Archive of Our Own ^beta

A visitorofferingsubjecthuman…

Viper stood, frozen, before a being that held absolute power over this enclosed world he'd entered like a fool. Translucent words streamed out from his skin and orifices, holding fear, glee, irritation, and all of the other messy emotions that made up "Baek Saheon" in unequal measure. When he looked at his fingers, they were in the midst of dissolving into the air. He blinked, and they were solid.

'I—'

He opened his mouth to speak, and those words and images and their intent joined the deluge, leaving him speechless. His ears rang, tinnitus and clanging bells.

It's been so long since I've "read" the tale of an individual human.

There were whispers between inhabitants of Darknesses and those lunatics from the Church of the Luminous Unknown about a monstrous god who traded stories for rewards if it found one worthy. Those who sought its audience and survived had returned in the throes of rapture. Viper had been overconfident, having sweet-talked and bargained with many a human and nonhuman. Stories as currency? He could easily play Scheherazade, and anything that could benefit him with minimal risk was worth an attempt in his book. He'd sought it out.

Now, he regretted that choice. He should have known that "stories" would mean something different and far more dangerous. Non-maleficence was not the absence of harm, and descent into insanity could not be judged by one already insane.

The crush of pressure against his chest was unlike anything he had ever felt. It was helplessness in the face of grandeur, prey already clamped in the jaws of a predator. The lack of agency of a character on a page completed and left unflipped.

The deific creature looming over him had taken the form of a writhing mass of shadow, cascading from a snout with curved antlers and glowing yellow eyes. The air around it hung dead and motionless, suffocating him in the scent of dust and time. Silence howled where the edges of its form faded into bookshelves, archives, a repository, a morgue, blank space that was white and black at the same time where of course no sort of shelving had ever existed howcouldyouthinkotherwise—

Tell me, who are "you"?

That cavernous maw opened wide with teeth that were ropes of pulled taffy from children's memories and fangs for tearing bodies apart and slick oil that dripped from top to bottom jaw. The words pouring from him were sucked inside, swallowed without chewing, his life and essence devoured by a ravenous reader.

It was a process without pain, being unwound and measured and scrutinized and judged and found lacking yet just intriguing enough to be kept alive in the moment—

He saw his sister in vibrantly colored festival clothing, her eyes empty and devoid of recognition as he reached out to her with small, trembling hands.

Betrayal, despair, obfuscation, panic.

He saw a subway station, and a man clutching his left eye as people glared from behind closing doors.

Triumph, deceit, flattery, murder.

He saw a hulking machine extracting the organs of a coworker, a corpse dangling halfway out from inside an oven, a teenager in a school uniform standing atop masked bodies…

Ah, I see. So you are

⟦

⟧.

For the first time in his life, Baek Saheon truly felt fearful of "comprehension."

When the flow of words-images-sounds-sensations finally ebbed and stopped, the being snapped its jaws shut. The rumble of its satisfaction echoed from Viper's head down to his paralyzed legs. He was nothing but a drained shell and yet he was fortunate to even have that, fortunate that the nature of a reader preserved a work's original identity.

Humans are so convoluted in comparison to other beings, and yet so simple. You in particular are a more fascinating character than most who venture into this domain. I quite enjoy stories of wit, where twists are unexpected and conclusions are pieced together bit by bit.

'Please don't let it say it wants to keep me here.' Viper was willing to leave empty-handed if it meant no longer dealing with this entity. He'd be lucky if he escaped without severe contamination landing him a permanent career change to the Security Team.

In exchange for such engaging stories, let me bestow upon you a gift, greedy, treacherous little serpent. Isn't that what you came for?

Visceral dread filled him. He didn't want a gift from this thing. Not after it consumed all that he encompassed. Already, it had rebuilt him and left little bits of itself in the cracks.

A tendril peeled away from the darkness and extended towards Viper's face, ripping away his eyepatch. He attempted to take a step back, to click the pen at his left heel, but his feet had sunk into the ground.

'Fuck. It read my memories. It knows.'

"Thank you, but I don't—"

Pain.

