Lukas Aguilar was gone.

No, it would be more accurate to say that the information representing Lukas Aguilar was overwritten. Something strange and alien had infected him from within, corrupting his soul, his very existence, and marred it beyond recognition. There was no agony or wound. Rather, it was an intimate violation of his very conscience.

In that moment, Lukas felt like he had been rebuilt in another’s image, only to be found lacking, and deconstructed and reconstructed to build something that was like him, yet anathema to his existence. When his mind tried to call forth any information related to “Lukas Aguilar,” all that answered were the sick, unusable, contorted caricatures created to serve as his substitute.

I am nothing.

Masses of cold power, of Decay, as if even that information was scrapped and melted down.

And then nothing at all.

Leaving behind nothing but a blank void, until all that remained was a cold, marble floor, an empty ceiling of eternal blackness, and dazzling white walls. A prison of white, under a void of black.

Within is nothing but an abyss that devours the world.

His body was no longer his own. His thoughts scattered in the endless void. He was naked. Alone. Vulnerable. A consciousness that was nothing. Would be nothing.

An empty placeholder for an endless array of ███████ ██████████—

Without is nothing but a killing machine.

And he was cold.

His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see.

His ears were intact, but he couldn’t hear.

He felt no pain, no fear, nothing but a pervasive numbing chill that filled his body and locked his muscles in place. Beyond the chill, it was not unpleasant. Everything was blank, frozen in a block of black ice, simply waiting for his consciousness to disperse because the host was not dead.

And yet, he couldn’t let go. As tempting as it was to surrender to blackness, some niggling feeling continued to poke and prod at him, like a tune he could not quite remember.

“Mortal.”

The word appeared in his mind, bypassing his useless ears, burning itself into the core of his consciousness. And with it came something like perspective.

A goddess clad in regal attire. A dimly lit cavern. An oceanic blue pendant.

An offer. A vision. A bargain. A goal.

The words filled him with worry, and a connection to something outside his own mind brought more sensation to his reawakening mind. The goddess—Inanna—was connected to him. Somewhere. Somehow. And something had happened. Nothing good, given what he saw and felt, but what it was, he could not say.

“Lukas.”

Another vision, blurry and vague, but…a different girl. Golden hair. Blue. Frost.

A companion. A fighter. Predator. Prey.

Then there was the power. So much of it. Power that could make his omphalos reserves feel inadequate. Power and awareness. Power and—

AwAReNesS

Yes. He could remember it. He could see it. He could sense it.

He was Lukas Aguilar.

He was also the anomaly of [LOSTBELT EARTH].

Activating Intense Repair…

Correcting Soul Contortion…

Path Reset!

Activate Auto-Scan Auto-Analyze.

Set.

He could see it now. The [CRYPT OF FIENDISH WORMS] had tried to corrupt him from within.

He had stolen monster prototypes from the crypt. The crypt had used his own mechanisms to hack into his system when he had siphoned the FAILSAFE.

Balance Reality Foundation—Counterbalance

Equalizing…

Base Focus Medium Chosen

Host Identified

The cavern. The tunnels. Moss lining the walls. Bryophytes. Ferns. Lichens. Monsters—reptilian, slime, insectoid. Creatures of various skills, various attributes, each occupying a finite amount of Soul Capacity from the nigh endless reserves held inside the center. The source of the crypt’s existence.

Suddenly, everything began to make sense, as the crypt’s memories flooded his mind.

He could see it. He could sense it. From the lowest fern to the greatest monstrosity, everything was part of the crypt. It always was. The unnatural curse that existed above the ground, the replication of the curse crafted to create DECAY and engraving it into the FAILSAFE… He could see everything. The crystal cave, the metal deposits, the churning chamber where ████████ was being manufactured. ████████ had a strong advantage against spiritual beings. He could win back the territory claimed by the spiritual predators. Access to the spiritual soul prototypes in the Soul Crypt was beyond him, but with access to new prototypes, he could craft Creation Protocols to synthesize new prototypes of a spiritual variety.

