The Shadow Beyond

Jonathan found his body becoming weaker as he crawled. It was as if his very life force was abandoning him, unwilling to follow him on his path.

And yet, he kept crawling, like he should have done all those years ago, back into the burning building.

Swallowed by his grief, he didn't even realize when he began chewing.

It wasn't until he felt a strange sensation in his mouth that he became aware of the peculiar act, but he couldn't care any less. 

He felt the grip of death tightening around his throat anyway. He welcomed it.

Eventually, his breathing became so far apart that he barely got a lungful even when he could fight to inhale.

The mere act of surviving from one moment to the next against it was a battle he lacked the desire to engage in, and his vision darkened as his consciousness slowly faded.

Finally, as he neared the edge, he truly felt that the next breath would be his last.

Then, there were stars.

And he was wide awake once more.

Countless different Constellations, each one spiraling around each other in a double helix. 

They moved in sync. Innumerable motes drifted from their bodies as they moved, leaving thick trails of shed tissue or perhaps energies painting the void of empty space in the wake of their dance.

When they were too far away to see one another, they communicated, and each message was enormous and violent in scope, expressed with the energy of an exploding star… However, his attention wasn't focused on the mesmerizing scene.

… But rather on something even beyond the Stars and Constellations.

There was a Shadow. A vast inky black, so dark that the void of space may as well have been the brightest of light. It was far, far away, Jonathan knew, much farther than the Stars, or so it should have been, yet it was not.

It was a darkness, a darkness full of things. Hungry, nasty things with no shape or form. 

No motes or shards like those that had come from the Constellations. Tendrils like spider webs reached out, and grasped the mote connected to Jonathan's mind. As it pulled, it spoke in a voice that seem to shattered stars.

{̴̝̲̟̙͇̖̟̻͑͗ͅ[̴̜̖̥̌͆͛͒̈́͜͝H̵̞͇̘̪͎̫̒͜͠u̸̙͎̗͍͚̗̤̫͈͐̅̎͝N̶̞̿̈́̃̀̇͆̈́̀̿͐̕ğ̴̢̢̱͓̙͖͖̠̱̥̠̠̺̓͊̄͋̍͂̒͠ͅÈ̶̡̨̡̩͓̝̋̂͑͂̒͗̈̃̈́̚ͅr̷̛͓̤̫̤̲͍̫̤͈͖̱̜̋̇̓̿͌̽̅̉̓̚]̶̼̟̮͍̠̳̳͉͓̞̫̤̳͛̈́͌ͅ}̸̡̛͕͉̄̾̍̃͋̍́͌̋͠͝ ̶̞̠̩͒̑̂̽̎͠͝

Jonathan simply stared up at the Thing behind the stars. Something stars did not even seem to sense.

Then it's gaze turned onto him.

It reached out with a thin wavering line of smoke-shadow that circled around him. As it passed through him, he realized that unlike the Constellations, this was one single… impossibly vast thing. It was not formed of motes or shards of crystalline flesh.

It moved closer, and Jonathan saw jaws within jaws. Jagged teeth filled them, teeth shaped like crystalline fractals, ever shifting in whatever horrific facsimile of a maw this Beast Had. 

As it got closer, it somehow became even darker, and Jonathan was made aware of infinite shades of darkness than he ever could imagine.

There was black, but that was merely a color, one that could be seen in even broad daylight. 

This thing, this impossibly vast thing was composed of a darkness far beyond that. 

A Darkness so dense that it could put out stars just by passing over, and all around it, completely unseen, were the limbs living within that darkness.

It's eyes, if they could even be called that, were not orbs, but veins, like the fractures in volcanic rock. They did not shine, did not glow, emanated no light, but they were bright. Impossibly bright, sickeningly bright. It's equivalent of eyelids did not open and close, merely sunder and crack, sometimes in reverse, and never in the same spot twice.

Jonathan lost whatever smidgen of sanity was left within himself.

Then, Jonathan forgot.

For that was the only way his mind could cope with what was witnessed.

—-

Jonathan always disliked fire. Even before the blaze that tore his life apart, flames unsettled him.

Now, that unease had grown into hatred so vile that he had to restrain himself from bringing a rusty pipe to someone's temple whenever he saw even the slightest flicker of it.

His chest tightened with anger every time the sight of a stray ember or the smell of burning wood met his deadened senses.

Fire was his enemy, a living beast that had devoured and burned his happiness whole.

 It needed to be killed.

His memories were so vivid, so consuming, that he didn't even feel the darkness slithering through his body, piercing his stomach and coating his veins, his muscles, his bones, and ultimately, his skin.

The Corruption, or the Truth, depending on whom one asked, was by definition utterly insidious.

It slipped into the cracks of the soul unnoticed, weaving itself into the fabric of one's being without a whisper. It was an invisible snake, silent, deadly, and changing a person from the inside out.

One didn't or just couldn't feel the change in their mentality, the mumbled, dying breaths of one's morality as it was consumed and broken down.

It was akin to reading, in a way.

After knowing and understanding the meaning of the letters, one couldn't simply go back to not knowing.

Jonathan certainly didn't feel anything weird, even though his body seemed more than thrice as strong as he had been at his peak.

He didn't notice the way his muscles moved with a fluidity they hadn't possessed in years or how his reflexes seemed sharper, quicker.

He didn't even realize the absence of the phantom pain caused by his missing limb.

It was like being in a dream, where everything felt so vivid yet surreal.

The only thing he saw were his wife and daughter, eternally burning in a sea of flame. He couldn't shake the vision from his mind, the haunting image of their faces twisted in agony, trapped in a blaze that refused to die out.

Alas, there was no more despair to be found within his soul.

No...instead, there was only hatred. Hatred for the fire, for the world, and for himself. And there was no more reason to keep it bottled up.

The rain had stopped an unknown amount of time ago, leaving Jonathan still as a statue. For minutes, hours, he remained unmoving, like a broken machine, reliving his darkest day over and over and over again.

His mind was a prisoner to the past, a loop that played without end...until all-too-familiar rage woke him up.

When the smell of smoke reached his nostrils, though, his body reacted with uncanny swiftness, betraying no hesitation whatsoever. Jonathan reached down toward the pavement, grabbing the trusty metal pipe he kept for fending off stray dogs.

The metal twisted in his grip.

His instincts as a firefighter and a now-pristine sense of smell guided his steps.

It was as if the corruption had sharpened his senses, honed them into something beyond human.

He could smell the smoke's acrid bite and hear the crackle of flames even from a distance.

The trauma he suffered might have broken him, and the corruption he unknowingly consumed might have turned him into a machine…but now, for the first time in the past three years, he had a purpose. It was ... liberating.

Jonathan Bauer, or what remained of him, stood up and walked deeper into the slums. 

Cries of horror began and swiftly ended, and just as swiftly, the coppery smell of blood replaced the acrid smell of smoke.