The darkness came a for Simon, though it was impossible to judge exactly how long each cycle took. Still, each time his view of the desert was repced by dirt and shadows, it was utterly terrifying.

  He would be plunged into absolute darkness for some indefinite period, with nothing but a dull ache for pany. Then he would suddenly be allowed to see the wider world above the sand for days or weeks until the storm rearrahings again.

  The first time he got his tedious desert view back after ay of darkness, he thanked a god he didn’t even believe in for saving him. He would have wept tears of joy if he’d been capable of such a thing.

  He couldn’t, though.

  So, instead, he burned every one of the stars in the night sky into his mind, trying to make sure he ook them franted again. But no matter how hard he tried to remember them and their exact positions, they faded after weeks or months of being alone in the dark.

  Sometimes things ged or stood out, but in the months and years that must have followed, his petrification, boredom, and monotohe rule, not the exception. Sometimes the basilisk would return a more of his body, filling Simon with hope.

  It never entirely mao get to his head, though, and so end the end, he tio exist as a disembodied mind as he watched the wo by. Twice he saw mert caravans in the distahough they gave this pce a wide berth for obvious reasons. Once, he saw a group of warriors entering this pce to sy the thing that had dohis to him.

  However, Simon couldn’t shout a warning or see if they were successful. Because of the way he ointing, he would live forever in mystery. Part of him hoped they had failed because he would only get out of this if the thing finally finished eating him. Most of him wanted vengeance more, though, and he hoped the monster was just as dead as its victims, scattered around this city for the rest of eternity.

  All the dark periods he was forced to endure seemed endless at the time. Still, eventually, Simon was submerged so far underh the suffog sand that he never reemerged. Intellectually he khat a few weeks could feel like ay, but there was something altogether different about the way he felt after being lost in the void for months or years. His thought process started to dull as he could feel his mind slowly grinding to a halt.

  This was a error that felt more like the feeling that the zombie hunger would erase his mind than the fear he’d had for the darkness up until now, aruggled against it as hard as he could. He spent that quiet eternity slowly revisiting every memory he could think of and expl all of his hobbies anew in an effort to fend off that horrible mental death that he could feel lurking at the edges of his mind.

  He repyed all his favorite games in his mind, noting how unrealistie of the sword animations were and adjusting them to better reflect the meics he was now better aware of. He had his favorite streamers watch him and critique his performanoting just how empty their jokes were pared to the traumatic, gruesome se that the gamepy was slowly morphing into.

  He ied a third game to his favorite series, Sword of Glory. He based its level design off the pit as he went deeper and deeper into the darkness. Of course - his version made sense and had stats and abilities, but other than that - it was an authentic recreation of his attempt to reach level 99 and finally put Hedes in her pbsp;

  Even though it was his game, in his head, he never succeeded in making it all the way to the bottom before losing i. Whether it was because he couldn’t imagine a well of darkness deep enough to desd into or because he simply couldn’t picture himself winning, he couldn’t say. Still, he never got past the giant fire-breathing dragon on level 43, no matter how many times he tried. So, he eventually moved on to other hobbies.

  He turhe on the first level into an eborate farm. Ohe valley was totally developed and the goblins were si bored again. He had no idea how long he’d been in the darkness now. It had been years, probably. It was difficult to say, but his mi like it was starting to short-circuit.

  Humans were social animals. They were damaged enough by solitary fi and surviving shipwrecks, aher of those would have seemed like paradise pared to what he was enduring.

  As the feeling of exhaustion started to spread over his mind once more, he was reminded of his saster from back when he hadn’t yet learo hate people. “If you’re lost in the snow, and you go to sleep, then you’ll never wake up again.”

  Somehow, despite his failing imagination and fraying sanity, that memory came to him from the dimmest recesses of his mind just as he felt like everything was shutting down. It wasn’t snowing, but it didn’t matter. If he went to sleep now, he would never wake up again. He was sure of that now.

  That fear gave him a sed wind, f him to redouble his efforts as he turned everything he had left to 11. There was still hope that the thing would find and kill him, wasn’t there? That should be enough to save him, shouldn’t it? Simon wasn’t sure, but he pretended he was as he bsted his mind with ercials and anime fight sequences.

  Like an exhausted trucker trying to stay awake after the meth had run out, he forced himself to explore anything that might be iing. TV ercials? Annoying jingles? Earworm songs that he hated but could never quite get out of his head? He examihem all, and only ohat was done did he decide to rewatch the lo anime he could think of, one remembered se at a time.

