Published at 14th of October 2023 4:51 pm

Chapter 1 Breaking the Universe

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The lost soul blasted through the realm of the dead, overwhelmed by emotions it had long since forgotten.

Confusion. Fear. Hatred.

Consumed by desires—

Longing. Hunger. Vengeance.

…Vengeance?

It paused, bewildered by these new feelings. It had been so long since it had arrived here, in this great space filled with souls awaiting their End. All of its memories had been consumed by the Maelstrom ages ago, and with those memories, its personality had gone. How could all these emotions be surfacing now? And where was it traveling to with such speed, even though time and space both meant nothing here?

The calling.

It appeared again, stronger now. A voice that reached through eternity. A pale ember ignited, and the soul felt a pull that urged it to make haste. The emotions swelled, and it continued on its journey, hesitation forgotten. Faster…. faster….

WHAM

A wall. Invisible and formless—an unbreachable barrier. The calling came from beyond.

The soul grew restless. The emotions that had fueled its impulsive journey didn’t dull, however, but grew stronger the longer it delayed.

What was that wall to deny it leave?

It swelled, growing in size in an attempt to force its way through. That didn’t work. It pooled against the wall like putty. It shrunk then, hoping to slip through the cracks, but there weren’t any to be found. No way around. No way through.

Yet the soul was not resigned. The calling had come from the other side, so perhaps it could send a call of its own. The soul focused the will within itself, seeking out the strongest emotion that would be able to permeate this barrier. It was a jumbled mess within, every vile instinct clamoring to be heard and released. The soul suppressed and examined all of them in turn, seeking the one that screamed the loudest.

Then it found it.

Hatred.

Bubbling, writhing, screaming hate. It rose up from within, devouring the rest of its noisy brethren in flames. As it did, it grew purer, forming an unprecedented, undiluted malice.

Even as the rest of its body began to evaporate from the heat of its own wrath—which in this realm is an incompatible emotion—the soul fought to focus and send that hatred outwards, through the impenetrable. The very realm of the dead itself seemed to help it along, wishing to remove this resilient emotion by any means necessary. Through, that hatred went. Ignoring the space of that barrier, it didn’t puncture any walls, but simply moved through without a ripple.

Past the wall, it traveled into the None. Through the None it went, until it finally tore through the thin veil enveloping the realm where the calling had originated. But this force was the soul’s hatred, not the soul itself, and the nearly sentient streak of spite somehow knew that it couldn’t survive without the rest of its Self.

But now a path had been made. A tunnel from one realm to another—not something that could be calculated in terms of miles or time.

The soul, still trapped behind the wall, now realized that the act of expelling its hate had made it lose all of its power to move independently. The wrath had been spent, leaving behind an empty husk without the ambition or ability to act.

But the path remained. And the universe wasn’t happy with it.

A rumbling came from the outer reaches of reality. A terrible roaring grew closer and closer as space rippled and undulated to accommodate it. The path distorted as this roaring neared, the edges becoming indistinct and blurry just as a powerful suction came from the opposite end. The soul, helpless, was sucked in just before this furious retribution could destroy the tunnel.

The lost soul hurtled through the blazing pathway at speeds beyond comprehension.

Hot.

The sensation of heat. Somehow, despite being senseless, it could feel that. But this was not the heat of fire, nor that of hot iron on flesh. It was the heat of the mind.

Through the vastness it twisted and churned, all the while the heat grew ever greater. As the soul passed through this pathway its hatred had forged, a blazing imprint was Branded onto it. The pathway had reached an understanding with the very wrath that was etched into the nature of the cosmos.

Wrath. The cardinal sin.

The ruling evil.

But do not good men act out of anger? A moment’s fury can lead to drastic consequences, but what of hatred? If anger is a force of chaos, causing irreparable damage given the right circumstances, then what of enmity and malice?

The enmity that fuels wrath. The malice that is the source of all strife. This is Hatred, that which seeps into bone and flesh, leading man away from brighter paths.

And this lost soul, burning with such a Hatred, shattered the boundary of death and emerged again in the realm of the living.

Amidst the great emptiness, it found home.

Unknown entity has entered the realm of Eogan. Measuring entity.

ERROR

Specifications do not match any known objects. 61% match with known <Branded> entities. Entity will be classified as such.

You have received the <Brand of Wrath>.

High above this vast realm, at the outer reaches of the atmosphere, something shimmered. It was small, roughly two feet across and completely unnoticeable to the unaided eye. This phenomenon lasted for only a moment before stopping. Then, something transparent blasted out from it like a meteor, piercing the clouds beneath without disturbing them. Not a single living thing noticed this event.

Where was it? So much closer than before… it could feel the source now. But where? It must focus.

The ghostly thing descended until it reached a blue shimmering expanse. Then, it shot forward. It flew across the surface of the ocean at a blinding pace. It eventually reached the shore, flying past the sandy dunes into the wide plains that lay beyond. Then, it passed a great forest. Deep in the distance, what had been indistinct before now loomed out of the sky as if it had always been there: a mountain range. At this distance, they were merely a slightly darker shade of blue than the paler sky above them. It was impossible to estimate their height, but as the spirit drew closer, it became clearer how monstrous the mountains were. Though the forest had long since given way to grassy fields, and signs of human habitation had become more prominent with villages and towns occasionally whizzing by, the mountains hadn’t grown larger, remaining hazy and indistinct with distance. The flat fields slowly turned into a series of hillocks, and then hills. The hills grew into mountains, and the mountains into behemoths. Yet with all this, the sky-shattering peaks beyond still mocked it, barely having grown at all.

