The first thing he noticed was the absence of everything—no sensation, no sound, no smell. Just a crushing silence. But even that didn't matter. His mind was drowning in grief, too overloaded to care.
But what he saw defied all logic.
Shapes, colours, and shards of light collided and bled into one another, as if reality had been shattered and clumsily reassembled by a mad child. Horizons bent at impossible angles. Buildings rose and shrank without pattern, some towering like titans, others no bigger than toys, each one tilting, folding, threatening to collapse in on him. Reflections shimmered in the air, unattached to any surface. Shadows slithered across the landscape, cast by nothing he could see. The rules of the world had broken down. And he was caught in the fragments.
He floated, or fell, or stood. He couldn't tell.
Then the imagery stabilised. At least, stable enough that he could tell what was happening.
As he drifted through what could only be described as an endless void, Edgar found himself suspended in a dense, pale fog that stretched in every direction. It dulled everything, even the sense of time. Through the haze, floating like islands in the mist, hung translucent panels of shifting glass. Each one displayed a different world, their colours casting faint glows into the fog. Some shimmered faintly, others flickered violently, but none offered comfort. Each world was stranger than the last, each one more alien than the one before. None bore any resemblance to the world he knew, and with every new sight, the urge to flee grew stronger.
In one world, the night sky lit up violently as massive explosions rocked the earth, relentless and unyielding. Through the inferno, amidst a blazing city, he glimpsed the silhouette of a creature, a monstrous thing with multiple snake-like heads, each the size of a thirty-story building. It tore through the buildings effortlessly, sending shards of glass and debris in every direction. The tanks and jets firing endlessly at it seemed inconsequential, barely a distraction.
It was striding directly towards Edgar.
As it drew nearer, its strides grew wider, faster, falling into a frenzy. His heart pounded in his chest so violently he could hear it, even though he had lost the sense of sound. Every survival instinct screamed at him to move, to escape its path, but his muscles refused to respond. The 'space' around him held him in place, forcing him to witness the oncoming doom.
The creature drew so close that the silhouette melted away, revealing every grotesque detail. He saw each blood-red scale that covered its body, every set of reptilian eyes glistening from the five heads, and every pair of serrated fangs as it opened its jaws wide -
The glass panel shattered, along with the world and the creature. Gone, like it never existed in the first place.
His breathing, ragged and fast, slowly began to steady. But before he could regain his composure, more windows to other worlds began to form around him, each one offering a new reality to witness.
One world showed a forest suspended in space, its vibrant nebulae swirling around trees that defied gravity, their roots jutting outward into the void. Another depicted a bustling city, entirely submerged underwater, encased in shimmering glass bubbles tethered to the ocean floor. He glimpsed many more distinct worlds, but it was the next one that gripped him with true terror.
There, in an empty street surrounded by high rise buildings, a lone man stood facing away, roughly the same build as Edgar - average height, broad-shouldered, with a lean frame. Tattered, dark robes hung from his body, trailing along the ground as he sauntered forwards toward a group of people huddled together. As he drew nearer, it became clear they were backing away from him in fear. The man raised an arm, and the air seemed to distort, the particles seemed to freeze.
The ground erupted.
Purple flames spread like wildfire as structures buckled and exploded, hurling deadly debris in every direction. They tried to flee, but it was hopeless. The purple flames surged with hunger, snaking across the ground and latching onto flesh, melting skin from bone as screams tore through the smoke. With a flick of his wrist, the man unleashed another wave of destruction, this time from the sky. Asteroids rained down on the survivors of the first blast, each one carving craters into the earth, turning bodies into pulp beneath stone and fire. Blood misted into the air, mingling with smoke and ash. Buildings crumbled like sandcastles, and amid the devastation, only one figure remained.
She had barely escaped an asteroid, only to have both legs crushed beneath the debris. The man approached like a storm given form, unhurried and inevitable. Each step he took over the mangled bodies and broken flesh cracked the ground beneath him, molten lines spiderwebbing outward. Flames danced in his wake, but none harmed him. Paralyzed with fear, the woman looked up at him and said something Edgar couldn't hear. Whatever it was, it didn't stop him.
Her neck snapped one-hundred and eighty degrees.
It was so sudden, Edgar gasped.
