Fate had fallen into a state of suspended animation, with his consciousness now shifting to familiar darkness. He groggily shook his head and flailed as he slowly sank into the murky darkness that seemed to be deeper than even the void…

???: “...I...eep...lling...ou...!”

He suddenly heard a voice, one that was similarly familiar as the place he seemed to be going...It was distorted, but it almost sounded as if its owner was quite close. He quickly checked his body and surroundings, but was frustrated to find that he couldn’t see them…

???: “...L...ve….it….I...k..eep...telling...you!”

He couldn’t understand what the voice was trying to convey to him, but it seemed to be getting clearer as his body continued to sink farther and farther downward. Fate hadn’t been able to feel anything before, but now it felt as if he had been soaked in cold water…

???: “Heeeey! A..re...you...istening...to...meee?!”

The voice grew louder, parallel to Fate’s frustration. He had already had to deal with someone prying into his thoughts and he had not been able to do anything about it, but the voice kept growing closer and clearer so he steeled himself to deal with whatever he would…!

???: “Ok, that’s it!!! WAKE UP!!!”

Fate suddenly was blasted with a burst of cold air, before being caught off guard by a blow to his forehead, knocking him to the ground!

He was furious and quite flabbergasted, struggling to deal with this new pain while squinting his eyes to grasp the form of his assailant. However, when his eyes finally cleared, a familiar sky filled his vision, one clouded by grey and black hazes that constantly attempted to subdue the other, it was the black sea!

And standing over him was…!

???: “Finally, I was wondering when I would be able to stop screaming to get you to listen! Now, are you going to pay attention, dumbass?!”

It appeared to be a young man, dressed in a ragged blue hoodie, a plain black t-shirt, black track pants with two white stripes along the sides, and a pair of worn-out red sneakers... however, all of them were riddled with a massive amount of holes and stained with copious amounts of blood! The areas of the man’s body, underneath the holes, were completely devoid of substances, making him look like a block of living swiss cheese…

Fate, now extremely confused, raised his head to see the face of the body he recognized, a mix of emotions all struggling to beat each other to the surface…

???: “Really now, why are you so shocked? After all, this is my world...and I guess yours, though you don’t exactly seem like me anymore...at least not completely.”

The face was riddled with holes, just like his body, but three things stuck out to Fate besides this. Messy brown hair, a single blue eye with part of the eyelid having been burnt, and a mad grin that he had worn to his death…

...It was his former self…

‘Fate?’: “Alright, it seems that your vision isn’t shot, but you’re staring an awful lot...I question if I might’ve given him brain damage by pulling him in here…”

The calm voice trailed off as his former body seemed to trail off into a tangent, mumbling over and over to itself in a manner that would make one believe he was mentally disturbed...

...However, Fate now began to look around to make sure he wasn’t going crazy, noting the dimly lit red platform that had occupied the black sea when he last left. He then turned its gaze to the black sea below, which was deathly quiet...a strange change from how furious it seemed to have been before...but his body began to chill when he suddenly noticed something protruding from the water…

‘Fate?’: “Now, as I’ve already stated, you’re already broken in more ways that one. But you just haven’t realized it yet, have you?~”

The tone of his former-life doppelganger suddenly grew much more sinister and demented…

The strange object that Fate was able to see, seemed to stretch from the water up to the platform. Fate now forced his slowly chilling frame to gaze, once more, upon himself…

‘Fate?’: “I...ve….just been...SO ECSTATIC...a..t...the thought that...we could...d...be...TOGETHER AGAIN...and now...y~OUR’E HERE!!!~”

By the time he had dragged his eyes to witness what was happening to ‘himself,’ he was horrified to see that ‘he’ was slowly being ripped apart from the inside as ‘his’ appearance now began to melt away and a mess of black tentacles and hands with a single blue eye and a distorted, pitch-black maw, with a yellow slit in the middle replaced it!

The melted flesh and clothing coagulated into a small drop of blue light that rested on the horrific being’s finger…

???: “N...o...w...I THINK...this BELONGS...to Y-O-U!!!~”
The being shoved its fist and the shining blue droplet into the blue eye that was dug into the mess of tentacles, before tearing it out, as a massive amount of black water began to flow from the hole it had dug!

It began to cackle madly as it sprinted towards Fate, who found himself paralyzed by fear as he internally cursed and crier over and over again at his damnable fortune and at the Goddess who had bound him to it! The figure tackled Fate off the platform, sending both of them plummeting into the black sea as it began to tear out one of Fate’s frightened eyes, causing him to scream in pain!

The pain overwhelmed him, almost causing him to pass out as he continued to fall with the distorted creature still pinned to him, now inserting the eye it had removed from itself into Fate’s eye socket!

And right before Fate was about to hit the now furiously clamoring black sea, the figure left him with one last message…

???: “It’s time to remember how you became such a shattered mess...Now go to sleep, and dream...dream the horrific dream that was…”
…

In a cold alleyway, a young man, similar to the appearance the inky creature had taken, walked alone as he continually wiped his nose…

???: “F*ck! Seriously, they called a scouts’ meeting today of all days, when it’s this f*cking cold out?! Damn motherf*cker…!”

The young man began to grip his head in pain as one of his eyes began to distort in shape! However, this sudden burst of pain only lasted for a few moments before he stood upright while scratching his forehead…

???: “The hell was that?! I seriously need to cut down on the late-night video watching...lord I hope that it’s just that, otherwise I’ll have to go to the doctor...And who knows what Mom will say about the results!”

The young man continued to walk, as one of his ocean blue eyes had now gained a frantically shifting yellow slit of light…
...