Twilight Butterfly

Chapter Six: Night in the Rose Garden

Chapter Six: Night in the Rose Garden

The screaming souls of the dead will cry out, clawing up from the endless black abyss to reach the light of the morning sun. When they rise, the dead will walk the Earth, and the Void will awaken from its endless oblivion. There is no free thought. There is no free will. There is only the Void. Endless chaos will cast its grip across the face of the world. The Void is forever weeping tears of blood, speaking out the misery of the endless dead. The Void's enslavement comes from a place of benevolent liberation.

When the skies are blotted out by a darkness as black as bubbling pitch, the eternally staring, uncaring eye of the Void will gaze down upon all living things and harvest them into its folds. They will no longer possess human souls. The flesh vessels they inhabit will be mere husks, tools piloted by the will of the Void, until those vessels rot away into dust and bone. Their spirits will be reduced to little more than voiceless observers, crying and screaming for the grace of God, henceforth until their end. In the name of the Void...it will be considered a mercy.

-The final written text of the Ancients, unearthed in Verruckt Mountain in 1997.

Ulysses gazed upon the towering glory of the Mother Computer, a barely living Mana Tsugumi lying limply in his arms. He ran his black-nailed fingers through her knotted pink hair. "Do not fear, child. It will all be over soon. Your sacrifice will give birth to a new world. Mother and Father dreamed of that world and fought so hard to achieve it. I am the only one who can finish their life's work."

Dozens of Crystal Shards arose from the jagged rocky interior of Verruckt Mountain, contained within transparent orbs. "I've worked so hard to gather so many, but even after taking what I could at Mistleteinn, and forcibly taking them from Figments...it still isn't enough. Not nearly enough energy to activate the Mother Computer. The vortex that opened here all those years ago granted the Cursed Children their power...it's only natural that the Cursed Children would be needed to reactivate it. The Ancients wrote of it in their sacred texts. Carolyn Shirahime, Luther Lancaster, Ichigo Murakami, and Mana Tsugumi...your abilities are just like those the Ancients wrote about, aren't they?"

He looked down at Mana, but she made no effort to reply. Her jaw hung slacked. Her eyes were hollow and empty. "I will need to have all of you, then," Ulysses said. "Four Cursed Children to reactivate the Mother Computer, just as the four heroes of yore written in the ancient texts. Soon, it will come. The gift to cross between dimensions and touch the souls of human beings will no longer belong to a special chosen few...but to everyone. This world itself will forever be changed. I will make it happen...by any means necessary."

Dr. Jack Hyness sat before a wide screen, facing the rest of the High Council via video call. One of the men cleared his throat and said, "So you're telling us that the child of Elliot and Maria Sterling is still alive, and you haven't done anything about it?"

"It isn't that simple," Hyness retorted. "We've been searching for him for years, but we only discovered him recently. We sent a team out to eliminate him, but they never returned, and then he launched a surprise attack on Mistleteinn, kidnapping the 25th Cursed Child and managing to get away with a number of our Crystal Shards."

"That is unacceptable!" another council member shouted. "Ulysses Sterling is putting our entire operation in jeopardy, and you let him break into Mistleteinn?!"

"You don't understand!" Hyness snapped back. "I don't want to risk losing any more Cursed Children!"

A well-dressed English gentleman calmly sipped his tea. "That is a worthy concern. Out of the 100 Cursed Children we raised, only 20 of them have survived, and many of them are scattered across the world in different countries kept under the watch of facilities outside our jurisdiction. As the lord of the House of Lancaster, I put my son's life in your hands, Dr. Hyness. This development is very concerning to me, particularly after I received word that he had become corrupted. I'm beginning to wonder if it was a mistake allowing him to leave England."