The man, his movements eerily fluid and deliberate, stopped in his tracks. He turned his head, slowly, as though he had heard something, or someone. His eyes, glowing faintly with a red sickly hue, locked onto Edgar's through the void between their worlds. The gaze of a thousand souls seemed to peer into his soul.
The recognition hit Edgar like a freight train. His breath caught, his heart pounding in his chest. For a moment, everything else faded—the chaos, the destruction, the infernal landscape, everything. All that was left was the man's gaze, staring through the rift.
This wasn't just anyone.
This was him. Something that was supposed to be him. The shape of his face. The same facial features. The same eyes, only these glowed with a sickly red.
It was like looking into the abyss, and finding the abyss staring back.
A strangled gasp left Edgar's lips as his entire body became numb. His mind was a riot of disbelief and terror, but the horrifying truth was unavoidable. This was him. Another version of him. A version that had harboured something… unimaginably evil.
The void between them seemed to narrow, bringing Edgar and the doppelganger so close, they were almost face to face.
"Who are you?" Edgar's voice faltered shakily. Although no sound travelled through the void the other him, the other Edgar, didn't need to hear it. He already knew.
Tilting his head ever so slightly, the faintest smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, a gesture so familiar it made Edgar's stomach twist.
Then, without a word or movement, it hit.
A pressure, sharp and overwhelming, like invisible claws digging straight into his skull. Edgar screamed, but no sound came. His hands flew to his head as a blinding pain impaled his mind, like hot metal being driven into his brain.
He could feel another being in his mind, prying into every hidden corner, peeling him open, reading his memories like a book. Every fear, every weakness, every suppressed thought was laid bare.
Just as the pain reached a climax, just as Edgar thought his mind would split apart from the sheer pressure, it stopped.
Abruptly.
The torment vanished like a flame snuffed out, leaving only the echo of its heat and the sickening emptiness it carved out inside him.
Edgar collapsed over and threw up, but nothing came out. His mind reeled, fragments of his memories still spinning behind his eyes. But something was wrong.
He looked up.
The other Edgar was frozen. Not in a calculated, imposing way like before, but still. Staring. Unmoving. As if he'd slammed headfirst into a brick wall.
A long, heavy silence stretched between them.
Then, like the flick of a switch, the other Edgar straightened. The flicker of hesitation vanished. His spine straightened back into its proud, predator's posture. The red glow returned to his eyes, not blazing, but simmering with something colder now.
Although Edgar had lost all sense of sound, a voice boomed inside his head, a voice so strong it could split his mind.
"Interesting, you're stronger than expected from scum like you. Good, grow stronger. You'll be of use to me later."
And then he turned, robes trailing through ash and flames, and walked away.
Not a retreat.
A promise.
The panel, unlike the one that shattered earlier, gradually faded away as the other Edgar disappeared from sight, leaving behind only the empty fog of the void. Edgar finally recollected himself after what felt like hours, but could have been minutes.
But the temporary peace was short lived as the void itself yanked him forward with such force he felt his body would tear apart. As he hurtled forward Everything a blurred around him, the glasslike panels of other worlds glowing stronger, as if reaching out to him. One of the panels was in his trajectory, and unlike the others that depicted strange worlds of vibrant colours, this one was just filled with darkness.
He had no time to react. The panel of darkness split open like a mouth and swallowed him whole.
***
Long ago, the surface was left behind. No one alive remembers how exactly; some talk of a biological war, others talk of overgrown plants producing toxic gas. What's certain is this: the air above turned deadly, thick with fumes that melted skin like highly concentrated acid. Humanity fled underground, burrowing into the depths of the earth. Centuries went by, and cities decayed into the past. In their place, tunnel-villages and cave settlements formed, surviving off of geothermal vents and salvaged tech. But life below would never be the same. Civilization splintered. Some communities maintained their humanity in an orderless world. Others became feral, devolving into cannibal tribes that hunt the tunnels in packs.
