Deep Sea Embers

Chapter 717: Fracture

In the expansive hall, light and shadow played a perplexing dance, merging and then fracturing into myriad shards that shimmered like an ethereal mosaic. The great device that had dominated the end of the hall shattered into fragments, each piece a mirror of light and shadow. Once grand and solid, the scene crumbled, revealing the dim, more mundane reality of a cave. The transformation was so swift and complete that it seemed like a fleeting illusion, a chaotic and transient projection from another dimension intersecting with their own.

Yet Duncan, with a certainty that bordered on the surreal, knew what he had witnessed was real. He could still perceive it, even now.

His eyes roved over the cave’s shadowy depths, blinking deliberately. He had glimpsed an alternate vision with each rapid closure of his eyelids, a fraction of a second in duration. In these fleeting moments of darkness, the grand hall reappeared as though playing peek-a-boo with reality.

Slowly, a realization dawned on Duncan. Two distinct realities were superimposed in this hallowed space beneath the sacred island. The deeper layer of “reality,” typically invisible to normal perception, revealed itself in the briefest intervals of a blink, lasting just 0.002 seconds.

He was convinced it was the exact length of time the hall appeared with each blink — a span almost undetectable to the human eye, yet long enough to imprint upon his senses.

Duncan’s attention then shifted to the wall relief beside him. In the moment of his next blink, a strikingly lifelike image of an avian creature appeared within a specimen containment jar, only for darkness to flood in once more, altering reality. The image morphed back into the wall relief, now a sinister depiction of a “death crow.”

Alice, noticing the sudden gravity in Duncan’s demeanor, expressed her concern. “Captain? Are you alright… Your expression suddenly turned so serious…”

Duncan spoke softly, his voice tinged with revelation. “…LH-01 didn’t manage to transfer everything in the database to the shelter. Some entities that failed to materialize during the creation process remained at their initial ‘hatching ground’,” he explained. “…This ‘shelter’ was intended to be much larger, more perfect, but it failed…”

“There’s another layer to this place, how it was before the Great Annihilation… but it’s beyond our normal senses,” Duncan said, his hand gently pressing against the stone wall beside him. As a faint green spirit fire crept into the crevices, he sensed his touch bridging more than just the cold stones. “Two realities are overlapping here, but the original one has been nearly entirely consumed by the Great Annihilation, only briefly resurfacing with each blink.”

Morris struggled to grasp the extraordinary concept Duncan was describing, while Duncan himself looked toward the deeper reaches of the cave.

“There should be a ‘contact point’ here,” Duncan stated gravely. “Those cultists must have interacted with something in this spot.”

With these words, he stepped forward into the gloom, the faint green flame spreading slowly in his wake, moving towards the end of the “hall.”

Morris and Alice, without hesitation, followed their captain’s lead, delving deeper into the mysterious cave.

…

Dog, appearing exhausted and despondent, trudged alongside Shirley with his head hanging low. The faint, intermittent red glow in his eyes flickered like a dying ember while the sound of his chains scraping against the ground seemed to fade into a distant, almost surreal echo. As he plodded forward, he eventually, though somewhat belatedly, lifted his head, only to realize that Shirley had advanced significantly ahead of him. Her figure appeared blurred and unstable at the edges as if she were being overlaid by something intangible and fluctuating.

Shaking his head as if to clear it, Dog’s mind, which had momentarily seemed hollow and incapable of thought, suddenly snapped back into focus. He found himself closely tailing Shirley once again as if the scene of them being apart was nothing but a fleeting, bizarre illusion that had vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Sensing something amiss, Shirley glanced down in confusion and noticed Dog beside her.

A prickling pain shot through her arm, accompanied by a searing sensation that coursed through the symbiotic chain connecting them. It was reminiscent of freshly spilled blood.

“Dog?” she uttered, hesitating. She wasn’t sure if she had spoken out loud or merely called to him through the symbiotic link in her heart.

Dog remained silent, unresponsive. Shirley’s ears picked up only two distinct sounds, “thump,” “thump,” resembling a heartbeat.

An unsettling realization dawned on Shirley. Something was terribly wrong, though she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

“Captain! Something’s wrong with Dog…” she called out.

But there was no response, no sign of the captain. In the dark cave, her voice echoed back to her, morphing into a distorted, unrecognizable sound. The captain, Morris, and Alice were nowhere to be seen. It was as if, from the beginning, it had only been her and Dog in this place.

