in the Mountains of Madness

Chapter 15

"Beyond the Mountains of Madness"

The chapter begins with Zolish and Gabriel, who had just finished the plan they crafted to resurrect the Lord of Demons. Gabriel felt a strange sense of comfort despite Zolish being a cosmic entity whose appearance instilled terror in all creatures. Yet, Zolish's presence gave Gabriel the illusion that he wasn't alone. Imagine—loneliness could drive you to feel that even the most monstrous and bloodthirsty demons, if they stood by your side out of sheer self-interest, would feel far better than the void of empty blackness known as isolation. Zolish flapped his demonic wings, preparing to leave.

Zulish: "I have written the entire plan for you. Study it well, mortal. I am leaving—I have things to attend to."

Gabriel, with tears of blood streaming from his eyes, said: "Wait—why are you always leaving me behind? I brought a deer. Maybe we can eat it and spend some time together... This Witch House is terrifying, and I can't seem to leave it for some reason I don't understand."

Zulish: "Ooooh, Gabriel, you still don't understand. I do not care about you or humans. I am an exalted cosmic being—you are nothing more than a worthless pawn in my plan. Once you've made your wish and I succeed, I will disappear from your life, you wretched fool. Do not think for a moment that a supreme entity like myself would care for someone like you—how arrogant of you."

As he finished speaking, his voice echoed with a terrifying laughter that made Gabriel's heart quiver. Zulish then uttered a single word—"Fall."

Gabriel felt as if the world beneath him crumbled; his body collapsed to the ground, nearly losing consciousness.

Zolish continued, laughing menacingly: "Hahahahahaha—I know this feeling. You are alone, child.

There is only darkness for you—and only death for your people.

I will build great and Terrible army, a powerful and terrifying one, and together we will sail

to a billions worlds. We will sail until every light has been extinguish and drown all hope. You are smart, child, but I"m Beyond strength

I"m The End

His laughter grew louder, sending tremors through the entire island. As he ascended into the icy sky, his wings stirred a howling storm. Gabriel lay trembling on the cold ground, paralyzed with fear. Then, without warning, Zolish vanished into the void, as though teleporting to an unknown place.

Gabriel barely had time to process the horror when two ghostly hands, emanating a strange green aura, emerged from the Witch House. These enormous hands belonged to Kazya Mysen, the dreadful ancient witch.

Her face emerged from the shadows like a demonic mask—her skin stretched unnaturally tight over her bones, her yellow, broken teeth glinting under a sinister light. Warts and festering boils marred her twisted nose, and her dead eyes glowed with pure malice. Then came her laughter—a sound that did not belong to this world.

Kazya: "Hahahahahaha—little boy, you've sealed your fate the moment you stepped into this accursed house!"

Gabriel, trembling, stuttered: "W-Who... who are you, you wretched hag?!"

Kazya: "Oh, you poor, foolish child. I was the first witch to learn magic in this cursed house. My soul remains here—along with the souls of all the witches who were slaughtered by the bloodthirsty man who once ruled this frozen island."

Gabriel: "H-How could a mere butcher defeat witches?"

Kazya: "Ooooh, little one—it was his thirst for blood. It was stronger than any magic. But you, boy—you should worry about yourself. Because now, you shall be cast into the abyss of nightmares and hallucinations. Hahahahahaha!"

She hurled Gabriel to the ground, which dissolved into a pitch-black void—the very essence of emptiness itself. The Witch House crumbled around him, as though sinking into the depths of the unknown.

The fall was endless. The dark void swallowed everything—his senses, his body, his voice, even time itself. Only the echo of Kazya's laughter remained, hollow and distorted, reverberating inside his skull as if it were coming from within. But suddenly, as if the universe twisted upon itself, the laughter faded... and light appeared.

Gabriel crashed onto the ground—but there was no pain. Only a chilling realization: this place was not real. He lifted his head... and froze.

The scene before him was like an image from a forbidden magical tome or an ancient, enchanted carving. The sky was a dark blue, drawn with rough lines that seemed to flicker if he stared too long. In the horizon, the green hills stretched unnaturally, as if mocking him with a twisted smile. But none of that was the most terrifying part.

A few meters away stood a man.

He was tall, draped in a purple robe, with a thick beard and a face that held ageless wisdom. A golden crown rested on his head—an eye-like symbol at its center, unblinking as it stared into infinity. Upon his chest, a strange emblem curled like a serpent devouring its own tail. In his right hand, he held a metallic sphere—an orb that seemed to represent the heavens themselves. His left hand stretched toward Gabriel, as though inviting him... or passing judgment.

Yet the true horror was not the man—it was what floated beside him.

