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TO Rewrite: B3 — 26. Black Hat
🕑 Added 2025-01-07 23:36:30 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Rachel Park (Our Lunar Hare!)
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The world shattered, reassembled, and inverted all at once as Rachel was pulled in the riptide Melishna’s sheer mass generated, dragging her through The Gate—a pathway tore past the fabric of the Scarlet Walls, bypassing every cosmic law that had once dictated reality to pierce this Fable Realm.
Soon, all of her power, everything she had gathered since The Oscillation—every moon—would be gradually stripped from her. She descended. Violence rippled through her entire being as she passed into the infinite and vast, drawn into her hymn. The choir rippled into the very essence of her core, plunging her into a shroud of mist.
She lost sight of the mirrors, gray coiling its tentacles around her. Abruptly, the scent of sulfur, corruption, hellfire, and damnation flooded her senses. Crimson lightning and black flames erupted out of her in a tide as something moved within the mist…drawing, lulling.
“Rachel!” Nia screamed—a sharp, soul-wrenching cry that made Rachel’s already tattered reality split further.
Nia?! What is it?
“It hurts! I—I can’t hold— I’m being torn apart!”
New fragments split out of her many eyes, showing her internal world. Showing Nia and the three Hell Pups. The vision echoed through her veins, raw, pained, her existence cracking under the pressure Melishna caused.
She’s…sucking out every last drop of Infernal Force from us…
In the blindness, her power—Hades and Yomi—all of it, was drawn out of her as if their souls were twisted into numberless knots. Stripped away in an instant, an unseen force ripping, clawing, devouring the aether she had gathered.
The Mirrorverse wasn’t enough… She needs more power to manifest!
Her limbs spasmed, she spiraled, and her connection to the Black Moon faltering, flickering like a dying flame at midnight. The weight of the Infernal realms slipped from her grasp, as if something primeval and holy were welcoming their strength as a gift: Melishna, Flower of Light.
Nia, we can’t fight it!
Paralyzed, she couldn’t twitch as her outfit began to tatter and disintegrate, shreds of her Soul Item burning away as Nia suffered the blowback. Rachel could feel it, even with her spirit held by Hades. The Cerberus Triplets’ voices overlapped in her mind, the eldest Hellhound snarling in frustration.
“Rachel, she was never meant to act as a medium for this much power—the King and Queen are suffering—all of Hades!”
“Even with all your moons and your Eldritch connection—” Irida choked, peppy voice wavering, slipping in and out of focus, “this shouldn’t be possible—”
“Our balance is breaking—” Aleka’s usually dull tone strained, her growl desperate. “Rachel, if you keep this up, Nia will—”
“Rachel, I’m…scared.”
[Evolution Complete]
Rachel gritted her teeth as she felt a shift, her mind slipping into a new order of thought, locking onto the core of her soul where Nia clung, her presence flickering like a bonfire in a storm. Selene and Athena still fueled her, barely stabilizing her core, while Nike fought to pick up the slack left in Nia’s collapse. This wasn’t fully Adult Nia…she was reverting back.
Nia… I’m here okay? Don’t give in on me, you short-eared bun! Rachel’s hand closed into a fist, summoning what little voice she gained from her adaptation, forcing it through the chaos of her mind. You hear me?
Nia gagged. “Mmgm! I… I can’t keep my head straight…”
Start your Grade X Evolution. NOW.
“B-But I haven’t selected a—”
Let it adapt on its own! Do it! Nia, she whispered, changing to a soothing tone. The Renewal will mix with the Black Moon and the other Divine Force we’re channeling. You’re my partner, right? You aren’t going to leave me naked!
For a moment, silence. Then, determination laced through their bond. A pulse of fierce, primal defiance. “…I better get a whole damn store of clothes for this,” Nia weakly whispered, young and vulnerable. “Melishna is kicking my ass… I’ll be out for—”
Shut up, you flat-tail bun! I’ve already seen it, Soldier!
“Bitch…”
Rachel chuckled through the pain the moment Nia’s Evolution began, the tremor rippling through her bones as she sewed into her soul as if a needle weaving through new fabric, a resurgence of something anchoring her through the Maelstrom they fell through amid the fracturing inverted 8th dimension.
Pressure eased, the flow of energy stabilizing within her constricted breast; the last wisps of the Hell Realms fading away, the stirring Eldritch creature soaking in Neil’scera whole to complete her awakening. Whoever Malishna was, she was something on a scale beyond any deity she’d met.
