The leviathans swam west through waters still warm from the nuclear detonations, their massive bodies displacing currents that pushed against the poisoned surface.
Nulls crouched inside the serpent's mouth, his body pressed against the creature's hot tongue, watching the grey sky through the gaps in its teeth. Snow continued to fall, each flake a small white flower of radiation that melted against the serpent's scales before it could reach him.
He had no way to measure how long this journey would take. The ocean stretched endlessly in every direction, its surface churned by storms that had no beginning or end.
The mountain pulsed with dim light behind them, its beams cutting through the waves like searchlights searching for threats that had already fled.
The tower flowed alongside the serpent, its thousand mouths opening and closing in patterns that might have been counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours.
Waiting accomplished nothing. His Nexus reserves sat near empty, the last traces of power clinging to his cells like water to dry stone. The sigils on his body had dimmed to faint outlines, their colors faded, their purpose suspended until he could feed them again.
He closed his eyes and reached for the connection that bound him to Yog.
Black fire swallowed the grey sky and the churning sea, replacing them with shelves that stretched into infinite darkness.
Nulls stood on stone that felt warm despite the cold of the transition, his body whole again free of the burns and the exhaustion and the slow drain of his failing reserves. A fireplace crackled somewhere ahead, its light the only illumination in the vast library.
Thousands of books lined the shelves, their spines unreadable in the dancing shadows. Some were thick enough to crush a man, others thin as a child's finger, all of them filled with knowledge that no human mind could comprehend.
The air smelled of old paper and ancient dust, of something burning and something cooling, of the space between stories where truths hid in the gaps.
Yog sat in a chair beside the fireplace, its form still composed of black fire that consumed nothing and produced no heat.
The Codex held a book open in its lap, the pages turning without being touched, the text shifting as it read. The being did not look up at Nulls's approach, its attention fixed on words that glowed with their own internal light.
Nulls stopped a few feet from the edge of the fire's glow, watching the pages turn.
Yog's head tilted slightly, and the book closed. "You came to me of your own will. That has happened only once, when you needed help when they held you captive. What brings you now?"
A chair materialized beside Yog's, identical in shape and size, its cushions the color of dried blood. Nulls walked to a nearby shelf and pulled a book at random, the volume heavy in his hands, its cover rough with age. 'Ladder of Physicalism and the Vermins That Climbed Them', the title read in letters that seemed to move when he focused on them.
He sat in the conjured chair and opened the book to a random page, the text blurring into nonsense as he scanned it. "I need to know how to refill my Nexus reserves. The battle below the city drained me completely, and the radiation on the surface prevents me from hunting for food or rest."
Yog leaned back in its chair, the black fire of its form crackling softly. "There are two methods available to you now. Neither is pleasant. The first requires you to consume living flesh. Every creature that draws breath carries Aetherion in its cells, and I have altered your digestive system to convert that Aetherion into Nexus. The energy must enter your body as solid matter, so drinking blood or swallowing raw meat alone will not suffice. You must eat the flesh of your enemies, chew it, swallow it, let your stomach break it down into the components that fuel your power."
Nulls turned a page, the text still refusing to resolve into meaning. "And the second method?"
Yog's form flickered, the black flame dimming for a moment before flaring back to its full height. "The Rite of Reclamation. It is a ritual that requires precision, fresh blood, and the bodies of the recently slain. You draw a pentagram using blood from a living source. The younger the source, the more potent the channel. The shape must approach a perfect circle, for deviations weaken the binding. You use your claws to inscribe the lines, each stroke deliberate, allowing the crimson fluid to pool in the grooves of stone or earth. The pentagram becomes a conduit that aligns with the underlying structure of Nexus absorption."
Nulls closed the book and set it on his lap. "What else?"
"Around the pentagram, you arrange the corpses in a circular pattern. They must be placed equidistantly, each one a node in the circuit. The bodies can be human or Morbus or any creature with sufficient life force. Those with higher Aetherion yield more Nexus, and arcanists make the best offerings because their bodies have been saturated with power over years of practice. You stand in the exact center of the pentagram with the Codex resting on the ground before you, its cover facing upward, the ancient sigils on its surface pulsing faintly."