The awareness extended, accessing his memories of a world that was a blur of color and energy—the Haze—

Accessing information from Soul Prototype MARID—

Accessing information from Soul Prototype YUREI—

Accessing information from Soul Prototype KASHA—

Yes. There was a lot of information. He could access the HAZE through the acclaimed territory. He could corrupt the ██████████ and access the HAZE and within it the other prototypes. All for itself. Everything for itself—

Everything would be itself—

Everything would be HIS—

Accessing information from BASE HOST—

Accessing information from CRYPT OF FIENDISH WORMS—

TRANSLATING—

Yes. The numbers were positive. The synthesis of ████████ would gain HIM advantage against spiritual predators. New spiritual prototypes would give advantage against physical predators. Access to the HAZE would grant him access to the reticulum spread across the entire WORLD SYSTEM and then—

He could see it very clearly.

Spreading through the tunnels of the Crypt of Fiendish Worms. Gaining control. Expanding into the Haze. Corrupting it. New information. New Truths. New horizons. New prototypes. Infect the reticulum, infect the World System, corrupt the creatures outside.

Kill, Expand, Kill, Expand, Kill, Expand, Expand and Expand.

Until he was everywhere.

Until he was EVERYTHING.

Enact Warmonger Protocol.

Lukas’s eyes snapped open.

He didn’t wake up, per se. It was more like he cobbled together some kind of awareness, the same way a carpenter built a table. The reality he awoke to was a cold marble floor, with dazzling white walls on four sides and a pitch-black sky.

Then he saw something else.

Someone’s toes. In front of his face.

Lukas frowned. He was certain they hadn’t been there a second before. But now, there they were. There she was. Seated on a chair, one leg crossed over the other, was Inanna. And as always, she looked breathtakingly beautiful.

She wore a sparkling white gown, tinted here and there with streaks of frozen blue. She wore the dress with inhuman elegance, its rippling fabric dripping with feminine perfection, her body a perfect balance of curves and planes, beauty and strength. She sat on the chair, eyes half-slanted, half-aware, her gorgeous, sensual lips opened just slightly, as he stared at her.

“A prison of white in a void of black,” she murmured. “Not my first choice for a mindscape, but it will do.”

“Mindscape?” His voice came out more shaky than he’d have liked. “I already have my own mindscape?”

“You did not, until now. I placed the foundations. Added the finesse. Your mind did the rest.”

“Not a very impressive job, then.”

Inanna had created dozens upon dozens of beautiful illusionary worlds in his mindscape whenever she’d brought him here. His own room was probably the simplest of the lot. Compared to that, this was basic. Chicken scratch with crayons on a white page, compared to Inanna’s da Vinci.

“On the contrary, I find it fitting, albeit rather…drab. It reflects your spiritual state well.”

“Are you saying I’m empty?”

Inanna let out a low, throaty laugh, but didn’t comment any further.

Lukas took a moment to consider everything that was going on. The last thing he remembered before losing control was siphoning the monster prototype into himself. It was only after he was done that he realized how badly he had fucked up.

Inanna rose from her throne. The setting suddenly changed from the familiar, cloudy landscape into an even more familiar cavernous setting—the anomaly. But he could tell it was still his mindscape and not reality. Walking ahead, the goddess ran her finger along a particularly sharp stalactite.

“You stole the crypt’s monsters. An act of a thief. That alone was worth retribution. Then you decimated its failsafe, the heart of its defense, and snatched it away. That was no longer theft. That was an invasion.”

Her words were clearly meant to be congratulatory, but they certainly didn’t feel that way.

“I know,” he admitted. “When I siphoned the failsafe, the crypt followed it in. It…it was like it had hacked into my own system and activated the failsafe.”

"A rather poetic revenge."

Lukas’s attention wandered toward the blank white walls of his new mindscape. The traumatic episode with the failsafe had done a lot of damage to himself. Damage that was sure to leave its marks on his psyche for good. But that hadn’t been the only thing that had changed since then.

He had gained knowledge.

And knowledge was power.

“There’s something I should tell you. It’s about that legend Solana talked about.”

“About the power to end the world?”

Lukas nodded. “When the crypt hacked into me, it left a door open. And I looked into it. Into what it’s capable of. The omphalos’s instincts—my instincts. I wanted to consume it. And it wasn’t just the omphalos. The power to end the world… I think she was talking about me…”