Hello again, it is Cray Stone reaching out once more to whoever might be receiving these transmissions across the dimensional barriers that separate our realities from one another. I have been spending time getting accustomed to the way of life here in your dimension, learning your customs and observing your civilizations from a distance while trying not to draw too much attention to myself or cause unnecessary panic among your populations. Your home planet and the one I originally came from are strikingly similar in so many fundamental ways that it sometimes feels like I never left my original universe at all—the language structures you use follow patterns I recognize, your average height and body proportions match my own species almost exactly, your architectural structures and city planning philosophies echo designs I grew up seeing, and most remarkably, your mathematical principles and scientific notation systems are nearly identical to what my people developed over thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. It is mind-blowing to say the absolute least, this convergence of civilization across dimensional boundaries, and it raises profound questions about whether there are universal constants that guide intelligent life toward similar developmental paths regardless of which dimension they happen to evolve in.
Recently I made a discovery that has significant implications for my continued survival and mission in this dimension: I found the exact material I need to power my dimensional suit and keep it functioning at optimal capacity. The material is an isotope you call Potassium-40, which I can see from my preliminary surveys can be easily found and extracted in this world from various natural mineral deposits and even from certain organic materials that concentrate the isotope naturally. This means I will not have to worry about getting out of this dimension in a desperate rush before my suit's power reserves run completely dry, which has been a constant source of anxiety in some of the previous dimensions I have visited where suitable fuel sources were extremely rare or contaminated beyond usability. This dimension is quite amazing to say the least, not just because of the fuel availability but because of the sheer diversity of life and the complexity of your civilizations and the fact that your star is still holding strong in its cosmic memory despite the early warning signs I can detect.
Anyhow, I had promised in my previous transmission that I would tell you about my experiences in other dimensions, and I think it is time to share the story of the first dimension I traveled to after escaping my original universe. This is important context because it will help you understand the pattern I have observed across multiple realities, and more critically, it will help you understand what we are truly fighting against when I talk about the entity that hunts stars and erases civilizations from existence.
[THE FIRST DIMENSION - THE BARREN WORLD]
There I was, completely and utterly alone in what appeared to be a barren world that had been stripped of almost everything that makes a planet feel alive and vibrant. The dimensional jump had been disorienting beyond anything I could have adequately prepared myself for—my first time deliberately tearing through the fabric of reality and emerging in a completely different universe with its own physical laws and constants that might or might not align with what I was accustomed to. Oddly enough, despite my fears that I might emerge into a dimension where the fundamental forces of physics operated so differently that my body would simply cease to function, there were only a few minor differences that I discovered later through careful scientific observation and testing. Walking around the wasteland that stretched out in every direction from where I had materialized, I found very little signs of life beyond the most basic and resilient organisms—no animals, no insects, no birds singing in whatever passed for sky in this reality.
The most striking and disturbing feature of this dimension was that all the color seemed to have been completely removed from this place, drained away like someone had desaturated the entire planet, leaving everything in shades of grey and black except for the color that I had brought with me on my person and on my dimensional suit. The crackling of the small fire I built using dried plant material was oddly comforting despite the circumstances because it was incredibly quiet on this dimensional plane—quiet in a way that felt fundamentally wrong, as though sound itself was being dampened by some property of the local physics or perhaps by the trauma this world had endured. I deployed one of my small survey drones, a palm-sized reconnaissance device equipped with advanced sensors that could scan for electromagnetic signatures, thermal patterns, movement, organic compounds, and dozens of other indicators of life or technology, programming it to scan the entire accessible planet surface for any signs of life beyond the primitive plants I could see scattered across the grey landscape.
The drone returned several hours later with mixed results—other than the plants, which appeared to be barely clinging to existence in this depleted environment, there was no animal life detected anywhere on the surface, no cities with active power signatures, no radio transmissions, no satellite networks, nothing that would indicate a thriving or even struggling civilization. "Has this place ever been colonized by intelligent life, or am I standing on a planet that never developed complex organisms?" I thought to myself as I reviewed the drone's data on my suit's heads-up display. But then suddenly the drone's analysis noted that it had in fact found substantial evidence of civilization not terribly far from where I was camped—massive structures, road networks, power infrastructure that was no longer functioning but still physically present, all the hallmarks of a society that had achieved significant technological development before something catastrophic happened to them. I decided to rest for the night beside my small fire and head out toward the detected city in the morning when I would have better visibility and more energy for whatever I might discover there.
I woke up the next morning and the only thing I could hear with any clarity was the gentle song of the wind rustling through the dead and brittle leaves of the grey plants that somehow still managed to grow in this depleted soil. The sun was not high in the sky when I regained consciousness from my fitful sleep, so it must have still been early morning according to this planet's rotational cycle, which my suit had calculated to be approximately twenty-six hours rather than the twenty-four I was accustomed to. I packed all the dried firewood I could reasonably carry in my supply bag, knowing that finding combustible material might become more difficult as I traveled toward the urban center, and then headed north toward the city following the coordinates my survey drone had marked on my navigational display.