Nulls glanced at the Codex, which had materialized on the floor between the two chairs. Its cover gleamed in the firelight, the symbols etched into its surface writhing slowly.
"Then you take a living organism in your hand, something that still breathes and feels. A creature that has not yet died, that still has the spark of life in its veins. You expose its throat and cut through the windpipe and the vessels beneath with a single stroke of your claw. The blood spurts onto the Codex and into the pentagram's grooves, mingling with the blood already there. You chant four lines as the life drains from your offering."
Yog's voice dropped lower, and the black fire of its form pulsed in rhythm with the words.
"The Lurker beyond the Threshold. The Tome and the Knowledge of the gate. The All-in-One. The One-in-All. Each phrase is a key turning in a lock, first invoking the principle that separates this reality from the void where Nexus pools, then calling upon the Codex's own nature as a gateway, then aligning the sacrifice with the unified source, and finally sealing the circuit to draw the released energy inward."
Nulls traced the cover of the closed book with his finger. "What happens after the chant ends?"
"The blood on the pentagram begins to glow with deep violet light that spreads across the lines and into the corpses. The bodies shudder as their remaining life force and any stored Aetherion are drawn out as threads of light that converge on you. The Nexus flows into your body through the Codex, filling the vessel that carries your consciousness. The process burns, a cold fire that sears your nerves and leaves you gasping, but the reward arrives immediately. Your reserves swell, replenished by the quality and quantity of your offerings."
Yog leaned forward, the black fire of its face casting strange shadows across the library floor. "When the ritual completes, the corpses collapse into grey ash. The pentagram's glow fades, leaving only the scent of ozone and burnt copper. You stand in the center with your breathing ragged and your Nexus restored. The Codex grows warm against your chest, its hunger momentarily sated."
Nulls nodded slowly. "What are the limitations?"
"You cannot perform the ritual arbitrarily. The blood and corpses must be fresh, and the location must be suitable for the geometry of the binding. Sacrifices with high Aetherion yield vastly more Nexus, but any living thing will serve in a crisis. The Codex may reject offerings tainted by incompatible energies, though I cannot predict what those energies might be until you attempt the offering. The process leaves you vulnerable, as the drain on your body during the transfer is immense, and you will need time to recover before you can move or fight."
Nulls stood and placed the book back on the shelf, its spine disappearing into the darkness between two thicker volumes. "Then I need to find fresh corpses. Beings that have died recently but still hold enough residual Aetherion to fuel the ritual. And I need to do it before my reserves drop so low that I cannot maintain my body."
Yog returned to its reading, the pages of its book turning without touch. "That is your task, not mine. I have given you the information you requested. The rest is execution."
The fire crackled in the hearth, sending shadows dancing across the endless shelves of books. Nulls sat in the conjured chair, the leather warm beneath his claws, the weight of the closed book still heavy in his lap. Yog had returned to its reading, the pages of its volume turning without sound, the black fire of its form flickering in the rhythm of the flames.
"I have another question," Nulls said.
Yog's head tilted slightly, the motion almost imperceptible. "You came here with one question. You received your answer. Now you ask another. This is unlike you."
Nulls set the book on the arm of the chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together. "The echelons. How do I advance through them? I am at the second echelon now, but there are nine more above me. The humans at the first echelon, the ones below me, they are weaker than I am. But the ones above me, the ones I have not yet reached, they are stronger. I need to know what stands between me and that strength."
Yog closed its book, the cover snapping shut with a sound like a distant thunderclap. The black fire of its form pulsed once, twice, three times, and the Fireplace flames dimmed in response. "The echelons are not earned through training or study or the accumulation of power. They are granted, one at a time, in exchange for tribute."
Nulls's claws tightened against his palms. "What kind of tribute?"