A sun—with a human face. Its expression was frozen in a twisted mockery between a smirk and hidden fury. Beneath it, a blackened mass, another face—lifeless, trapped under the burning sun, as if it suffered in silent agony, trying to speak but unable to. Surrounding them were flames—not ordinary fire, but a living, pulsating darkness that defied comprehension.

Gabriel couldn't move. It felt as though his very bones had turned to ash, and his mind strained to understand what his eyes beheld. This was not just a nightmare—this was something older, something that existed before dreams were ever conceived.

The man in the purple robe stepped forward, his voice silent yet resonating directly into Gabriel's consciousness:

"Do you see it, traveler? This... is a paradox, isn't it?"

Gabriel wanted to answer—but his mouth would not move. His voice did not exist.

The sun-faced horror began to drift closer. The light intensified, searing his mind, etching itself into his very soul. The burning knowledge was too much to bear—his thoughts began to unravel.

And then, the face beneath the sun whispered a single word:

"Alone."

In that moment, something broke inside Gabriel. An all-encompassing terror, deeper than anything he had ever known, consumed him.

Kazya's face pierced through the void again as if bending time and space itself.

Kazya: "That's right, Gabriel. I never cursed you. Not me, nor this wretched Witch House. The real curse... lives within your skull. And now... fall deeper into the void—until you find your true face, you hypocrite. Hahahahahahaha!"

With one last push, she sent him plummeting into the endless blackness once more—without mercy, without end.

---

Gabriel wanted to scream, to move, but his body was no longer his. He was trapped inside himself, just a consciousness imprisoned within decaying flesh.

The man raised the glowing staff, and the celestial eye began to move… it gazed directly at Gabriel.

At that moment, he spoke to him:

"I don't think they was ready…

And I know he's know me, I push foreigns like they Chevy's…

She's fuck with my eyes, she do that shit to be petty…

I still get the top in hell, tell me who's are is Bredi??!!"

Gabriel didn't understand anything he heard. He stopped, staring in silence, his face frozen in a calm shock—not the kind that makes you scream, but the kind that leaves your mind utterly blank. His thoughts froze completely at that moment.

Then Kazia pushed him, and he resumed falling again into the cold, dark void.

The fall was no longer a fall.

It became a state… a state of slow dissolution, as if his existence was melting into the void itself. He no longer felt his body, his bones, or his skin—he was just a drifting awareness through nothingness. Time no longer made sense here. Images poured into his mind—faces, places, colors that no human eyes were ever meant to see.

And then, suddenly, everything stopped.

Or rather… it froze.

The void around him began to crack, as if the darkness itself was just a thin shell hiding something else beneath it. Cracks of light filled the emptiness, and reality itself shattered like fragile glass. Then, without warning, the world around him exploded… and he found himself standing in a place that should not exist.

There was a sky. But it wasn't a sky—it was a cosmic expanse teeming with stars, but the stars were… wrong. Some moved as if watching him, others blazed like supernovas, and some melted like burning wax. There was no horizon, no clear ground, but he stood on something strange—a white surface, like marble, but surrounded by a void full of shimmering, living lights, like enormous comets—something that shouldn't be beneath his feet.

And then… he saw her.

She stood before him—or perhaps she was part of the place itself.

A feminine figure, her body a blend of white marble and cosmic void. Her limbs were sculpted like an ancient statue, but her core was a black hole—consuming light, consuming meaning. Her hair flowed in slow, silver waves, as if it floated through space, and her eyes… there were no eyes, only an endless abyss pulsing with the light of dying stars.

She didn't move, but she saw him.

Gabriel couldn't breathe. He wasn't even sure if breathing mattered here. He tried to speak, but his voice was meaningless—just dead vibrations lost in the cosmos. Then, without warning, she raised her hands.

And he realized… they were not hands.

They were something else.

Her limbs stretched and bent, transforming into long claws, but the flesh wasn't flesh—it was like cracked marble revealing something beneath. And beneath… were stars, galaxies, black holes swallowing light.

And finally… she spoke.

But her voice wasn't a voice.

It was existence itself.

"Gabriel…"

She wasn't speaking his name.

She was knowing it.

"You are here because you fell. You are here because you have always been here. Do you think falling means descent? No, no, no…"

She moved toward him, but the distance did not change. No—she was walking inside his mind.

"Falling, Gabriel… is realizing that you were never rising at all."

And then, before he could respond—before he could even think—she raised her hand, or perhaps an entire galaxy, or maybe something he couldn't comprehend… and touched his forehead.

And then… she laughed.

---

Gabriel was lost once again in the void.

But during his fall, a ghostly green hand, wrapped in a spectral mist, emerged from the emptiness—stretching upwards toward the Witch's House. With unnatural force, it seized him and hurled him away from the mirror.

