How To Survive A Calamity

"Eyes of Discerning." The slow words coldly lingered as in the next moment the Skill swiftly activated and the world flipped, the colours growing much warmer and layered against each other.

Warm bright radiance of red, orange, blue, green and more spread and mixed like the fluidity of a lava lamp, becoming more and more saturated as they thickened. The world seemed to change completely as i felt more than half of the Ether i had left instantly plummet to oblivion, my gaze flickered at the blue status screen hovering before me...

And then everything went red.

"Aargh!!"

A sharp pain like a needle ripping straight through my brain tore through my eyes with a searing heat akin to my eyeballs vibrating with a frequency high enough to shoot lasers right out of them, my vision instantly blinded by red that seemed to encompass my whole world with a shredding sense of pain.

The Status screen ruptured into a bronze pale golden hue as the letters and numbers of my stats scattered about and lost format, flipping into completely different unrecognisable characters that danced sporadically as if they came to life.

They ran horizontally like a chain of computer codes and algorithms written in ones and zeros, each of them possessing a poisoning and blinding enough radiance that shimmered mysteriously.

The morphed characters scattered disorderly and rearranged themselves as if they'd suddenly come alive, creating mysterious inscriptions like runes, the blue screen of the System interface glitched like a virus had been inserted — it's blue surface and characters turning a pale bronze golden yellow that very instant as it flashed faster than i could blink before disappearing.

It was just an instance before i seemingly ruptured from an overload of sensory information that caused my eyes to explode with red and pain, but something had flickered across my vision, almost too fast to see. It was a jumbled mess of runes, signs and symbols.

...

====

[Name: Victor [SEALED]

Level: [SEALED]

Rank: [SEALED]

Race: [UNDEFINED]

Class: Π$‰¿‽¡¡!!

Familiar: Hamlet the Silver Slime?

Hp: [LΩCK&D]

________

________

<STATS>

Str3ñ#№th:- [SE?LED]

Sp@&d:- [SEALED]

Ag¿lity:- [S!AL‽D]

Con¿stit¡tion:- [??SEALED¿¡]

Luck:- [SEALED]

Et№her:- [¿¡EALED]

Intμlig‰ence:- [SEALΩD]

Ch→±rm:- [SEALED]

???

???

.

.

.

.

<SUMMARY>

UNKNOWN

====

"AAARGHH!!"

A searing pain tore through my eyes as though they had exploded, everything was drowned in a vibrant blood red and i threw myself to the ground from the pain, shutting my eyes close desperately.

My first instinct was to immediately close my eyes as if i had just stared directly at an exploding sun, the heat and pain searing deeply through them. I grasped at my eyes with both my hands as i rolled against the floor, feeling warm red streams of blood flow down my face from my eyes

At some point, the Skill had been immediately terminated, causing what felt like a momentary gap in my vision and consciousness, but i hadn't realised quickly over the amount of pain i was suffering from around my eyes.

"Fuck..."

I gasped and heaved for air, reeling from shock, pain and the breathtaking fear that gripped my body as i held one hand against my eyes, bent over the floor. A cold voice poured over my being like a vat of cold water over my head.

[Lower your eyes.] It was Meta, the synthetic voice layers more colder and unsympathetic then ever. Every single word utterd, each vibrations from the inhumane voice sending tremors rocking through my body as if I had been plunged into an ice frozen lake of a frigid winter, the heat from my eyes becoming more prominent.

What had i just seen?

Everything felt so somber, so terrifying and chilling. My body trembled uncontrollably for different reasons.

Meta's synthetic voice echoed and lingered at the back of my head with an unsettling weight as my head throbbed. I rose my upper body partially above the ground and slowly lowered my arm covering my eyes, blood smeared all across my face with tears.

My eyes winced sharply with pain instantly, the moment i did so — my vision a deep crimson and my world dyed in veil of red. My heart was thumping and my mind raced erratically with a burst of emotions like a myriad of colours.

I wasn't able to understand anything that just happened, but a haunting looming sense of dread gripped my heart and soul from the depths.

Sucking in a deep, feverish breath, my lips trembled, a cold darkness engulfing my heart. Meta's words...

Lower your eyes...

I gulped.

'That was a warning...'