[Living Denier Class Upgrade: Activated]
[Soul Item - Base Upgrade: Transformation into Living Denier ‘Null Crescent’ In-Progress]
I bet Scarlet’s going to do more than that after this… Thanks for pulling through with me, Captain Bun. Take your rest. You’ve earned it.
The expanse of shattered dimensions twisted around her, bending and refracting light in ways that shouldn’t be possible. Rachel spiraled through space-time, her body slipping between mirrored fragments of existence, each one flashing a different reality, a different fate.
A thousand versions of herself flickered in the prism of shattered time and mists—each a possibility, a choice lost, a road never traveled. Something colossal rose in the distance, vast and unknowable. She saw herself breaking, rising, falling—dying in a dozen different ways, winning in a hundred more. Every one of them an echo of misfortune and triumph, of paths stolen and fates manipulated.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she grasped at her slipping power, her connection to the Black Moon barely tethering her to stability. Nia’s essence stirred within her soul, a fluctuating presence shifting between collapse and renewal.
[Processing Upgrade - Critical Error Detected]
[Rolling Back to Last Stable State]
[Attempting Reinitialization]
[Soul Strengthened]
[Evolution: 17%]
[Interfacing With Core Existence]
[Critical Error Detected]
[Attempting Reinitialization]
[Soul Strengthened]
[Evolution: 7%]
[Evolution: 8%]
[Critical Error Detected]
[Attempting Reinitialization]
Melishna’s song rippled through her bones as Nia’s evolution barely kept her soul tethered to hers. Then, all fragmentations broke into numberless pieces of glass shards. The mist gathered. And she fell into silence.
Not a sound, not a whisper—but a resonance, a deep, vibrating hum that rattled her soul, felt more than heard. The Song. One she whispered in her mind…
The Call… The End of it all… The Reaper sleeps. The Black Sun shivers. The Deep opens its eyes. It comes at last. The nightmares foretold, from days of old… The secrets we keep. The Slumbering Dream awakens…
It connected to something further beyond this realm—something Rachel wasn’t ready to understand.
And then the world cracked.
Rachel burst through the final tear in space-time, her form emerging just above the desert planet’s orbit, but this wasn’t the same world she had left.
Below, the planet cracked.
Fault lines pulsed outward from its core, fissures glowing with something far worse than molten rock. A weeping, Eldritch darkness bled from beneath the surface, writhing, alive, a prison breaking apart from the inside.
No. Not a planet anymore.
A corpse.
And something inside it was waking up.
It wasn’t the only thing that stirred.
Around the globe burned a golden halo from the distant sun—triggered into a supernova that would soon consume this fable realm—blocked by the sphere. The sky burned with gold and black. Two moons hovered above her, not the blackened heavens that had watched her descent into this realm. These celestial colors were alien, their presence suffocating, distorting the light that should have illuminated the surface below yet didn’t due to the invisible shell around the planet.
Power flooded her from the lunar rocks, renewing her with potent light: two Normal Moons.
One was the color of deep hematite, a dark, liquid metallic sheen reflecting twisted refractions of the planet’s surface—The Orchre-Black Moon. It pulsed with an unseen force, and Rachel’s fur bristled at the sensation. Her muscles tensed instinctively, her vision fractured, the moon itself granting her a Feat to split her consciousness.
[Dual Mind III: Activated]
[Dual Mind III: Consumed by Black Moon]
Rachel had to chuckle at its feeble attempts to add to her strength. The Black Moon is like a million of you… Thank you for the boost, though.
The second was a peridot-green, its glow sending unwanted revelations into her mind, as if it forcibly dragged memories from different versions of herself across future possibilities, giving a slight haze of possible outcomes three seconds in advance.
[Future Sight III: Activated]
[Future Sight III: Consumed by Black Moon]
A bitter chuckle left her lips despite the chaos assaulting her as she noticed the insanity of what was happening before her. The lunar spheres themselves were being drawn toward the planet to collide with it.
You would have been helpful earlier… Soon, you will be no more. I hear you, fiend. Your tune has changed, Corrupted Seed… Did you foresee this?
And then—a voice.
Not from rousing flower materializing between her and the planet.
From the Eldritch horror below.
A laugh, deep, knowing, full of eerie amusement as bells rang out to meet the Song.
