CHAPTER 8: THE GATE TO ALL REALMS
1
Grief was a physical thing, a weight that settled in Bobby's chest so heavily that each breath felt like lifting stones, each heartbeat like a hammer striking his ribs from the inside. He sat on the shore of the Ocean of Blood, his armor now feeling like a cage rather than protection, the crystalline sword that had been his guide lying unused beside him. The waves of dark red liquid lapped at the skeleton-strewn beach with a rhythm that seemed to mock the beating of his own heart, each splash another reminder that Woody was gone, that his best friend had been consumed by the very horrors they had come here to face.
Tears tracked clean paths through the grime and dried blood on Bobby's face, each one carrying the salt of loss and the bitter taste of failure. He had failed Woody, had failed to protect him, had watched helplessly as the person who mattered most in his world had been swallowed whole by things that should never have existed. The image was burned into his mind—Woody's final nod of acceptance, the way he had stopped fighting, the brief moment when their eyes had met across the blood water and communicated everything that words could never express.
"I should have done something," Bobby whispered, the words barely audible above the gentle lapping of the ocean. "I should have saved him."
Torren stood nearby, his silhouette a dark shape against the churning purple sky, his posture carrying the weight of someone who had witnessed this particular tragedy before, who understood the particular poison of survivor's guilt that came with losing someone to this place. The older man moved closer, sitting beside Bobby on the carpet of bones, the crunch of skeletal fragments beneath his weight the only sound besides Bobby's quiet weeping.
"You blame yourself," Torren said, not as a question but as a statement of fact, his voice softer than Bobby had ever heard it. "You think there was something you could have done differently, some move you could have made, some power you could have accessed that would have changed the outcome."
Bobby nodded, unable to speak, the grief too fresh, too raw for anything other than the simple acknowledgment of responsibility.
"I know," Torren continued, and there was something in his tone that suggested this wasn't just sympathy, that it came from a place of personal experience. "I know exactly how you feel, because I've been sitting where you're sitting, feeling what you're feeling, for twenty years."
Bobby looked at him then, really looked at him, and saw something beyond the hardened survivor, beyond the cynical mentor who had trained them to survive in this nightmare dimension. He saw someone who carried his own grief, someone who had his own ghosts that followed him through the endless corridors of this realm.
"I didn't come here alone," Torren said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that seemed to carry the weight of decades of silence. "I came here with my best friend, just like you did. His name was Ian Altright, and he..." Torren paused, a sad smile touching his lips for just a moment. "He was a lot like Woody, now that I think about it. Carefree, reckless, always pushing boundaries, always looking for the next adventure. But he had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known, the kind of heart that would give you his last piece of bread even if he was starving himself."
The revelation hit Bobby with the force of a physical blow, the sudden understanding that he wasn't alone in his grief, that this terrible cycle of loss and survival had been repeating itself long before he and Woody had stumbled into the elevator, long before they had ever heard of Epimethius or the multiverse's cosmic dumping ground.
"We were exploring some ruins in what we thought was just an abandoned industrial district," Torren continued, his eyes distant, focused on memories rather than the present reality. "Same kind of urban exploration you and Woody enjoyed, except we were doing it across dimensions instead of just in abandoned buildings. We found a doorway, and Ian being Ian, he had to go through it. I followed, because that's what you do when you're best friends, when you're bound by something deeper than just shared interests."
Torren's hands clenched into fists, the knuckles white even through his armored gloves. "The doorway led here. To this realm. And just like that, we were trapped, just like you and Woody. We learned the rules the hard way, lost more equipment than I care to remember, saw things that would have driven weaker men insane. We survived, or at least we thought we were surviving. Then one day, we were exploring what looked like an old temple, and there was a collapse, a cave-in. I was trapped on one side, Ian on the other."
The story hung in the air between them, heavy with the weight of inevitable tragedy, with the kind of outcome that Bobby could already guess but didn't want to acknowledge.