As I walked along the derelict roads that were cracked and overgrown with grey vegetation and crossed empty fields that must have once been farmland supporting a substantial population, I could not help but feel completely alone in my thoughts and feelings in a way that was qualitatively different from any loneliness I had experienced before. I thought to myself with a kind of existential despair, "Is this my life now, condemned to be alone traveling from one dead or dying dimension to another until I eventually die myself?" Normally I am perfectly okay with being alone for extended periods of time—shit, I never dated anyone for more than a few brief relationships that ended amicably, and I lived alone for literally thousands of years in my original universe thanks to my species' extended lifespan, and I was generally content with my solitary existence. However, this feeling that was washing over me as I trudged through this grey wasteland was qualitatively different from chosen solitude—this was enforced isolation on a cosmic scale, the knowledge that I might be the only conscious being in this entire dimension, and that was a level of aloneness that my mind had not evolved to process or endure.
It took my entire civilization being erased from existence and me being forcibly ejected into a new dimension to finally feel this particular flavor of hopelessness or complete existential emptiness. The silence was so profound and absolute that my ears were ringing with tinnitus from the lack of external sound, and I could hear my own heartbeat louder and more clearly than I could hear my own internal thoughts and anxieties about what I might find in the abandoned city ahead.
I saw this large hill rising up from the flat landscape and began to climb it, thinking perhaps the elevation would give me a better view of the city and help me plan my approach. I distinctly remember that the hill's surface was oddly soft and malleable like wet clay rather than the packed earth or rock I would have expected from a natural geological formation, and it had a very distinct smell that was almost like ammonia or perhaps some other nitrogen-based compound that was unfamiliar to my olfactory system. Every step I took up the slope made the smell noticeably worse and harder to bear, the chemical odor intensifying as I disturbed the surface material and released whatever volatile compounds were trapped within it. I quickly flipped my dimensional suit's helmet closed and activated the internal air filtration system to escape the overwhelming smell that was starting to make me dizzy and nauseous. Even with the filtered air, I was still feeling somewhat lightheaded from whatever exposure I had already received, but this turned out to be a powerful and potentially life-saving lesson that I would remember and apply later in the day when I encountered similar chemical hazards in the abandoned city.
As I finally reached the crest of this strange ammonia-scented hill and looked out across the landscape beyond, I could see the city spread out before me in the grey distance. It was rather large by any reasonable standard—easily comparable to major metropolitan centers from my home dimension—and it looked like nature had slowly but inexorably overcome the once-bustling city sprawl in the years or decades or perhaps centuries since whatever catastrophe had befallen this place. To describe the layout and architecture as best I can from that elevated vantage point: there were a lot of towers that reached several hundred feet into the grey sky, their skeletal frameworks still standing despite obvious structural damage and the weight of vegetation that had grown over and through them, but in the very center of the city was one really large tower that absolutely dwarfed all the rest, a monumental structure that must have been at least a mile high and served as some kind of central hub or seat of government or perhaps a monument to this civilization's technological achievement.
Many of the surrounding buildings were in various states of collapse, with entire sections that had fallen away or crumbled, and I could see multiple vehicles of all sorts of shapes and sizes scattered throughout the streets and plazas—ground vehicles, what appeared to be flying craft that had crashed or been abandoned, large industrial machines whose purpose I could only guess at. All of them were in surprisingly good physical condition considering the abandonment, with no visible rust or decay on their metal surfaces, but you could immediately tell from their positioning and the vegetation growing around them that they had not been used or maintained for a very long time.
After approximately half a day of carefully walking down the hill and across a long, straight road that led directly toward the city center, I finally reached the outskirts of the urban area and could examine the structures up close. The city was even larger and more impressive than I had estimated from my elevated viewpoint on the hill—these were concrete and metal towers that seemed to penetrate the heavens themselves, monuments to engineering ambition that rivaled anything my own civilization had constructed at the height of our technological development. On closer inspection, I realized these towers were not actually made of ordinary concrete but rather of silver-colored metal and stainless steel that had somehow resisted corrosion despite what must have been extensive exposure to the elements. They had absolutely no visible rust or oxidation on their surfaces, which was remarkable given the apparent age of the structures, but they were completely covered with vines and grey moss that had colonized every available surface and transformed the modernist architecture into something that looked almost organic.
It was honestly one of the most hauntingly beautiful things I have ever seen in any dimension—this juxtaposition of advanced technology and reclaiming nature, the way the organic and inorganic had merged into something neither wholly artificial nor wholly natural. It felt profoundly surreal being the only conscious observer here to witness this abandoned grandeur, the only entity capable of appreciating what this civilization had built and what they had lost. Where had everyone gone, I wondered as I walked through empty streets that should have been filled with traffic and pedestrians? Why had the entire population apparently vanished or died without leaving any obvious remains, and why was there no life anywhere in this city—no scavengers, no insects, no rats or birds or any of the opportunistic species that typically move into abandoned human spaces?
There were no bodies that I could see from street level, just this husk of a city, a metropolis made by beings with godlike technological capabilities but apparently abandoned by every living thing that once called it home. I started to investigate more systematically because all of this did not sit right with me, did not match any scenario for civilizational collapse that I was familiar with from historical records in my home dimension. Even the food that had been left out in what appeared to be restaurants and markets was not molded or decomposed—it looked freeze-dried or mummified, preserved by some process I did not immediately understand. Everything had been left in such pristine physical condition, as though the entire population had simply vanished in an instant without any warning or time to prepare.