***

Victor's soul reeled from the shock and terror, an empty, dark and sprawling darkness existing elsewhere undulated — silent and formless ripples spreading through as a distinct figure outlined in its depths. The silhouette.

A small figure stepped through the curtains of darkness, their steps as silent and empty as the dark empty expanse sprawling around. A pair of otherworldly golden eyes pierced through the darkness like bright gold beacons. Their appearance was that of a young boy, seemingly not much older than the age of 12 or 13, with short, messy sandy brown hair like pale bronze, and striking, one could say familiar, golden eyes possessing the glint of otherworldly gems.

But those eyes held no radiance of warmth, peering forward through the darkness coldly. His expression was still and motionless, a solemn pull on his face, a gaze that would make many freeze.

The young boy stepped out silently from the darkness with a transluscent glowing orb of gold light raised in one of his hands. His movements were seemingly indifferent to the lightless reality of the black world.

The familiar looking young boy stood alone surrounded by the emptiness, his pale, fair skin suffusing with an illusionary soft radiance. The golden orb of light spreading warm halos around him as his silent steps finally came to a stop.

The boy stood, his back straight, and his expression unreadable. His golden eyes stared into the orb of light held up in one of his raised hands, peering at what was seemingly concealed in it.

What resembled a single shimmering and golden thread hovered mysteriously inside of the orb, bathed from all side by the bright warm and otherworldly radiance. It was twisted and curved, as thin as a strand of golden hair, and as ethereal as anything dreamlike as if woven purely from light. Peering even closely, the single thread, or stand, of gold seemed to encompass concepts far beyond what could merely be seen to understand.

The mysterious young boy with an uncanny and striking resemblance to a certain other stared deeply at the twisting gold strand, his cold emotionless eyes becoming something even more colder and calculating — something inhumane as if all things of the world possessed no relevance than a means.

An indescribable shadow cast a dark curtain over his small oval face, his gold eyes gleaming even brightly. Then the boy turned, casting his gaze away from the orb and thread finally. The darkness of the world seemed to ripple slightly as he shifted around on his feet.

—CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The steel rattling of heavy chains resounded dominantly in tge darkness the next second, their clangours drawing bellows from seemingly the depths. As if there was a short lapse in the flow of the world, a malevolent figure binded in links of heavy change suddenly appeared behind the boy as he shifted to turn around.

The chains rattled, their clamours screaming as if in defiance. The binded figure bellowed in a grating voice full of confusion and trepidation, however.

"What... What's going on?"

"You've finally come too." The boy said as he turned. His child like voice befitting his age sounded like something a span short shy of imitating a human's. It was something both unnatural and artificial like an overlap of dry vibrations.

His voice was devoif of warmth or emotions, his eyes, even colder, cast a fleeting calculating glance across the malevolent figure now before him. It was a black demon in chains.

But...

An entity once feared, great and powerful, and full of glory, now np different compared to a mere prisoner groveling against its knees, its head and limbs sealed tightly by mysterious binds that rendered it obsolete.

Upon hearing the dissonant voice of the boy, the Demon slowly lioked up, revealing half the face of an otherwise human boy, and the other half a twisted, ugly menacing face.

It blinked in confusion, the placid golden gaze of the boy causing unease and panic to rise. Despite being a entity that was allegedly an authority on Thoughts and emotions, the Demon currently found itself unable to curb the blood curdling intimidation and trepidation it felt.

In fact, he quickly realised he couldn't do much of anything at all in that state, to more of its horror. The pair of otherworldly golden eyes seemed to tear down its secrets and soul apart, laying it all bare. The mere thought had the demon tremble with a small shiver.

He tried to move, but even its limbs felt like lead in the grasp of the giant chain links.

"Where is this?"

The Demon's memories also offered no solace. Its last and most recent recollections were in complaints and scrambled all over the place, raising even more questions about its current circumstance.

The mysterious young boy before him took the first step toward him. And then he took another, and another. And a couple more still. He raised the glowing orb of light slightly forward, casting halos of bright searing light against the demon. The strange gold thread was still folding around itself without much of a difference or change to it.

The boy's lips coldly pulled to an emotionless smile, the edges of his mouth curving slightly across his face coldly as he leaned forward towards the shivering demon.

"Tell me...do you Demons believe in fate?"