"I dug for days," Torren said, and his voice cracked with the memory, with the raw emotion that he had clearly suppressed for decades. "I dug until my fingers were bleeding, until my muscles were screaming, until I was passing out from exhaustion. When I finally broke through, he was gone. Just... gone. No body, no blood, no sign of struggle. Just an empty space where my best friend had been standing seconds before."
Bobby understood then, with a clarity that made his head spin, why Torren had been so willing to help them, why he had taken the risk of training them, of arming them, of becoming invested in their survival. It wasn't just about being a decent person in a place where decency was a liability. It was about redemption, about trying to save someone else when he had failed to save the person who had mattered most to him.
"But coming here to get you home safe," Torren said, his voice dropping even lower, carrying the weight of confession, "that wasn't the only reason. I came because after twenty years of searching, after two decades of feeling like I was screaming into an endless void, I could finally sense him. All Realmers are connected, Bobby. We're interlinked in ways that normal beings can't comprehend. When you and Woody arrived, when the dimensional passages stabilized enough to bring new souls into this hell hole, I felt it. I felt Ian. He's here. Somewhere in this godforsaken place, my best friend is still here."
The revelation was staggering, the implications so vast that Bobby's mind struggled to process them. Ian wasn't just missing, wasn't just dead—he was here, in this realm, somewhere within the endless maze of corrupted landscapes and impossible architecture. And Torren could sense him, could feel that connection that bound all Realmers together across the barriers between worlds.
"This place," Torren said, looking out at the ocean of blood, at the distant castle that seemed to drink the light around it, "it takes who you love most. It's not just random chance, not just the luck of the draw. It targets the strongest bonds, the deepest connections, because that's where the power is, that's where the essence that feeds Epimethius comes from. It took Woody because he was your brother in every way that mattered. And it took Ian because he was mine."
Bobby looked from Torren's grief-stricken face to the castle that dominated the horizon, to the fortress that represented everything they were fighting against. Everything changed in that moment—his grief was still there, still raw and real and painful, but it was joined by something else, by a determination that burned hot enough to momentarily sear through the cold weight of loss.
Woody was gone. Nothing would change that, nothing would bring him back. But Torren was right about one thing—they could still save someone. They could still break the cycle, still prove that this place didn't always win, that love didn't always have to end in consumption and despair.
"Let's go," Bobby said, pushing himself to his feet, his voice stronger than it had been since before the ocean, since before he had watched his best friend die. "Let's go get your friend back."
2
The Castle of Endings was even more terrifying up close, a structure that defied normal architecture, that seemed to have been designed by minds that understood the fundamental principles of fear and had built them into stone and metal. The walls were made of the same black material as the bunker, a substance that absorbed light rather than reflecting it, creating the impression of holes in reality rather than solid surfaces. Towers reached toward the purple sky like claws, like accusations, like the broken fingers of a god trying to escape from a tomb of its own making.
The entrance was a massive archway, carved with reliefs that showed beings in various states of torment and transformation, their bodies twisted into positions that suggested both agony and worship. Bobby felt the Scrolls stirring behind his eyes, felt knowledge unfolding that showed him the patterns in the carvings, the way each figure represented a different stage of corruption, a different step on the path from normal being to servant of the ancient hunger.
"Stay close," Torren warned, his crystalline sword humming with contained energy. "The castle is alive in its own way. It remembers everyone who enters, and it doesn't like visitors unless they're here to serve the master."
Inside, the first chamber was like something from a gothic cathedral designed by someone who had never actually seen a cathedral but had heard descriptions from madmen. The ceiling arched hundreds of feet above them, lost in shadows that seemed to move and twist like living things. Pillars that might have been carved from bone or stone supported the structure, each one covered in the same writhing symbols that decorated everything in this realm, each one seeming to shift and rearrange itself when Bobby looked directly at it.
And in the center of the chamber, rising in a spiral that seemed to defy gravity, was a staircase. Not a normal staircase, but something impossibly vast, made of black metal that creaked and groaned with the weight of centuries, of millennia, of endless cycles of souls climbing toward whatever waited at the top. The steps were wide enough for ten people to walk abreast, but they were also treacherously steep, rising at an angle that seemed intentionally designed to exhaust those who attempted the ascent, to wear them down physically and mentally before they ever reached their destination.
