“How could that be?” Nyarlathotep’s head swiveled back like an owl’s. Its face, deliberately shaped to eerily mimic Cavendish’s own, twisted into a bizarre smile. It gave the uncanny impression of a living portrait doctored into a grotesque collage. “I really do have important business. If anything, spotting you aboard this ship is what’s truly caught me off guard.”
Nyarlathotep planted one hand on its hip and braced the other against the desktop, leaning in toward Cavendish with a posture so flippant it bordered on outright provocation. “So why are you here?”
“Never mind going back a few centuries—just take last year. You were always content to hole up in one spot, sticking with the same face until it was good and ready for the grave. What, suddenly developed a taste for globetrotting?”
Nyarlathotep’s other hand slapped down onto the desk as well. The redwood surface’s intricate grain abruptly writhed like dozens of blinking eyes. “Or… is it for my dear sister-in-law?”
Kinship meant nothing among the Outer Gods. Nyarlathotep was using the term solely to provoke disgust.
Its gaze bored into Cavendish’s perpetually impassive face. “You know why I descended on London half a month ago, don’t you? You’re afraid that with you away, I’ll snatch him right out from under you. But why make such a fuss? Only humans obsess over lifelong monogamy—”
Its voice cut off abruptly. In the blink of an eye, that handsome new flesh-and-blood body crumbled into a handful of crimson ash and scattered on the wind, extinguished.
Cavendish, never one to waste time on trivialities, calmly lowered his gaze. He turned the page of the handsome leatherbound volume, its gold-edged pages frayed from excessive reading. He utterly ignored the frenzied shriek echoing from its blood kin’s true form, billions of light-years distant:
“Yog-Sothoth!! You know damn well the real reason I’m fixated on that human—the true origin of that ‘fruit’ capable of usurping authority over time! Was it you!? Or has even you, the all-knowing and all-powerful, descended into madness in pursuit of the unknown?!”
“You’d better not try to shatter Azathoth’s dream out of your selfish whims. Don’t think you can drag me down with you into oblivion!”
“I’ll go find him—find that human. He’s always been mine! Ever since twenty-one years ago, he’s been mine!!”
Cavendish didn’t so much as blink as he turned to the next page, as if he hadn’t heard his blood kin’s impotent rage at all.
Meanwhile, in the Phantasmal Dream Realm.
The sickly-sweet tang of blood rode the night breeze across the endless expanse of the Corpse Sea, drifting toward the cities of the Eastern Continent.
“…”
Jack froze on the steps of his mansion, his chin practically doubling in shock. He barely recovered when a muffled thud echoed from inside the house, like something heavy hitting the carpet. Jolted, he leaped to his feet and burst through the door. “Who’s there?!—Oh God! Mom!? What are you doing here? Didn’t you say this morning you were heading to Selerphis—”
“There! There!” Mrs. Paine, still rattled from the fright, couldn’t string together a full sentence. She just yanked desperately at her son’s sleeve, jabbing her finger toward the kitchen—the one facing the Corpse Sea. “There!”
“Huh?” Jack warily snatched up the baseball bat leaning by the entryway. He pulled his mother, whom he’d only reunited with days ago in the Phantasmal Dream Realm, safely behind him with one arm. Edging to the kitchen door, he wrenched open the frosted glass.
Five or six strangers in black headscarves stared back at him in abject terror, their hands thrust out pleadingly toward him. A clatter of oddly shaped curved knives hit the floor.
“Help… save us!!” wailed the skinniest of the bunch, thrashing wildly. Pale skeletal hands gripped his waist and legs tight. “These bones are going to kill us! They’re killing us!!”
“Robbers! They’re robbers!” Mrs. Paine finally caught her breath. Clutching her chest with one hand and her son’s arm with the other, she gasped out the story. “I just came back for my wallet. They broke in and declared the house theirs from then on. They tied me up and holed up in the kitchen to lie in wait for more victims! They had accomplices… a dozen in total. Most bolted when a mountain of corpses popped up out of nowhere. These ones lagging behind just…”
Jack and his mother watched the gruesome bone hands in stunned silence. For a few seconds, simple human empathy nearly had Jack stepping forward.
But as he raised his bat to smash the grasping bones apart, his sharp eyes caught something familiar dangling from one of them: tattered fabric. “That’s—! Ali’s performance gown!!”
The headscarved men let out one final howl before going limp. The relentless bone hands yanked them backward with vicious speed, snapping bones and hauling them right out the window.
