A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”— A Man Said to the Universe, by Stephen Crane

  So familiar and so dreadful to return again to a place of Amun’s demise, and he had done this so many times. So familiar, so dreadful. Everything he had carried with him up to this point, all the knowledge and all the preparation he may have had—even now, upon the precipice of finality, he was still so mortal and fighting off the doubt of whether or not it was going to be enough. Did he have the sand and stones?

  He looked at his former nemesis, the weapon of Hastur (so the Yellow thing had thought! Har). Amun surveyed Adrestia, taking her in for just a moment, weighing her. The woman plucked from the garden stood her ground and took in the barren, hellscape of Carcosa. She shifted and tested her gravity in the silty dust under her feet. She looked not at the warlock, but at the twisted and alien cyclopean terrain cradling them.

  The high ridge all around was an echo of the Laconian spire’s theater aloft, where the Choir would sing to their gods, but this was on a much larger scale. Familiar and dreadful, it was as if they had both been fed to the maw of a yawning beast named there as Carcosa. The consumer of Hastur’s enemies, Carcosa. Adrestia pondered while spying for her former patron: if the dust underfoot was so much debris of the conquered and the consumed, was Carcosa a great gathering of entropic remains? It was akin to Abe’s furnace, but this felt like death and finality, not the mud of beginnings as the childe had found. She searched for him, but there was too much distortion…Abe was present, she could sense—safe for now, but muffled, as if drowning, yelling to her and Amun even now, but under so much water. She could not understand, she could only hear him, and she had to choose which to address: the childe Architect or assist Amun (odd as that intuition hummed to her) against Hastur. She kept her footing and met the warlock’s gaze at a glance, conveying quickly that she was with him.

  Was it a tactical mistake?

  There was a hum in the stillness, not similar to the vibrations of Gaia’s realm; this was a hum of absolute stillness and vacuum, the song of entropy, quiet and silent so deep and strong that its undertow only meant to pull sanity deeper into its sour depths. A dreaded well so familiar, a dark place all souls possess and oft do not dare drink from its sour waters. Some do, though.

  There was movement in the distance, though no wind, no natural pressure against the cheek. The silt and sand across a great distance danced. The gentle movement swirled and gained momentum out there, and the two watched the eerie Sufi dervish go. It was mesmerizing. As the twist reached higher and higher, the tip towered over the two—dipping that finger into the cosmos. The night above yielded, and it became hard to comprehend.

  There were stars there in the fingertip sky, but to see the dark pull against this whirly-dance boggled their heads, the night stretched in on it and swirled together like cream into tea, but full of stars, be they young or old, and the dead waste of the planet, Carcosa.

  “He comes,” Amun said to his compatriot, “still yourself.” The warlock was kindled and poised, his scars and sigils lit with the iridescent eldritch power he held—had indeed been holding this whole time, playing possum for the auction. “Adrestia, my foci, please.”

  She snapped herself away from the sand’s dance macabre, thankful to have her attention diverted, if but for a moment. She acted on the request and took the curved family dagger from her belt. Handing a weapon dipped in the ether back to the old prey felt queer, but it felt right. He contacted the metal, and in a slip gesture of his other hand gave her a leaf. A simple leaf, green and felt-like on the inside; this token was rich with life and a beautiful contrast against the dead grey of Carcosa. She knew this eld plant; it was Gaia.

  “Keep her safe. She is with us, even here. Should you fall, she may renew you. I pray it not on this carcass planet, that she plant you back in her soils, cradled in her vine.” Adrestia held the perfect leaf and felt something return. Though not the shade, her heartbeat steady and calm in the face of oblivion. She smiled in the curious respite, knowing that a portion of Gaia was close.

  Hastur's arrival was more than the mere manifestation of an eldritch being; it was an affront to the stability of existence itself. The storm’s appearance did not shift from the shadows as others might. Instead, it unfurled like an ancient, malignant bloom, rising from the distorted silt of Carcosa in a wave of unspeakable gravity that struck out emotionally, psionically, and physically. A sweeping yellow robe, tattered and regal, billowed and moved with a sentience all its own, trailing not like silk but like a hemorrhaging of lightless mists that draped over the unnatural landscape. Beneath these tatters were glimpses of things that defied reason: a shifting multitude of eyes that blinked in and out of sync, each pupil holding a depthless, seething void.

  The air vibrated as if torn by the collective screams of those who had once gazed into such recesses in folly. Reality quivered under the weight; the very horizon shivered and bent, as though Carcosa itself bowed to the dread arrival. Lines that had once marked the landscape became blurred, folding and twisting like reflections in a disturbed pond. The concept of range warped, stretching and compressing in nauseating surges, making focus a Sisyphean task. Spellcraft would be most difficult under the assailing forces.

