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The moment Derek’s fist connected with Avery’s chest, everything should have ended there. The force knocked the breath out of him, sent his body sliding across the glowing platform, sent the world tilting into that endless yellow abyss waiting below. For a split second, there was nothing but the rush of falling and the hollow certainty that this was how Derek chose to say goodbye.
But Avery didn’t fall.
His fingers caught the edge.
The impact tore something in his shoulders, a sharp burning pain that made his vision blur, yet his grip held. Below him, the void pulsed like something alive, breathing in slow, sick waves of gold and black. It felt aware. It felt patient.
Above him, Derek had already turned away.
Of course he had.
Avery dragged in a shaking breath, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “You idiot…” he whispered, voice cracking into something rougher than anger, something that felt like panic trying to claw its way out. His hands trembled as he pulled himself up inch by inch, boots scraping uselessly against the smooth stone. “You absolute idiot.”
Derek didn’t look back.
He stood at the center of the platform, golden armor reflecting the impossible light of the King. That massive eye hung in the sky, unblinking, swallowing everything in its gaze. It wasn’t just watching Derek. It was inside him already. You could see it in the way his posture stiffened, in the way his head tilted slightly as if listening to something no human mind was meant to hear.
“I stand and give my eyes to you…” Derek’s voice was quieter than it should have been. Calm. “Wake me as one.”
“No.”
The word tore out of Avery before he even realized he’d spoken.He hauled himself over the edge and stumbled forward, legs shaking, chest heaving. “No, no, no, no, you don’t get to do that!” His voice echoed strangely across the platform “You don’t get to just decide that for both of us!”
Derek froze.
For a second, everything stopped.
Then slowly, like something dragging him back through layers of static and whispers, Derek turned around.
His helmet hid most of his face, but Avery didn’t need to see it. He could feel it. That exhaustion. That quiet acceptance that had been there from the moment they reunited.
“You weren’t supposed to come back,” Derek said, voice low.
Avery let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh, except it sounded broken halfway through. “Yeah? Funny thing about that, I don’t really listen.”
“Avery.”
“No.” He stepped closer, shaking his head, hands clenched at his sides. “Don’t say my name like that like you’re already gone or something. I’m right here. I’m still here. You don’t get to push me off a platform and call it saving me.”
Derek’s shoulders tensed. “You don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I understand enough.” Avery’s voice dropped, quieter now, but sharper. “You think this is the only way out. You think if you throw yourself into it, it’ll stop chasing me.”
“It will.”
“That’s not how this works and you know it.”
For a moment, Derek said nothing.
The eye above them pulsed faintly, like it was breathing in their silence.
Avery stepped even closer. “You told me to stay away. You lied to me. You set up that stupid side quest like I was just going to go along with it and never come back.” His throat tightened, words coming faster now, spilling over each other. “What, you thought I’d just forget about you? That I’d just leave you here to rot in this place while you play hero?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need that kind of protection!”
Derek flinched.
It was small. Barely noticeable. But Avery saw it.
“You think I want to go back knowing I left you here?” Avery continued, voice cracking now. “You think I could live with that?”
“You’d be alive.”
“That’s not the same thing!”
The words hit harder than anything else.
For a second, Derek looked like he might say something. His hand twitched at his side, like he didn’t know whether to reach out or pull away.
“You don’t get it,” Derek said finally, quieter now. “My mind is already gone. It’s full of things that shouldn’t exist. Things I can’t unsee. It doesn’t want me anymore. I’m useless to it.” His voice faltered just slightly. “You’re not.”
Avery shook his head, stepping even closer until there was barely any space between them. “Then we figure something else out.”
“There is nothing else.”
“Then we make something!”
“You can’t just fight this!”
“Watch me.”
For the first time, Derek’s composure cracked.
“Avery, this isn’t a game anymore.”