“Wait… wait!” Jack didn’t think twice. He didn’t even hear his mother’s protests from inches away. Pure instinct drove him to vault out the window after them. “Why do you have Ali’s clothes on?! How the hell did Ali’s clothes end up in the Phantasmal Dream Realm—”
Inside?
Jack’s final word never came. The instant his feet sank into the squelching rot of the corpses, he saw them… so many pieces of Ali’s gowns…
One was mostly intact, save for a single severed sleeve. The cufflinks he’d given her still gleamed coldly on that ragged cuff in the moonlight. But… but…
“Jack…”
A sigh-like murmur rose from the Corpse Sea beneath his feet. He felt bony fingers latch onto his ankles—some viciously clawing into his flesh. But in the next instant, they released as if snapping awake from madness.
Suddenly, those hands lost all aggression. Instead, they pushed at him urgently, one after another, forcing him outward:
“Don’t come in here…”
“Get out!”
“Don’t look at me… you can’t look!”
“Why…” Pain choked his throat. Tears trembled down his jawline as he whispered hoarsely, “Why are you all wearing Ali’s clothes? Why do your voices sound just like Ali’s? Are you… Ali? Why are there so many of you…?”
The night wind swept the mingled scents of blood and lament from that tear-soaked corner, carrying them deep into the heart of the Corpse Sea.
Between swaying stretches of red and white, the red-haired youth stood expressionless atop the crushed form of a god’s avatar. Silvery moonlight washed his face ghostly pale, while his tailored trousers clung to the taut lines of his long legs’ muscles.
“…▇▅█!” Behemoth desperately tried to revert to its more fluid misty state. But every time the thought formed, twelve bone hands rose around it—fingertips adorned with molten gold ornaments that dripped searing liquid gilt down the bleached bones. A massive Alchemy Array slammed down, pulverizing it back into filthy wisps of cottony fluff.
“Learn reverence!” The shriek whipped in from the wilds, laced with hysterical laughter.
“Kneel before your new king!” A thrilled chant trembled against its skin, shuddering with savage glee.
A million grasping palms seized it, compelling it to pluck blood-cleansed weapons and alchemical gems from the surrounding cadavers, one by one. They wove them into a crown.
The blood-soaked crown grew ever more opulent—opulent to the point of excess, warped into deformity.
Until at last, pinioned by countless skeletal grips, it crowned the new king’s dark red hair. Yet even then, it couldn’t tell if this was a symbol of sovereignty or the twisted soul of some unresting corpse.
Fury and shock intertwined. The raw emotional surge bridged the Phantasmal Dream Realm’s barriers, linking Behemoth to its true body and other avatars.
The Lord of R’lyeh beneath the South Pacific, Chorazin still prowling the Dream Realm, and the Father of Sharks slumbering in the depths off Gansba—all beheld the same vision in that instant.
Beneath the moon, a face carved from ice and snow loomed above, crowned in grotesque magnificence. Lake-green eyes gleamed with icy menace as they glared down imperiously.
He trampled it beneath his foot, forcing it to grovel on the ground, permitted only to gaze upward. The sleek lines of his thighs strained against his trousers, sharp as knife edges.
Humiliation? Undeniably.
Awe?
Chorazin, at least, made no denial.
He lounged on a sun-drenched beach, eyes at this evident low angle. Yet he recalled the youth pinned beneath him earlier, brow furrowed in stifled groans. Moments later, Chorazin cleared his throat softly and shifted into a casual leg-crossed pose. His gaze drifted—subtly, almost incidentally—along the youth’s tensed thighs, down to the firmer, more prominent curve where they met.
Chorazin would bet his fins that Behemoth felt more than mere rage right now. Otherwise, its awareness would fix on escape or counterattack—not on gawking like some wide-eyed fool, tracing the moonlight’s caress over its tormentor. Outlining how shadows and glow wove artistry across that face and form, etching every breathtaking detail.
But in the next second, such thoughts evaporated.
Amid the red-and-white wastes, a blaze of blade-light erupted—from the red-haired youth’s fingertip, aimed straight at the loathed god.
With every slash that sheared off clumps of cottony flesh, Behemoth emitted a horrific screech. In turn, several corpses amid the vast charnel ground shed their bloody filth. They rose as clean, ethereal souls—pausing only briefly to glance back. Love and hate alike faded to peace before scattering across the boundless plain.
“Vengeance served—I’m heading out. …Huh, guess I had a pretty good run this time around? Otherwise Jack wouldn’t have freaked out so much at the sight of my corpse.”
“The piano… oh, already bought one, huh? …Why couldn’t I still save my little brother this round?”