“It is done… Finality woven into your defiance. You believe you have won, O foolish and enlightened Limpid Jade Hare, yet all you have done is awaken the sightless—pulled the ever-shifting Mists into reality. What horrors will unveil themselves to you now? Will you dare to look? Are you strong enough to see?”
The planet trembled.
Lifting her chin, Rachel could practically taste the tendrils of corruption within. The many eyes upon her body opened wider, seeing the smirking shadows within, surrounding a crimson core.
And who do I have the pleasure of speaking to? You cry and laugh at the same time… What do you see that I cannot, creature? Because…in this new destiny I have forged. I see your loss…
From its core, something shifted.
Rachel’s pulse quickened. The laughter from within the world intensified, whispering through the void.
“Gaze within… Only then will the seal break,” the voices echoed—layer upon layer, a chorus woven from every whisper that had ever touched reality. They rose in tandem with Melishna’s unfurling roots, reverberating through the time-locked abyss. “You know of the seal…but not its purpose, Changeling. In your reckless defiance of Fate, you have condemned all Existences to the unknown… To the Crimson Tide.”
Her smile faded, knowing this creature could only speak truth in its riddles.
“The Crimson Tide and The Mists converge upon the board… The Veil of Nihility frays, unraveling. Tread carefully, little hare—walk the path carved by those before you and step into the fog. As the vessel of guardians, embrace the Threatening Song…and follow what beckons through the abyss.”
A pulse of gold and black light erupted between the breaking sphere and her. Rachel’s wide-mouthed grin grew. I crossed through the rift of ethereal gift, Friend. I’ve faced my reflection…and broke your chains. If I can do that…then I can break you. The board is wiped clean, and the unknown is released into reality. I’m not running.
“Are you so sure? To my eyes…there is one you flee. She sings you to sleep…”
The image of a cracking egg emerged. Then, a thin, black-outlined man with a top hat took form, circular, reflective glasses materialized in her shaky vision below. Gnarled fingers finding themselves behind its obscured back, the tight visage of a frayed suit clinging to his tight frame as black wings spread wide, ripping the slowly tearing planet apart. His crow-like face twisted into a ghastly smile, blood glistening in its bottomless maw.
Rachel’s long tail twitched, sensing misfortune spiral the moment it looked up at her.
Truth you may speak…interpretation is left wanting.
“Indeed, Misfortune.” His frame flickered from side to side, between real and fiction, form convulsing to hideous shapes. “The cruel thing about the Ever-Shaping Chaos is that Fate and Destiny cannot see absolution. Do not be so sure of my demise. Sweet dreams await you in The Mist, Rachel. Enjoy.”
Massive fractal stems spiraling outward in six directions, reaching for something behind the planet—time returned to a crawl—the light growing brighter beyond understanding. Melishna’s petals unfurled like an umbrella on the opposite side of the sphere.
Rachel felt it immediately—the shift, the cosmic scale of what she had just unleashed. This thing wasn’t just anchoring to reality. It was reshaping it.
The Song intensified, the hum vibrating through her ribs, coiling around her thoughts, a thread winding through her mind. Her instincts screamed at her, telling her to move, but the roots of Melishna lashed out before she could even process it, wrapping around her limbs, anchoring her in orbit; not to trap her. To keep her from falling into nothing.
The outlined darkness below observed.
A gasp tore from her fanged lips as the fractal light reflected in her many eyes, the petals’ crystalline surfaces catching the shattered dimensions around them, revealing a truth beyond her perception.
Numberless shifting eyes opened, rippling along Melishna’s roots, each one flickering with different versions of reality—some reflecting her, some reflecting things she couldn’t yet see, many reflecting the entity below and things she wasn’t supposed to see.
Rachel gritted her teeth, forcing herself to focus. She wasn’t a passenger in this. She wasn’t a bystander. She had pulled this thing into existence.
We end this—
The shade below raised his gnarled fingers, and snapped.
No sound.
No warning.
The planet broke into pieces but it wasn’t that that lodged her twin tongue to the roof of her mouth.
“Careful, Holy Horror… Visions of The Deep are fickle. The madness, blinding… It begins.”
Melishna’s shimmering petals reached out and she solidified. A wave, unlike anything she’d experienced ripped into her. Life. Pure spiritual force. It bathed her as the Flower of Light illuminated, drinking in the unstable power like lifeblood.