  It was filled with guest stars in the form of his favorite childhood cartoons and video game characters by the time it was dohat didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was that he forced his spirit to keep funing.

  He’d been down here long enough that he was starting to believe that this was gehe underworld. Death legitimately lurked somewhere in the darkness just beyond his circle of sciousness, and it was only the light of imagination that kept it away.

  It was sometime during this endless standoff, without warning, that two hands reached down from somewhere above him, pulling him out of his eternal night and into the bright light of day. It was only when the person rotated the head that he could see that they were slender female hands, and a sed ter, he saw who they were attached to. Hedes. It was an unthinkable twist and so uhat his first thought was he’d finally lost his mind.

  It had to be real, though, because suddenly, he was seeing things again with a level of detail that he’d almost fotteed. His imagination was only a pathetic shadow of this. She set his head on the low wall, the dowo him at the edge of his field of vision so that he could enjoy the geous view of the setting sun.

  It was the first one he’d seen in a long time - maybe the first one he’d ever really seen in his whole life. She was talking to him, be he couldn’t hear her as he focused on the su. He’d remembered red, yellow, and blue, but the thousand little shades e and purple bleogether in a way that he would have sworn was impossible in his almost empty mind.

  With some effort, Simon tore his attention away from the majesty of nature and forced himself to focus only on what she had to say. That she’d bothered to pull him up out of the darkness instead of leaving him there forever was a miracle, and he o know why she’d do.

  “... it’s like when I told you that only one soul iy makes it beyond the tenth level? Well, only one in a hundred makes it past level twenty, which is where you are now,” she said simply as she looked at the suh him. Simon struggled to remember if he’d known this was the tweh level or if that was new information.

  “Though you have to finally kill the basilisk to succeed, I like to e through every tury or so and help some of the heroes that get stuck here. Given how mauck here, it seems only fair,” she sighed. “Of course, given how long you’ve been stuside your own head, there might not be anything in there worth saving, but we’ll see, won’t we?”

  He wao scream at her, to ask why she hadn’t freed him or how she could sleep at night knowing she did this to people routinely. Still, the anger never left his mind, and all he could do was stare at the slowly setting sun with her in silenbsp;

  “You probably think this is the worst thing that could happen to you, don’t you?” She finally asked, breaking the silehat ay in stone is the most terrible thing. I wish that was true, but even with the sort of quasi-immortality that this awful pce grants, there are so many other worse things that could happen. If the shadows were to get you, or you were to make a misstep in the chapel… The are so many horrible pces between here in the mazes, but there’s nothing for it.”

  She psed into silence again. “Well, the less said about that, the better, I’m afraid. The point is that this world was always a monstrosity waiting to happen, and many terrible things o be resolved to make that happen. You’re starting to show just a hint of promise Simon. Keep it up, and maybe you’ll be able to do more than care about a kill streak or a speed run.”

  Simon desperately wao rebut any of those points or ask her what the hell she was talking about, but he was still trapped, screaming in his mind. Then suddenly, she was gone. He didn’t know how long she’d been missing, and he certainly hadn’t seen her leave. What he did notice, though, was the shadow that roag from his right side.

  It was only now that both eyes were uncovered again that he could appreciate that his left eye still had perfectly clear vision. At the same time, his right had begun to blur so severely that all the stars in the sky had little halos around them.

  He idly wondered how long it would take for wind and sand to erode his stone eye so that it would be noticed pitted. Still, he wouldn’t have dohe math even if he could figure out how as he studied the movement that was getting closer and closer to him.

  Even though he could only make out the vaguest outline of the dark, he kly what it was. He’d never be able tet the basilisk.

  For a moment, he worried that Hedes had put him up somewhere too high, just out of reach, but that proved to be mispced as the thing came straight toward him and, in a moment of blessed relief, crushed his skull between its giant jaws, ending his pain.

  Author's Note: Well, after a nice long break, we are back! I have pleted an outlihat I think will make book two (Life After Death After Death) even strohan book os of simir length and ends in the same way: with an ending that is not the ending. With a couple bonus chapters, I expect this story will post weekly until the end of the year.

  Patreon is currently only one chapter ahead for this story while I get it back up to speed. I pn to get that back to 5 chapters ahead in the week or two, and ten chapters ahead within a month(currently Tenebroum is 10 chapters ahead, but I want to get all my stories to the same level as time allows). I'll make a note when I achieve those milestones.