“I know that!” Avery snapped, then softened, his voice dropping into something more fragile. “I know. I’ve known since the moment I saw your messages. Since the moment I realized you were talking to me before we even met.” He swallowed hard. “You think I came all this way just to walk away now?”
Derek looked at him then. Really looked at him.
And for a second, the noise of the King seemed to fade.
“You’re supposed to be better than me,” Derek said quietly.
Avery blinked. “What?”
“You’re supposed to be the one who gets out.” Derek’s voice shook now, just slightly. “That’s the whole point.”
“Maybe I don’t want that if it means losing you.”
The silence that followed felt heavier than the void beneath them. It sank into the cracks between them, into the space where something unspoken had always existed, something neither of them had ever dared to define because naming it would make it real, and real things could be taken, broken, erased just like everything else in this world.
At first, it was subtle, just a tremor in the air, like the world itself had inhaled too sharply and didn’t know how to exhale. The golden eye above them twitched. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. It physically jerked in its place, the massive iris constricting, expanding, constricting again like something deeply, cosmically irritated.
Then the whispering started.
Not the usual endless, layered voices that Derek had learned to endure. This was different. Sharper. Messier. Like a thousand overlapping thoughts suddenly arguing with themselves.
“No—no, no, no, this is not—this is not the sequence—”
The voice didn’t come from one place. It came from everywhere. From the platform, from the void, from inside Avery’s skull, from behind Derek’s ribs.
Avery winced, grabbing his head. “Oh, great,” he muttered. “It talks now. Fantastic.”
“It always talked,” Derek said automatically, but there was something off in his tone. He was staring upward, tense. “Just… not like this.”
Above them, the King in Yellow pulsed brighter. The golden light flickered erratically, like a broken signal.
“You were supposed to run,” the voice snapped, sharp and sudden. “That was the design. The warning was clear. The emotional distress was calibrated. The sacrifice was—”
It stopped.
There was a long, dragging pause.
Then, quieter, almost disbelieving:
“Why are you still here?”
Avery blinked. “…Excuse me?”
Derek slowly lowered his head, his entire body going rigid. “Don’t engage it,” he said under his breath.
“Don’t engage—?” Avery gestured wildly upward. “It’s already engaged, Derek, it’s literally complaining!”
“I am not complaining,” the King snapped, voice echoing like a thousand slamming doors. “I am correcting a deviation.”
Another pause.
“…Several deviations.”
The eye narrowed.
“Many deviations.”
Avery squinted up at it. “…Are you… mad?”
Derek made a strangled noise. “Avery—”
“Yes!” the King snapped immediately, the word cracking through the air like lightning. “Yes, I am, this is, this is incomprehensible! I have calculated every possible outcome across infinite timelines and none of them included,this!”
Avery blinked again. “Wow. Okay. Didn’t expect the cosmic horror to have a meltdown, but here we are.”
Derek dragged a hand down the front of his helmet. “This is bad,” he muttered. “This is really bad.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” the King continued, voice rising in pitch, not quite human, not quite anything. “You—” the eye focused sharply on Avery, “—you were supposed to be terrified. You were supposed to break. You were supposed to accept the inevitability of your role as a vessel!”
Avery crossed his arms. “Yeah, well, I got distracted.”
“…By what?”
Avery pointed at Derek like it was obvious. “Him.”
The silence that followed was so abrupt it felt like the world itself had lagged.
Then—
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Derek froze. “…What?”
The King’s voice dropped into something dangerously flat.
“I dragged a mind across eternity. I filled it with the collapse of stars, the birth of civilizations, the end of all things. I gave it knowledge so vast it shattered under the weight of it.” The eye flicked toward Derek. “And you—”
Derek straightened slightly, like he was bracing for something.
“—you used your final coherent thoughts to leave behind cryptic warnings… carefully designed pathways… intricate systems meant to guide the next subject…”
A pause.
“…and instead of properly instilling fear, you accidentally set up a romantic narrative.”