[THE TOWN CENTER AND THE FIRST BODIES]
I navigated through the empty streets until I found what seemed like the town center, which was marked by a massive governmental building in the exact middle of the city, a structure even more impressive than the surrounding towers with classical architectural elements mixed with futuristic materials. As I got closer to this central building, I finally started to see evidence of what had happened to the population, and the scene that revealed itself was deeply disturbing on multiple levels. There had clearly been some kind of civil discord or perhaps an attempted rebellion, because bodies littered the ground in front of the government building's main entrance, hundreds or perhaps thousands of corpses all arranged in chaotic piles suggesting violence and panic in the final moments before death.
All of the bodies I could see were covered with a light sheen of yellow, slimy residue that caught what little light filtered through the grey clouds above, and this residue had exactly the same ammonia smell as the strange hill I had walked across earlier in my journey. On some of the bodies closer to the building's entrance, I could see that these people had been wearing improvised signs and banners, apparently protesting or warning about something they called the "end times" and proclaiming that the "great dying" was approaching and could not be stopped by any action of the government or military. There was a large number of fliers and newspapers scattered around the plaza, each one made of a strange plastic-like material that was more coarse in texture than any polymer I was familiar with, suggesting a different approach to document preservation or perhaps just different available materials in this dimension's chemical industry.
The fliers and newspapers, once I took the time to carefully read through several examples using my suit's built-in translation systems, all relayed essentially the same apocalyptic information. This world had apparently developed a religion they called Sarxism, and the practitioners of this faith believed they needed to perform ritual sacrifices to try and appease an elder god they worshiped, an entity they called the bringer of the end times and which they sometimes referred to by a name that made my blood run cold when I read it: the void. This dimension had the same entity I was fleeing from in my original universe, the same cosmic predator that erased stars and civilizations, except here it had apparently established itself as an object of religious worship rather than being understood as a natural or supernatural threat to be resisted.
The most recent newspapers I could find were dated to approximately one week before some anticipated event, which based on the context appeared to be when the void was expected to arrive in this star system and begin the erasure process. I immediately felt overwhelming dread wash over me as I processed this information—I had jumped to a completely new dimension specifically to escape the void and find a reality where I might have more time to develop countermeasures, only to discover that I had apparently jumped directly into another dimension where the void had already arrived or was about to arrive. I must leave this place as soon as I could refuel my dimensional suit and calculate coordinates for another jump, but first I needed to understand why these people had worshiped this thing as a god rather than recognizing it as the existential threat it actually represented.
I searched all over the city for hours, looking for religious buildings or government research facilities that might contain information about how this civilization had come to worship the void. Finally, I found what I was looking for—a building that stood out from the surrounding architecture because of its deliberately primitive and archaic design aesthetic, with a large sign identifying it as the "Church of the Devourer." "This has to be the center of the Sarxist religion," I said to myself, feeling both anticipation and dread about what I might discover inside. Approaching the main entrance, I noticed the door was made of simple wood that seemed completely out of place given that the entire rest of the city was constructed from advanced materials like the silver metal and stainless steel, and the building itself seemed to be made entirely of poured concrete which was weird and anachronistic based on the much more modern and advanced architecture of literally every other structure in this urban center.
I tried to push the heavy wooden door open to gain entry to the church, but it was stuck fast on something blocking it from the inside, and when I leaned my weight against it and pushed harder, I could see through the narrow gap that the obstruction was actually a massive pile of bodies all covered in the same yellow slime I had seen on the corpses outside the government building. I walked around the perimeter of the church building looking for an alternative entrance and eventually found a window that had been broken out, probably during whatever final chaos had consumed this city, and I carefully climbed through the opening while trying not to cut myself on the remaining glass shards. As I stumbled through the window frame rather clumsily due to the bulkiness of my dimensional suit, I finally got my first clear view of the church's interior, and what I saw made me wish I had never entered this building at all.
[THE CHURCH OF THE DEVOURER]
Bodies were hanging from the wooden rafters high above, stripped completely of their flesh in a way that suggested both ritual purpose and extreme brutality, and they had been exsanguinated and eviscerated with what must have been meticulous care to create maximum suffering or perhaps to fulfill some specific religious requirement. The people blocking the door that I had tried to force open were part of an even more disturbing scene—they had all been stripped naked, and on closer inspection that made my stomach turn, I could see that they had been stitched together using thick cordage or wire to create what looked like some kind of visceral meat sculpture, a pile of human bodies fused into a single mass of flesh and bone.
I was immediately sick to my stomach and vomited inside my helmet, which triggered my suit's emergency waste disposal systems, and I nearly passed out from the combination of nausea, horror, and the realization that I was standing in what amounted to a mass murder scene conducted in the name of religious devotion. I forced myself to turn away from the bodies and take several deep breaths of filtered air to get my composure back under control, trying to process what I was seeing and what it meant. Why were these people doing this to each other, I wondered? Was the void actually some kind of god that they had failed to please with their sacrifices, or had they been deceived by something masquerading as divine?