“Hey? Anyone spot Smith? Smi—er, sorry, you were the tech whiz next to me at that conference, chatting about embedding tracking chips in weapons? Yeah, you! Spill it—can we make that tech work? How many years till full rollout? I can’t rest easy until I know! What do you mean I’m being ‘obsessive’? …’Obsessive’ what? I got at worst what you kids call OCD…”
Amid laughter, sobs, and chatter, the god was stripped of its butcher’s tools. Sliced to ribbons, piece by piece. The souls whose grudges were settled ascended one after another, drifting away on the wind—until the protracted execution delivered its final stroke.
“Fuck… that guy’s insane.” Farther from the Corpse Wasteland, the bandits who’d barely escaped watched the entire spectacle in horror. They ground their teeth. “This new lord’s a total psycho!”
“It’s not like the Phantasmal Dream Realm has just one god around. Dragging a Great Old One in there and executing it right in front of all those Elder Gods—what the hell is that supposed to mean?! They’ll lose their minds! What is this, finger-pointing? Killing the chicken to scare the monkey? A straight-up challenge?”
Meanwhile, across an entire ocean from the Corpse Wasteland, atop the Northern Cold Plains.
Chalcedony Castle stood majestically, a place where gods—whom countless humans and even mythical creatures could scarcely glimpse—had gathered. They had begun by arguing over Ctharnid’s proposal, but now they watched the newly emerged continent in the southeast in utter silence.
“Looks like Ctharnid’s little friend doesn’t need our permission,” the Sleep God yawned listlessly, his tone laced with mockery. “We’re still holding this meeting, and he’s already crowned himself! All the sacrifices slaughtered too. Let’s call it quits… what else is there to discuss?”
“There are plenty of topics to discuss—it’s just that some people are stubborn, self-righteous, and refuse to heed advice.” The cat goddess Bast, a staunch advocate for all-out war, launched into a tirade. “Why are we doing this? Why must we Elder Gods cower behind humans, afraid to confront the Outer Gods?! If you lot have even a shred of divine pride left, you should—”
“Enough.” A weary yet authoritative voice rang out from the head of the council chamber. Nodens, king of the Elder Gods, spoke in a tone that brooked no argument. “The Phantasmal Dream Realm has acknowledged this new continent, making him its undisputed lord. Return to our human ally, Ctharnid. See if there’s anything he needs.”
·
Ctharnid’s return could not have been more perfectly timed.
At that moment, Cthulhu had just endured a death by a thousand cuts through shared sensation, his fury beyond doubt. Even Chorazin reined in his wandering thoughts. When they recalled Ode, all that lingered was the excruciating pain of being sliced apart inch by inch—no trace of lust remained, only a resolve to betray that burned fiercer than ever.
Of course, whether he betrayed or not was a matter for later. Right now, those trapped in Cthulhu’s Dream Realm faced the wrath of its master.
“Goka ya mgepog…”
In the raging storm, the battered ship was tossed about by the merciless waves.
The people aboard clung desperately to whatever fixtures they could grasp, their faces turning green as they gained a newfound appreciation for the hardships of fishermen. The prime minister shouted over the din, “Faust… Faust! What is that voice saying?!”
“…” Faust had no desire to translate, but their dire straits wouldn’t resolve themselves if he stayed silent. “He… Cthulhu… demands that we hand over Ode.”
“What? Why?” Beside him, the old professor—whose legs had just been healed by alchemy—flushed red with effort as he tried to squeeze closer to Faust. Faust couldn’t help but wonder just how much the teachers at school had adored Ode in the past. “Ode is just a…”
On second thought, his student’s grand entrance hadn’t exactly screamed “ordinary.” The old professor fell silent for a second before barreling on, “An ordinary soldier, that’s all! I trust that a man like Mr. Faust has far more capable and experienced people under his command. Why would a being like Cthulhu specifically demand Ode? God only knows, less than two months ago, Ode was still a political science student! The kind who sat in an office—he was utterly harmless!”
“…” Harmless… Ode… Fine.
Faust replied, “This isn’t the time to question why. Cthulhu doesn’t negotiate. What we need to figure out now is what to do—”
He had no intention of handing Ode over, but the current situation left him no choice even if he wanted to. Ode was deep in the Phantasmal Dream Realm, completely out of contact.
Faust was on the verge of losing it. He yanked out his phone and snarled into the receiver, “Prepare for the coordinated assault!!”
He had no idea what Ode had done in the Phantasmal Dream Realm to provoke Cthulhu into appearing ahead of schedule. According to their original plan, trapping the Behemoth there shouldn’t have incited this level of rage.