"They designed it to break you," Torren said, his eyes scanning the shadows that clustered in the corners of the chamber. "Every step is a test, every level a new trial. The castle wants you to fail, wants you to turn back or die trying. The only way up is to keep moving, no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, no matter how much your body and mind scream at you to stop."
They had taken only three steps up the spiral staircase when the first attack came. Small creatures, things that looked like they had been assembled from discarded pieces of insects and nightmares, scurried from the shadows beneath the staircase. They were no bigger than rats, but they moved with the speed and coordination of something much larger, their multifaceted eyes glowing with malevolent intelligence, their mandibles clicking with the sound of hungry anticipation.
Bobby reacted without thinking, his training taking over, his weapon rising instinctively. The energy pistol hummed as he fired, the beams of contained light striking the creatures with explosive force that sent carapace and chitinous fragments flying across the metal steps. More emerged from the shadows, an endless tide of skittering horror, and Bobby fired again and again, the sounds of energy discharges echoing in the vast space above.
A larger shape detached itself from the shadows near the staircase's central pillar, something dog-like but wrong in every detail. Its body was covered in matted fur that seemed to bleed from a dozen open wounds, its legs were too long and jointed in ways that would make a biologist weep, and its jaws opened to reveal fangs that were the length of hunting knives, dripping with some kind of black venom that sizzled when it hit the metal stairs.
The creature launched itself at Torren, moving with impossible speed, its jaws agape, its claws extended to tear and rend. But Torren was ready, his crystalline sword already in motion, the blade humming through the air with a sound like crystal bells ringing. The sword struck the creature's side, and the effect was immediate and devastating—light exploded from the wound, pure, clean energy that burned away the corruption, that purified the violence that had animated the thing's flesh.
The dog-creature screamed, a sound that was partly animal agony and partly something else, something deeper and more ancient. It thrashed wildly, trying to dislodge the blade, trying to reach Torren with claws and fangs both. But Torren held on, his movements precise and economical, each strike of the sword aimed at vulnerable points, each blow burning away more of the corruption that held the creature together.
"They get stronger the higher we climb," Torren grunted, driving the sword deeper into the creature's chest. "The essence of Epimethius is more concentrated near the throne. It permeates everything, animates the dead, corrupts the living."
Bobby continued firing at the smaller creatures, the energy pistol growing warm in his hands, the beams of light cutting through the skittering horde with mechanical efficiency. The staircase creaked beneath them, the sound like bones being ground to powder, like the castle itself was protesting their presence, was trying to shake them loose, to send them tumbling into the darkness below.
They fought their way upward, step by agonizing step, the spiral seeming to stretch endlessly before them. The smaller creatures kept coming, an endless tide of skittering death, while larger horrors emerged from the shadows with each new level they reached—things that might have once been birds but now flew on wings of leathery skin and bone, things that crawled like centipedes but with the faces of screaming humans, things that defied easy classification but shared the same consuming hunger, the same desperate need to stop anyone from reaching the throne.
Bobby's grief was still there, still a heavy presence in his chest, but it was changing, transforming under the pressure of survival and purpose. Each creature he destroyed, each step he climbed upward, the grief was being refined into something sharper, something more focused. Woody was gone, but he could still honor his friend's memory by fighting, by continuing, by refusing to let this place claim another victory, another soul.
"I can feel him," Torren said, his voice strained with effort as they fought their way up another level, the air growing thicker, charged with some kind of energy that made Bobby's teeth ache. "Ian's close. The connection is getting stronger."
The staircase seemed to go on forever, each level bringing new horrors, new tests of their resolve and strength. Time itself seemed to warp and bend around them, moments stretching into what felt like hours, hours compressing into moments that passed too quickly to properly process. Bobby found himself losing track of how long they had been climbing, found memories of the ocean, of Woody's death, of their earlier training blurring together as if they had all happened years ago rather than just hours or days.