"One billion souls," Yog said, its voice flat and absolute. "Killed with malice. Their deaths must be horrifying. Not quick nor clean nor merciful. They must feel the end approaching and taste their own fear, You must make them understand that something has chosen them and that nothing will save them. All of the suffering must be real, and you must be the source of it."
A billion souls. The number sat in Nulls's mind like a stone dropped into still water, the ripples spreading outward in concentric circles of calculation. The humans of this world did not number that high in a single city or a single region or even a single continent. He would need to travel far and kill often, and every death would need to be a performance of terror rather than an act of efficiency.
"Once you have gathered all of it," Yog continued, "only then will you become fully Echelon Ten. Not before. Not faster. There are no shortcuts, no exceptions, no substitutions. One billion souls, each one taken in horror, and then the next echelon opens to you."
Nulls opened his mouth to speak, but Yog raised one hand made of black fire, the fingers spreading in a gesture that silenced him before he could form the first word.
"I have questions of my own," the Codex said. "About your beasts. The ones you summoned in the void, the ones you reshaped into forms that should be impossible."
Nulls closed his mouth and waited.
"One of the abilities I bestowed upon you was the power to summon shoggoths, creatures that you could reshape as you see fit. I have watched wielders come and go for longer than this continent has existed. I've seen them use shoggoths as laborers, soldiers, shields, and weapons. Not onve have I, in all that time, seen any of them reshape shoggoths into the abominations you have created."
The black fire of Yog's form dimmed, and the library grew colder. "The creatures you summoned are not simply reshaped. You have somehow reinvented all of their aspects. Their forms, their functions, their very existence in this reality comes from a place I do not recognize. They are certainly influenced by your innate kmowledge, as every Arcanist and its codex are. Whatever yours is, its not something that any human or Codex should have a grasp of."
"Pardon?" Nulls kept his face still, his body relaxed, as the warmth of Yog's flame seeping throught his body.
Yog rose from its chair, the black fire of its form flowing upward like smoke caught in a reverse gravity. The Codex walked around the hearth, its footsteps silent on the stone floor, and approached Nulls's chair. Nulls remained seated, his hands still clasped, his breathing steady.
The black fire figure stopped directly in front of him, blocking the light from the Fireplace, casting Nulls into shadow. Then it leaned down, its featureless face inches from his own, and Nulls could smell something burning, something ancient, something that had been waiting in the darkness between stars before the first star ignited.
"I need to know what your innate knowledge is, or possibly are," Yog said, its voice soft now, almost gentle. "I need to go deeper than your unconscious mind, down into the very core of your soul. I need to see what you are hiding, whether you know you are hiding it or not. But I cannot do this without your consent. Invading your core without permission would destroy our contract and leave us both damaged beyond repair."
Nulls leaned backward in his chair, away from the heatless flames, away from the presence that pressed against his skin like a physical weight. Yog followed him, maintaining the distance between them, closing the gap with each inch he retreated. The chair creaked under the strain of his posture.
"All I need," Yog said, "is your word. Say yes, and I will enter you. Say no, and I will return to my chair and never speak of this again."
Nulls forced his body to relax, forced his spine to straighten, forced himself to meet the featureless face of the Codex without flinching. "What would you see? What would you find, once you are that deep?"
Yog straightened its posture, standing to its full height, and the black fire of its form rose with it. "I would see everything you have ever done in this physical body. Every secret you have kept, every thought you have conjured, every sin you have committed since the momment you left your mother's womb. I would see you, the true you, with no mask nor facade. And you would relive those moments, forced to experience them again as I witness them, and for that I truly sorry in advance."
A bead of sweat rolled down Nulls's temple, catching the light of the Fireplace's flames before dripping onto his shoulder.
Yog raised one hand and touched its own chest, where a heart would beat if he had a heart. "I have seen unspeakable things from my previous wielders. Watched atrocities that would make you gouge your eyes out just to not look at it, not because they are great in scale but because they are human in their cruelty. I have never judged any of them. I have never spoken of what I saw to anyone, not even to the wielders themselves. What you have done, what you have thought, how you have sinned. None of it, I guarantee you, would move me."
