The world of Lord of the Mysteries churned as something foreign pressed against its fragile borders. Invisible ink bled at the edges of the narrative, and for a heartbeat, Backlund's smog, the endless lightning of the City of Silver, and the three worlds and the flowing river all trembled without knowing why.
At the seam between realities, Elias stood upon nothing—a dark, chaotic gulf where everything and nothing existed. Here, beyond the written pages, the very edge of the fictional universe, way beyond the astral world. He touched the boundary and pressed his will against it.
The darkness around him reacted violently. The Primordial Chaos that cradled LoTM's world stirred, sluggish at first, then frantic. Slumbering madness—devoid of reason, morality, or even intent—awakened at his intrusion. His very existence in this place had awoken this slumbering entity.
It lunged.
The formless chaos surged like a living ocean, countless phantom limbs reaching to cease his form in hunger for structure and balance. Its whisper was not sound but the definition of irrationality itself.
Elias exhaled a long, hopeless sigh, a sound more tired than fearful.
With a flick of his left hand, the entire expanse of chaos recoiled. A single gesture collapsed an infinity, compressing the raw madness until it condensed, screaming silently, into a humanoid silhouette.
The thing stood before him: featureless, shifting, and ancient. A residue of creation's first screams. It was the Oldest One. His awakening meant the end of the story before it even had the chance to unfold.
The void pulsed with silent panic.
Elias lifted his hand again, fingers curling lazily. Chaos obeyed. The humanoid chaos slid forward, helplessly dragged as if gravity itself had chosen sides. Its faceless "head" slammed into his open palm, which now gripped it firmly by the jaw.
The chaos writhed. For all its endless power, for all its authorities as the Creator, it could not escape.
Elias leaned closer, his gaze sinking into its non-existent eyes. Beneath his calm expression, something older and far more dangerous flickered—a wisp of a far more ominous chaos sealed within him, a fragment of an infinitely deeper abyss.
The Oldest One felt it. One of The Original Creator's oldest and most primal instincts was stirred to impossible levels, It felt fear, old primal fear.
Elias' voice was soft, but in this place, it was a decree.
"No need to cause unnecessary ruckus," he murmured. "You're too early for the stage I'm writing, besides compared to the original where you couldn't do much, I may give you a part in the play, an audience even. Now go to sleep"
The humanoid shaped chaos shuddered, its edges unraveling like smoke under a breeze. The tension in the void lessened.
Elias loosened his grip, letting the condensed chaos dissolve into harmless motes that drifted back into the darkness. The gulf stabilized, but faint ripples lingered.
Straightening, he dusted his hands as though the act had been trivial.
"With that out of the way," he whispered to himself, his tone regaining its playful lilt. "Let's see how far I can go with my own pathways."
With that, he stepped forward, letting the mists of LoTM's world swallow him whole. Reality shivered again, before the story carried on, unaware that an alien author now walked among its characters.