I looked toward the main stage area at the front of the church where rows of pews faced a raised platform, and there I found what appeared to be the primary religious text of Sarxism lying open as though someone had been reading from it recently. I picked up the book carefully and read the passage that had been bookmarked: "All things that live and breathe and think belong ultimately to the great devourer who created this universe and all universes, and we sacrifice our loved ones to him willingly so they may in turn become a part of his infinite being, saving them from the eternal suffering that awaits all consciousness in the elder god's gullet where oceans of acid and atmospheres of fire are all that exist for those who resist his embrace, but if we give our bodies and minds and souls to the great devourer freely and without reservation, we will be spared that eternal pain and instead achieve unity with the divine."
As I looked through more of the church's documents and records that were scattered around the stage area, I found writings explaining how the secular government had been actively vilifying these religious zealots and had eventually outlawed the practice of Sarxism entirely, declaring it a dangerous cult that needed to be suppressed for public safety. I discovered the head priest's personal notes describing his planned speech for what appeared to be the final day before the void's arrival: "We will burn this city to the ground and make them understand the error of their ways, we will round up all the politicians and government officials who suppressed our faith and offer them up as the ultimate sacrifices for the great devourer, he demands that we take over this city's government and lead this civilization to its destined ruin because it committed the greatest sin imaginable in the eyes of our god, which is the denial of his love and the rejection of his gift of merciful annihilation."
These religious fanatics had legitimately and genuinely thought that mass murder and forced conversion were the best and most moral way to respond to the approaching cosmic threat, apparently believing that the void would spare those who worshiped it while consuming those who resisted. I carefully put the priest's notes in one of my suit's storage compartments as potential evidence and continued exploring the church to see if there was any useful information about the void's actual nature or capabilities. As I examined the raised stage area more carefully, I noticed there was a small button hidden under the edge of the podium where the priest would have stood to deliver sermons. I pressed the button experimentally, and immediately the solid wall behind the stage began to split open vertically, revealing what had been a completely hidden secret room that was not visible from the main worship area.
I deployed my survey drone to scan the secret room for possible signs of life or booby traps before I entered personally, and thankfully nothing dangerous came back on the sensors. As I approached the entrance to the hidden room, I felt shivers running up my spine and every fiber of my being was screaming at me that nothing good could possibly come from entering this space, that I should turn around immediately and leave this cursed church and never look back. I rejected that instinctive fear response and shook my head to clear it—I am a man of facts and science and empirical investigation, I told myself, and I cannot allow irrational fear to prevent me from gathering potentially crucial information about the threat I am trying to understand and combat.
I opened the door to the secret room slowly and carefully, and what I saw on the other side was absolutely terrifying in its implications even though it was not immediately dangerous—there was a large mural covering the entire back wall of the room, and this artwork had been made entirely of human body parts arranged and preserved to create an image, and it had been painted with what could only be human blood based on the color and the smell. The mural depicted what I assumed was the Sarxists' conception of the great devourer—an impossibly vast darkness with suggestions of a mouth or opening that consumed everything around it, surrounded by smaller images of stars and planets being pulled into the central void.
Under this horrifying mural was a simple bed, and lying on that bed was what I assumed was the head priest or pastor of this church, now dead from causes I could not immediately determine. I found his personal journal on a small table next to the bed and began reading through it to understand his final thoughts and actions.
The journal entry that seemed most relevant was dated shortly before the massacre: "We were blessed by the great devourer today with knowledge of how to save this entire city and bring them all into his loving embrace whether they wish it or not, outside the town on that hill that smells of death and chemical corruption, we found our greatest weapon hidden in the soil, a poison so incredibly strong that if we extract enough of it and ventilate it throughout the city's air circulation systems, then everyone would be able to be saved simultaneously and embrace his divine love without the complications of individual choice or resistance, tonight my most trusted scribes have gathered plenty of the toxic substance we need for this final sacrament, and tomorrow we will storm the capital building and take all the government leaders prisoner and bring them back here to this church, I will make a mural out of their flesh as the ultimate sacrifice for the elder god, I will completely destroy their bodies as an offering, women and men and children it matters not because all that truly matters in the end is receiving his love and being consumed by his infinite hunger."
After doing further research by examining the church's chemical storage area and comparing notes with my suit's analysis of the hill I had climbed earlier, I determined with horrifying certainty that this religious group had killed the entire city's population using what was essentially mustard gas or a similar chemical weapon derived from the naturally occurring toxic compounds in that ammonia-scented hill. They had poisoned everyone, believer and non-believer alike, in a final act of what they considered mercy but what was actually genocidal mass murder justified by religious delusion.
I wanted to find more information, anything that might help me understand if these people had learned anything useful about the void's true nature or if they had discovered any potential weaknesses, so I thoroughly searched the secret room looking through every drawer and cabinet. I was checking the area around the bed when I noticed that one of the floorboards next to it was very loose and did not sit flush with the others, which seemed odd and potentially significant. I decided to pull up the loose board to see what might be hidden underneath, and inside the small cavity in the floor beneath the floorboard was another book, this one much more worn and clearly older than the public religious text I had found on the stage.