They were like worlds unto themselves.

After a long time, the sun dropped below, and the soul entered the Shadow of the Mountains. The world was plunged into an early night. The formerly phantasmal figure of the spirit changed. When the light vanished, it seemed to gain substance and form, its outline appearing almost like a human. The head, where the face would be on a human, was a blur, but it was clear that it had become more whole.

After traveling for some time more, it stopped without warning.

Here. It was here.

It plunged downwards, into the fog-covered ground below. As it fell, the air became thicker. As the spirit passed through the lowest layer of clouds, a mountain valley was revealed. The sides were precariously steep, giving this basin the appearance of a deep and inescapable chasm.

It was a desolate place. Mist clung to the ground in patches. What few trees that grew here were twisted and blackened, their ugly branches still sporting a few ash-colored leaves. Grass and vegetation was sparse. A river threaded through the bottom of the valley, but like the rest of the place, it looked foul and polluted.

Stones also dotted the landscape sporadically. Most of them were small, but there were several mountainous boulders larger than skyscrapers scattered around with no rhyme or reason, as if the hand of some primordial titan had dropped them where they lay.

But none of these things were what stood out the most. Amongst the rocks and trees, by the river and in the slim stretches of grassland, there were signs of human habitation. Small villages of stone and wooden huts, a few dirt roads, and many dead fields were scattered about, following a river that wound through the valley. Smoke spiraled up from several of the areas where these buildings clustered, making it clear that something had just happened to them recently, fires spreading no one had been able or willing to extinguish.

This was it. This place contained the voice of that which called out to him, who had been drifting aimlessly in the realm of the dead.

The spirit flew closer to the ground, impatient to find the reason for its presence here. Soon, it saw shapes moving along the ruins. There were hundreds of them... things that, from a distance, appeared to be humans but for their slow and shambling gait. Once they came into view it became clear that these humans were anything but.

Yellow eyes. Pale white flesh covered in gaping wounds.

These figures were the dead.

On the edge of a field nearby, two of the corpses, moving sluggishly, nearly ran into each other. One of them suddenly turned on its fellow and lurched forward, jaws latching onto the other's neck. The victim clawed at its attacker, but the efforts were futile. The other ripped and tore at its victim until it stopped moving, giving it one last shake before proceeding to devour its rotting flesh.

Elsewhere, similar scenes were playing out. The mindless corpses wandered around until they bumped into one another, when they would then fight and eat one-another. Some actively hunted others. One or two living humans were seen, fleeing through empty fields, pursued by ghastly hunters. This valley was the host of a macabre celebration.

The specter that flew above the valley took only a passing notice of these things. Its mind was consumed by its urgent desire.

Need it. Where? Find it—find it.

The call indeed came from this valley of death, but it was not the valley that the spirit sought. There was something else, something that itched at its hatred-filled consciousness. It was waiting.

Then, it heard something. A whisper carried on the wind. A lamentation.

It followed the sound, which led it to the center of the valley. Here, the air seemed to grow impossibly thick. It pushed the soul, threatening to sweep it away.

Nestled underneath one of the great stones not far from the river was a simple wooden hut. The door was cracked open, and it was through that doorway that the spirit heard the crying. It entered the house.

Before it was a confusing scene. The floor was bare, all the furnishings pushed aside to make room for patterns that had been drawn onto the wooden surface. A great circle dominated the interior of the cottage. Hundreds of complex runes were held within it. In the very center of the circle sat a hooded and robed figure with long and unkempt black hair that shrouded her face. Hands covered up her eyes, giving her the appearance of a grief-stricken widow.

The soul, upon seeing a burial shroud that covered a body in the rear of the room, forgot everything else. In a moment, it had crossed the room and was hovering over the shroud.

Here. Here it was. Whatever lay beneath that shroud was what it sought. In one swift movement, it sunk beneath the veil.

A few moments passed, and the body twitched.

There was a tearing sound as the shroud slowly split down the middle. A monster that couldn’t be called beautiful slowly sat up. It had gray, stretched skin. It was shriveled, as if it had been dead for a long time in a dry environment. Some scraps of dark hair still clung to its cranium, and its eyes, which may have once been bright and animated, were now sunken and lifeless, though a dull yellow gleam came out.

There was a sizzling sound, and the smell of burning flesh spread through the air. The mourning woman on the floor lifted her head. Standing before her was a corpse. A thin strand of smoke curled upwards from his forehead. Emblazoned by fire was a sinister Brand that glowed with a red gleam—a circle with two crescent moons attached to either side, facing outwards like the horns of a bull.

Even as the woman watched, the Brand began to fade.

The woman spoke up in a hoarse voice barely more than a whisper.

“Are you him? Are you my Lord of Death? I prayed for deliverance, you know. And they sent me you.”

The ghoul looked down, and upon seeing her face, paused. The eyes that looked at him were like two deep wells of eternity, darker than the deepest pits of hell. And in them burned that same hatred which inundated his own spirit.

He knelt, slowly and awkwardly, his knees hitting the floor as he lowered his head in subservience. This was his mistress. He knew it intuitively. This was the one who had called him here.

A string of characters flickered into existence before his eyes as he stared downwards. After entering this dead body, his thinking became much more sluggish than it had been when he was a spirit. He was unable to make any sense of these characters. Whatever they might have meant, it didn’t matter anyway. What mattered now were his orders.

“Rise, ghoul.”

He rose.

“Go and devour.”

Brand recognized.

Race: <Lesser Ghoul>

Level: 1

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