Hello, thanks for checking in on me. Yes, I’m still in the process of plummeting to my death—or at least that’s what I think is happening. It could just be my sanity crumbling, but I swear I’m falling slower now. My body drifts like a feather, soft and slow.

  A minute passes, and something comes into view in the distance.

  “Is that… blood?” I squint, trying to get a better look. No, not quite. I wait a bit longer as I get closer. “Oh… it’s a pool of gore instead.” The thick, viscous liquid resembles blood, only there’s way too much of it. And I’m heading straight for it.

  “Ugh… I hope this coat is waterproof.” Maybe I can steer myself to the side? Kind of like nding with a parachute. I attempt to angle my body, but then I realize—“Never mind, it’s an ocean of gore. I can’t even see the end.” The more the scene opens up, the clearer it becomes that there’s nothing but a vast expanse of dark, deep ichor waiting below me. Well, at least my wish came true—I managed to jinx myself out of dying.

  “How does one swim in blood?” I muse aloud as I inch closer and closer to the surface. Maybe I should be panicking a bit more, given that I’m about to drown in gore.

  “Ugh, the smell is putrid.” Now that I’m close enough, the thick, metallic stench sms into me, nearly making me gag. I take a deep breath, inhaling as much clean air as I can, before preparing to dive—I make sure to angle my body so that my feet touch the surface first.

  As I slowly descend, my feet make contact with the ocean of blood, yet they don’t sink in. I’m just standing there, hovering on the surface. My presence sends ripples across the viscous liquid, but the waves quickly swallow them up.

  “Holy fuck, I must look so cool and elegant right now,” I mutter, giving myself a mental pat on the back. I gaze out into the nothingness beyond.

  Strangely enough, the Void isn’t here—I can feel it isn’t. It feels wrong to even call this bnk expanse above me the Void. It’s more like a featureless sheet of sky, stretching endlessly with no signs of life.

  Okay, I look cool. But now a new question arises. “…Great, now what? Another episode of me wandering in circles?” I’d really like to avoid that, if possible.

  “Though, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Eventually, I have to start walking. So I do. Step after step, each one sending ripples across the blood-red surface, only for them to be swallowed up by the relentless waves.

  I swear I’m not just trying to sound poetic here—it’s a real problem. I have no way to mark where I’ve been, no sense of direction, no clue where I started. I’m just moving forward, hoping it leads somewhere… or at least to something different.

  Dread starts to rise in me, slow at first, but one wrong move and it’ll rocket out of control. It’s strange; when I faced the same unknown depths—the Void—I found a sort of peace in it. But now, it’s almost the same abyss, and yet I can’t shake the unease gnawing at me.

  A desperate thought surfaces: The dagger… maybe if I just hold it, I’ll feel safer. Yeah, and if something crawls out of that crimson sea, I’ll have something to stab.

  I reach down to my robe. The instant I withdraw the dagger, the entire ocean convulses. It gleams like gss under a sudden light before shattering, porcein fragments raining from the sky, breaking through some unseen barrier between ocean and air. Waves erupt on all sides, monstrous and violent, crashing against each other in a cacophony of chaos.

  And yet, somehow, I’m still standing.

  “Did I cause this?! Did you cause this?!” I shout, staring at the dagger in my trembling grip. The runes bze to life, pulsing with an almost frantic energy. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, just keep me safe… please.”

  Instead of bracing for a fight, I clutch the dagger close to my chest like it’s some holy relic, my st anchor to sanity. It seems to work, for now. The fragments—disembodied hands, fingers, and heads—are smashing through the surface everywhere except the spot where I’m standing.

  The ocean floor fractures further, the ground beneath me shrinking until there’s only a tiny sliver of space left, barely enough for me to bance on. I’m surrounded by a churning, violent abyss.

  “What the hell is this…?”

  A brief, fleeting moment of peace. Then, something begins to form in the distance. Thick, congealed sludges of meat start to merge, grotesque tendrils of gore spiraling into the mass. Bits of sinew and shredded tissue join the fray, knitting together like some twisted, organic quilt. Ah, my luck ran out. And slowly, inevitably, the wall of flesh begins its march toward me.

  “What does one even do in this situation? Run? Fight?” I gnce down at my dagger—it’s practically vibrating with energy, the runes glowing even brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat. I steel myself and attempt to ssh at the monstrosity.

  Or at least, I try to. As the monstrous abomination lumbers closer, I fight the urge to gag. Dozens of malformed arms, slick with ooze, unduting and writhing like maggots in a rotting corpse. They reach out, grasping hungrily for anything within reach, their touch wet and cmmy. Embedded in the mass are eyes, rge and small, rolling wildly in their sockets, each one bloodshot and leaking, like the crazed gaze of some rabid deity.

  “Yeah, fuck it. I’m not doing this.” Any sembnce of rational thought vanishes as I weigh my options: stand and fight this horror head-on, or turn tail and flee. But both choices feel like death sentences, so I opt for a desperate gamble.

  I take a deep breath, lungs burning with the stench of decay, and with a surge of reckless resolve, I dive straight into the ocean below.

  ***

  Notes: Tis one is a short one. But I really, really enjoy writing the mass of flesh, hehe. Hope ya'll enjoy it <3 (Next chapter next week, hopefully.)