Kazia's voice echoed through the air, filled with venomous mirth:

"Do you know what will free you from the torment of this house, Gabriel? It is but one thing—just one thing! Hahahaha! If you do it… you shall have your freedom!"

Gabriel, his voice trembling, barely more than a broken whisper:

"Anything… anything! Just get me out of this hell, you wretched sorceress!"

Kazia leaned closer, her spectral face twisted in malicious delight:

"You must kill the child of the family that dwells atop the Mountains of Madness… devour his hands… and bring the rest of his body to me. It will be an offering… to my god—the cosmic deity… the Lord of the Seas…

Cathuloooooeh… Mmfynis… the Master of Whales!"

Gabriel's hollow eyes widened in disbelief:

"But… there's no one else on this island… it's isolated… isolated… isolated!"

His voice echoed through the void—a desperate, broken sound—reflecting his utter bewilderment at the thought of a family existing in such a desolate place.

Kazia's laughter grew louder, cruel and cold:

"You have two choices—seek them out in the Mountains of Madness… or return to the hallucinations of the void. Choose, Gabriel… and choose quickly… Hahahahaha!"

Gabriel, defeated and without hope, lowered his head:

"Fine… I will go…"

---

He walked—dragging his weary body—toward the frozen peak of hell itself, the Mountains of Madness. The storm raged around him, howling with a fury that would have broken lesser men, but Gabriel pressed on. Each step was agony. The ice beneath his feet seemed to hunger for him, pulling him down with every stride.

When he reached the base of the mountain, he tried to climb—but the sheer, merciless slopes cast him down repeatedly. And yet… as if the mountain itself had grown impatient, it granted him a staircase—a ghastly spiral of blood-streaked ice that twisted toward the summit.

Gabriel—his mind long since shattered by madness—ascended the bloodied steps without hesitation, his boots echoing in the frozen silence. Each step oozed with crimson, as if the mountain had devoured others before him. He climbed higher… and higher… until at last, he stood at the peak.

And there—at the summit—he saw the god he had always believed in.

It was Christ—crucified—his figure nailed to a splintered wooden cross, wearing a crown of thorns. Yet this was no savior. Around the crucifix danced a horde of goblins—hideous, twisted things—cackling as they piled kindling beneath his feet, eager to set their unholy fire alight.

Gabriel, who had escaped the delusions of the Witch's House, now found himself ensnared in the visions of the Mountain. The crucified figure smiled—a smile devoid of hope—and spoke with a voice heavy with cosmic despair:

"Boy… your attempts to grasp the hidden truths of the universe… to unlock the dormant power of your mind… will only lead you down the path to true damnation."

And then—suddenly—everything vanished.

Not only the crucified man and the goblins… but the entire mountain itself.

The world cracked open beneath him, and the mountain devoured him whole. He fell again—down, down into a blackness deeper than any void he had known. Here, the icy winds howled like tormented souls, lashing his body as he plunged into the eternal dark.

---

There was no endless fall this time.

Only an impact.

Gabriel did not realize when the fall had ceased—but he found himself sprawled across a cold, wet wooden deck, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His body trembled as if he had endured centuries of torment.

He raised his head slowly, nausea twisting his stomach as he beheld his new prison.

He was aboard a ship.

But this was no vessel built by human hands. The wood was blackened, waterlogged with the blood of the lost. The sails, torn and tattered, fluttered in the wind like the shrouds of forgotten dead. The air reeked of salt and decay, thick and oppressive—as if the sea itself hungered for his soul.

Gabriel tried to rise, but the ship groaned beneath him, shifting as though it were alive.

And then… he heard the sound.

Not the crashing of waves. Not the fury of the storm.

Something else.

Something hungry.

He turned his head slowly, and what he saw wrenched the last fragments of his sanity away.

The ocean had split—a vast maw yawning open in the heart of the sea. It was no mere creature but an ancient blasphemy, a living abyss with fangs like jagged spires. The water around its mouth boiled, releasing a fetid stench that twisted Gabriel's stomach. This thing… this being… was not part of the sea—it was the sea.

Other ships—broken and doomed—struggled in vain to escape. But there was no escape. Around them circled monstrous sharks, their fins slicing the waves in anticipation.

Gabriel's terror deepened into something far worse—an understanding. He was not just a victim. He was prey—ensnared by a mind far older and more vast than any human consciousness.

The ship began to drift—pulled inexorably toward the gaping maw.