The tentacle pierced into his empty eye socket. As he crumpled to his knees in agony, he could feel it wriggling, digging into the scar tissue.

"AGHHHH!"

Viper grabbed at the appendage, but his hands passed through it like smoke. In contrast, the irrefutably solid point of it inside his flesh swelled and bubbled. Something emerged from its end, round, heavy, and wet. He could feel the liquid that coated its surface oozing into his exposed nerves and blood vessels—

RED flooded his newly expanded field of vision, a massive halo spiraling around the tips of the being's antlers. It was crowds of screaming humans reaching out fruitlessly for escape, it was concentric rings with filigree detailing so beautiful it brought tears to the eye, it was a shapeless splatter of viscera that rained blood in droplets upon him—

Where one lacks, ONE replaces.

For all that the villagers of Jisan preached about divinity, nothing they could imagine would be comparable to something like this. Under Daydream's ranking system, surely it was Abyss-class—a peek into the horrors beyond the known cosmos.

Blood welled up from both his old and new eyes, flowing freely down Viper's cheeks. His head pounded. Was he going to die here? Implode upon himself and be subsumed into the faceless masses of that wailing choir? Perhaps hanging himself would have been a better death, a better escape from Jisan, from ghost stories and g o d s

Too much? The stories born from the remainder of your lifespan have yet to be claimed.

Wisps of shadow seeped out of the eye to rejoin the being's main body. The intensity of the light—the visions—dimmed. Viper collapsed to the ground on his side, suddenly feeling his control over his limbs return even though he could not muster the strength to move them.

'Am I spared? Agh, it fucking hurts…' He tried and failed to push himself off the ground with his arms, only managing to look up at the deity like a supplicant.

Antlers rattled, hollow bone. Your tragedy is entertaining. Will you give it to me?

He could not deny its request. Even if he unwillingly sold his soul to this creature, Baek Saheon wanted desperately to live.

"Y-yes…" he croaked, drool leaking from between his split lips. Those lamp-like yellow eyes curled at the corners, expressing satisfaction in an uncanny imitation of humanity.

Then go, and lead an interesting life, mortal. I shall be watching v e r y closely.

The world distorted around him, flashes of hellish landscapes and incomprehensible void mixing together. Releasing a chain of curses toward the eldritch being in the safety of his own mind, Viper passed out.

The door clicked open quietly as Viper slipped into the apartment. Switching on the lights, he was greeted only by the emptiness of a central room with half its belongings missing. It had been four days since his latest roommate had met their end in a C-rank Darkness, which meant he was due to meet (note: intimidate) yet another company lackey with more ambition than brains.

Baek Saheon sighed and toed off his shoes, nudging them to the side. Loosening his tie with one hand, he dropped his briefcase onto the couch and made his way to his bedroom. He changed into loungewear, then placed his suit jacket and pants into a plastic tub he filled with cold, soapy water—they'd gotten bloodied in the Darkness his team had handled today. At the very least, the time he'd spend washing out stains tonight was well worth the extra points his coworkers would no longer need. Despite its grotesque method of acquisition, the eye had once again come in handy, alerting him of deceptively innocuous threats that his team members had underestimated. For the sake of his sanity, he'd decided to treat it like his other items, even if the therapist at the Fox Counseling Room seemed unusually intrigued by it.

He was about to roll up his sleeves and get to scrubbing when he heard a key slot into his doorknob. Peeking his head out of the bathroom, he watched a black-haired man in a similar suit to his own push open the front door. The man's skin was pallid, his eyes lightless. He looked uncomfortably like a haunted doll, with a delicate face and long, spindly limbs.

A familiar shudder crept down Baek Saheon's spine like crawling fingers. Hastily, he pulled up his eyepatch to call upon that unfortunately useful power—

remember me?

The halo was the same.

Smiling with teeth, the salaryman locked eyes with Baek Saheon, who was still half-hidden behind the doorframe. The crimson glow around him was near-blinding, but the "man's" amusement was undeniable. Baek Saheon's breath escaped his lungs in a silent whimper, survival instincts shut down in the face of overwhelming terror.

"My name is Kim Soleum. Pleasure to meet you, roommate."