Chapter 487

The shimmering glass vials were ubiquitous, a new kind of currency in a world teetering on the edge. They held 'Ascend,' a drug that promised more, offered the seductive lie of being something other than ordinary.

It had swept across the globe with terrifying speed, and the results were as devastating as they were predictable. Those who indulged became paragons of power; enhanced, terrifying reflections of their former selves, with speed and strength beyond natural limits.

And now, the 'ascended' warred against the rest, their augmented rage unleashed. The world had changed with the coming of the new age.

Before it, there was a delicate balance, an illusion of peace held together by social structures and human frailty. Now that thin facade was shattered; the line between predator and prey was now a gaping chasm.

The streets that were once filled with casual movement were now barren. The only souls left were those running, hiding, waiting, and of course, the 'ascended.'

The structures that once symbolized human cooperation were now only rubble and wreckage. Gorbula, a man whose life had always been measured in quiet acts of service and patience, found himself lost in the new reality.

He was a bookbinder; a craftsman whose fingers had always danced with a gentle touch and meticulous skill. His hands now felt alien; trembling not with the creation of beauty, but with raw fear.

His apartment, once a sanctuary filled with the soft scent of old paper, was now a cage. The windows were blacked out with fabric, muffling the night's cacophony of screams and breaking glass.

Each day became a repetition of the same: waking to the deafening silence, finding that no day brings safety, rationing a decreasing stockpile of supplies, and then the tortuous task of trying to locate a different room in his small home.

In each of those movements, there is always the thought, a terror he could not avoid: they could come any second, they could breach the pathetic protection that his meager existence had constructed.

This was no way to live. But then what options were left for him?

He wasn't like them; He hadn't taken 'Ascend'. He was just... regular.

He was simply human, with the aches and weakness that he'd carried all his days. And for this he felt a great deal of self-loathing.

"Coward," he said to himself one evening in the darkness. "Coward. Worthless Coward."

He clutched a leather-bound book, its aged pages a testament to a life before the horrors that had befallen them, as if touching it could bring the calmness of days past.

His eyes traced over words that had previously filled him with meaning and satisfaction, now just dead language and abstract art that only served as a mockery to his current world.

But then again, all beauty and truth were mockeries to his world. It was a bitter mockery of himself.

Gorbula recalled a story told to him by a man at the bookstore, a tale from the 'old world.' In this story, heroes had stood their ground against overwhelming odds.

But he found no courage in such tales; they only filled him with an even greater degree of despair. These stories were now pointless to him, completely void.

What worth were these stories if it made people cower with even greater dread. Was it all pointless?

"What was the point?!" He slammed the book onto the dusty table.

The noise was too loud; It made him tremble. His heart threatened to explode from his chest.

What did he expect to accomplish from doing something so careless. There's no going back once such a risk had been made.

"You did that." His thoughts echoed back at him. A sharp, shattering impact reverberated through his building.

He froze, every muscle tense. It was close, very close.

"Please... just pass by." He said in an uneven breath, like an erratic prayer to some indifferent God.

Another loud noise ripped through the stillness of his dwelling, followed by a second, then third. They weren't random sounds; the building shook with intentional rage.

The ascended, Gorbula knew, had arrived. Gorbula did what had become ingrained: He made himself unseen in the darkness of his home, a simple and ineffective trick.

His breaths became shallower, and faster as the sounds became closer. First it was the pounding on the building door, which seemed so sturdy now became paper as its wood fractured from the strikes.

Then it became the smashing through of a wall that he'd hoped wouldn't fail him, but to no avail it collapsed with a startling, yet expected crash.

And with a quickening tempo it moved towards him, each movement sounding closer, as though this unseen force wanted to torment him, toy with his terror, just so he could experience it to it's fullness before the brutal final act of annihilation.

It is at that moment, he heard a chilling laughter not unlike glass rubbing across pavement and his body quivered like a frightened rat. It was all over.

It had reached him. He could see him, illuminated by the fractured moonlight.

The Ascended stood there with distorted body shapes, moving in sharp angles. His physique twisted unnaturally, his muscles swollen.