"The time distortion is stronger in here," Torren explained, breathing heavily as they paused on a relatively clear stretch of stairs. "The castle exists partially outside normal temporal flow. Spend too long in here and you start to forget who you were, what you were fighting for. The past becomes a dream, the future becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is the endless cycle of climbing and fighting."
They continued upward, and Bobby could see that they were indeed incredibly high now. Through gaps in the staircase's central structure, he could see the strange green stars of this realm's cloudless sky, could see the twisted landscape spread out below them like a map of some artist's nightmare. They were higher than any building on Earth, higher than planes flew, ascending toward something that existed in the space between atmosphere and void.
And then they heard it. Chanting. A sound that seemed to come from above them, from the very top of the staircase, from whatever lay beyond the endless spiral. It was a language Bobby didn't recognize, words that had no human equivalent, but the Scrolls helped him understand fragments, helped him process the meaning behind the alien syllables.
"EPIMITHIUS RISE!"
The words repeated, over and over, growing louder with each step they climbed, the chanting of voices that had been twisted by centuries of service, of minds that had been reshaped to worship the ancient hunger rather than fear it.
"He's already started the transformation," Torren said, his voice tight with urgency and fear. "The ritual is underway. We're too late to stop it, but maybe not too late to save him."
The staircase finally ended, opening into a vast chamber that took Bobby's breath away despite everything he had seen. The throne room was circular, hundreds of feet across, with a domed ceiling that seemed to be made of the same black material as the castle walls but covered in patterns that shifted and rearranged themselves like living constellations.
In the center of the room, arranged in precise geometric patterns, lay bodies—not just of creatures like the ones they had fought, but of beings from countless realms, some humanoid, some utterly alien, all arranged in positions that suggested both ritual sacrifice and willing participation in some terrible cosmic ceremony. The bodies were fresh and ancient both, some still bleeding, others reduced to little more than bone fragments, all contributing to the power that gathered in the room like a storm about to break.
And above the bodies, floating just above the center of the room, was something that made Bobby's blood run cold. A sword, but not like any weapon he had ever seen. It was a giant version of Torren's crystalline blade, but black rather than clear, made of a material that seemed to absorb light rather than refract it, that radiated an aura of absolute evil, of ancient hunger, of the kind of power that could consume worlds.
But it was the figure standing before the throne that truly broke something inside Bobby, that made Torren gasp with a sound that was partly recognition and partly absolute despair. The figure was dressed in a black cloak that seemed to be made of shadow rather than fabric, their arms raised as they conducted the ritual, as they chanted the words that were awakening something terrible in the very foundations of reality.
They were floating, hovering just above the floor without any visible means of support, their body positioned in a way that defied gravity, that suggested they had transcended the normal laws that governed physical beings. The voice that emerged from the hood was dark and evil, layered with harmonies that spoke to countless minds merged into one terrible consciousness, the voice of someone who had become a vessel for something far older and more powerful than themselves.
And then Torren realized it, the understanding hitting him with the force of a physical blow, the connection he had been sensing for hours finally snapping into place with painful clarity.
"Ian!"
The name echoed through the throne room, cutting through the chanting, through the gathering storm of power. The floating figure hesitated for just a moment, their chant faltering, their concentration broken by the sound of a name they hadn't heard in decades, by a voice that connected to a part of them that had been buried beneath layers of corruption and service.
Slowly, the figure turned, their hands lowering from their ritual position. They reached up and pulled back the hood of their cloak, revealing a face that was a masterpiece of corruption, a testament to the terrible price of survival in this realm.
It was Ian, but not the Ian that Torren remembered, not the carefree adventurer with the big heart and reckless smile. This Ian had been reshaped, repurposed, transformed into something that served the ancient hunger. Seventy-five percent of his face was charred and burned, blackened by some terrible fire that had never quite gone out, by wounds that bled eternally, weeping a dark fluid that seemed to carry the essence of corruption itself. His head was bald, the hair burned away long ago, and one eye was completely black, an endless void that promised nothing but consumption and despair.