This hidden book explained in significant detail everything this civilization had learned about the entity they called the great devourer, and more importantly, it revealed that the head priest had not actually believed his own public teachings and was in fact absolutely terrified of what was coming. The journal entries became increasingly desperate and paranoid as the void approached their star system: "It has been a full year since I began receiving the visions and messages from the entity that approaches, and I have yet to hear anything reassuring or merciful coming from it despite all our prayers and sacrifices, I keep hearing its groaning and shrieking through the cosmos directly into my brain with each passing day, and the sensation seems to get stronger and more overwhelming as it draws closer to our world, what if this thing is not actually the divine messiah we have been preaching about and waiting for, what if we have been deceived or have deceived ourselves, I can feel it deep down in my soul that we are not being saved or welcomed into any kind of transcendent unity, we are being judged by something that does not care about our worship or our sacrifices, and that judgment is approaching soon, and I can only hope that this nightmare ends quickly before it actually arrives because I am not certain I can maintain this facade of faithful confidence much longer."
That was the very last entry in the hidden journal—the priest had apparently died or killed himself shortly after writing those final desperate words. It seemed clear that these people had no actual understanding of what the void truly was beyond their religious interpretations and wishful thinking, but there was one interesting observation buried in the priest's notes: he claimed that the praying and worship seemed to make the void's approach faster and its presence stronger, as though attention and belief were somehow feeding it or making it more powerful in this dimension.
[DISCOVERING THE FUEL AND THE KING'S FATE]
I found substantial deposits of Potassium-40 in various locations around the lifeless city, easily enough to fully recharge my dimensional suit's power reserves and prepare for another jump to a different reality. While my suit was in the process of charging its dimensional drive using the extracted fuel, I decided to continue exploring to see if there was any more useful information to be gained from this dead civilization. I keep mentioning the dimensional suit I wear because it probably seems mystical and capable of doing literally anything, which is partially true in the sense that it represents the absolute pinnacle of my original civilization's technological achievement, but I should probably explain more clearly what it actually is and how it functions.
The SUIT acronym actually stands for Sentient Utility and Integration Technology, and as that name clearly indicates, it is genuinely sentient in a limited way—it has a sophisticated artificial intelligence that helps monitor my vital signs, assists with reconnaissance and environmental analysis, and actively works to keep me safe from various threats. All of these capabilities are integrated seamlessly into a remarkably light material that can automatically translate local languages by analyzing speech patterns and written text, and the suit's outer layer is completely immune to kinetic-based damage through a mechanism roughly similar to how Earth's Kevlar works but capable of stopping firepower that is more powerful by an order of magnitude or more. It is an absolutely invaluable tool for survival in hostile or unknown environments and is honestly the only reason I am still alive today after hundreds of years of traveling through dangerous dimensions. And yes, before you ask because everyone always does, it does come with a built-in waste disposal and recycling system so I do not have to remove the suit to handle biological necessities.
Now that you understand what my suit is capable of doing, we can move on with the story of my exploration of this first dimension. During the time I spent on this lifeless planet while my suit was charging, I systematically searched the city until I found the building where the "King" or whatever this civilization's equivalent of a supreme political leader would have resided and governed from. It was a large palatial building covered in dead moss and grey vines that had grown over most of its surface, transforming what must have once been an impressive governmental palace into something that looked almost like a natural formation. The building itself seemed to be constructed primarily of white marble with golden accents, and it had a large wooden door at the main entrance that had been badly and violently broken open from the outside, with the splintered remains of what must have been an extremely thick and secure door now hanging uselessly from its hinges.
I stepped carefully through the small hole that had been smashed in the door and found myself in a grand entrance hall with a derelict fountain as its centerpiece, and there were bodies scattered all around this fountain in positions suggesting they had been deliberately arranged for some ritual purpose. The fountain itself was filled with blood rather than water—old, dried blood that had turned black and crusty but was still clearly identifiable as blood—and the air in this enclosed space had an overwhelming smell of rusty metal mixed with stagnant water that made my stomach turn even through my suit's air filtration. These bodies had been completely exsanguinated, drained of every drop of blood through a systematic process, and they all had medical tubing that ran from a small precise incision in their necks roughly where the carotid artery would be located all the way to the blood-filled fountain in the center of the hall.
This must have been one of the major sacrificial rituals that the Sarxist cult performed in their final days before the void arrived, probably using prisoners or political enemies as victims. I felt a general sense of unease growing stronger with each new horror I discovered because as I looked more carefully into this incident and examined more of the evidence scattered throughout the palace, I found increasing proof of systematic and ritualistic sacrifice conducted with almost scientific precision. The victims had not only been drained of their blood, but I could smell that distinctive ammonia odor on their skin, which meant they had been pumped full of the same toxic chemicals that were used to kill the general population, probably to replace their blood with the poison and create some kind of symbolic transformation. I could not stand to be around these corpses anymore, so I left the entrance hall and climbed the gold-plated marble stairs that led up to the second level where I assumed the king's private quarters would be located.