And those eyes, glowing with an inhuman hunger, settled on Gorbula. It spoke, and the words tore through Gorbula's sanity, mocking every value that he once believed in:

"I can taste your fear." His laugh echoed and it is now in full control.

It's laughter made the deepest parts of him hurt, something he did not think could possibly hurt this bad, or more appropriately, ever hurt at all.

The monster came closer, its long limbs bending into shapes never intended. His distorted smile grew larger as he relished in his power, making each and every moment that Gorbula had left an act of torment.

This wasn't about victory; it was an act of malicious sadism. This isn't how any person was supposed to act, but it felt completely real, it felt appropriate to their world.

Gorbula stumbled back, falling against the cold stone wall of the room. The distance was negligible, yet the dread grew large with every deliberate, menacing movement.

His past life was all just a mere dream, just a collection of thoughts as though he were still within that life. He closed his eyes; what more could he possibly hope for at this point?

All those lessons about kindness and bravery, they never would've served in this life. What a cruel joke, a malicious taunt!

Those were lies and now lies will kill me! All this had served nothing, there was only an abyss left behind, just void, an empty and hopeless wasteland, nothing could save him now.

Why try? Why struggle? His body gave up completely as his mind already had.

This wasn't surrender, no it was defeat, and a realization that nothing was within his control. His past values and moral high grounds?

Useless. In his previous life that kind of weakness would make a fool, in this life it makes a victim, a very convenient one.

The ascended came closer, as close as could ever get as his hands coiled into claws, and in a sharp, cutting, movement ripped through Gorbula's chest, as though tearing a page right from the center.

The final seconds became an agonizing show of agony and brutality; he tried his best to ignore what was happening, to push back against the realization that this was really the end, this was where he went, this is how it is.

Blood flowed from him; as his life started slipping away like sand, as though even time was betraying him and wanted to get over this pointless tragedy of his.

He stared at the hole in his chest, the gore reflecting a warped light, it wasn't unlike the twisted look in the eyes of the ascended that stood above him.

Then it all went away, nothing was left of that body. But the story wasn't over.

The horror didn't simply end with a final breath; there were always remnants, just echoes left behind that made any conclusion seem only like the beginnings of some more morbid and terrible.

A tendril of black smoke rose from where Gorbula had perished. It gathered with speed as if drawn towards something greater, like it could never rest until it did.

The tendril weaved like a snake in the air, it gathered up like a ball, only to expand. This shadow reached into the crevices of the building.

Like ink slowly poisoning the water it grew bigger, it seemed like a tumor from another dimension, that slowly engulfed every aspect of this now-dead body, turning its flesh, muscles, bones, all into pure black smoke that now grew even faster with purpose.

And when the blackness completely covered every aspect, from head to toes, with all its essence gone; A mirror image of Gorbula was revealed. He looked just like him; everything down to the most minute detail, all except his eyes.

They were an abysmal darkness that pierced into the soul and took something away with it, unlike what the first Gorbula did. With cold, deliberate efficiency, the second Gorbula examined his newly formed body, as if an artist was assessing their finished product.

No shred of emotion registered in his face; his gaze was like glass, vacant, and dead. There wasn't sadness, there wasn't even an acceptance or surrender; no, it was just an observation.

Then, this being, a mockery of Gorbula's former life; moved. With calculated intent, he turned his sights, not on the shattered walls around him, but down to where his predecessor laid, still barely clinging to what could even be remotely considered life.

The second Gorbula bent over him, his black gaze intensified. With his cold, dead hands, he touched Gorbula, his presence was something far more terrifying than a knife and with that the first Gorbula stopped trembling and with no fear finally released his final breath, leaving the world without an Gorbula and without hope.

And with Gorbula's death complete the second figure rose, and a chilling, triumphant laughter came from deep within the false body that no mortal soul could possibly match, only darkness.

The figure with its vacant gaze looked up into the empty building and without a thought and without a care in the world, made his way to the surface; now with the strength that Gorbula had not the luxury to attain and the will that he could not possibly possess, leaving all behind and nothing at the same time.

Now just one thought crossed the monsters mind. To continue the horror.