Chapter 28: A Domain of Endless Suffering

There was no thunder when he descended.

There was no sky left for it to crash from.

The Unseen arrived like a wound opening in reality—a rippling wave of absence that turned the Higher Realm to ash and silence. Even the fractured light of the realm recoiled, curling inward like dying embers. Aria staggered backward, her god-bloodied hands trembling. The aftershock of her defiance still buzzed in her chest.

She had refused the Entity.

The cycle was broken.

But something deeper stirred in the fabric of the cosmos, and that something was angry.

<You were to merge. You were to become mine.>

The voice of the Unseen came not from a mouth, but from every memory, every nerve. It was layered in screams, infinite in tone and age. It struck Aria with the force of a planet collapsing.

<You reject eternity. You defy inevitability. You dishonor the suffering that birthed you.>

Aria stood tall, bleeding divine light. “I reject you.”

The Unseen’s presence rippled in black coils through the realm, folding light and thought into suffocating shadow.

<Then you shall suffer for every life you denied me. For every soul you failed to convert into mana. Alone.>

He raised a hand—not a hand, but a cluster of starlight devoured by rot—and reality twisted.

And then he paused.

<No. Not alone.>

From beyond time, from the sanctum Aria had sealed him within, Ren was ripped from existence.

The Tearing of the Sky

Ren’s body was flung into the Higher Realm like a dying comet. He gasped, landing near Aria. Her eyes widened. She screamed, lunging for him, but space bent around the two of them. The Unseen had already almost formed the pocket dimension.

<He was the anomaly,> the Unseen murmured. <The fracture in the loop, the cause of your defiance. The one you loved.>

“Don’t you dare—”

<Then suffer with him.>

They were enveloped in darkness.

The First Cycle in the Unseen’s Domain

When Aria woke, she was in a sunlit meadow.

The grass swayed around her like a cradle of gold. Birds called from distant trees, their songs soft and familiar. A breeze touched her skin—warm, clean, real.

Ren was beside her. Laughing. Alive.

His eyes were bright with mischief, the same look he used to give her before stealing bites from her plate. He reached for her hand, and she let him. No blood. No scars. No guilt.

There was no pain.

They lived in a cottage on the edge of a quiet village, where the air always smelled like rain and bread. Days passed in soft, golden hours. Ren planted herbs. Aria wrote stories she never thought she’d live long enough to tell. At night, they held each other under open skies.

They kissed beneath trees and danced barefoot in the fields. They raced the wind and traced the stars.

They whispered dreams into each other’s mouths, promises of forever.

They spoke of names for children. Laughed about who they’d take after.

It was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

One morning, Ren’s skin began to peel in her hands—softly at first, like sunburn. Then deeper. Flaps of flesh curled back, revealing muscle, then bone. He didn’t notice.

The sun bled across the sky like an open wound. The wind began to scream.

The laughter in the village turned to howls. Faces collapsed into skulls. Eyes fell from sockets like rotten fruit. Aria ran, but the streets warped beneath her feet—flesh instead of stone, throbbing, gasping.

Ren clutched her wrists, sobbing.

"Aria, please—don’t let me die again."

His voice was wrong. Wet. Hollow.

She tried to hold him, but her hands passed through his ribs.

He was unraveling. And so was she.

The perfect life twisted into chains.

Their house shrank into a coffin of blades.

The fields blackened. The air curdled.

Her memories caught fire.

She screamed as her body split open, threads of herself pulled in opposite directions.

Ren’s voice cracked and warped until it was shrieking static, scraping across her skull.

And then—

they died.

Together.

And Then Again

She awoke in a garden.

Ren was there. Smiling. The pain gone.

He didn’t remember. But she did.

She knew it would happen again. And it did.

Over and over.

They lived lifetimes of peace. Then the peace unraveled. Flesh ripped. Time burned. Children screamed into her womb then were torn apart. Ren was crucified in the sky. Her own bones sang dirges of pain.

Aria could do nothing to stop it.

They died.

And woke.

Again.

They had children. Two. A boy and a girl.

The boy had Ren’s quiet eyes. The girl had Aria’s voice when she laughed.

They lived in a quiet house on a hill. Ren painted. Aria sang. Their children played in fields of stars.

One night, their daughter didn’t come home.

They searched.

They found her body nailed to the moon.

Their son turned into ash before their eyes.

Aria collapsed, clutching her face. But it wasn’t her face anymore. It had melted into the Entity’s. Ren tried to scream but his mouth was stitched shut.

And then the knives came—falling like rain, slicing their joy into ribbons.

Aria was blind. Ren was mute.

But they were together.

They communicated through touch, pressing words into each other’s skin.

They lived in a city of light. No war. No gods. Just peace.

Until the world began whispering.

Walls bled. The streets screamed. The stars turned to eyes.

Aria tried to cover her ears but found no hands.

Ren held her. Then exploded into a thousand crawling spiders.

She ran.

The spiders followed.

They gnawed her open.

She was reborn, again.