  The gravity attack betrayed the senses, pummeling sensitive mortal jellies, pulling in irregular pulses, as if the ground itself hesitated to remain beneath one’s feet. A pressure mounted behind the eyes and in the hollows of the skull, a sensation of sinuses filling with liquid lead, hot and sickly, each throb of pain a drumbeat heralding the loss of coherence. Breathing felt labored, as though the air was too thick or too sparse in alternating moments, leaving lungs to clutch at an intangible imbalance.

  The Yellow King lingered with an unnerving grace, a glide that denied friction and confounded perception, the pattern of sky and Carcosa intertwined. Its Lord need not tread the dead sands of Carcosa but instead commanded them, twisting each grain to his will, shifting and rising in spectral waves that pulsed like living tissue. His robe flared, trailing whispers in forgotten tongues, each syllable a knife-edge of sanity’s undoing. His dwelling was his great weapon, and it yielded to his arrival.

  Amun yelled defiantly in hopes to bolster Adrestia (as well as his own girding). Sound warped too, drawn inward and stuttering. Moments of silence would descend in sudden bursts, only for a cacophony of mournful wails to echo between those dead intervals—a mournful chorus announcing his arrival, the cadence stolen from the forgotten and cursed song. It was the chant that announced doom, woven from a fabric older than light itself.

  And then there was the sense of time. It did not progress here; it staggered. Thoughts stumbled over themselves, looping back in fragments. What had been a moment ago felt like an age, and what was now seemed to have already passed. The mind clawed for linearity, but the presence of Hastur denied it, made it recoil in stutters of comprehension. A mental skip, a dissonance in which the soul could find no purchase. Amun’s previous evisceration in this place, the trauma clawed at him.

  Hastur’s form shifted subtly, and with each movement, perception splintered anew. Senses became unreliable—the sight fractured, sound echoed falsely, touch registered nothing but a chilling void. The world bled sideways, and the mere act of standing became a battle against the tilt of reality’s slanting plane. Here, where Hastur held dominion, existence itself was an illusion waiting to fray.

  The presence of Hastur was a plague upon stability, a gnawing truth that spoke of a universe’s indifference: the reminder that even the gods had shadows, and within those shadows, sanity did not dare tread.

  Finding courage, Amun firmed his tone, “Hastur ambushed me once. The yellow prick did not expect me to lear…”

  Before the warlock could finish, otherworldly celerity hurled the Yellow King from the uncanny distant tempest, covering the expanse in an instant, spindles of dust arching like threaded needles all reaching for Amun. Amun, who had readied his defenses, shot the eldritch wave in a cutting arch, nullifying the spindly darts but not evading the predatory pounce of Hastur.

  “Dead once and to remain so dead and gone this time, warlock.” The air hissed a shapely noise of these words all around Carcosa. The voice of Hastur was everywhere, in every particle of that dead density, his seat of power. He began to easily lift the old pact fiend from his footing, had the dagger not sprung out, stabbing deep between the long fleshy radius and ulna. The necrotic grasp was severed from Amun, the warlock rolled away, giving Adrestia room to enter the fray.

  Adrestia, more nimble than the others, had her long blades ready, the curves of the vorpal metals finding contact with Hastur’s back and flank, where she thought he wouldn’t see. The weapons found their mark, but it was familiar in how it moved in the cuts. The Yellow King was dressed in robes made up of the shade she had been severed from and abandoned for the childe. It moved around the cuts from her weapons in waves of independent will…and looked at her.

  Too many eyes were in the shadows and gaps under that cloth. No undead corpse rot was Hastur, just too many eyes under and around the robe. Before she looked away, the gaze of her former shade sapped her will. All she felt was falling.

  Amun came up from the roll and had managed to keep the dagger in his gnarled hand. Adrestia had given him a chance, and he had to keep Hastur see-sawing and indecisive between his two opponents; it was one of their few advantages. The warlock saw the robes assaulting her psyche; they had her in the glow-light stare that had to be avoided at all costs. There was no shine in that void. Your eyes searched for the depths of fathoms while your body and soul would drown. He had to save her from it, and he would sacrifice something so dear.

  The neck pouch snapped, and he grasped a handful of Vanessa’s remains—salt and sands. He took a handful and flung it at hundreds of slimy peepers under that damn, Hastur’s clothes. The shriek from it all was most rewarding as he tackled Adrestia away from the line of sight.