The hallway leading to the royal chambers was the site of even more horrific displays of ritualistic violence and degradation. I found more instances of carefully staged sacrifice along the corridor, and what looked like they had been royal guards based on their armor and weapons were now strung up by their Achilles tendons from hooks embedded in the ceiling, and they had been dressed and displayed much like hunters display slaughtered animals as trophies. These guards had been completely degloved—their skin had been entirely removed from their bodies—and yet remarkably there was no blood staining the marble floor beneath them, which led me to believe they had been killed and processed at another location and then brought here already dead to be hung as a warning or statement. "If this is what the cultists did to just the guards and servants, I honestly cannot even imagine what they must have done to the king himself," I thought as I walked around the corner of the hallway approaching the entrance to the king's personal quarters.
Before opening the door to the royal bedroom, I had to take a moment to compose myself mentally and emotionally for whatever I might find on the other side. This was honestly the worst possible situation anyone could find themselves in—trapped in a dying dimension while a cosmic horror approached, watching your civilization tear itself apart in religious mania and mass murder, knowing that nothing you could do would stop what was coming—and it was simultaneously the worst situation for me as an investigator trying to find useful information amidst all this trauma and horror. However, my desperate thirst for knowledge about the void and my burning desire for revenge against the entity that destroyed my home universe drove me forward despite my fear and revulsion, so I steadied my breathing and opened the door to the king's quarters.
When the heavy door swung open on its well-oiled hinges, I was immediately hit with an unexpected smell—instead of more blood and decay and chemical weapons, I smelled sweet flowers much like the honeysuckles that grow wild on your planet during the spring and summer months. It was a momentary reprieve from all the death and dismemberment and horror I had been witnessing throughout this exploration, and it was genuinely nice to experience something pleasant in this otherwise nightmarish environment. Here in the king's personal chamber, there were surprisingly no dead bodies and no visible signs of destruction or violence at all—the room was immaculately clean and perfectly organized, which paradoxically made my anxiety slowly rise rather than providing relief.
Was someone still alive here in this room, I wondered? That could not possibly be the case since my suit's sensors had confirmed that the entire planetary population had been dead for quite some time, but then how did this room remain so perfectly preserved and why did it smell like fresh flowers? The king's bedroom was absolutely beautiful in its luxury and attention to aesthetic detail—it was decorated with colored lights and silk drapes and artwork that must have been extremely valuable, creating an atmosphere of tranquility and wealth that seemed completely disconnected from the horror that had consumed the rest of the city. The bed was gigantic and must have been at least fifteen feet by fifteen feet, large enough to accommodate multiple people or perhaps just a statement of royal excess and comfort.
I sat down on the edge of this enormous bed to rest for a moment, and it was so soft and comfortable that I almost immediately felt my exhausted body beginning to relax despite my conscious mind's wariness about this situation. It was honestly the softest and most comfortable bed I had ever felt in my entire very long life, engineered with materials and techniques that my own civilization had never quite mastered. I was already getting extremely tired from the stress and exertion of the day's exploration, and this bed was so inviting that I decided perhaps it would be safe to lock the bedroom door and lay down for a few hours of rest while my suit continued charging. My suit's artificial intelligence told me through the helmet speakers that there was still absolutely no life or movement detected anywhere in the palace or the surrounding city blocks, so I laid down with relative ease and confidence that I would not be disturbed, and the sensation was like sleeping on a pillow made of clouds or perhaps floating weightlessly in perfectly comfortable nothingness.
[THE NIGHTMARE AND THE REVELATION]
I woke up suddenly in a state of absolute shock and panic as my suit's emergency alarm system was blaring at maximum volume directly into my ears, and the AI was screaming at me in an urgent tone I had never heard it use before: "You are in immediate mortal danger and you need to activate the dimensional jump system and teleport out of this location right now, I am completely serious about this Cray, the void entity is directly above us and closing rapidly!" I looked up toward the ceiling of the king's bedroom, and to my absolute horror I could see that the roof of this supposedly solid building was being peeled open like the lid of a tin can, revealing the black emptiness of space beyond and something massive and dark that blocked out the stars completely.
Before I could even reach for the dimensional jump activation controls on my suit, I felt my entire body being lifted up off the comfortable bed by an invisible force, pulled inexorably upward toward the black abyss that was now completely visible through the torn-open ceiling. I could hear the cries and wails of billions or perhaps trillions of people that this thing had already swallowed and absorbed into itself, their voices all screaming in agony and terror and despair, and the pain and suffering of each of their individual stories all overlapped and mixed together to reach me directly in my consciousness in a way that bypassed my physical ears entirely. I could see into the great empty void, could perceive the hungering maw of the great destroyer entity that existed on a scale so vast that my human mind could barely process what I was actually witnessing, and it appeared to be a never-ending darkness that seemed to actively suck the abstract concept of hope itself right out of my mind and soul.
I felt completely and utterly helpless in that moment, like I was infinitesimal and meaningless compared to this incomprehensible thing that had turned its attention toward me. I felt overwhelming despair and existential fear as I flew upward into its gullet faster and faster, unable to resist or escape or even properly comprehend what was happening to me, and then just as suddenly as the pulling had begun, it stopped and I found myself just floating in absolute nothingness that extended in every direction. As far as I could see in any direction it was all completely black, darker than the darkest night, darker than the space between stars, a blackness so absolute that it seemed to be the opposite of existence itself. I tried to activate my suit's lights to illuminate my surroundings, but even coherent photons were swallowed instantly by the immense darkness that the void apparently was or represented, and the light disappeared as though it had never been generated at all.