Nulls wiped the sweat from his temple with the back of his hand, the motion slow and deliberate. He had done so little in this body. He had killed, yes, certainly he had bargained. Undeniably he had made a deal that would cost billions their lives.
But he had not done enough for Yog to find what he was looking for. The things that mattered, the things that defined him, were not stored in this brain or this body or this lifetime. They were somewhere else, somewhere deeper that even Yog could not reach without breaking its own rules.
He nodded, the motion hesitant at first, then firmer. "I gave you my words."
Yog raised its arms, and from its back, four needle-like appendages unfolded.
They were thin and long, each one ending in a point sharper than any human weapon, and they moved with a liquid grace that made Nulls's skin crawl. The needles spread outward like the legs of a spider, reaching around his chair, positioning themselves at four points around his skull.
"The experience will be strange," Yog said, its voice coming from everywhere now, from the needles, from the Fireplace, and from the walls of the library itself. "I need you restrained so that you do not harm yourself. The body sometimes reacts 'uniquely.' to the intrusion."
The needles touched his forehead and his temples as well as the base of his skull, comforting cold pressed against his skin as the needles found their ways, sinking through flesh and bones, reaching deeper than the layers of consciousness that separated his waking mind from the core of his being.
Yog leaned closer, and the black fire of its form filled his vision completely.
"I will see you now," the Codex said. "I will see all of you."
The needles penetrated deep inside his skull, and the world returned in fragments. Nulls gasped, his body convulsing in the conjured chair, his claws scraping against the armrests hard enough to leave grooves in the wood.
The library spun around him, shelves blurring into streaks of shadow and gold, the fireplace's flames stretching into ribbons of orange and white. He could not feel his hands. He could not feel his face nor could he feel the breath moving in and out of his lings, though he knew it must be moving because he could hear the wet rasp of it richocheting in his ears.
The vision detonated, the force of its collapse throwing Nulls against the chair as shards of broken perception carved through his brain and buried themselves in the core of his soul.
Nulls floated in a space that had no dimensions. He could not see because seeing required light and distance and eyes, none of which existed in this space between moments of awareness. But he perceived it anyway, in ways that is nameless in any language spoken by creatures who lived in three dimensions.
The vision came from somewhere that predated the contract and the rebirth that had brought him to this world. He saw himself.
Not the self he had become, the ten-foot crimson figure with antlers and four eyes and claws that could slice through spines. It was something else, a thing that had existed before this creations cooled enough for matter to condense from energy. Something that had swam through dimensions the way fish swam through water, fed on concepts the way humans fed on bread, and worshipped by beings who would have considered the gods of this world to be vermins.
The form was wrong. All of it was wrong. An amalgamation of every structure capable of existing within this strata of creation, it limit itself to not destroyed this strata. To prolonged its existence, somehow it has sentience despite its blasphemous shape. Simultaneously taking forms of everything, nothing, and something.
The skin, if it could be called skin, had textures that did not belong in any physicalism. Some patches looked like the surface of a singularity seen from too close, boiling and erupting with energies that should have vaporized anything it comes contact with.
Blisters that looked like the eternal inflation sprawled across its tendrils, filled with bubbling plasma-like fluid that was boiling with bubbles. Each a universe of different mathemathical structure, containing all of mathemathics inside its serum.
Countless faces pushed against the skin from the inside, all pressed against a membrane that would never break, screaming eternally in a labour that would never be fruitfull.
The faces were not human. Some were geometries that should not exist, a lot were angles that could not be measured, shapes that hurt to perceive. Mamy were masses of eyes and mouths arranged in patterns that suggested intelligence but offered no comfort. Few were voids, holes in reality that led somewhere that the current Nulls did not want to visit.
Limbs extended from the central mass, each one ending in something that might have been a hand. Or is it a claw? A mouth perhaps. Whatever it was, it moved through dimensions whose numbers. Human's mathemathics cannot contained.