There’s no way—even my Eldritch soul can’t absorb this! The answer bloomed before her with [Curse of the Wise] as the roots sank into her. It’s…not meant for me.
Cerridwen, you devil… She reached through the Black Moon, through her connection to Athena, still within her soul, a twisted smirk lifted her toothy mouth. No wonder you were able to pull Izanami into my circle. You foresaw this, didn’t you? I can distribute it. Scatter…
Clapping came from below, hollow and teasing.
“You adapt well, hare… Take back Eternity. Puppets learn to pull strings…and cut down the user’s lead.”
Spiritual force detonated out of the spanning pod: EXP.
Rachel gasped, body trembling as an explosion of unreal levels of Experience poured from the universe itself—Ali Baba’s crushed and twisted Fable Seed—flooding into her to the Black Moon, into the channels of her still-evolving soul.
“Don’t stop. Don’t think. Don’t look back… You are Misfortune. Your own road to ruin. You are the answer… Transcend time.”
The EXP rippled through the chuckling goddess of wisdom as she immediately took control of the raw feed of spiritual force…and spread it to Earth, across the whole planet. Not instantly but in a warped distortion that flooded the future—unfolding in the twilight of the following day.
Not just her team—not just those she knew.
Everyone.
“Carried in the madness and scars. The secret is…you were designed for this. Feast and grow.”
Rachel felt the shift in future threads of misfortune, the tremors as countless individuals—across the world, across all factions, across all alignments—were forcefully pushed into a Second Oscillation.
The sky split a second time. Only, this time, they would see a flower in the cracks, a flower of pure radiance.
She heard Fiona’s gasp, Anthony’s sharp intake of breath. Selvaria, Cahira, Maria, Elizabeth, Aurora, even Relica… Yet, half of it was pulled into her brother’s shattered soul and into the singularity at its core. The echoes of her allies, her rivals—hell, even her enemies—reacting as they were swept up in this new wave of evolution.
Thumping music rang with the bell’s toll and…she saw it. A change. The slightest shift… She saw him. “Black Hat,” she whispered, peering through the darkness to the faceless mass of formless corruption within. “A choice must be made.”
“Indeed. Move back the veil. It’s all here… It’s all you. Take back control…” The entity’s laughter echoed, bolts of lightning erupting down Melishna’s form, pulling her in. His head tilted ever-so-slightly, glasses reflecting Melishna’s light. “But what did Cerridwen tell you? What did you hear in her Black Eye?”
The words spilled out of Rachel, carried with the pulses of the Black Moon, repeating the same words as the man in the Black Hat:
“Bring me your soul,
“Bring me your fear,
“In my name, you will create;
“Bring me your hate,
“Bring me your pain,
“In my name, you will destroy;
“I am that nightmare which you cannot face,
“Hope, your road to ruin;
“I am your undoing…”
Black Hat removed his head piece, and placed it across his chest, performing a deep bow. “How this song ends will be between creation and undoing. I am the Black Hat of the Crawling Chaos. It is my pleasure to meet the newest ally of The Mists, Karma.”
Rising back to his standing position within the exploding planet, Rachel met his gaze, feeling the last segments of the Mirrorverse breaking free, revealing the Dark Djinn.
The world bent, twisted, and unraveled around her as Melishna’s roots surged outward, weaving through the shattered remains of the planet below like an intricate web of radiant veins. The fable realm quaked beneath the weight of something unfathomable, a presence far beyond the comprehension of gods, demons, or even the Eldritch horrors that spread his wings in the cracks of existence.
Rachel’s lungs burned, her obsidian fur bristling as the residual energy of the Second Oscillation cascaded through her body in perpetual pulses. The cries of tens of thousands of souls awakening to their new reality echoed through the Black Moon, their confusion, fear, and elation merging into a chaotic symphony.
The EXP continued to pour forth, an endless tide of potential from the 8th dimensional entity that she couldn’t hope to control, leaving it all to Athena.
[Evolution: 36%]
[Critical Error Detected]
[Attempting Reinitialization]
[Evolution: 32%]
[Evolution: 42%]
A sharp crack tore through the space around her, a rend in the very fabric of the realm. The entity below howled, its laughter reverberating through dimensions, warping the distant echoes of reality.
“You scatter the scales, but the weight remains. The burden is not lessened, only spread wider… The Mists coil tighter around the world. Fate’s hand recoils as the Mists and Crimson Tide surge. The Song grows louder. You will see Our glory…in time.”
