Kain Bleart regained awareness in utter darkness.
Cold. Silent. Agony lanced through his being, a torment so complete it felt like his very essence was being unmade. He curled into himself, hugging his knees as waves of excruciating pain crashed over him, each stronger than the last.
Time held no meaning in this place. Minutes? Hours? Days? It might have been weeks—yet not a moment of respite was granted. His bones ached, his skull cracked and splintered, expanding and contracting in ways that defied logic. His flesh—if he still had any—was repeatedly torn apart, his insides shredding themselves like rabid beasts feasting on their own carcass.
At first, it was unbearable. Then, he adapted.
At some point, he stopped blacking out every few seconds.
"Alright, Kain, you got the hang of it," a voice echoed in the abyss, shattering its tranquility.
"For ten seconds, I can think without my brain melting and leaking out of my eyes," Kain muttered, his voice as cold as the void around him.
He clenched and unclenched his fists, lowering his head in an attempt to see his own arms—but darkness prevailed. No amount of adjusting his eyes would let him see past a centimeter. Sight was worthless here. He relied instead on his heightened sense of feel—a twisted evolution born from having his skin and flesh stripped from his bones over and over again. Surprisingly, repeated agony had granted him something akin to a seventh sense.
"Focus."
Shaking off idle thoughts, he stretched his consciousness outward.
Two meters. Seven meters. Ten meters.
'Guess that's my limit for now.'
Darkness. A whole expanse of it. Nothing more, nothing less.
'Time's up.'
With a sickening squelch, his eyes burst. A searing migraine followed, and his consciousness recoiled back into him with the force of a detonation, sending him hurtling backward.
And just like that, his hell began anew.
But he had grown used to it. In fact…
He was starting to like the pain.
'At least it keeps me from dying of boredom.'
With a chuckle, he felt his eye reform—only for it to melt away again. Then, everything faded to black.
---
In this forsaken domain—a realm so deep into the abyss that even demons dared not linger—Kain moved.
Walked? Floated? Tumbled through space? He no longer knew. Up, down, forward, backward—it all lost meaning ages ago.
Recently—well, not so recently, maybe a couple of centuries ago—he had achieved movement. His sense of time was unreliable, but he had kept a rough count in the back of his mind. His latest discovery, however, was far more intriguing.
A distortion.
Something that didn't belong in this endless abyss. It was fleeting, appearing and vanishing across vast distances in unpredictable patterns, but Kain had been chasing it.
And after millennia of stagnation, he was damn good at calculations.
His estimates put him at the site in five minutes. Excitement flickered within him—an ember in a dead man's chest. Would it be dangerous? He didn't care. He needed something new.
When he arrived, he was dumbfounded.
It changed shape—spherical one moment, hexagonal the next. One instant it was blindingly bright, the next it barely flickered. It alternated between monochrome and vibrant polychrome, shifting without pattern.
It was chaos incarnate.
Intrigued, Kain split his consciousness into three. Two focused on theorizing its nature, while the third extended outward, cautiously probing the anomaly.
Seconds stretched into eternities. His curiosity swelled beyond restraint.
"Screw it."
Without hesitation, Kain dove headfirst into the swirling chaos.
After all, he had already died once. What was the worst that could happen?
---
In another plane of existence, the sun had set, casting a dark purple hue across the city. The moon hung gracefully above, illuminating the quiet streets of the 24th Ward.
It was an otherwise normal night.
Except for the itch at the back of everyone's mind.
It stirred those with a sixth sense, setting them on edge. The feeling was indescribable—an unplaceable wrongness lingering in the air.
Inside a small coffee shop, an old man stood behind the counter, humming as he polished a mug. He 'gazed' at the moon through massive windows—despite his closed eyes, his presence was palpable.
A cheerful voice pulled him from his thoughts.
"Hey, Boss! Rare of you to be stargazing. What's the occasion?"
The speaker was a well-dressed waiter—the only one in the shop who wore a bow tie. His brown hair was styled into a pompadour, his stocky build and bulbous nose giving him a distinct look. He carried a tray of used mugs and plates, setting them in the sink before turning a calculating gaze toward his manager.
The old man did not answer immediately. Instead, his focus lingered on an empty table. Laughter echoed in his mind—a blonde and a dark-haired bookworm; the silent boy who had sat between them.
His expression darkened.
"Yo, Bossman? What's up with you today?" the waiter prodded, mild concern lacing his tone.
The manager exhaled.