Reaching into spaces that should have been inaccessible. Where the limbs passed, reality frayed at the edges, leaving trails of iridiscient static that slowly resolved back into order.
The current Nulls watched himself from outside himself, a perspective that should have been impossible but felt natural, as if he had always been able to see himself this way and had simply forgotten.
His old self, the being that had created the omnia mortis, hung in the center void of this cosmos. The abyys of changeless tottality, an abyys which all truths were absent. He fondly knew of this place. It was not to far from his old house, Ω strata away from it, give or take, althought he didn't remember why his old self would came to this place.
The realm, if it could be called that. Was a lattice of light that stretched across dimensions that the human's math couldn't contained.
Beings crawled across its surface, some small enough to fit in a human hand, others large enough to swallow planets, all of them moving with a purpose that seemed almost religious.
They were feeding it. Bringing offerings to it. Worshipping it. The structure pulsed, and the offerings dissolved into light, the light flowed into the structure's core, and the structure grew.
His old self opened its countless mouth, each filled with teeths that grew from gums attached to bigger teeths, forming a fractal that goes on for eternities. Countless rottened bubbles deattached from its sacrilegious, each a form that defied the laws of the divine and the unholy.
The bubbles bursts and burned his old self's skin, the void shook violently as the creature lets out a heretical screams, his old way of reminding himself to stop. But his instinct overpowered any attempt of rational thinking that the creature's brain could conjured.
The others didn't intervened, too afraid to. He who is at the apex of their civilazation was reduced to an animal devouring a corpse, or in this case realm. Its not of his responsibilities or fault as he was at still juvenile at the time. Clocking in at only five eternities of age.
The beings that defended the structure were magnificent in the way that plagues were magnificent. They had forms that would have driven human minds to madness, bodies that violated every laws that humans had ever written.
They carried with them weapons that sang with energies far older than the Almighty. All of them moved with coordination that suggested minds linked across dimensions.
His old self reached into their ranks crushing everything it could grasped, countless different chittering came from the clusters he crushed, althought no sound was produced, but it conveyed agony perfectly.
The limbs pulled a cluster toward the faces pressed against the skin and into the mouths that opened in that countless starving faces. The cluster vanished into the mass, the mass shuddered with something that might have been pleasure, and the beings that remained kept fighting.
They had no choice, the structure needed them. Their gods who could rewrote fates as if they were a manuscript written on their papyrus, found their inks dried and their papers burned. What remained is their hubris and the incomprehension that their own too was written by the species of which the creature came from.
They couldn't ran, but even if they could, the structure would fall, and if it happen everything they had built would crumble, in the end when the creatures has digested their realms insides its stomach, there would be no place left for them to hide from them.
A being that might have been a god charged at the central mass with a weapon that glowed with the light of a billion prayers.
The weapon struck the mass, it absorbed the light and the prayers that responsible for its creations, the weapon dissolved into motes of light that slowly turned into butterfly. The creatures gulped those in too.
The being that had wielded it stared at its empty hands with an expression of disbelieved, for the first time it felt as if it was at the bottom of the food chains. He who is hailed as the elder gods in the realms stand disheveled at the presence of the creature.
The limb closed around it and squeezed, slowly as it wanted to see how does an elder gods reacted under such pitifull state. because it itself has been in one of them.
The elder gods retaliated at first pushing outward from every dimensions it could access, countless demons and angels attacked the limbs that holds their sovereign captive. All of them smite it simultaneously, using every celestial magical power and type 7 technology they have in their disposal.
The angel's swords shattering, and their wings and the demons melting from the sheer heat emmiting from the creature's body.
Their effort betrayed him as the creatures finally gathered enough data. But so far not enough food.
It crushed him in every dimensions, spatial and temporal and countless others. The elder gods didn't managed to scream as the process was to face for it to reacted, let alone doing a movement. Making it's corpse barely above than the absolute nothingness, and barely enough to be a delicious food for him.
