CHAPTER 3: THE MAN WITH THE BLADE

Bobby Brando and Woody Callahan scattered in humid voices around a world they did not know at all. That is when they heard it. A sound like scales sliding against stone, a susurrus so loud it drowned out the ambient roar of the storm above. Bobby and Woody turned simultaneously, their heads whipping around to locate the source. That was when the creature emerged from the fog. It was massive beyond comprehension. Even from a distance, Bobby could tell it was at least seventeen feet long, perhaps more. The body was serpentine, undulating with a grace that belied its size, and it was covered in scales that seemed to shift in color—from sickly yellow to deep crimson to a black so dark it hurt to look at. But it was the mouth that held Bobby's attention. The creature's maw opened, revealing hundreds of rows of teeth—perhaps a thousand or more—each one the size of a man's hand, each one sharp enough to pierce steel. The teeth seemed to go back infinitely, descending down a throat so cavernous that Bobby could see no bottom. The creature's eyes were the most terrible part. They were intelligent. Not animal intelligence, but something far more complex and sinister. These were the eyes of something that had been around for eons, that had seen the rise and fall of civilizations, that had fed on things Bobby couldn't even imagine. And it was heading directly for them. "Run!" Bobby screamed, but his feet wouldn't move. Fear had paralyzed him completely. All he could do was stand there, watching as the creature undulated across the rocky ground, its scales catching what little light existed in this nightmare world, each movement bringing it closer. But before the creature could reach them, something happened. A figure descended from above—not flying, but falling, dropping out of the purple sky like a meteor. The figure landed directly on the creature's back, and Bobby's mind struggled to process what he was seeing. It was a man. He looked to be in his early forties, with a weathered face and eyes that had seen things no human being should ever see. He wore a tattered coat that might have once been brown but was now the color of dried blood. And in his hand, he wielded a sword—not a decorative sword or a rusty antique, but a real blade that gleamed with an otherworldly light. The man roared, a sound that was somehow more terrifying than the creature's shriek, and brought the sword down in a perfect arc. The blade met the creature's flesh and split it open in an explosion of viscous, glowing fluid that burned where it touched the ground. The creature screamed—a sound so loud and so agonized that Bobby felt it pierce through his ears directly into his brain—and thrashed violently, trying to dislodge its attacker. But the man held on, his movements fluid and precise, moving along the creature's back as if he and the beast were dancing some terrible waltz they'd performed a thousand times before. The sword flashed again, and again, and again. With each stroke, another portion of the creature's flesh was cleaved away. The glowing fluid continued to pour, burning holes in the ground, evaporating into clouds of caustic steam that stung Bobby's eyes even from a distance. Finally, with one last tremendous stroke, the man drove the blade downward with both hands, cleaving the creature completely in two. The two halves of the beast fell to the ground, still twitching, still moving with a horrible mimicry of life. The glowing fluid pooled and bubbled, and then, after a moment, the creature simply ceased to exist. It didn't fade or dissolve. It simply stopped, as if whatever force had animated it had been switched off. The man descended along the blade as it fell, sliding down its length as if performing some kind of impossible stunt, his feet touching the ground just as the sword came to rest beside the vanished remains of his kill. Then he turned and looked directly at Bobby and Woody. His face was hard, lined with scars both physical and otherwise. His eyes were a pale gray, almost colorless, and they held the accumulated weight of untold suffering. When he spoke, his voice was rough, as if his throat had been damaged long ago and never properly healed. "Who the fuck are you guys?" he demanded, stepping toward them with a predatory grace. "I haven't seen a single damn human being in the past twenty years in this hell hole." He raised his sword slightly, not in an overtly threatening manner, but in a way that suggested he was perfectly willing to use it if necessary. Bobby and Woody stood frozen, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at this impossible man and wonder how deep into the abyss they had truly fallen. The man looked at them with what looked like the stare of a man who had lived a thousand lives. Bobby thought to himself for a moment about what to say. Ask for help? He really wanted to know why that man had been down there for twenty years, that is for damn sure. As Bobby began to speak finally the man somehow spoke his exact words simultaneously. "Please help us." They both spoke at once with the only differences he said to me and now wore a sad expression. "What! Help you with what? Where the fuck are we how do we get out of this hell hole." Woody yelled out. The man spoke with much more calmness in his voice now than before. "Come on we must go, I can get you boys safe and food with shelter. Help me and I will help you help yourselves out of here." Bobby thought about and still had much worry that he was lying or trying to hurt them. Woody took off first, boots slapping the strange soil, but Bobby froze for one suspended heartbeat. He didn't know why — maybe the roar behind them rooted him, or maybe it was the way The man didn't flinch at the sound, like he'd heard far worse and gotten bored of being terrified. Then Bobby's legs remembered they were attached to a kid who wanted to live. He pushed forward. As they ran, an avalanche of thoughts slammed into him, way too normal for a place like this.