Avery choked. “A what—?”
Derek made a sound that could only be described as a system failure. “That’s not—what are you—no, that’s not what I—”
“Oh, please,” the King snapped. “Do you have any idea how this looks from a higher-dimensional perspective? ‘Don’t turn left.’ ‘Find me.’ ‘I’m waiting.’ You may as well have written poetry.”
“I was trying to save him!” Derek shot back, voice cracking for the first time.
“And yet here he stands!” the King roared. “Defying every logical survival instinct because he cares about you!”
Avery raised a hand slightly. “I mean… yeah?”
The eye snapped toward him.
“You are ruining everything.”
“Okay, rude.”
“I constructed a flawless descent into madness!” the King continued, spiraling now, the golden light flaring erratically. “The library, the town, the behavioral loops—twelve hours of cognitive erosion! That book alone should have reduced you to a compliant shell!”
Avery shifted awkwardly. “Yeah, about that… I kind of just… snapped out of it.”
“Yes, I noticed!” the King snapped. “Do you know how difficult it is to induce a perfect trance state only for the subject to break it because he’s thinking about someone else?!”
Derek slowly turned his head toward Avery.
“…You were thinking about me?” he asked, voice quiet.
Avery froze.
“…No,” he said immediately.
A beat.
“…Okay, maybe a little.”
“Avery.”
“I thought you were dead!” Avery snapped, suddenly defensive, hands flailing. “You left all those messages, and then nothing, and I was stuck in that stupid church reading that disgusting book, and I just—” He stopped, jaw tightening. “I wasn’t going to let that be the end of it.”
Derek stared at him.
The King made a noise that sounded deeply, cosmically exhausted.
“This is unbearable.”
The platform trembled under their feet as the eye pulsed again, brighter now, more unstable.
“I am an ancient entity beyond comprehension,” the King continued, voice slipping between fury and disbelief. “I exist outside the boundaries of time and reality. I have witnessed the rise and fall of universes.”
Another pause.
“And I am being emotionally undermined by two idiots who refuse to acknowledge they are in love.”
“We are not—!” Derek started.
“We are a little—” Avery said at the exact same time.
They both stopped.
Slowly turned toward each other.
“…What?” Derek said.
Avery blinked. “What?”
The King let out a long, suffering sound that echoed like something collapsing in on itself.
“I cannot do this,” it muttered. “I cannot enact a grand cosmic convergence while you two are having a moment.”
“This is not a moment!” Derek snapped, though his voice wavered just slightly.
“You punched me!” Avery shot back.
“I was saving you!”
“By throwing me into the void?!”
“Yes!”
“That’s not how saving works!”
“It worked, didn’t it?!”
“I’m still here!”
“Exactly!”
“That’s not—!” Avery stopped, visibly struggling to keep up. “That’s not the point!”
“The point,” Derek said, stepping closer, frustration bleeding through, “is that you were supposed to leave!”
“And the point,” Avery shot back, matching the distance, “is that I didn’t!”
They were close now.
Too close.
Derek’s voice dropped. “You should have.”
Avery shook his head. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Why?”
“Because I—”
The world glitched.
Violently.
The King screamed.
“NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. WE ARE NOT DOING THIS RIGHT NOW.”
The platform cracked beneath them, golden fractures spreading like lightning as the eye above spiraled, its light distorting, warping.
“I REFUSE TO BE INTERRUPTED BY A CONFESSION SCENE.”
Avery blinked. “A what—?”
“YOU WILL BOTH KINDLY RESOLVE YOUR EMOTIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS LATER,” the King snapped, voice shaking with barely contained rage, “SO I CAN PROCEED WITH YOUR EXISTENTIAL DOOM IN A TIMELY MANNER.”
Derek stared upward, then slowly dragged a hand over his helmet.
“…It’s having a breakdown,” he said flatly.
“A cosmic breakdown,” Avery corrected.
They smiled to eachother.