By this point, Aria had long since forgotten herself.

Ren was a teacher.

Aria was a florist.

They met during a spring thunderstorm, their hands brushing over a fallen umbrella. It was so ordinary, it felt sacred.

They married beneath silver clouds. Every morning, he made her tea. Every night, she placed a flower by his pillow.

They never had children. Just each other.

Until, one day, she opened her mouth to say his name—

—and her tongue fell out.

Ren tried to run, but his legs turned into chains that dragged him into the ground.

She tried to follow, screaming soundlessly.

But her skin flayed away in petals of light.

They were gods.

Together.

Creators of a small galaxy of warmth. Their world had no pain. They made sure of it.

Ren sculpted laughter from stardust.

Aria shaped kindness into rivers.

Their people loved them. Worshipped them. Sang hymns in their names.

And then the sky bled black.

The Unseen appeared.

Their galaxy shattered into teeth. Every worshipper tore their own flesh. Their temples became torture chambers.

Ren was forced to watch his creations eat each other.

Aria’s hands were nailed to suns. She screamed their names—her people, her love, herself.

Then it all went dark.

And she woke again.

They didn’t know each other.

She was a dying soldier in a war without sides.

He was a prisoner, chained beneath the battlefield.

Somehow, they met.

Aria carried him on her back for days, despite her own wounds.

He held her hand when her eyes gave out.

They found shelter in an abandoned cathedral and stitched warmth from whispers.

Before their first kiss, a single black flower bloomed between them.

Then came the laughter.

The walls turned to flesh. The sky screamed.

And hands—so many hands—ripped through the stone, tearing them apart.

It was a quiet forest cabin this time. The kind made of worn wood and loving hands. Aria painted while Ren read books by the fire. Their fingers touched often. The snow outside made everything feel wrapped in time.

She didn’t know why, but one night she couldn’t sleep. She sat by the window, watching the trees, and whispered:

“There’s something I’ve forgotten.”

Ren stirred, murmuring her name in his sleep.

Then came the scream.

Not from outside.

From inside her skull.

The cabin caught fire with no source.

Ren burned while reaching for her.

She reached back—

But the flame turned into a noose.

They died in silence.

And still, that thought lingered.

There’s something I tied down, once.

They were in a desert city. Sandstorms howled. Yet inside their home, they were safe. Ren was a scholar. Aria worked in a sunlit greenhouse. They shared tea in the morning and stories at night.

Then she heard it.

A voice in a dream.

“It’s still there. You left it for yourself.”

She woke in a cold sweat.

Ren asked what was wrong.

She didn’t know how to explain it. A thread of gold somewhere in her chest.

She touched her sternum as if to draw it out.

The sand outside began to rise. A tidal wave of glass and teeth. The walls screamed.

Ren was buried alive.

Her hands bled as she tried to dig him out.

Then the ground swallowed her whole.

This time, she knew the world was fake.

She kissed Ren, but there was a numbness behind her smile. Her body went through the motions, but her mind traced the edge of something invisible.

At night, she stood in the garden and whispered into the stars:

“Who are you?”

Something inside answered.

“You’re the one who remembers.”

She wrote the word tether into the dirt.

By morning, it was gone.

But something remained. A feeling in her bones.

That day, Ren exploded into a swarm of black insects, screaming her name.

She ran until her legs snapped.

Still, she clutched her chest, whispering:

“I must remember.”

Cycle 5,411,100,000,001

The world was fractured from the start.

They were in a modern city. Screens flickered. People glitched. Ren was her husband. They had a newborn. The baby cooed and giggled and reached out with tiny fingers.

Aria felt like crying every time she held the child. It felt too real. Too good.

Then the sky blinked out.

The baby collapsed into ash.

Ren froze in place, his mouth stuck open in a silent scream.

Aria fell to her knees.

And then—like thunder in her blood—

She saw the memory.

A door. A golden thread. Her own hand tying it to something.

Cycle 7,020,000,540,010

This time she was a priestess.

She worshipped no god—only a name she couldn’t say.

Every night she lit candles. Every night she dreamed of a thread wrapping around her fingers, pulling her toward something just beyond reach.

Ren was a traveler. A stranger. A voice in the wind that called her name before they even met.

When their eyes locked, he whispered:

“I’ve been looking for you.”

She dropped the candle.

It shattered into blood.

The temple cracked open.

And from the walls came hands—screaming, dragging Ren into the altar.

She threw herself after him, screaming—

And for a split second, she saw it:

A symbol carved into time.

A tether burning in golden flame.

Cycle 8,923,020,376,121

They were born already screaming.

The world was a slaughterhouse of color and pain. No joy. No warmth. No time for peace.

And yet—

As Aria knelt beside Ren’s mangled body, blood pouring from her eyes, she said:

“I remember now.”

“I left us a way out.”

Ren coughed blood. His hand reached hers.

Their fingers locked.

And in that moment, beyond the horror, they felt it together.

The tether.

Still holding.

Still waiting.

Still glowing at the edge of oblivion.