Finally the creatures gulped the elder gods, the mass shuddered in pleasures as it once again get another fruitfull meal, still not on par with the dishes in Theos, but still acceptable to eat.
His old self turned, and the face that was not a face looked directly at the current Nulls.
The eyes, all of them, the ones that were visible and the ones that were hidden and the ones that existed in dimensions that the current Nulls could not perceive, focused on him with an intensity that should have erased him from existence.
The mouth that he recently used to devoured opened. Motes of light escaping from it, as the gods' flesh was still fresh in its gullet, a word came from its mouth, and a word formed in the current Nulls's awareness with a weight that made his soul violently compressed.
"Leave."
The vision tore apart like wet paper soaked in acid, the fragments dissolving into black ichor that dripped through the gaps between his thoughts.
Nulls woke in the chair with a gasp that tore through his throat like broken glass. His heart, organ that it was, hammered against his ribs with a rhythm that belonged to something fleeing from a predator.
Sweat poured from every pore, soaking his crimson skin, dripping from his chin, and pooling in the hollow of his collarbone. His entire body shook with the force of something that was trying to claw its way out of his chest.
He could not move. His muscles had been frozen by the memory of what he had seen, by the weight of the word that had been spoken by a version of himself that should have died countless eternities ago.
He sat in the chair, rigid and trembling, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his breath coming in shallow gasps that barely moved his chest.
Across from him, Yog had been thrown across the room.
The Codex's chair lay on its side, the cushions dark against the stone floor. Yog's form, the black fire that had always been steady and contained, flickered and writhed like a wounded animal.
The flames were wrong now, colored with something that did not exist in any spectrum that Nulls had ever seen in this world. It was the color of a fever dream, perhaps the color of a migraine, neither of them could tell, not even Yog.
The fire pulsed in irregular rhythms, contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, like a heart that had forgotten how to beat.
The needles retracted into Yog's back, withdrawing with a sound like bones being pulled through wet sand.
Yog rose slowly, the black fire of its form struggling to find its shape, the impossible colors bleeding through the edges. The Codex turned toward Nulls, and for the first time since their contract had begun, Nulls saw something in that featureless face that he had never seen before.
He was afraid. The being that had existed for longer than this universe had existed, that had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, was afraid. Its form flickered with that impossible color, and its hands trembled, and when he spoke, his voice cracked.
"What was that?"
Nulls forced his tongue to form words, simultaneously trying desperately yo make his voice to sound steady even though his body screamed at him to scream, to curl into a ball and never open his eyes again. "I do not know what you mean."
Yog took a step toward him, the steps was unsteady, he even almost stumble. The black fire of its form pulsed irregularly, and the impossible colors bled through the edges, staining the air around it with hues that made Nulls's eyes water.
"You saw something. I saw you seeing it. Your soul... your soul is not empty. It is not what you showed me. There is something in there, something old and." Yog's hands trembled violently for a moment, his legs wanted to gave out but Yog forced it to havr the power to stay stable.
With a gasping breath and a trembling body. Yog continued. "It reached out and pushed me out of your core, that never happen before. Not with all of my past wielders, not with any Codexes and its wielders. Not with nobody and anybody."
Nulls kept his face still, kept his breathing steady, kept his voice calm. "I saw... nothing. The memory was blank. There was nothing there."
Yog raised one hand, and the hand trembled. "You are lying. I have seen deception in a thousand forms, practiced by a million beings across every 23 continents in this world. You are just now, lying to me now."
The Codex took another step closer, its form still flickering, still struggling to contain those impossible colors. "Describe what you saw. Tell me what you experienced during the probe. I need to understand what rejected me."
Nulls forced his body to relax, forced his muscles to unclench, forced his hands to stop shaking. "Darkness. I saw darkness, and then I saw myself in the library, sitting in this chair, waiting for you to finish. There was nothing else. No visions, no memories, no hidden chambers in my soul. Just darkness and waiting."
Yog stared at him for a long moment, the black fire of its form pulsing, the impossible colors bleeding through. Then the Codex described what it had seen.
