Chapter Text
You end with fire burning through your chest. It throbs to a steady rhythm, each pulse spreading that searing pain further till it reaches to and past the edges of some form you barely understand, till your world is naught but burning fire and that sluggish, steady rhythm. Even as the interval between the throbs grows, the pain digs further and deeper into you, corroding and eating away your very being. It continues, intensifies, razes...
Until suddenly, it stops, and you begin.
Child.
The darkness echoes and rings about within your mind. The word takes shape like ripples in a pond, twinkling with the reflection of stars. It reminds you…
Do you wish for a second chance?
A second chance… (query-how query-why?)
I have seen your wishes. Your desires. Take the burden of true name and I shall give you a new life.
A new life… (burden-okay new chance wantwantwant)
Will she be there? (fearangerhatred, love anger fear fear fear fear fear)
No, child. The ghosts of your past will haunt you no more.
…
I accept. (true-name new-life wantwantwantwantwant)
Then your name is…
…
It’s dark when you wake up. Not quite endless black, but dark nonetheless. You blink. It feels… weird, somehow, in a way you can't quite describe. But even worse is when you try to open your mouth. Some sort of attachments spring to life, spreading themselves apart with an angry clattering. You clamp them shut, but the damage has already been done in the form of a strange clicking noise echoing through the empty cavern. (Was that… you?)
Your body feels weird and light, as though it were taken apart, scraped out, and then put back together in all the wrong ways. (It reminds you of the mechanical pencils you'd take apart in middle school.)
Is this really you?
With effort, you pull yourself to your feet, and immediately realize a lot of things wrong. (Weight on your butt [A tail?], weight on your back [Backpack? Wings?], weight on your head. [Horns?])
As expected, you stumble backwards and onto the floor with a painful-sounding crack, quickly discovering that you can, in fact, feel things through that weight on your butt. It's definitely a tail, scrunched at a weird angle and almost crushed between your weight. (What the fuck? [It's huge…])
After a lot of scrambling around, you finally find yourself in a position that isn't incredibly painful. Take stock, take stock. (Deep breaths, in four, hold two, out four, just like Milo taught you. [Who's Milo?])
Okay. You appear to be breathing through your sides. Fuckin, neat as hell. You have one pair of arms and one of of legs, three pairs of what are definitely wings (They're stiff and only really move at the joints. Insect wings, then.), and one incredibly long, segmented tail with a large amount of tiny, flailing legs dotting its sides. A centipede tail, perhaps?
You have five fingers on each hand and what feel like digitigrade legs and toes, making it a bit weird to stand with what feel like extra joints. Every movement you make creates a soft click of chitinous joints that limit your range of motion by a bit. (Is this what your colonists would feel, when you morphed them into insectoids? Eh, oh well.)
It takes a lot of trial and error to get standing, but you manage it eventually, casting a glance about your surroundings. Though you can vaguely tell that you're in a large cavern, it's dark, almost impossibly so. Details fade into obscurity around you, and while the dark feels soft and soothing, the wide-open silence of the cavern makes you feel unsafe and exposed, and the dark does nothing to combat this feeling.
Where… Are you?
You remember so little, and what few memories you have break apart like silk whenever you try to grasp them. You remember pain and bitter betrayal. You remember tidbits of lives deeper below, half-forgotten and half-remembered. You recall a game, a story, siblings beloved and burning blaze of the infection.
And then, just like that, you realize where you are.
Beneath you is a metal platform, softly illuminated by light that shines on you, perhaps even comes from you. Beyond that to one side is soft sand and rough stone, and to the other is a vast ocean like a hole cut out of the world.
As if to confirm, you reach up to your head and then probe further above. Your fingers catch on a razor sharp edge, (Thankfully, your chitin is strong enough to resist injury. Though, quick investigation reveals that not the entire hand is protected, because what the fuck, are those paw beans???) and following it further down reveals the shape of a spike or tine. Further exploration reveals ever more of them, arranged in a circle around your head.
(No mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering.)
You must be… the Pale King. Wyrm, conquerer, usurper of the crater and ruler of Hallownest. Sire to a million tiny childr- (Wait. Children. You are in the Abyss, which must mean-...)
You panic. Ice-cold fear shoots through your veins like the fiery pain of Before, sending you scrambling away from the sea and towards the other end of the platform, dropping to all fours in your haste to ensure the unfamiliarity of your new body doesn't cause you to overbalance and fall flat on your face. (Run, run, run, run, run. [Precious siblings, children of Void, broken shell and screaming shade and children, they are only children-])
You skid to a stop on the main Abyss floor, and if you knew how, you could cry for your relief. The great valley is empty, no broken masks or eggshells, just the odd, bonelike stone of the Ancient Basin. A sound tears its way out of your throat, a loud, chittering keen of unmeasured gratitude. They have not been born, the tragedy hasn't happened, they will not be suffering!
A voice that is not your own calls out to the Abyss in a language you don't recognize yet perfectly understand. "Meled'king! Do not fret, che is coming!"
...Ze'mer? Looking up into the darkness, you see descending the platforms none other than two of the (Your, you suppose.) Great Knights! Dryya and Ze'mer vault down the platforms, glimmering with Pale light against the dark of the Abyss.
They are… alive. There is no doubt, then, that this is real. This is happening. This is your life now. The realization knocks you off balance, the day's events rapidly coming up to meet you.you.
As your world goes hazy, you look back to the smooth floor and then up to them. Your new mouth is still a mystery to you, but you wish to call out to them, so you merely open it and let out some long, mournful noise.
Then, for the first time in your scarce memory, your world tears apart at the edges as you fade to black, overbalancing and falling forward as you pass out.
You are not awake to hear the sound your body makes when it hits the floor.