The air was thick with unspeakable quiet.
It was a stillness so profound it suffocated every breath, every thought. The kind of quiet that curled into your lungs and made you forget you had a voice. Selamira knelt in that quiet, shaking.
In the deepest corners of her soul, buried beneath layers of devotion, duty, and purpose, she had known.
Ever since he’d transformed her.
Ever since he’d whispered salvation and offered her power for the sake of the humans, for the sake of saving them all from destruction.
He had never lied. But he had never told the truth either.
And she had been a willing blade.
Her breath shuddered from between clenched teeth as she sat still under his gaze. Her master’s touch lingered against her cheek- cold, velvet-soft, and ancient. She shivered.
But still... still she raised her head.
Her throat trembled with the effort, with the weight of everything crashing into her at once. Yet her gaze rose. Brave. Broken.
"I just..." Her voice cracked like dry parchment. "I just want to see you."
The words escaped her lips with the breath of a dying flame. "The real you. Please. I gave everything. My body. My soul. My purpose. If this is the end... just let me see what I’ve truly served."
For a moment, the darkness did not respond.
Then, slowly, the Primordial Light of Darkness smiled. His face, ever shrouded in liquid shadow, softened with something that looked like fondness. Or maybe hunger. Or both.
And then, the world changed.
Behind him, the space trembled.
First, a ripple, like water disturbed by a drop.
Obsidian tendrils shot out from behind his back, coiling and writhing like serpents given breath. They twisted in the blackened void, each one larger than a mountain, each one whispering with the sound of a thousand dying stars. They pulsed not with light, but with presence. A density so foreign and ancient it pressed down on Selamira’s shoulders like a slab of stone.
Tendril! Tentacles deeply obsidian!
The tendrils grew thicker, slower... changing.
Their dark obsidian sheen bled into crimson.
It began at the tips, just a soft gleam of red- andcthen deepened.
Crimson, like blood on snow. Crimson, like the eyes that haunted the dreams of Ancient Ones before the Long Slumber.
Crimson, like a warning etched into the bones of this Plane.
The tendrils unfurled slowly behind the Primordial Light of Darkness, opening like a flower too blasphemous for the light of day. They spread in a perfect, horrifying circle- a blooming star of flesh and madness- and at their center, something began to emerge.
Or what her mind could only recognize as one.
It wasn’t shaped like an eye. Not truly. It was a mass of tentacles coiling into the illusion of an eye, as if her consciousness was being forced to interpret it that way, lest it snap.
It was not seeing her- it was her. It reflected every memory, every betrayal, every moment of ecstasy and grief. Selamira saw herself within it, every frame of her existence laid bare and inverted.
Tears slipped down her cheeks.
And yet, she did not scream.
Not until the tendrils moved.
A few- delicate, almost gentle- slid forward toward her mouth.
Her eyes widened. She tried to close her lips.
The first tendril pressed softly, like a lover’s finger.
Her jaw began to force open, her body no longer responding to her own commands. A wet crack echoed as her mandibles stretched beyond what was natural. Bone crunched.
The tendrils pushed inward, slowly, reverently, as if savoring every inch of her. Down her throat, into her chest, deeper. Her back arched violently.
Yet she still looked at him.
Her Master watched her with... affection.
"You were my favorite," he said softly, his voice laced with genuine sorrow. "You gave me a shape to hunger. A taste for devotion. For beauty."
His fingers ghosted through the air as if caressing her hair from a distance. "You taught me the flavor of longing. The ache of loyalty."
Her tears had stopped.
The light within her was fading- pulled, devoured.
"And now," he whispered, "you will shape my dominion. My appetite. When I rule... you will echo in every shadow I cast."
She rose from the ground, slowly, her limbs limp, head lolling. Her body was cradled in the embrace of tendrils as they carried her toward the yawning crimson eye.
As if she were a sacrifice. As if she had always been meant to end this way.
And as her body met the center of that impossible, writhing gaze- she vanished.
Just a shimmer of devoured light.
The eye began to fold into itself, layer by layer, petal by unholy petal, until it was gone.
And the Primordial Light of Darkness stood alone once more.
He let out a breath that sounded like a sigh... and a funeral dirge.
"I did like her," he murmured to no one. "She was exquisite. But..."
He looked down at his hands as the crimson glow vanished from beneath his skin, absorbed again into the shadows of his body. His form solidified, yet retained its ambiguity- human and not.
"...this enemy exceeds all parameters."
His voice was heavy now.
Around him, the darkness listened.
And he whispered to it.
"My true form is approaching. The Shackles of the Long Slumber... are fraying. Only a little more."
He closed his eyes, lifting his face to the unseen heavens above.
His body began to rise, shadows lifting him skyward as if he were floating on the spine of a beast.
"I will clean up what remains. If they cannot be used as tools..."
His hand opened, fingers splaying wide as if grasping an unseen world.
"...then they will become fuel."
And in the darkness, a smile bloomed.
Crimson. Cold. Endless.