Stupid thoughts. Human ones. This morning I was mad about not getting new sneakers… and now I'm in some nightmare dimension running after a dude with a blade and a limp. What is happening? He thought of his mom — the warm clatter of her in the kitchen, the kind of tired that hugged her eyes. She always said she'd "find a way," even when they both knew that meant something like skipping dinner or not paying the electric bill until the last possible moment. He wondered what she was doing now. Whether she felt the empty air where he should've been. The man didn't slow for them or look back. He moved with a strange precision, half-glide, half-stumble, like someone who'd learned to run in a place where the ground couldn't always be trusted. "Keep your steps light," he muttered, almost irritated. "If the soil senses weight, it might wake something. I'm not in the mood for that." The boys didn't ask what that meant. They didn't want to know. The fog around them pulsed in soft, unhealthy colors — bruised purple and nicotine-yellow — shifting around The man's shoulders like it recognized him. As they ran deeper, enormous shapes appeared through the haze. Not buildings. Not quite ruins. Something in between. Huge metal capsules slumped against each other like dead whales — Soviet fallout shelters, their red stars peeled and rusted, their doors twisted like they'd been clawed open from the inside. Beyond them, on a ridge of black stone, rose castle-like structures. Their towers leaned like broken teeth. Their windows were empty, dark, watching. Nothing here looked abandoned. Everything looked like it had simply paused. "This way," the man snapped. "Try not to gawk. Curiosity is a liability here." They followed him into a tight gap between two half-collapsed bunkers. The darkness inside swallowed the color from their clothes.

The shelter they stepped into was tiny, lit by a lantern with a blue flame that didn't flicker so much as breathe. The shadows on the wall seemed to crawl in slow patterns — almost thoughtful. The man set his blade down. Not carelessly, not protectively — more like someone placing down a memory they're tired of carrying. He turned to them with an expression that wasn't kind but wasn't cruel either. It was… old. Older than anything humans should look without turning to dust. "This realm," he said, voice low, "is the multiverse's dumping pit." He tapped the metal wall. "Every world throws its errors here. It's a mistake. It's too-powerful. It's too-different." He didn't give them time to react. "It means monsters," he went on. "But also things are worse than monsters. Things that stopped being describable a long time ago." Woody swallowed. "So… why us?"

