energy, his old body. But in front of him, as though it were it's antithesis, was an equally gargantuan yellow sphere, an entire universe.
He looked back one more time at the fractured void that was his home/prison for the time he was here, and gave it one last farewell.
"So long umbra. I hope we never meet again."
Turning back around, RWQ put his hand to the yellow sphere, and muttered another invocation.
"[Start New Game]."
Binding himself to this world, he wondered as space twisted and churned.
"Where will I end up?"
Merely hoping that theres people, RWQ closed his eyes and let Umbra take him away.
...
..
.
"So let me get this straight. You're saying you fell here? From another world?"
==================
You already know it baby.