Endling (Kaito x Gakupo)

Chapter 13

Kaito had lost track of time long ago. Even his senses seemed to be completely warped. He was lying on the ground inside one of the many rooms of the fae hideout, yet he felt as if he could've been slowly sinking in a black sea. Like the rich waters of a deep trench, his surroundings seem to pulsate with something beyond his imagination. There was one thing clear to him at this point: the world he always took for granted was a shroud for something more than the mere absence of sunlight. He knew this with complete certainty, yet he couldn't grasp what was there to be discovered. Perhaps each time dawn touched the surface of the earth, the night and all its monsters simply seeped underground, condensing and growing more and more sour as they descended.

Had Yuki and Prima lied? Maybe they had always meant to feed him to whatever dwelled in the lower levels of their abode. Maybe the pain making him scream wasn't due to a metamorphosis...He was simply being consumed. It hurt. It hurt. How could anyone survive this? Fire danced on his back as if his spine contained oil instead of marrow. His limbs ached terribly as they rearranged themselves in nonsensical ways. Through it all, he passed out again and again, only for the same torment to drag him back into consciousness. He could do nothing but curl up inside the bowels of the earth, barely able to formulate thoughts.

Hate wasn't the proper word for what Kaito could feel around him. And yet it played so cruelly with his body, twisting it and splashing the ground with his misery. There were no descriptors appropriate for something so unlike humans, nothing that could capture the exact mixture of indifference and malice of his unknowable torturer. It absorbed his sobbing and shouting and found them unsatisfactory. Kaito meant nothing to the years and years accumulated all around him, the condensed layers of yesterday's nocturnal terrors and featureless apparitions. Everything that had rejected the world of rationality was down here, ready to accept his suffering as a momentary distraction. However, a single boy lost in the dark was ultimately insufficient to satisfy them.

Many hours passed. Or perhaps it was only minutes.

Without warning, Kaito felt something materialize right on top of him, straddling his body. Before he had time to react, a red light seared his eyes. The scene revealed by the fleeting glow remained etched inside of his head, its details clear enough to push aside the other sensations fighting for his attention as his blindness returned. The figure was wearing an imitation of his own face, with an expression so alien that he could hardly recognize his own features. His throat had no sounds left, but Kaito managed to scream yet again. He could still feel the weight of the other Kaito pinning him to the ground, but in the darkness the entity must've shed its false visage, because he could feel it prodding his body, pulling his limbs in multiple directions and tearing at his clothes. It felt as if it had many more than four extremities.

"Who are you?! What do you want?!" Kaito managed to say.

Something like a hand touched his cheek. The fingers had more phalanges than it was possible. "Who are you? What do you want?" The figure or the darkness itself replied, he couldn't tell for certain. It sounded like his voice, but distorted and robbed of any emotion, so much that almost sounded like a random collection of sounds, devoid of any meaning.

"I..." Kaito gnashed his teeth. Why did he feel compelled to answer? Whatever this horror was, it surely wouldn't understand or care. It was merely parroting back his words without knowing what they meant, wasn't it? Nevertheless, he had to answer.

Who are you?

Kaito was still lying on the ground. However, he also was standing in a mountainous terrain covered with bamboo trees and mossy rocks. A fine mist clung to his skin. He was back in his homeland, somehow. Although he was in a dark cave, he was also in his mountain, waiting for the sightless maiden. He looked at his claws covered in dew and smiled wistfully. He was in love. It was wrong to love her, but he couldn't erase her image from his heart. He was desperately lonely.