The man shot him a sidelong glance, sharp and unimpressed. "You're Realmers," he said as if the word should've meant something to them already. "You slipped through dimensions. That alone marks you." He clicked his tongue softly, annoyed. "You're untrained. Wild. Loud. It's a miracle the void didn't digest you instantly." "But… we didn't mean to do anything," Bobby said. "Power rarely waits for permission," The man replied, dismissive. "And realms don't open for accidents unless the accident is you." He crouched beside a pile of rags and deliberately unrolled a leather bundle. Inside, old scrolls unfurled, marked with symbols that twisted if you stared too long. He didn't present them dramatically. He didn't explain their importance. He just let their presence fill the room like a dangerous scent. "These are mine," he said. "From when I wasn't so…" He gestured vaguely at his thin frame, his hollow eyes. "…depleted." "Depleted?" Woody asked. The man huffed — not quite a laugh, not quite irritation. "This place drains you," he said. "Strength. Memory. Hope. Everything leaks out eventually." He tapped the scrolls. "I should have left long ago. If I'd had training. Guidance. Purpose." He rolled his jaw, thinking. "You two have what I didn't. You can learn. If you survive long enough." He looked away, as if the admission cost him something. "You'll use these scrolls," he said. "I'll teach you what I can. Not because I want to." His eyes sharpened. "But because letting you die here will bring me more trouble than training you." He sat back. "There are infinite realms—some parallel to yours, some ancient, some still being born. Every one in a different time frame. But this realm?" He paused. His expression changed, just for a flicker — not softer, but heavier. "This one sits in what I call the final hour of mankind. The very end of possibility. Nothing good remains here. Only things strong enough to survive the end." His gaze bored into them. "And if you want to leave? You'd better learn to be stronger." The man shoved two silver-wrapped packets at them with minimal explanation. "Eat. You'll need the energy." The boys stepped outside to breathe a little. Woody tore open his packet. "Dude… this is Russian space ice cream." He took a cautious bite. "It tastes like someone's freeze-dried balls." Bobby let out a short laugh — real, but thin. It faded fast. As he stared at his own packet, the whole reality of this place pressed down on him. The fog. The distant roar. The castles like broken memories. The earth that felt alive in the wrong way. He thought of his mom's voice. Her laugh. The way she said his name like it mattered. His chest tightened. Woody looked at his own melting chunk and whispered, "I want to go home." The fog shivered around them, as though something large had just exhaled. Behind them, The man stood in the shelter doorway — silhouette sharp, posture impatient, eyes unreadable — watching them like someone who had seen this moment a thousand times and knew exactly how quickly innocence burned out here.

Woody wiped the last crumb of pale-pink astronaut ice cream from his thumb, chewing with exaggerated disgust. "This tastes like drywall had a baby with chalk," he said, his face scrunching up. "Like… Soviet chalk." Bobby didn't answer. He stared at the little crumbling rectangle in his hand, the sweetness hitting the back of his throat in a way that made him feel sick. Not because it tasted bad—though it did—but because it reminded him of something warm, something real, something that belonged in a world that suddenly felt impossibly far away. His mom. Her cracked vinyl car seats. The gas station stops after school where she'd let him pick out a candy bar even though she'd say, half-jokingly, "Rent is going to haunt me for this." And how he used to worry she'd look embarrassed when the cashier recognized how often they bought cheap dinners. How he used to worry about shoes. Shoes. The aching irony hit him hard, and he put the ice cream down carefully, like if he dropped it, something in him would break, too. From across the bunker, The Man watched them silently. Not with pity. Not with sympathy. But with the measured, analytical look of someone used to seeing children cry and deciding he couldn't afford the luxury of caring about it. "Sentimentality is a liability," he muttered, turning away. He said it like an insult thrown into an empty room. But the way his voice caught slightly at the end—like a breath snagging on an old wound—was impossible not to notice.

The bunker groaned as wind—if it was wind—swept across the hollow valley outside.

Dim blue lanternlight flickered against the metal walls, casting stretched shadows that lagged behind every movement like they were controlled by something with slower instincts than the rest of the world. It smelled like rust, dust, and old cigarette smoke layered over the metallic tang of the realm itself—like copper mixed with rain that never fell. Bobby sat on an overturned locker. Woody perched on an ammo crate. The Man stood by the corner table, hunched over something old—older than language, maybe—unfurling a leather bundle of scrolls that glowed faintly as though the ink remembered sunlight. "Listen carefully," The Man said, his voice carrying a deep, restrained irritability. "I don't like repeating myself." Woody flinched a little.

Bobby didn't look away. "This realm is a sinkhole of creation," The Man continued. "A cosmic landfill. When a dimension births something too strong, too unpredictable, too… reality-breaking—what you'd call a 'monster' or an 'anomaly'—it gets pushed here." He flicked ash into the corner. "Some worlds send their failures on purpose. Some leak. Some crack. Some collapse under their own timeline-pressure and spill out their dead like overturned dumpsters."

He tapped the metal wall with the hilt of his blade. "All of it ends up here. Everything is unwanted." Bobby swallowed. "That means… we're unwanted?" he asked quietly. The Man snorted without humor. "No. It means you're dangerous."

He walked closer, eyes sharp enough to cut.