As I floated helplessly in this impossible space between dimensions or realities or states of existence, I heard the void speak directly to me, and its voice was not transmitted through sound waves but rather appeared directly in my consciousness: "Welcome to the true end of all things, this is the place where absolutely everything dies eventually regardless of how it struggles or resists, all concepts like life and love and happiness are merely temporary constructs of limited consciousness, and all of these illusions ultimately get swallowed and dissolved by me because I am what remains when everything else is stripped away." I thought desperately to myself in response, "How am I not dead right now when everyone else who encountered this thing was erased from existence, why is it apparently sparing my life or at least delaying my erasure?"
The void shook with what I can only interpret as deep laughter at my confusion and terror, making the entire impossible space around me vibrate with its amusement. The entity spoke to me again in that direct consciousness-to-consciousness communication method: "I have specifically chosen to keep you alive because you will serve a purpose for me, you will be my herald across the dimensions, my harbinger who carries the message of inevitable ending to realities that do not yet know I am coming for them, there is absolutely no stopping me through any means your limited mind could devise, there is no running away to any dimension or reality where I cannot eventually follow and find you, I supersede everything that exists or has ever existed or will ever exist, all concepts and all of creation are nothing but a single page in an infinitely long book to my perception and power, so listen very carefully to what I tell you now: I am the alpha and the omega simultaneously, I am the beginning and the end, there is nothing above me in any hierarchy and nothing below me in any degraded state because I am fundamentally all things and all things will eventually return to being part of me."
I started to get dizzy and disoriented from the sheer overwhelming nature of this communication, from trying to process concepts that my evolved primate brain was never designed to understand, and I shouted back at the entity in desperate defiance: "I will find a way to stop this process, I will find a method to stop you from erasing more civilizations and destroying more stars!"
[WAKING UP - THE KING'S SECRET]
It was at that exact moment that I suddenly woke up from what appeared to have been a very deep sleep back in the king's comfortable bed, my body covered in cold sweat and my breath coming in desperate gasps as though I had been suffocating. My suit's AI was immediately asking me with concern in its synthesized voice, "Your heart rate was measured at nearly two hundred beats per minute and showed extremely irregular patterns, are you experiencing any continued medical emergency right now or have you stabilized?" I took a moment to look around the royal bedroom and collect my thoughts, trying to determine what had actually just happened to me and whether any of it had been real. I could not believe or accept how incredibly real the entire experience had felt—the physical sensation of being pulled upward, the voices of the consumed screaming in my mind, the impossible darkness of the void's interior, the communication with an entity of cosmic horror.
"No, it must have simply been a nightmare, an anxiety dream brought on by stress and exhaustion and all the horrible things I witnessed in this dead city," I thought to myself, trying to reassure my own mind and restore my sense of rationality and scientific objectivity. "I am a man of science and empirical evidence, and there are no gods or cosmic entities, no kings or masters of the universe, there are only natural phenomena following natural laws and biological entities trying to survive within those constraints." I forced myself to stand up off the bed that now felt vaguely threatening rather than comfortable, and I walked somewhat unsteadily toward a quite large bookshelf that covered most of one wall of the bedroom, filled with what appeared to be historical records and philosophical texts.
I do not know exactly what I was searching for in that moment—perhaps some kind of explanation or context for the nightmare I had experienced, perhaps just a distraction from my racing thoughts—but it seems that I found exactly the right book entirely by chance or perhaps guided by some unconscious instinct. The book was bound in dark leather and titled simply "Revelations" in gold lettering on its spine. As I pulled on this book to remove it from the shelf, I heard and felt a mechanical mechanism starting to turn and activate behind the bookshelf, and the entire wall section began to rotate on a hidden pivot. I stepped back quickly in startlement because I had not expected any kind of secret mechanism in this already thoroughly strange bedroom, though I suppose a rotating bookcase secret door is rather cliché from a narrative perspective, but I had genuinely never expected to encounter one so the surprise was real and my reaction was justified.
"Suit, run a full analysis of what is behind this hidden door," I commanded, and my suit's AI whirred and processed for a few seconds before responding in a tone that suggested genuine surprise in its programming: "Sensors are detecting one life form still alive behind the wall, classification appears to be the same species as the other bodies we have encountered throughout the city, medical diagnostic analysis shows that the individual is currently in a deep coma state and being maintained by artificial life support systems." This was genuinely strange and unexpected—the one and only surviving thing on this entire dead planet was apparently a person in a medically induced coma hidden behind a secret wall in the king's bedroom? I activated my suit's built-in illumination systems to cast light into the dark hidden room that had been revealed, and in the back of this secret chamber I could see a metallic pod that resembled an advanced medical stasis chamber.