Rachel’s eyes snapped to the spiraling void beneath, the place where the planet’s core should have been. Instead, an abyss stretched endlessly, swirling with unfathomable darkness around the entity. In that abyss, she saw him move behind his mask—something vast, something folding, something expanding.
He had been waiting for this…taunting her.
The Crimson Tide and The Mists would soon clash.
She couldn’t let them meet.
“What do you see, Misfortune?” The Black Hat’s voice slithered through the unraveling world, his glasses flashing as the first tendrils of the freed Eldritch horror—his true form—slithered upward from the planet’s remains.
Rachel felt the weight of his words settle in her chest. Her many eyes widened as the shifting future cascaded before her. She adapted, finding the path that would set her back on the right track. Paths upon paths unfurled in her mind—threads she could follow, threads she could cut. And yet, no matter how she arranged them, they all converged upon a singular truth.
This wasn’t just a battle for survival. This wasn’t just about breaking Fate’s grasp.
This was the first war of the Unknown.
The weight of that knowledge sent a thrill through her bones, a feral grin splitting her lips as her elongated ears flicked with anticipation.
“I see the choice…” Rachel's voice resonated with the pulse of Melishna’s unfurling might, her fingers curling as the last vestiges of her once overwhelming power slipped from her grasp. “The Sultan isn’t going to be happy.”
She could feel her stats diminishing, the last pools of lunar energy bleeding into Melishna’s bloom, the radiance of the Flower of Light expanding in all directions, a luminous entity eclipsing even the erupting star.
She was barely tethered now.
Her body shook as she felt the echoes of something even deeper—something neither the Mists nor the Crimson Tide had accounted for. The Black Moon pulsed, an anomaly between the two forces, an existence meant to disrupt, not to be claimed. Something warm, as if being held in front of a warm hearth.
“I’m not afraid of the dark…” She sneered down at the abyss.
The Eldritch Seed writhed, its form vast and shapeless, its voice a cacophony of whispers and screams. The planet beneath it was no longer a world, but a husk—a discarded cocoon from which something terrible was emerging.
Small bubbles remained, floating out of its shattered corpse. The last remains of power from the Sultan’s djinn to save as many fictitious people on the planet as possible. At its crown, drawn toward the Black Hat man, was the capital city.
“Then step forward as The Balance.” He mused, directing his pawn, the First Djinn, now fading in power from his attempted rise through the Mirrorverse. “Look upon the face of what you have freed.”
Rachel exhaled, steadying herself through fractures in space-time, her body weightless in the void. She had no little power to burn, no more overwhelming strength to throw at the problem. For the first time since her transformation, she was truly on the edge.
And yet, she had never felt more alive…and the System’s essence resonated within her.
[Level Up - Level 20]
[1 Stat Point Added; 10 Available]
[New Feat Slot Added: 5 Slots Available (4/5 Used)]
[Type Evolution Unlocked]
[Evolution Extension Available]
[New Limit Break Perk/Advancement Unlocked]
[2 Equipable Feat Choice Available]
[3 Feat Extension Available]
[1 Stat Modifier Available]
[1 Branch Feat Available]
Her tail flicked behind her as she fell through a fissure in space. The fractal light of Melishna’s petals reflected in her crimson irises as she slipped into the void between fiction and reality to reach Grace.
“Shake off your dust old man… You have a body to steal.”
“It’s a race…” The Eldritch horror’s laughter turned into something more sinister, more real. “The dark decay has guided your way, and she will be your end. So ascend… But Truth is often misled by understanding, young horror… My end is my beginning.”
Melishna’s petals pulsed, its six spiraling stems piercing through the fractured barriers between realms, pulling. The unseen strings twisted further, the weft and weave of existence bending.
Rachel grinned as she felt it—something deeper, something beyond the struggle of gods and mortals.
Not Fate.
Not the Crimson Tide.
The rift between dimensions widened.
Then, the void collapsed, carrying her into her soul to meet the goddesses one more time before she fully fell from her Eldritch perch.
It was Melishna’s Song to her mistress.
And it couldn’t be stopped.
Dre’jna Jaenona Le’thrga would be her avenging angel at the end of this bleeding dream.
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Comments
Opala
🎩 Statue lady is back.
Andy
Thanks for the chapter. Holy...