  He roughly shook her a bit, bringing her out of the trance, “Be at the ready! We have but one chance at this, and I need you now!” Adrestia choked in a breath. How long had she not breathed in the gaze of the robes? Hastur writhed in pain from the sacred salts of Vanessa’s sacrifice, but it wouldn’t last. Amun, blind but clearly navigating all that was around, looked from Hastur and back to her. “You must buy me precious time.”

  Facing her master, Adrestia had renewed strength and would not suffer that craft again. The small, forearm-fitted crossbow was readied in a flick from under her vambrace. She took the green, vial dart from her hip, not even needing to look at it, all feral muscle memory. The huntress, at a run, fired the vial dart and hit the crown at the bony brow. The dart burst in Attor’s mists, acidic and chlorinated. Though she doubted Hastur breathed, she wanted him to burn a bit longer to close the gap. The mist also happened to be flammable, if she could build enough time to…to what? What was the old man’s plan?

  Switching up her tactic, she taunted her former lord, “One so great, blisters and peels just fine, great Hastur!” He whirled on her, nails on enormous hands each a jagged scythe, missing wildly. She deftly maneuvered with a jump back, her spring taking her well out of melee range so she could bait another provoked spell from him… She readied another crossbow dart on the landing, remaining low.

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  Hastur’s arms reached and hurled the cold fire in a stream at her, the image of a torrent of skulls flying toward her. “That’s it, all those eyes on me,” she thought as she sprinted out from the crouch, evading the stream of energy spraying from the Oduum’s envoy.

  Amun had to trust her now, had to give Adrestia the opportunity to distract the godling. Amun had a final atrocity to enact on the dead moon. In this space, far from home, Amun could see his beloved Lacon there, so beautiful and so worthy. He sang his bivocal rumbling thuum, not averting his intent from that verdant gem swimming in the cosmos,

  “I create from chaos, yet I am unmoved.”

  He planted his boots to the firmament. Gritted his jaw and appreciated the grounding ache familiar there. The robe slipped from his shoulders, and he was there, defiantly, as the childe of nine again, intent on setting his will upon his chosen Path. So long ago, yet the time rhymed until he got it right. He had to get it right this time.

  “I stand in the storm, where shadows pulse and twist, where the noise and the gnashing frenzy into something raw, primal. I do not flinch.”

  Sigils surged with the song, tensed musculature underneath his battle-scarred flesh, flexed. His ancestral thuum continued, “I am the sculptor, hands stained in the ink of the abyss, each movement deliberate, each breath an anchor in the howling dark.

  “Order won’t come on its own accord, it waits, a patient specter, for the bold to call it, forge it, to form sanity from the shriek of entropy. And though the maelstrom bites at the edge of thought,”

  The family dagger was out, and even with Adrestia’s war cries accompanying his song, he kept his focus on Lacon. The blade severed the remaining tether, he cuts himself deeply, the blood his bond to the land he loves, there at the umbilicus. Should he die this day, he would not return to the coil. No leaf, no safety rope—all descent into chaos.

  “Yet, I remain, unmoved, commanding chaos to heel.I know the dance, not as a victim, but as creator, crafting meaning from the rattle of ruin.”

  Palm raised to their beloved home, he began to siphon the continuum. His thuum trailed into silence as the final note of his incantation reached the void, the sound swallowed by the weight of Carcosa’s ambiance. The air around him grew thick with shimmering, iridescent light, the very essence of Lacon’s continuum streaming forth in a stream of impossible color. His body, battered and scarred by lifetimes of battle and knowledge, now pulsed with raw, uncontainable power. The sigils carved into his flesh flared brilliantly, the lines and curves—so many wards—achingly trying to retain the force of it all, each line cracking open to reveal glistening, spectral veins beneath. It was a sight both magnificent and grotesque—the rows of craft, the bodily grimoire, bursting at his seams.

  The air hummed with a frequency that pressed against the mind, rattling thought into incoherent fragments. Amun’s eyes, clouded yet filled with a resolute calm, shed the tears of finality. His lips curled into a faint smile, serene amidst the chaos engulfing him.

  The first spectral strip tore free from his shoulder, luminous and ephemeral, like a ribbon made of condensed stardust. He watched with his elevated sight as it floated on an unseen current before being drawn toward Adrestia, wrapping itself around her like a blessing of fate itself. Then another strip followed, and another, peeling from his body in rhythmic succession. Each piece carried the essence of Lacon—the collective memory of its landscapes, its histories, the songs of its people, and the undying hope that clung to its battered soul. The strips shimmered as they bound to Adrestia’s form, merging with her essence and weaving into the sinew of her spirit.