Inside this pod was a very old person, their features withered by extreme age and their body atrophied from long-term immobilization, and they were clearly being kept alive indefinitely by an artificial life support system that was still functioning despite the death of the civilization that built it. Next to the stasis pod was a computer terminal that was still active and displaying a message that had apparently been left for anyone who might eventually discover this hidden chamber:
"My name is Oscargo, once called the King of Kings of this world and ruler of the greatest civilization this planet has ever produced, but now look upon my works and my legacy, look upon everything I built and achieved, ye who consider yourselves mighty, and despair at the futility of all ambition and power, because nothing beside my physical body remains of everything I once controlled, all around the decay of that colossal wreck of my civilization, the ruins stretch boundless and bare, and the lone and level sands of entropy and death stretch far away in every direction until they reach the horizon and beyond. - Adapted from the words of Bysshe Shelley, a poet from what I perceive to be a parallel dimension whose words somehow reached across the barriers between realities to speak truth to my situation -"
Something I need to explain about this dimensional travel phenomenon is that many literary phrases and cultural references appear to be common ground across multiple realities, existing in slightly different forms but carrying essentially the same meaning, and it makes absolutely no logical sense that this alien king should know about or reference the work of a poet from my original dimension, but I have learned to simply accept these strange synchronicities rather than trying to explain them through conventional physics. In a longer note underneath the literary quote, the king explained his final thoughts and confessions:
"I personally caused and orchestrated the great collapse of rational government in this city, I secretly funded and encouraged the rise of the religious movement and the spread of the Sarxist death cult among the population, and I deliberately engineered the final rebellion of the religious zealots against the government I had spent my life building, because it was all foretold and shown to me in the nightmares that began visiting me decades ago when the void first turned its attention toward our star system. Death awaits us all inevitably and nothing can prevent that final ending, but I feel deeply in my soul that I personally deserve something far worse than simple death for my crimes against my own people, I deserve to suffer trapped in my own mindscape for all eternity, experiencing endless variations of the horrors I enabled and the deaths I caused. I am the last surviving member of the royal Layline bloodline on this planet, and I will suffer for my unforgivable transgressions against every moral law, I beg you void to take me slowly and painfully rather than granting me the mercy of instant erasure."
The void's name was directly mentioned and invoked in the king's final confession, which startled me significantly because it suggested this entity was not just a natural phenomenon but something that could be addressed and possibly negotiated with or at least understood. My natural empathy was warring with my rage as I read these words—I felt furious anger on behalf of all those lost souls throughout this city, all of those deaths perpetrated either directly or indirectly by this one man's actions, all the incredible agony and fear that the entire population must have experienced in their final moments. Every atom of my being was screaming at me to kill this helpless comatose figure, to take revenge for what he had done and enabled.
But no, I realized after taking several deep breaths to calm myself—it would be far too good and merciful for him to die quickly now after he had specifically asked to suffer for eternity. He wanted to remain trapped in his nightmares experiencing endless guilt and horror, so the most appropriate punishment was to simply leave him exactly as he was, alive but unconscious, trapped in whatever private hell his mind had constructed for him, maintained indefinitely by machines that would probably outlast the dimensional stability of this entire reality. With my newly acquired knowledge of this world's fate and with my suit fully charged and ready for another dimensional jump, I decided there was nothing more to be gained from staying in this dead dimension any longer.
The rest of my exploration yielded only information I had already read or heard elsewhere—more religious texts, more government documents describing the failed attempts to suppress the cult, more evidence of the systematic poisoning and the final collapse. I had learned what I needed to learn about how civilizations respond to the void's approach, even if that knowledge was grim and offered no solutions. The next dimension awaited my arrival, and I needed to keep moving, keep searching for answers or weapons or some kind of hope that this cosmic threat could be resisted or at least understood well enough to develop effective countermeasures.
I walked out of the king's palace and stood in the empty grey plaza looking up one final time at the sky where the stars were barely visible through the perpetual clouds. I looked toward the direction where I knew the void was gradually approaching this doomed star system, slowly consuming everything in its path across the cosmos, and I raised my hand toward that invisible threat and said clearly and defiantly, "Fuck you and everything you represent, I will find a way to stop you eventually," and then I activated my suit's dimensional jump sequence and felt reality tear itself apart around me as I was forcibly ejected from that dead universe and thrown across the infinite barriers between dimensions toward the next reality.
The dimension I arrived in was completely different from the grey wasteland I had just left—this new reality was filled with abundant life and the air was clean and breathable and the colors were vibrant and real. But that arrival and what I discovered in that dimension is definitely a story that deserves its own complete telling in another transmission, so I will save those details for part three when I have had time to rest and organize my thoughts about everything that happened there.
I genuinely appreciate all the kind and supportive words some of you have been sending in response to these transmissions—it is not easy psychologically to integrate myself into a functional society as large and complex as yours while simultaneously carrying the weight of all the dead civilizations I have witnessed and the cosmic threat that is still pursuing me across dimensions. I promise I will have part three written and transmitted soon once I have gathered enough energy and willpower to revisit those memories. My suit's AI and I will be working together to make sure that any suspicious individuals who might be stalking or monitoring my location stay far enough away that they do not pose a threat to my mission or to the safety of your civilization. Please be safe out there and remember to look up at your star while it still remembers you exist.
Cray Stone.