Hunched over a floating dark sphere, an old, decrepit fossil of a man remained with his mouth agape for a few seconds, incapable of reacting properly at first before breaking into mad laughter.
A raspy, guttural scraping came from his dried-out throat, his meagre attempt at voicing his joy was cut short as he began coughing without stop, up until blood splashed down onto his emaciated arm.
His broken record of a voice repeatedly bounced off the eroded walls surrounding him on all sides, escaping through cracks and slowly growing distant as his distorted words escaped the dungeon he had made into his own prison.
Not only did he not know how to speak properly anymore, his life was nearing its end.
But it didn't matter to him.
This floating orb was the sum of his entire life, nearly one hundred and ten years, all for the sake of this one object.
Turning around hurriedly, he clutched the sphere, cradling it like a child.
His abrupt movement sent him to the dusty and cold hard ground, uncaring for the newly risen particles suffocating him. He dragged his sorry self through the pebbles, shards of glass, and many other objects he had hoarded and taken with him before secluding himself.
The vestige of a man smiling toothlessly was reflected in the orb, uncaring for the abuse he was putting his decaying flesh through.
He had long since forgotten what the point of the orb was, what it was supposed to accomplish, why the fire of hatred within him was soothed by its completion.
Why he had even locked himself deep into a dungeon in the first place, he only remembered the process he had elaborated.
With madness fueling his muscles, he soon arrived before a huge hole in the ground, overflowing with cadavers, some whole, some reduced to mere dust, most in between those two states.
There was no telling just how expansive the hole truly was underneath, how many people and creatures had been shoved into its darkness, left to rot away.
Just above the pile of decay, a small bird cage was hanging on by a thread from the ceiling, its exterior rusty and suffering from the elements.
Its exterior was illuminated by a bright light, but its true colour couldn't be perceived, was it red? Was it blue? Was it everchanging? Was it a colour that did not exist?
The crumbling elder could not care less.
There were many lights, in fact, the sheer mass of them pressed against one another unified them as one.
Inside of this cage, the souls of the bodies beneath were trapped, both their spiritual and physical bodies had been gathered together, the souls carefully extracted so that both the minds and spirits remained perfectly linked to the soul.
All of them were to be used as kindling for the orb to reach its true potential.
Struggling to his knees, his bare body bruised from all the crawling, the living corpse the man had become took in the sight before him.
The stench of death had since long numbed him, his eyes plagued by cataracts, he smiled.
Not one of his teeth remained in their place, the gum supposed to anchor them had turned black and unstable.
With warm tears going down his cheeks, finding themselves in a maze of deep wrinkles, the old man raised the sphere as high as he could muster, readying himself for the penultimate moment of his awfully long life.
Even without being able to remember a single reason why this was so important to him, he looked forward to what was going to happen.
His long and filthy beard found itself within his vision, averting his gaze down, his moment interrupted as he wondered what could be happening.
No breeze this potent could make its way in this desolate room.
It was no breeze, he felt nothing on his back, something was pulling everything in the room.
Looking back at the pile and cage, he witnessed the mountain of dead bodies folding onto himself, the rotten and mummified flesh was compressed, the bones were ground into dust as everything converged into a single point.
Everything in the room but the old man was sucked in, furniture, filth, dust, any piece of rock that wasn't properly stuck to the walls.
The cage and orb were no exception.
His most prized treasure was snatched as easily as candy from a baby─ powerless to do anything about it.
The old man could only question what was happening.
He hadn't done anything yet, this wasn't his doing, it wasn't his creation.
The remains and souls fused with one another seamlessly.
The complete harmony mesmerised the sole witness before blinding him as the compressed mass exploded outward with a dark, purple light.
A purple the old man couldn't fathom, a colour he could perceive, yet, knew he had never seen before and would never see again.
When he regained his sight, something else now stood in the room with him.
"Aah- AAAAH!" crying out shamefully, he tried to get up to his feet only to fail miserably, falling to the ground once more and forced to crawl like a maggot.
He didn't dare look back again, consumed wholly by his fear, he moved with renewed vigour.
Still, his poor attempt at escaping wouldn't have even gotten him away from a sloth.
The sound of footsteps rang out like the tolls of a passing bell.
Clicks resounded from the being that was slowly walking up to him.
A loud clack shook the room, like a bear trap snapping into action.
This sprung the elderly man to stop his useless attempt to flee and roll over on his back.
Raising his arms defensively, he shouted incomprehensible words at the creature, his intent unknown even to him.
No one would have understood what he said, much less the being walking toward him.
Seeing his doom only getting closer, showing no hesitation in its advance, the frail man swatted his arms randomly, most likely hoping to deter the monster.
There was no success to be found in his frantic action, the thing born from thousands of corpses and souls took a hold of his twig-like arms, snapping them with appropriate ease.
His suffering didn't last long, the aggressor, not interested in making him wail, swiftly grabbed him by the neck and with a sudden motion, broke it.
Death had already been inevitable for him, his actions had only brought it faster and made it that much more harsh.
His executioner stared at its own reflection for a few moments, taking in its own appearance before dropping the lifeless husk down like the meaningless object that it had become.
Still, to the monster, the old man had ascended to something superior.