  Adrestia knew the difference between an act of violence versus whatever this craft was that landed on her from her compatriot. She sensed finality but power in the boon. The threat of Hastur upsetting Amun’s craft was too great; she must pull hard on the vine lasso and keep the spectral deity grounded!

  “NO!” Hastur averted from the volley of fiery rain toward Adrestia’s direction. She squatted behind a mound of stone, taking cover from the assault. She had taken a few hits but had delivered tenfold on the menace. She whipped out from the shelter, having weathered the firestorm smoldering a bit, hooked flail sending forth the long barbs into the tattered robe. She called for the strength of the terra, the bedrock of Lacon, to hold her footing, yanking the elemental of entropy back to her. She called for Gaia’s grasp, complete and encompassing in vine and trunk, holding him back from Amun and whatever the wily warlock was up to.

  Amun's body trembled as the ritual reached its fever pitch, yet his expression remained one of peace. The latticework of energy that consumed him was a dance of dissolution, a sacrament that unraveled him thread by thread. His arms, now translucent, extended outward in an almost cruciform gesture, embracing his end as the culmination of every decision, every betrayal, every scar he had borne. The pain was excruciating, yet transcendent—a burning release that lifted the weight of existence from his soul.

  Like an entombed pharaoh, so many wraps, so much time given to lives lived and died, failures that brought new opportunities to learn, knowing in an echo’s remnant that this must go on, the pursuit of knowledge no matter the cost, no matter the supposed heresy, would all culminate at a final point as lovely as this. An apex, a triumph of sorts, for it had been a long journey here indeed.

  As the last remnants of him disbanded, a sigh escaped his lips, more an exhalation of spirit than breath. His final expression was not of agony but of profound relief, a release into the latticework of his own making. The spectral threads dissolved into Adrestia, brightening her form until she glowed with the entire continuum of Lacon, a vessel transformed by the sacrifice of one who had given all.

  With a flicker and a whisper to Abe, “the cycle has ended and so does fear. Gods, it is full of stars,” Amun was gone—scattered into the light that now enveloped Adrestia, his essence bound to her as an eternal echo. The silence that followed was both harrowing and reverent, as if the universe itself had paused to witness the martyrdom of the warlock who had defied even gods for the sake of hope.

  Amun’s form was gone, and Adrestia was renewed.

  Lord Hastur was bound to her, stuck to his Carcosa, pinned, but for a moment.

  Lacon had been stripped; its citizens would mourn the loss of the continuum. Things would dim and lose luster. Their minds would calcify a bit, but they would go on.

  Adrestia would give the Oduum what they were migrating back for; they would search for their meal no matter where it lay. She gleamed of stars and suns, the pearlescent flows around her limbs shone undeniably epic. She was new again, wrought of the Architect’s design, poised and deadly.

  She turned to the one who had hijacked her ascension when she was most vulnerable there in the hollows—cowardice. She faced a fear that was praised by those greasy yellow monks on that night, their hungry hands taking of her what they willed, for his worship, vile. She would purge this festering sore that held sway over existence, a false judge. She would give the inevitable Oduum their meal.

  The cry she emitted was high and beautiful; she held the warrior’s pose, arms outstretched, and exhaled it all. Amun’s ribbons that had grafted to her lit in azure and blinding day in that dark Carcosa. The beam bore upon Hastur, coating the creature, imbuing him absolutely with the entirety of Lacon’s continuum, its histories, its triumphs, and the deaths that mortared so many stones in building a legacy. All dumped into this dark being, coating, energizing, and creating a great beacon, so bright.

  It drew a greater being's attention. Hastur felt madness and was inebriated in the power, not comprehending the danger looming… yet. His laughter filled the grey plains, and the jagged peaks of Carcosa chattered with it, avalanches of stormy plumes rose in his might. He didn’t understand but reveled in the force.

  Adrestia spent it all, veins standing on her skin, the effort expending all she had to sacrifice along with the enhancement of Amun’s boon. For a moment, she thought she could hear his laughter in the crescendo, not an evil wry noise, but very happy nonetheless. The torrent of energy subsided with an aftershock that blew her from her grounding. All she could think to do was to pull the leaf from her blouse and close her eyes for a while, knowing peace in that she and Amun had done what they could to this impasse.

  Hastur hovered in his glory, dumbstruck with energies that he did not understand. Entropy knew fullness, a deep crevice now filled and overflowing. Even this ancient, haggard mind needed pause to ponder the meaning.