"Ah, it's nothing. Just an old man's intuition…" He stroked his chin. "Tell me, Koma—do you feel strange tonight?"
At that, Koma's demeanor shifted. His usual carefree air was replaced by something sharper—something far more calculating.
The manager nodded in quiet acknowledgment.
'A sword, no matter how long it's been sheathed, always keeps its edge.'
Plans began forming in his mind. Whatever was coming… he would be ready.
---
Across the ward, those with instinctual awareness took precautions.
Some criminals vanished into hiding, unwilling to gamble against the unknown. Protectors of the city doubled their patrols, growing more vigilant. Clowns rewrote their scripts, preparing new tricks.
But there was one person who had no such concerns.
Well, scratch that. He was very, very concerned.
"F-Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What the hell just happened?! Why is my luck always this bad?!"
Kaneki Ken ran for his life.
Tears blurred his vision, pain searing through his shoulder where she had taken her 'love bite.' He pressed a trembling hand against the wound, his entire left arm going numb.
"Oh, Kaneki~"
The voice was angelic. Playful.
And absolutely terrifying.
"You were just so cute, yapping about The Black Goat's Egg… I just couldn't help myself~"
Kaneki didn't care for her excuses. He only cared about the alley's exit—so close. If he could just—
"Gaaah! Urk!" With a soft squelch, something penetrated into his back and out through his front, he gazed down at the dark-red tentacle skewering him, it was glowing in rhythm to a heartbeat,
Before he could develop a Kink, he was hoisted off his feet and into the air, tens of metres of the ground. The moonlight kissed his bloodied figure, illuminating the fear painted on his face.
"Ahh~ isn't that a beautiful expression? Makes the wait worth it...More! Sprinkle more fear into it, tenderize and marinate your flesh with it!" Ushering her statement, another tentacle pierced his abnomen, earning a heart wrenching scream from Kaneki, and an ecstatic giggle from the lady.
Suddenly, there was thunder across the tranquil night, setting Kaneki's date off as she flinched, causing him to drop to the ground, landing on his left leg, and with a sickening crack, it broke under his weight. Kaneki gazed up, his consciousness was wavering and as he weakly glared at the cause of all this, he couldn't help but lament at his luck in meeting with her.
Rize stood tall, way taller than any human being, at a height of nine feet; she was adorned in a white dress, with its sleeves a light shade of purple. Her figure was seductive, even through her loose attire, she retained an hourglass physique, her hair was waist length, its tips coated in red dye (she had taken a large bite out of him apparently), her face was scrunched up in perversion, her cheeks flushed in intoxication; her irises were blood-red, her sclera black, yet, she had a semblance of beauty...scary, yes, but beautiful nonetheless, even with blood smeared across her full lips.
As to her unnatural height, she was being held up by two of her massive tentacles, the same type that had skewered Kaneki's guts prior. In total, she had four of said tentacles; the other two were currently creeping towards Kaneki, wrapping around him and lifting him off the ground towards her. Kaneki accepted his fate, he was about to become a ghoul's meal for the night, thankfully, it was a pretty ghoul.
Kaneki berrated himself for his Humor at such a moment, Rize kept on talking about her infatuation with him but Kaneki was distracted...by the moon.
She was full and creamish, like cheese, he could feel her sympathy and...wait, did the moon just Crack??!!!! Kaneki's eyes widened, he abruptly blinked and sighed, confirming that it was indeed his hallucinations; just then, the very moon changed colour, it became purple and then red and...pink?!
"What...urk...The..Actual Fuck!!" His voice came out in rasped whispers, Rize picked up on his unusual behavior and turned her gaze to indulge her meal's curiosity.
Her eyes widened in Shock...no, not at the multicolored moon, the moon was its usual graceful cheese. No, the beauty of it was the least of her worries, what concerned her were the descending steel beams.
"Oh For Fucks' Sake..." She's cut short as the beams reach her, crushing over her in a pile, Kaneki drops to the ground as a steel beam pins him by the chest, crushing his sternum.
Silence prevails into the night, sirens wailed from a distance. By the site, where beams had piled over the couple, with the clap of thunder, the beam over Kaneki's body was repelled off of him, sending the Heavy metal into a wall of the incomplete building. A distortion in space occurred over the deceased body of the bookworm as a ball of an anomaly levitated above him.
[(Hmmm;* T#•is Will do~°^{..."~...
Thunder rumbled again in Fervor as the phenomena uttered its content.