Worst of all are the things that move beneath them. Leviathans, miles long, blind and ancient. Born of the deep or remnants of surface weapons, no one knows. Initially, colonies vanished in their wake, swallowed whole by the shifting earth. Over generations, the larger underground settlements discovered something critical: the colossal creatures that stalk the tunnels despise the smell of crude oil. Something in its fumes agitates their senses, maybe even burns them. Some speculate that its because they have no sight their sense of smell is heightened. Nonetheless, it works. The larger colonies learned to burn oil in deep vents and drip it constantly along trench lines. Some even built perimeter furnaces that belch oily smoke day and night, creating a protective ring of scent and sound. It's dangerous, dirty, and a waste of fuel, but it keeps thousands of people alive. They call it "The Fume Shield." Smaller settlements can rarely afford it. And those that can't… are eventually swallowed.
This was the world that Edgar had found himself in.
All of Edgar's senses slammed back into him at once. The first was touch; he felt the sharp bite of gravel and cracked stone beneath his palms. Then came the stench; it was thick, bitter, and suffocating, reeking of oil and rusted iron. He could hear a low drip, echoing endlessly, as if water was falling into a cavern that had no end.
He opened his eyes, and saw nothing.
A heavy, smothering darkness pressed down on everything. This wasn't the night sky, this was blindness. Even his own limbs were just vague outlines, swallowed almost entirely by shadow.
He stood slowly, boots crunching on gravel and broken things he couldn't see. Each movement sent echoes bouncing back from the void around him. He stretched his arm out in front of him as he walked forwards cautiously. He didn't even take more than four steps until he reached what felt like the wall of a cave, cold with sharp rocks jutting out into his palm. On the edge of his peripheral vision a faint glow of yellow light ever so slightly illuminated the rest of the cave, revealing a long narrow passageway three foot wide and seven foot tall. He also heard a continuous faint humming sound, occasionally accompanied by the sound of metal striking metal.
Curious, he carefully walked forward toward the light. The humming grew louder with each step, now accompanied by a low mechanical churning, like gears grinding somewhere deep within the cavern. The passage narrowed slightly, forcing him to turn his body sideways to squeeze through. His fingers brushed along the rock, slick with something gooey.
Then, after he turned a corner the tunnel widened.
Before him lay an enormous cavern carved deep into the earth, a subterranean basin lit by dozens of dim, amber lanterns strung across wires overhead like a web. Their yellow glow revealed narrow bridges made of scrap metal and planks connecting clusters of homes carved directly into the stone walls. Chimneys jutted out at odd angles, releasing thin trails of steam. Makeshift lifts and pulleys creaked as they hauled items between tiers of the settlement. People moved like shadows below, their features obscured by masks and layered clothing thick with grime. From somewhere deeper in the cavern, he heard the clang of hammer on metal, the low murmur of voices, and the hiss of hydraulics.
The low hum he'd heard earlier was the sound of a town quietly alive beneath the earth.
He stepped out of the tunnel onto a narrow ledge he could barely stand on comfortably and looked down onto the multi-layered settlement; the stone roofs of houses were arranged in erratic sequences. Some formed neat rows, while others were scattered randomly, as though the settlement had grown without any plan. The settlement clung to both the cavern walls and the floor below. Some buildings were partially carved into the rock face, jutting out precariously like nests high above, while others sprawled across the cavern floor, nestled together in tight, uneven clusters. The further his gaze drifted, the more it felt as though the entire place was struggling to stay attached to the cavern, each layer barely hanging onto the next.
All of it felt surreal. Was it a dream? He considered the possibility, but everything had felt too real. The dozens of worlds he had seen, the overwhelming terror at the sight of his doppelganger, and most of all, the unbearable grief of holding his mother's lifeless body in his arms. That pain still clung to him. And so did the promise he had made: to find whoever was responsible, and make them pay.
But if what he had witnessed so far was real, then the one who murdered her could be from another world entirely, and far more powerful than any ordinary human. Even if Edgar did find them, he doubted he could confront them… not as he was now.
He needed to become stronger, strong enough to face the one responsible for the unforgivable act. But for now, he had to tread carefully through whatever world he'd landed in. He'd seen the colossal monsters and strange creatures glimpsed through the panels in what he had begun to call the "void."
He didn't fully understand what the void was, but he assumed it was some kind of dimension, a place that allowed him to look into other worlds... and enter them. What he didn't yet realize was that the void had been triggered by something within him, an ability awakened by accident.
And so, Edgar, wielding the tragedy as a weapon, hopped off the ledge into a narrow alleyway between two houses, beginning his journey across worlds, driven by a single purpose: to avenge his mother.