  In Abe’s fantastic astral voyage, so terrifying, he had looked upon the Oduum. It was an effort, but the Architect could place them there now, and they were eager to feed. The absolute night above Carcosa turned its attention on their Harbinger and lusted to taste his contents. The nightline became the great eye, a great empty maw with so many baleen that would thresh the meal, and the source was the Yellow King.

  The heavens themselves seemed to darken beyond black, not with the emptiness of night but with an encroaching, visceral density. The stars, once distant witnesses to the struggle below, were consumed one by one, blinking out, vanishing as if snuffed out by an unseen lid. Silence once again swallowed Carcosa, Hastur’s madness faltered in the slow realization… even the dying embers of triumph faltered, caught in a maelstrom of mute awe.

  Then, a slow, rumbling throb, a primal subsonic more felt than heard, resonated through the land. Carcosa quaked, shifting like liquid under the immense pressure. Above, the night rippled and cracked, splitting open into a chasm of utter void—a great eye unfurling, ringed not in color but in the blackest ichor, dull and ancient, yearning for a target to consume. This was no eye of discernment or cunning; it was an eye of indifference, a cosmic being whose intellect was lost in the eons of its own incomprehensible existence. It did not see as mortals do; it absorbed, an infinite maw of perception that devoured light, thought, and continuum alike.

  Adrestia, battered and luminous with the gift and burden of Amun’s sacrifice, felt the pull before she saw it. The power binding her surged in waves, resonating like a heartbeat in her marrow, vibrating her very essence. She could feel the continuum, not just within her but reaching outward, a beacon too tempting for this colossal being to ignore. The sky quivered as the Oduum’s focus locked onto Hastur, whose form, drunk with energy, now seemed pitiable under the vast gaze.

  Hastur's eyes, those countless orbs peering from beneath the tattered yellow, widened in sudden, dawning terror. Some popped like pustules. The godling, who moments before reveled in the stolen might, now shrank as the realization clawed at his perception. The Oduum's dull intellect was slow but inexorable, an inevitability that even a being of Hastur’s ancient might could not resist. It was hunger made manifest, a celestial migration finding its feast.

  The very air felt different as the great eye continued to open, the black rim undulating like a tidal wave of void remains. Carcosa groaned in agony, its cyclopean stones bending and splintering under the immense gravitational force, as if bowing to their true lord. The silt and dust rose, drawn skyward in a swirl that danced mockingly around Hastur’s once-majestic form. The Yellow King’s robes flared in desperate resistance, thrashing like snakes, eyes blinking furiously within their folds as if seeking an escape that did not exist, panic surging within him.

  The eye loomed, impossibly vast yet curiously devoid of malice; it was simply indifferent, a migratory titan answering an ancient call, incapable of empathy or emotion. To the Oduum, Hastur was not a god to be revered or feared—merely sustenance, an ember to be snuffed and consumed.

  Adrestia, weakened but unwavering, stood as a solitary sentinel to this final act. The weight of Amun’s sacrifice thrummed in her veins, echoing in her resolve. She knew what this meant. The continuum of Lacon had been offered, and the Oduum would devour its keeper, siphoning every last ounce until nothing but whispers of what once was remained. A shiver ran through her as the massive, unknowable gaze of the Oduum shifted, registering her presence in its periphery—a brief recognition of the next possible meal.

  Hastur’s scream, raw and filled with a fury only a cornered god could muster, shattered the silence as he fled, trailing luminous contrails of power behind him. The Oduum, sluggish in intellect but absolute in purpose, rumbled and shifted, extending its tendrils of void and stardust in pursuit, a slow yet inexorable march.

  The night above Carcosa no longer resembled a sky. It had become the unfathomable, star-speckled maw of an ancient, migratory being, consuming all before it, answering the call to feast on the continuum—no matter its bearer. Glee became fright in the Yellow King’s masked face; the decaying jaw sagged and went agape in the delayed realization. Forgetting his fight, forgoing the execution of his remaining foe, his once-pawn Adrestia tossed aside. The great elemental of entropy fled, mustering newfound power as he launched Carcosa away, AWAY as quickly as it could fly him upon… the streak that produced a great comet’s tail behind him.

  The Oduum were more than indifferent to chasing a cosmic snail trail. There would be a glorious morsel at its end.

  *****

  The Architect Abe sat back from the sculpted work, not quite certain where to go next. He was working with a phantom limb, but in his young mind. He was at a loss.

  *****

  “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.” - H. P. Lovecraft