"You two aren't here because you're trash. You're here because every version of your home reality wants to know what you are. Realmers don't appear often. And when they do, they change things. Sometimes catastrophically." He said it with annoyance, not admiration—like they'd been dropped on him as an inconvenience. Woody raised a timid hand. "So are you… uh… a Realmer too?" The Man's jaw tightened. A muscle in his cheek twitched. "I was." A pause. Something dark crossed his expression. "Once." He limped back to the table. The boys hadn't noticed the limp until now—it was subtle, but it made every step look painful, like the floor beneath him was trying to drag him down. "You want answers?" he said, pulling out a scroll with ink that shimmered faintly like wet oil. "Start with this." He handed it to Bobby. Bobby expected it to feel old and brittle. Instead, it was warm. Almost pulsing. The symbols didn't stay still—they undulated softly, rearranging and reforming like they were thinking. Woody leaned over his shoulder. "Can you… read that?" "I…" Bobby stared. The symbols clicked together into patterns he shouldn't have understood. But somehow, he did. "It's like it's… teaching me." "That's how it works," The Man muttered. "For Realmers. It adapts." He said the word Realmers tasted bitter.

Sleep came for Bobby like a trapdoor opening beneath him. One moment he was staring at the bunker ceiling, trying to imagine his mom doing dishes in their tiny kitchen.

The next, he was plummeting through a lightless void. Whispers approached before shapes did. "The hour bends."

"Shadow Remembers."

"Epimethius stirs…"

"…and the bone-light dims."

Faces, or the idea of faces, drifted through the black—tall, thin, angular, like silhouettes of creatures that had been stretched across dimensions then folded back wrong. A voice rose above the others. Not loud. But vast.

"You will stand where the Light fell silent." Bobby tried to run, but dream-logic pinned him.

Something cold touched his back. He turned— A clawed, bone-pale hand erupted from the dark and wrapped around his shoulder. The void trembled as another phrase carved itself into his skull: "The return of Epimethius is carved in breath." Bobby jerked awake, nearly falling off the cot. The Man sat in the corner, sharpening his blade. He didn't look up. "Dreams here don't lie," he said, voice dull and matter-of-fact. "Sleep lightly."

The Man woke them with a loud clang as he dropped a tin can onto the metal floor. "Up," he growled. "Training starts now." They stumbled out of their sleeping bags, bleary-eyed. The Man stood in the center of the bunker, holding the can. He closed his fist around it, took a slow breath, and— Reality rippled. A thin, shimmering slit opened mid-air, like he'd sliced the world along an invisible seam. He dropped the can. It vanished— —and reappeared on the opposite side of the room with a hollow clank. Woody jumped. "Dude! That's sick!" The Man panted slightly, leaning on the wall. His face paled. "That was… harder than it looks," he admitted, begrudgingly. "My strength isn't what it was." He pointed at them. "That move's called threading. Simple enough for beginners. If you can't do this, you'll die before the week's out." Woody went first. He clenched his fists theatrically, face red. Nothing happened. He tried again. A hiccup of air.

Still nothing.

"This is impossible," he whined. "Nothing is impossible to a realmer," The Man said coldly. "Some things are just slow." Bobby stepped forward, scroll symbols still lingering faintly in his thoughts like afterimages from staring at the sun. He breathed. The air bent. A thin slit tore open. The can trembled—then warped through the opening and hit the shelf with a soft plink. Woody gaped. The Man didn't praise. But a furrow burrowed deeper into his brow. Exactly the expression someone makes when a terrible suspicion is confirmed. "Again," he ordered. "Both of you."

Time in the bunker stretched and folded strangely, like the realm wanted to confuse them.

Morningswere spent studying scrolls that shifted their ink depending on who read them. Woody struggled. Bobby absorbed them like a sponge. The man didn't say it, but he noticed. Deeply.Afternoonsthey practiced:small telekinetic pushes

threading objects

flicker-step teleportation (only Woody puked)

reading tiny fluctuations in the realm's air

The Man barked commands like he hated having to teach, but each correction he gave carried precision—real experience. Though he never smiled, there were moments where his tone thinned into something almost human. Almost.

Evenings

they sat around the tiny functioning TV—connected by a frayed wire vanishing into a thin, shimmering slit in the wall. "Threaded directly into your timeline's power grid," The Man grumbled when Woody asked. "Don't question it." Old Super Sentai reruns flickered across the screen—grainy, colorful, loud. Woody cheered every transformation sequence.