Eva, for her part, remained calm. If the order came down to fight to the death, it would feel like a return to familiar ground for agents like them, who were accustomed to resolving problems with combat. “Don’t be mad at Ode. You know what he’s been through. If he could stay perfectly calm after all that, I’d start questioning whether he still had any humanity left. Maybe this is exactly who he’s meant to be—”
“I don’t care.” Faust clamped his hand over the phone’s microphone. The pounding rain plastered his sideburns to his face, and his eyes gleamed with a near-ferocious intensity beneath the disheveled strands. “I don’t care about any of that—whether my demands are considerate or ruthless. All I want is for him to leave the battlefield alive. Walking out on his own two feet for me. Not lying on a stretcher, covered in a white sheet, and carried into the ground.”
Faust stepped closer, a raindrop sliding off his nose and splashing onto Eva’s collar. “Don’t lecture me on leadership, Eva. At least the teams I lead make it home alive to collect their paychecks…”
And yours?
He swallowed those cutting words. Breaking eye contact with Eva, he turned back to bellowing orders at the support teams outside about the joint assault.
“…” Eva stood motionless in the downpour for a long moment, but that final flicker of hesitation in her eyes was utterly extinguished by his challenge.
It was at this delicate turning point that Ctharnid made his entrance. The moment he materialized on the deck, Faust spotted him and seized his wrist with startling speed. “Uh, the council approved—”
“Find Ode,” Faust cut him off. “We’re launching the full offensive.”
Meanwhile, in the Phantasmal Dream Realm.
Far from the onlookers’ imagined blaze of glory, Ode’s sense of self sat cross-legged amid his memories of the Corpse Mountain Bone Sea, lost in thought. Seated beside him was Elder Zhong, who had perished in some untold cycle.
The little old man still wore his threadbare shirt, nearly worn translucent from washing, as he fanned himself vigorously with a palm leaf fan. “You’re just going to sit here and watch these people hijack your soul to wreak havoc everywhere? I figured you’d try to stop them! After all, it doesn’t do the real-world battlefield any favors.”
“That’s because I’ve figured some things out, and now I’m pondering one particular matter…” Ode’s brows knitted tightly. “I’ve realized why it’s not my home that haunts my dreams, but this battlefield—it’s the same reason Jack had to carry me here with his soul, isn’t it? It’s not that I can’t let go of my past memories. It’s that my soul carries all of yours—”
“And our love… and our hate.” The old man sighed. “I’ve always felt it’s too heavy a burden for a young kid like you, but—”
“You’re just humoring me again.” Ode looked up at Elder Zhong, his gaze a mix of helplessness and far more profound, weighty emotions. “These aren’t just souls dwelling within me, are they?”
“Everyone understands that no one comes back from death without reason, that resurrection isn’t free.”
Ode paused, then fixed Elder Zhong with an even deeper stare. “In Dreamcatcher Town, facing the Black Mud Monster… I should have died on that seabed, shouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t devour anything. The Black Mud Monster was cleared out by my Gatling Gun—I shouldn’t have had any self-healing left… The only logical explanation is that someone paid the price for me.”
“…” Elder Zhong fell silent, his fanning slowing to a halt.
Ode pressed on relentlessly. “I remember Faust once telling me, in one of the cycles, that people can voluntarily offer themselves up as sacrifices. Sacrificing their lives, their souls… to achieve what no mortal could accomplish alone.”
“These ‘souls’ inside me—are they truly souls? Or are they… sacrifices made to me? Prepaid costs so I could achieve some impossible mortal goal?”
That was why those souls had assured him so steadfastly on the road to death that it was nothing to fear—and why he had miraculously survived time and again.
“What if the answer is yes?” Elder Zhong set the fan aside. “We all want to charge toward that victorious future. When we fall, someone has to carry on for us. Besides, with time rewinding, our sacrificed souls get reborn anyway. How’s that any different from getting power for free? Kid… stop with all the love-hate drama.”
Elder Zhong shifted his position, propping his chin with the fan in fascination. “Come on, tell me—what’s this ‘one particular matter’ you’re pondering? There’s an old saying at the base about Faust: ‘Politicians have filthy hearts.’ You’re practically brothers with him. I don’t buy that you’d let these souls torment the Behemoth without some ulterior motive.”
“…” Ode’s train of thought derailed completely at “love-hate drama.” He wanted to point out that the phrase wasn’t used that way but second-guessed himself—Chinese was vast and profound; what if it fit here after all?
Ever the perfectionist in his studies, Ode hesitated before saying, “I’m wondering… why Chorazin looks so human. So much like… the old me.”