Then… a skeletal figure emerged from a neighboring vessel—no mere man, but the remains of a pirate captain. Its empty eyes fixed on Gabriel with cold amusement. It raised one withered, bone-clad finger and spoke words that shattered reality itself He raised his terrifying finger and pointed it at Gabriel, then he said, :

"I don't think that bitch was ready…"

Spent my hunnid thousand at Starlets, my heart got heavy

As the words echoed, a still-beating heart erupted from the pirate's chest—pulsing with a sick, otherworldly light Then he continued his words

Then I thought about it, that money so tell me where the hell is bradi

I ain't want no pussy baby, just give me the headie

I done found my opp location just right off the ready

I can pay for the whole hit, that's only if you let me

Voodoo lady prayed over me just so she could bless me

And as the maw closed over them all… Gabriel He fell again, the creature's mouth turning Darkness and empty.

Here is the fall again.

But this time, there was no sea. There was no water to swallow him.

He was falling into the void.

The sky above was torn, as if it were a burnt cloth, and instead of stars, there were only moving shadows, crawling, watching him with eyes that were not there.

The tilted moon was more like a hole in existence, emitting a dim light that barely illuminated the ruin below.

Then he saw the ground approaching.

But it was not ground. It was an entity.

Gabriel realized it too late, when the "ground" opened its eyes, eyes glowing red like embers in the void. It was not a solid body, but a living being, gigantic, from which twisted black claws crawled, writhing like hungry snakes. The creature was not moving, but was part of this world, as if the fabric of reality itself had become a monster.

Then the attraction began.

He was no longer falling freely.

He was being pulled.

The claws stretched out towards him, twisting in the air, some of them were tearing through space itself, leaving black cracks where they passed.

Gabriel tried to scream, but the sound did not come out. There was no air, there was no echo, only a suffocating silence that swallowed everything.

Then he saw the others.

Bodies were falling like him, writhing in the air before being snatched by the claws. They were no longer quite human, their faces were distorted, their eyes empty, as if they had witnessed something the mind could not comprehend.

He saw one of them being pulled slowly, screaming without a sound, before his features completely disappeared when the claws touched him. He became a black mass, absorbed by the shadows as if he had never existed.

Gabriel could not move.

The creature below opened its mouth, or perhaps it was not a mouth but a gap, a gateway to something older than darkness itself. There was no end to it, there was no light reflecting inside it, only nothingness.

Then the whisper came again.

But this time, it was not from outside.

But it was inside him.

"Keep falling..."

Then the darkness swallowed him.

Then Gabriel finally woke up from the nightmares, panting and trembling.

He gasped—drenched in cold sweat—finding himself once more at the peak of the mountain.

Before him, at the very edge of the summit, stood a decrepit wooden cabin, half-buried in snow. The wind howled, but he forced his shaking limbs forward, pushing open the cracked door.

Inside was chaos—broken glass, shattered furniture, and an overturned bed. By the hearth, he found a sight that froze his blood.

A young couple—no older than their thirties—lay dead, stabbed through the heart. And beside them, a crying infant, no more than a month old.

On the wall above them, scrawled in blood, were the words:

"Signed—The Reaper."

Tears welled in Gabriel's eyes as he pulled the knife from the mother's heart. Approaching the child, he pressed his lips to its forehead, whispering:

"Forgive me… but this is the only way out of hell…"

And with that… the knife fell.

He couldn't do it. Every time he was about to stab, his hands would suddenly stop, or they would tremble and the knife would fall from his grip. Then Kazia's ghostly spirit appeared to him and said: "Gabriel, if you don't do it, you will see nightmares in that house forever, and you will never leave this island, forever... ha ha ha."

Then Gabriel closed his eyes, stabbed the one-month-old child, killing him, and the knife fell from his hand. He felt hysterical and started saying: "What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?"

Before Gabriel left the shack, his stomach growled as he cursed the smell of blood, a scent he had grown accustomed to from eating the flesh of animals on this island. He hurried inside the shack and locked the door. We don't know if he searched their fridge for food or ate their corpses, the three of them, after he finished his meal.

Gabriel came out of the shack, running, his face and beard dripping with blood, his mouth full as if he hadn't finished his meal yet. His clothes were all soaked in crimson blood. He then stopped at the edge of the cliff, near the ravine, so close to falling. At that moment, an apparition appeared to him in the mist.

---

At the mountain's edge—his beard dripping with blood—Gabriel faced the searchlights and hounds of the New Zealand police. A broken man—part beast—he stood defiant, cradling the cursed dagger.

Detective Carl shouted:

"It's over! There's nowhere left to run!"

Gabriel only smiled—a smile that no mortal should wear.

And as he leaped from the cliff's edge, a black-winged being caught him mid-fall—Zulish.

"It's time to burn down the House of Ashes …"

—End of Chapter