Bobby watched quietly. "I had a Power Ranger costume in fourth grade," Bobby murmured one night. "My mom made it. I was terrified it'd look dumb. But… It was the coolest thing ever." For a moment, the bunker fell quiet except for the static hum of the TV. The Man didn't turn his head, but something in his posture softened—just for one heartbeat. Then hardened again. "Weakness comes from comfort," he muttered. "Don't get used to nostalgia." But his voice didn't have its usual bite.

Nights

felt the strangest. The boys sometimes forgot what episode they'd watched.

Forgot if they'd eaten. Forgot if they'd talked or just thought they'd talked. "The realm steals moments," The Man said. "Loops them. Be vigilant." But even he looked confused sometimes, glancing at the lantern like he didn't remember lighting it.

Three days after the ice-cream moment, it happened. A sharp thud shook the bunker.

Then another. Then a low, guttural, wet roar that crawled down Bobby's spine like mold spreading across a wall. The Man froze mid-sentence. "Get back," he whispered. Not yelled—whispered. Fear in his voice for the first time. The roof dented inward.

Dust rained down. Through the cracks in the metal, they saw it: A massive crimson creature—wolf-shaped only in the way nightmares resemble real things.

Its ribs jutted like twisted branches. Patches of skin sagged, half-decayed, swarming faintly with unseen movement beneath. Where eyes should have been were smooth, pale plates—grown over, like it had evolved past needing sight. An ancient thing. Old enough to have rotted, healed, mutated, then rotted again. It rammed the bunker wall, shrieking. "Move!" The man barked, grabbing his blade. The creature smashed through the doorway, stumbling blindly, breaking shelves, smashing equipment simply because its existence bent toward destruction. The Man lunged— The beast swiped with a monstrous limb. Metal shrieked. The Man flew backward, smashing into the opposite wall, blade skittering away. Bobby felt something ignite inside him—fear, training, instinct, something he didn't have a name for. The scrolls flared behind his eyes. He stepped forward. Air warped. Pressure condensed. A burst of invisible force blasted from his chest outward. The creature was hurled twenty feet, slamming into a pile of collapsed Soviet shelters with a crash that shook dust from the sky.

Woody yelped. "WHAT THE FUCK?!" Bobby collapsed to his knees, dizzy, vision whitened at the edges. The Man lay bleeding, barely conscious. The beast staggered, then fled into the fog.

The boys sat beside The Man, first-aid kit emptied across the floor. "This thing looks like torture equipment," Woody said, holding up a bandage roll like it was a snake. "Just… wrap something," Bobby sighed. They patched The Man terribly—bandages crooked, medical paste smeared in the wrong places, gauze stuck to his hair. When he woke, he squinted at them like he wasn't sure whether to scold or laugh. Woody handed him a cigarette. He took it. A long inhale. A slow exhale. Finally he said: "…My name is Toren. Toren Grave." The bunker seemed to shift with the weight of it. He looked at them—not cold now, but worn.

Haunted.

Human.

"I owe you the truth," he said. "All of it."

He told them how long he'd been here, over twenty years he spent searching for his friend whom he lost down there. How they once fell into this place. How they learned—piece by piece—to read the scrolls. How the realm changed them. How his power slowly drained away.

How he stayed because something ancient whispered in his dreams:

Epimethius.

Not a demon.

Not a god.

A relic from the first world—the world before light, before creation branched, before the infinite realms existed at all. "This realm was the original," Toren said. "Where Epimethius ruled. Where darkness was law." Then came the Light. A being or force or event—no one knew.

It created infinite realms. Sealed Epimethius away. "But the Light has long since disappeared," Toren whispered. "And Epimethius can only return here. Because this is his essence. His origin." He stared at Bobby. "I thought I was chosen once. My friend and I trained for five years. We felt him stirring even then." His voice cracked for the first time. "And I still feel him stirring. Every night." He leaned forward. "But now I know. It isn't me." A long silence stretched like a taut wire. His eyes locked with Bobby's—heavy, sorrowful, resigned. "It's you," he said.

"You're the one the realm has been waiting for."

Chapter 2 - CHAPTER 3: THE MAN WITH THE BLADE