The world around Seko dissolved into shades of gray, a landscape built from fragmented memories and emotions that didn't belong solely to him. Stone walls melted into shifting ash. A floor without texture. A void with just one figure in it—that kid.
His eyes—black. Not the kind of darkness that came from color, but a void, an absence. Looking into them was like staring into a forgotten cave where light had never dared to enter. His clothes were torn, frayed at the edges, soaked in stains whose origins told stories better left untold. They hung from his small frame like a shroud, each tear seeming intentional, each stain a medal of something twisted.
His hair was set strangely neat for someone so ragged—mostly black, but streaked with silver-white strands that made him look ancient despite his clear youth. The juxtaposition was eerie. He looked no older than eight, yet he carried an aura of someone who had seen centuries of torment… or caused it.
"You were an easy target," he said again, voice unchanged—velvety calm, disturbingly patient, like he had all the time in the world to break Seko down.
Seko stood firm, his own eyes narrowing. "Always was one," he replied, his tone sharp but calm. He didn't flinch, though his body burned with instinctual rage and confusion. The boy's presence was heavy… more than human, more than monster.
The boy's lips curled up again, not in amusement but in something far more sinister. "Playing a psychological game, are we? That's cute. It would've been easier if I pretended to fall into it. But let me make this simple—" he tilted his head, voice shifting into something colder, more mechanical, "—all I care for is blood. Suffering. And maybe… just maybe… trauma."
Seko's jaw tightened, the words slashing through his focus like razors. But he forced his voice to steady. "You have no idea how they feel. I bet if you felt the same pain, you'd be broken. A mess."
The boy paused, then smiled wider.
"I'm not a hypocrite."
Seko blinked. "…What the hell does that mean?"
The world snapped back into motion as if a switch had been flipped. Time, breath, sensation—all returned with a heavy, suffocating rush. Seko stumbled forward, one hand clutching his head, his body trembling under the weight of the fever. Sweat clung to his skin like a second layer, and his breath came in shallow, uneven gasps.
Kiyomi rushed to him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, steadying him before he could fall.
"Seko… hey, stay with me," she whispered, her voice unusually soft.
Seko's lips moved slowly, almost against his will. A name slipped out—broken, quiet, and laced with dread.
"Ma-da-la... Suj-ay…"
Kiyomi blinked, leaning closer, trying to decipher the faint murmur. "Madala Sujay?" she repeated, puzzled.
Before the weight of the name could settle, Violet, who had been quietly scanning an inscription further down the cave wall, suddenly froze. As though the name had been burned into his very soul. At the exact moment Kiyomi spoke it aloud, his lips moved too, involuntarily.
"Madala Sujay…"
Their eyes locked. That name had appeared in both places—Seko's lips and the ancient script Violet was deciphering. A tension, like electricity, surged between them.
Then—
PFFFFT—
Atama spat out his snack with violent force, spraying crumbs and bits of whatever he was chewing into the air.
"Pfft—What did you just say?!"
The silence that followed was thick.
Kiyomi looked from Seko to Violet, her brows drawn tight in confusion and worry.
Violet's voice, usually so calm, was now low, grave. "That name… it's not supposed to be spoken. Not without consequence."
Atama, for the first time ever, wasn't smiling. He wiped his mouth, slow, uncertain. "That name hasn't echoed in any timeline I've seen... none. Not one." He pointed at the dusty stone wall with a trembling finger. "That's not just a name. That's a marker. A locked part of reality."
Kiyomi's voice was shaky but determined as she asked, "What does that even mean?"
Atama, already mid-bite into a fresh bag of crunchy snacks, chewed thoughtfully—too thoughtfully for the situation. He swallowed hard, dusted crumbs off his fingers, and, just like that, slipped back into his usual, bizarre composure.
"The most evil—heck, beyond that," he said, pointing lazily at the eerie, childlike figure etched on the stone wall. "This guy, his name… real or not... it's not something we should be saying casually."
He paused, a rare moment of sincerity dancing behind his eyes.
"Okay, lemme go back a bit," he continued, adjusting his sitting posture like a professor preparing a lecture. "There are things called Absolute Beyonds and Beyond Absolutes. Sounds weird, I know. But they're anomalies... not gods, not demons, not anything you can slap a neat label on. They belong to a section of existence even the divine don't poke around in."
Kiyomi, still gripping Seko's shoulder, glanced uneasily at Violet, whose silence had grown heavier by the second.
Atama continued, waving his snack like a pointer stick. "You know how we got our cute little power types? Positive energy, Negative energy, and ol' Neutral just vibing in between?" CRUNCH "Well... these guys—these Beyonds—they don't follow that system. Each of them is infused with an overwhelming amount of Negative or, worse, Neutral energy."
He stopped chewing.
"And the Neutral ones?" He gave a slow, unsettling smile. "They're the worst. No sense of right or wrong. Just purpose. Void. Ambition, stripped of empathy. A god complex soaked in silence."
Then his tone shifted—colder, low enough to raise goosebumps.
"And this mofo—" he jabbed a thumb toward the child in the picture, the one with the blank black eyes, white hair streaked through shadows, sitting cross-legged like a king over corpses and madness—"If he's who we think he is—if that's Madala Sujay..."
He let the words hang there like the weight of a thousand tombs.
"He's the most evil thing to ever exist—and non-exist."
Silence.
Even the wind that had been whispering through the cave stilled.
Kiyomi slowly backed away from the mural, her heart pounding. Violet's knuckles were pale as he clenched the ancient scroll tighter.
As the heavy silence settled like a shroud around the group, the air thick with the weight of Atama's words, no one dared to speak for a moment. The mention of Madala Sujay hung above them like a curse, dark and insidious. Even the ancient stones seemed to pulse with unease.
And then—as if nothing had happened at all—Violet leaned over to Kiyomi, his lavender eyes gleaming with a casual, almost mischievous charm. His voice lowered to a smooth murmur, like velvet slipping over a dagger.
"You know…" he said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear with theatrical gentleness, "even in the shadow of unspeakable evil… you still manage to outshine ancient murals and apocalyptic inscriptions."
Kiyomi blinked.
Hard.
It took her a full second to process what had just been said. Her face turned crimson—not from embarrassment, but from sheer emotional whiplash. The mood had just shifted from existential horror to romantic nonsense in less time than it took for Atama to open a new snack bag.
"You're seriously hitting on me now?" she hissed, her voice a furious whisper. "Right now?!"
Violet shrugged innocently, resting his elbow on a nearby pillar as if they weren't standing inside a crypt echoing with the history of cosmic nightmares. "Hey, life's short," he said, smirking. "Especially when eldritch children are rewriting the fabric of reality."
Seko groaned, holding his still-throbbing forehead. "Is this… is this really happening?"
Atama didn't even look up. He simply tossed another snack into his mouth and muttered, "Yup. This is what flirting looks like during a global crisis. Classic Violet move."
Kiyomi turned away, muttering curses under her breath as she tried to cool the flush in her cheeks.
Violet winked at her back, still perfectly composed—until the mural behind them flickered ever so slightly.
Madala Sujay's eyes seemed to follow.