Shirley inhaled sharply, a cold breath of realization. The immense, oppressive darkness around her morphed into an even greater, more palpable fear — a fear that felt hauntingly familiar. She thought she had buried this bone-deep terror long ago, but now, it resurfaced abruptly in her mind: images of fire, smoke, the metallic taste of blood, the sound of structures collapsing, something sinister gnawing at her flesh…

Wide-eyed in the dark, she felt bony structures slowly emerging from her arms, shoulders, and spine. The red glow in her eyes intensified, distorting her vision. In this warped perception, she heard an unfamiliar, chilling voice coming from beside her. “Shirley… I feel… a bit cold…”

Slowly, she turned towards the source of the voice.

There, she saw Dog, undergoing a horrifying transformation. He was sinking into the soil and rocks as if melting away. His body was gradually being swallowed by the ground, which seemed to pulse and ripple with life like a sea of thick, slow-moving waves. Within these ripples, teeming with what appeared to be billions of living creatures, Dog’s form was being consumed. First his limbs, then his torso, and now only his neck and part of his head remained visible above the undulating surface.

“Dog!!!” Shirley’s mind, previously numb and disoriented, suddenly snapped into action. The name ‘Dog’ echoed in her mind, reminding her of the entity at the other end of the chain. She surged forward towards the increasingly restless ground, gripping the chain connected to her arm with all her might. “Dog! I’ll pull you out! Just hold on!” she shouted desperately.

But her valiant efforts seemed futile against the inexorable pull of the viscous ground. As Dog’s head neared complete submersion in the mud, a hauntingly familiar voice reached Shirley’s ears.

“…Shirley, your dad and I are going to buy you a cake, today is your birthday… When we come back, you won’t be mad anymore, okay?”

The voice jolted Shirley, sending a shockwave through her already fragile state of mind.

The words, emanating from the other end of the chain, momentarily fractured her sanity. In that brief lapse of reason, she heard a crisp snapping sound.

Suddenly, the weight on her hand vanished entirely into the mud. The forceful tug at the end of the chain ceased abruptly, causing Shirley to stumble backward.

As she watched, the other end of the chain emerged from the mud, snapped and broken. At its end, there was no sign of Dog. Instead, two fist-sized objects were flung out of the mud, landing beside her with a dull thud.

They pulsed and quivered on the ground as if imbued with life.

They were two hearts.

Shirley gazed at the scene, her body rigid, immobilized as if she had been turned to stone.

The pitch-black mud around her began to stir ominously, coalescing from all directions. It seemed to conjure visions of a distant, alien land populated by grotesque, sinister shadows floating eerily about.

In the profound depths of the sea, an array of demonic entities took notice of an unexpected intruder nearing their realm.

And in a more remote darkness, a colossal structure lay dormant. Its main body sprawled across the shattered landscape like a mountain range. Tentacles originating from this behemoth ensnared countless floating islands, their surfaces pulsating with a dark blue glow. Demons, born upon these tentacles, were ceaselessly spawned and devoured.

Yet Shirley seemed oblivious to these looming, nightmarish visions. She remained seated on the ground, dazed, for a prolonged moment before slowly standing up. She crawled towards the two still-throbbing hearts and gingerly picked them up, cradling them in her arms as if they were precious.

She hadn’t held them for a long time.

“Dad… Mom…”

As darkness engulfed the area, Shirley’s figure vanished into the depths of the deep sea, swallowed by the impenetrable gloom.

…

With a sudden sense of urgency, Duncan sharply turned his head towards a clearing not too far behind them.

There, a vague figure shimmered momentarily, like a phantom image, before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Instantly, Duncan’s mind raced to a troubling conclusion. “Something’s happened to Shirley!”

Hearing this, Morris, who had been trailing Duncan, was jolted from his focus. For a brief moment, it seemed as though the name “Shirley” was alien to him, and the captain’s words acted like a key, unlocking and reorienting his memory back to the right context. He then looked up in delayed realization, noting that one member of their party – along with one shadow demon – was conspicuously absent.

“Hey! She was just walking beside me!” Alice, too, came to a sudden realization. Her eyes widened in alarm as she scanned the area where Shirley and Dog had just been. “I even heard her talking to Dog…”

Duncan’s face grew stern and serious: “None of you noticed when she disappeared?”

Both Morris and Alice could only respond with shakes of their heads, indicating their unawareness of the situation.

With a deep frown etching his face, Duncan didn’t waste another moment in contemplation. He swiftly swung his hand through the air, executing a decisive gesture.

In the blink of an eye, faint green ghostly flames erupted, followed by a series of explosive sounds that roared through the cave. The flames spiraled outwards like a tempest, reaching every corner of their surroundings with ferocious intensity.

These roaring flames seemed to challenge the very nature of space-time around them. The entire cave, and even the sacred island itself, shook violently in response to this nearly dimension-altering disturbance. After this seismic event, Duncan’s expression had grown notably darker.

“The marks on Shirley and Dog are still there,” he stated, lifting his head to look gravely at Morris. His voice carried a weight of concern and urgency, “…but they’ve separated.”