The land itself bled despair.
Beneath Gloria's boots, the ground crunched—not with gravel or frost, but bone. Not old bones either. New ones. Still pink in some places, still whispering the echo of screams that had long since stopped. Above them, the skies swirled with red-black clouds, shaped like grasping fingers. Lightning cracked silently behind them, revealing the silhouette of a twisted castle: all ribs and skulls, built upward like a corpse trying to stand again.
Guruji said nothing.
Gloria squinted toward the horizon, sweat mixing with frost on her brow.
"Why do I feel like we're walking into the mouth of something?"
"Because we are," Guruji murmured. "This place… this function realm… it isn't memory. It isn't dream. It's a fracture. A curse made of time."
The Castle of Bones loomed closer with each step, as if it were breathing them in.
---
The gates opened not with creaks, but sighs.
Inside was a hall of skulls, pillars of femurs, chandeliers of spinal cords that burned with dark-red flame. And at the end—on a throne carved from what looked like a fossilized god—Everett sat.
But it was not their Everett.
This one wore black, not frost. His face was sharp, more angular, shadowed with dark markings that crawled like worms beneath his skin. His eyes—red, endless, furious—were pits that could suck in the soul itself.
He did not move. Not even when Gloria called softly, "Everett…?"
Guruji gripped his staff tighter. "That's not him," he whispered. "That's someone who was him."
Then, Everett opened his eyes slowly, like an ancient door being unlocked.
"Gloria. Guruji."
He smiled.
But it was not the smile they remembered. It was not warm. It was not kind. It was the smile of a broken sword learning to love its cracks.
"You're finally here," he said. "I thought maybe I imagined you."
---
Gloria stepped forward. Her voice quivered. "What happened to you?"
The Everett on the throne blinked once. Slowly. Then, almost gently, he looked down at his own hand.
"They killed her," he said. "Sylvie."
Neither Gloria nor Guruji knew the name. But the way Everett spoke it—it was not just a name. It was a world. A wound. A farewell.
"They killed all of them. The humans. The children. The Federations. The oracles, the beasts, the rebels, the cities carved into planets."
He looked up, and now tears lined the edge of his infernal stare. "I thought they killed you, too. I saw your bodies… lying in a frozen hell… something writhing through your spines."
Guruji closed his eyes, his face pale.
"I killed them," Everett continued. "Every last one of them. Their empire spanned galaxies. I burned every moon. I drowned every mother. I buried every god."
He stood now. The throne behind him groaned.
"I became their extinction."
Gloria staggered back. "No—no, Everett would never—!"
"I'm not him," the Dark Everett said, voice thunderous now. "Not anymore. The Everett you knew is still inside this multiverse. Somewhere. Somewhere bright. Somewhere stubborn."
He turned. "And I won't let him become me."
---
Guruji finally spoke. "Why… why summon us here, then? Why show us this ruin, this self-sacrifice?"
Everett's eyes flickered with red stars.
"Because I have knowledge. Power. A class no longer human. I have seen the end and become its student. And I wish to give it all—every secret, every transformation, every technique born from hellfire and loss—to Everett. To myself. So he can be prepared."
Gloria shook her head. "No. That's not how it works. You can't just overwrite him. He's not your backup drive. He's you, yes—but also not. You're different choices. Different griefs. You carry different ghosts."
She raised her sword. "And we won't let you burn him into a mirror of yourself."
There was silence.
And then, the Ashen King smiled again. This time, softer. But it still hurt to look at.
"I knew you'd say that."
---
For a long moment, they just stood there. Three figures in a room made of death and history.
"I have one last request," the Everett of Bones said. "If you won't accept what I give… then let him hear this instead. Tell him…"
He faltered.
"…**#₹@***%"
" So," the dark Everett said, "let's start the hunt."
The words weren't loud, but they echoed. Not through the air—but through the bones beneath their feet, through the hollow lungs of the castle itself.
Guruji stiffened.
Gloria felt it too—a strange shiver in her chest, like something intangible had marked her. It wasn't pain. It was permission.
Everett… no, this Dark Everett… had marked them.
----