But the other part of his face—small, almost precious in its normalcy—was untouched. There, the blue eye that had once sparkled with laughter and mischief still retained its color, still showed hints of the human skin beneath, still connected to the person he had been before the realm had claimed him, before Epimethius had chosen him as a vessel.
"Ian is gone," the figure spoke, and the voice was layered with harmonies that suggested multiple personalities merged into one terrible whole. "I am all that remains."
Tears streamed down Torren's face, the sight of his best friend—so changed, so corrupted, so utterly lost—breaking through the hardened exterior he had maintained for twenty years. This was worse than death, worse than simple loss. This was the ultimate violation, the complete consumption of everything Ian had been, everything he had ever been, by the entity that Torren had dedicated his life to fighting.
"I do not want to fight you, my friend," Torren said, his voice thick with grief, with the weight of two decades of searching ending in this terrible moment. He drew his blade, the crystalline sword humming with contained power, with the promise of purification rather than destruction. "There's still a part of you in there. I can feel it. We can save you."
Ian—or the thing that wore Ian's face—laughed, a sound that was partly the carefree amusement Torren remembered and partly something else, something ancient and terrible. "Save me? Torren, my old friend, you don't understand. I was never in danger. I was chosen. I was elevated. I have become part of something greater than either of us could ever imagine."
He struck then, moving with impossible speed, the black sword appearing in his hand as if from nowhere, the blade humming with the opposite of Torren's energy, with the promise of consumption rather than purification. The strike was aimed at Torren's chest, a killing blow designed to end the confrontation before it could truly begin, to eliminate the last connection to the person the vessel had once been.
But Bobby was already moving, the Scrolls flaring behind his eyes, his connection to whatever power he served manifesting in ways that were still new and unfamiliar to him. He didn't have time to think, time to plan, time to do anything but react, to protect the person who had become his last connection to hope in this nightmare realm.
The black sword stopped inches from Torren's chest, frozen in mid-air by an invisible force. Bobby stood with his hand raised, his mind focused, his will extended like a physical barrier between the blade and his mentor. The energy it required was immense, like trying to stop a freight train with bare hands, but he held it, his determination giving him strength, his grief transforming into something protective, something that would not allow another loss.
Ian's black eyes widened with surprise, with the first genuine emotion Torren had seen from him since entering the room. The blue eye, however, showed something else—recognition, maybe even hope, as if the part of Ian that remained trapped beneath the corruption could see what was happening, could understand that his old friend had brought someone who might actually be able to help.
The sword flew from Ian's grasp, ripped away by the force of Bobby's will, tumbling through the air until Bobby caught it by the hilt. The moment his fingers closed around the black grip, the blade began to change. The darkness that had made it so terrifying began to recede, replaced by a soft, white light that grew stronger with each passing second. Cracks appeared in the black material, and from those cracks, pure energy leaked out, the same kind of clean, powerful light that Bobby had channeled during the gioloop, the same energy that connected him to whatever force opposed Epimethius's ancient hunger.
Bobby's eyes began to glow, the same white light that had illuminated the sword now radiating from his gaze, from his entire being. He felt something shifting inside him, some connection being completed, some dormant aspect of his nature awakening in response to the sword's transformation, to the proximity of the throne, to the terrible stakes of this final confrontation.
"The Light," Torren whispered, his voice filled with awe and dawning understanding. "That sword was one of the Light's original weapons, forged in the first realm before the schism, before Epimethius was sealed away. It was corrupted, twisted to serve the darkness, but the Light never truly leaves. It just waits for someone strong enough to call it back."
Bobby moved then, his body guided by instincts that weren't entirely his own, by the connection to the Light that was growing stronger with each passing second. He jumped through the air, his movements impossibly graceful, his body surrounded by an aura of white energy that pushed back against the darkness in the room, that made the shadows retreat and the corruption tremble.
Ian tried to block him, tried to intercept, but Bobby was too fast, too focused, too filled with purpose. The transformed sword struck out, not with lethal intent but with something more transformative, with the power of purification rather than destruction. Ian was knocked backward, his body flying through the air to crash against the throne with a sound like thunder, like something fundamental breaking.
But it wasn't Ian that broke. It was the throne.