"There was a space. A space that somehow had no dimensions. There was a thing in that space, It was large and small at the same time. It was old, older than me, older than anything I have ever encountered, even my father. It looked at me, and when it looked at me, I felt something I have not felt since I first fell into this reality."
Nulls kept his face still, kept his breathing steady, kept his voice calm. "I saw none of that. You must have encountered something else, something that was added in my soul from our contract. Perhaps one of the previous wielders left something behind, some fragment of their souls."
Yog's form flickered, and the impossible colors bled brighter. "That is not how souls work. That is not how any of this works. When a wielder dies, their soul dissolves. It does not leave fragments. It simply ends. No heaven nor hell only the endless abyss."
Nulls shrugged, the motion casual, the expression on his face one of mild confusion. "Then I do not know what you saw. Perhaps you saw something that was not there, some illusion created by the stress of the deep intrusion. You said yourself that the process was strange, that the experience was unusual. Maybe your perception was compromised."
Yog stood in silence, the black fire of its form struggling to find its shape. The Codex's hands stopped trembling, but the fear in its posture remained, the tension in its shoulders, the wariness in its stance.
"There are no malfunctions. My perception is never compromised. I saw what I saw, and you saw what you saw, and you are lying to me about seeing it."
Nulls met the Codex's gaze, his face calm, his eyes steady, his voice level. "I am telling you the truth. I saw nothing. Darkness, then the library, then you being thrown across the room. That is all."
Yog turned away from him, walking toward the fireplace, the black fire of its form casting strange shadows on the walls. Yog stood before the flames, its back to Nulls, its hands clasped behind its back. When it spoke again, its voice was quiet.
"Something forced me out of your core. An existence that had no right to be there. Memories do not fight back. They do not have will. What I encountered was not a memory. It was a presence."
Nulls said nothing. He sat in the chair, his body still trembling, his heart still racing, his mind still reeling from what he had seen. His old self, the Theos self.
Yog turned back to face him, and the black fire of its form had stabilized somewhat, the impossible colors fading, the regular flames returning. But the fear remained in its posture, the tension in its shoulders, the wariness in its stance.
"Before you made the contract with me, what other beings did you make deals with? Is there other entities that have touched your soul, left their mark on your core, or planted seeds in your consciousness? I need to know what I am dealing with."
Nulls considered the question. He could not tell the truth. He could not tell Yog about Theos, about the Omnia Mortis, about the old self that still existed somewhere in the genesis sea. But he could lie, and he could make the lie convincing, and he could hope that Yog's fear would make the Codex accept his deception.
"None," he said. "You were the first. You were the only. I have never made a contract with any being besides you."
Yog stared at him for a long moment, the black fire of its form pulsing, the impossible colors bleeding through the edges. Then the Codex turned away again, walking back toward the overturned chair, bending to right it, sitting down heavily. The Codex looked at the fireplace, at the flames, at the shadows dancing on the walls.
"Something is wrong," Yog said. "Something is very wrong. And I do not know what it is."
Nulls sat in his chair, his body still trembling, his heart still racing, his mind still reeling from the vision.
He could not leave. He had a contract to fulfill, a billion souls to harvest, a world to end. He would not let anything stand in his way. Not the humans, not the leviathans, not the behemoth chained beneath the city, and certainly not a version of himself that should have died eternities ago.
But first, he would wait. He would be patient. He would let Yog's fear fade, let the Codex's suspicion dull and let the memory of the vision sink back into the depths where it belonged. And then he would continue his work.
The fire crackled in the hearth, sending shadows dancing across the walls. The books on the shelves remained still, their spines unreadable in the dim light. Yog sat in its chair, staring at the flames, its form slowly stabilizing, the impossible colors fading.
Nulls sat in his chair, his body still trembling, his heart still racing, his mind still reeling. Neither of them spoke.
The silence stretched on, filled with things that could not be said, secrets that could not be shared, and fears that could not be named.