The Core: The Dark Enemy

34. The Skism's domain

I was seeing spots.

How long had I been at this? Time had lost all meaning in this place—if it had any to begin with.

At first, I poured everything into my newly created black fire—rage, vengeance, raw emotion. But eventually, even that lost its appeal. It started feeling like an endless Dragon Ball Z episode, all flash and fury with no real progress. Boredom set in, so I did what I always did to keep from losing my mind—I started experimenting.

Trial and error. Mostly error. But then, finally, something clicked.

I pushed Focus into the fire and simply held it there for a long time.

At first, it seemed like nothing changed. The flames still crackled and lashed wildly, refusing to be anything but pure chaos. But the longer I concentrated, the more I forced this new concept into them, the slower they burned. Until finally, I held something new in my hand—a spike of solid black flame.

No longer flickering and unstable, it had taken a definite shape, a slightly curved spike of pure darkness. I could even control its form—to a degree. I practiced extending it into a spear, a giant sword, and even a dagger. But the moment I let go, or even tried to throw it, it simply poofed out of existence.

It was strange. Solid as a rock while I held it. Gone the moment it lost contact. It almost seemed like it wasn't supposed to exist and I was the only thing keeping it around.

At least it didn't take any time to recreate, I could flicker it in and out of existence instantly.

For several minutes, I amused myself by making a flame coin appear in one hand, pretending to throw it, and then making it instantly reappear in the other. It was the best magic trick no one would ever see.

Sadly, even that lost its novelty after a while.

I flexed my blazing hands, still marveling at having them back in human form beneath the raging black sparks. The odd spots in my vision hadn't gone away, flickering unpredictably at the edges of my sight no matter how many times I blinked.

They had started appearing after the shrieks of the Void spread faded. Strangely, the soundscape had changed as well. What was once an overwhelming storm of chaotic noise—the relentless pulse of the Skism field mixed with the distant, ever-present wailing of the Void spread hunting me—had reduced to something far more personal. Now, the only thing I heard was the violent crackling of my own hands held before me.

How was I even hearing them? There was no air inside the Skism.

I suspected it had something to do with the energy waves I was generating. The sound reminded me of unshielded wires buzzing and spitting during an electrical storm, raw energy hissing in a space where sound shouldn't exist.

As for why everything lost its overpowering nature, both in volume, sight, sense and feel, I suspected that it had allot to do with my use of Loss in the Skism field. It seemed to be steadily draining the area around me of its influence. Just the fact that the Skism field could hold up to the amount of Loss that I had been pumping out was a testament to its fortitude.

At least that was my theory baring outside influences, it was all I had to go by.

The spots, though... they were different.

They stood out precisely because they didn't move—not like the ever-shifting, flexing mess of space around me. If they had lingered longer than a fraction of a second, I might have dismissed them as some lingering effect of my time here. But their fleeting nature made them feel deliberate.