The material that had seemed indestructible, that had survived countless millennia of ritual and corruption, that had been designed to serve as the anchor point for Epimethius's return— it shattered. Cracks spread through the black material like lightning, white light leaking from the fractures as the ancient power that had been contained within was suddenly, violently released.
Ian slumped to the ground, the black sword clattering from his grasp, his body suddenly looking smaller, more fragile, more human without the throne's support, without the ritual's power flowing through him.
"NO!" Torren screamed, running toward the fallen figure, his face pale with terror. "What have you done? You've killed him!"
But even as he spoke, even as he reached Ian's side, Torren's expression changed. His hands hovered over the fallen man's chest, his head tilted as if listening for something that only he could hear.
"No," Torren said, his voice filled with wonder rather than grief. "I can still feel his heartbeat. Faint, but there. The corruption is receding, the vessel is breaking, but the person—my friend—he's still in there. Bobby, you didn't kill him. You saved him."
Behind them, the throne room was coming apart, the shattered throne releasing energy that tore at the very fabric of the room, at the castle's foundations. But more importantly, something else was happening—directly above where the throne had stood, the air was shimmering, reality was tearing, a portal was forming.
The energy from the throne's destruction had destabilized the dimensional barriers, had opened a gateway, had created an escape route that would last only seconds before the castle's collapse sealed it forever.
"Bobby, come on!" Torren yelled, already lifting Ian's unconscious body, throwing him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "We have to go, now!"
The portal crackled with energy, with the promise of escape but also with the danger of the unknown. Bobby hesitated for just a moment, his glowing eyes taking in the chaos, the destruction, the terrible beauty of a dark fortress consuming itself. He could feel his mother somewhere, could feel the pull of home, of the world he had lost, of the life that was waiting for him if he could just survive this final trial.
Then he jumped, his body surrounded by white light, his mind clear with purpose, following Torren through the tearing fabric of reality.
The transition was disorienting, a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds and sensations that defied easy description. For a moment, Bobby felt like he was being unmade, like his very molecules were being scattered across a dozen different dimensions. Then, just as suddenly, it was over.
They opened their eyes into a world that was so different from everything they had experienced that it took Bobby's breath away. This wasn't the corrupted nightmare of Epimethius's realm, wasn't the familiar reality of Earth, wasn't anything his mind had been prepared to comprehend.
They stood on a platform of glowing crystal that floated hundreds of feet above a city that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. The architecture was unlike anything Bobby had ever seen—buildings that reached impossible heights, connected by sky-bridges that shimmered with contained energy, adorned with holographic advertisements that flickered and danced in languages both familiar and alien. Flying vehicles moved through the air in coordinated patterns, their lights creating rivers of color against the dark sky.
The city was alive with technology so advanced that it seemed like magic, with glowing neon signs that wrote themselves in mid-air, with robotic beings that moved with purposeful grace, with energy fields that shimmered and pulsed with contained power. It looked like Japan, but not the Japan Bobby knew from pictures or videos—this was Japan from a future that hadn't arrived yet, from a timeline that had evolved differently, from a reality where technology and tradition had merged into something breathtaking and slightly terrifying.
"I am sorry, Bobby," Torren said, his voice heavy with the weight of difficult choices, with the understanding that he had just made a decision that would affect both their lives. "I had to save him."
Bobby looked from the impossible city to the unconscious man lying on the crystal platform, to the face that was finally becoming visible as the corruption receded. Ian Altright was around Torren's age, with a scraggly blonde beard that had clearly known better days, with features that would have been handsome if not for the exhaustion and the lingering marks of his ordeal. He looked like someone who had been through hell and back, like a homeless person who had once been something more, like a man who had been broken but was now, finally, being given a chance to heal.
And Bobby began to get angry, began to feel the familiar surge of betrayal, of helplessness, of being yet again in another world that was completely unknown to him. Woody was dead, his mother was waiting for him back home, and instead of going back, instead of returning to the life that was his by right, he had followed Torren through a portal to save a man he had never met, to participate in a rescue that wasn't his responsibility.