Yellow - a strange color

Some while ago, Kai had concluded that the Blood Prophecy showed him a Random Encounter, which was bound to result in his death.

That theory encountered its first challenge today.

When the Act took effect, the Blood Ocean greeted Kai like a lucid dream.

There was an awareness about him, letting him sense his surroundings. Kai waited. He waited for the waves, the shooting pillars, and the twisted whirls to turn into structures and shapes that would give some meaning to this world.

The wait paid off.

A blood figure rose out of the depths of this ocean, taking a humanoid shape. It walked and walked, holding something in its hand with over 3 ft long and slippery creature slithering behind it, following its footsteps.

Kai followed this figure like an unseen phantom.

It was him.

The realization came suddenly. Kai tried to peek at what he from the future had in his hand. But every action other than just watching stupidly brought with it an impassable resistance. The moment he tried to do more than just follow the figure, his awareness dwindled, on the brink of disappearing.

So he reluctantly gave up on finding out what it was in the blood figure's hands.

Suddenly, the blood ocean shook like the static noise of a TV on losing the signal. The scene changed, and when Kai could perceive his surroundings, he found the blood figure kneeling, lighting what seemed like a candle. There were other things placed beside the candle, which he couldn't make sense of.

Then the blood figure spoke, chanting some words. And the slithering shape behind it burst into many blood drops, melting into the humanoid figure. 'The future Selene just entered my body.' The thought passed by Kai's awareness. He couldn't hear the words. Nor could he see where he was, and what he was doing. But he could tell there was a deep mystery about the words his future self was chanting.

And then it happened.

The Blood Ocean shook again. But this time, it was truly the ocean which was shaking. Dense yellow turbulent clouds took over the world which had materialized because of the Act, Blood Prophecy. Yellow lightning thundered, hitting the blood underneath. Tens of thousands of tornadoes rumbled along with the storm, throwing off enormous pillars of blood. Even the wind had a color, Kai's awareness noticed.

Yellow. Everything was yellow. And this yellow was taking over the red of this blood world.

Only then did he notice the door.

When did it appear? How did it appear? Of these questions, Kai's awareness had no answer. Was it still a dream? A Prophecy? He dared not ask these questions. The only reality was the door. A monstrously gigantic door, reaching from the ocean's floor and going beyond the ceiling of the sky. There were patterns on the door that repulsed Kai at the sight.

A disgust rose from the very depths of his soul.

Those patterns seemed to be of a geometry he had seen nowhere. Lines were circles, and circles seemed to be shapeless cubes. Concaves looked convex with every tilt of the head, and in the next moment, they looked like spherical holes. Dimensions were folding onto each other, ruining the meaning of existence.

Everything was wrong.

Only the door's color made sense to him. Yellow.

The door tilted from one side then. Which side? Was it opening outward or inward? He couldn't know. The only thing Kai was sure of was when he saw a deep yellow mist churning behind that door, he gasped. In fear, terror, and genuine horror.

Kai's awareness shivered as he saw a long strip of tattered yellow cloth forcing its way in through that opening.

It was then the Blood Ocean shattered, like a billion shards of a black mirror.

When Kai's awareness returned to his actual body, the world was black. He was lying on the floor, with jet black blood oozing out of his eyes. There was a tear on his chest, and thousands of thin tendrils flailed out of it, trying to grasp at just anything. All over his body were yellow spots, multiplying and disappearing like an uncontrolled mutation.

And the notification flashed so red that it almost looked black.

Gritting his teeth, Kai wriggled for the only thing he cared about. The meatballs and filth. The only time he had felt so much pain was when the official wizard had used that Cruciatus Curse on him. Following his survival instinct, Kai pushed himself to his right. Nothing.

The food seemed to have been kicked away by him.

"Need… food…" Kai hissed out through his teeth. All the HP capsules he had were gone, and he had only counted on the Filth Manipulation to recover. It was a sound choice. How would he have known about this strange course of events? Suddenly, when all hope seemed to be lost, and the world was getting darker, a burst of bone-chilling cold wrapped around his body.

His blood, flesh, bones, and even his soul were being frozen.

Hisss!

This hiss rang in Kai's ears like a sonorous play of divine flutes.

A layer of white-blue frost appeared on him, but it was concentrated around his chest. The black tendrils that were flailing in madness and hunger calmed down and instantly went for the yellow patches that were still overtaking his skin. Selene slithered out of him and rushed off. To where? He didn't know. The cold had numbed him, making the pain more bearable.

Something pried open his mouth, and Kai felt the hardness of scales touching his teeth, tongue, and gums. Selene opened her jaw and passed on the filthy meatballs directly down his throat. The Filth Manipulation took care of the rest. As rotten meatballs and grime kept going inside him, it countered the drop in his HP regeneration rate.

Through the gap of his eyelids, he saw the little serpent slithering in panic, going for the meatballs that had rolled away from him, putting one in her mouth, and then coming back to dump it down his throat.

Kai found himself unable to think.

Only a string of words repeated themselves in his mind as if someone had planted them there, in his consciousness. Kai latched himself on those words, fearing that he would forget them in the next second. When the last meatball went down to his stomach, he spoke them out using sheer willpower to give them a reality.

"The… The King in Yellow…"

Then he passed out.

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AN: Don't ask for spoilers, lol. Wait for the next chapter. Or the more curious ones can use the mighty google. Enjoy!