1. Macabre Marmalade (COMPLETED; EDITING)

XXXIII (15.2)

Todor growled, his head moving from the display of mercy on the other side of the abyss to the play of ridicule around himself. The large chasm between where he stood and where he wanted to be. What a person must do to reach the place he wants, the voice asked, he thought, staring at the chasm. You make the first step towards your goal, no matter what stands in your way, he concluded.

Taking a big lungful of air he put his foot forward into the abyss. Instead of falling he stood in the air. The vision of an inky wall of figures hissed and jeered at him.

"And right after it another step. And another. Not stopping," he said walking through the air until he traversed over the chasm.

The spirits on both sides of the drop turned into a blue, cold mist that chaotically started to dance around Todor. The hail of snowflakes formed and peppered him a second after, forcing him to shield his face. A moment later all sensation was gone and he stood in a snowy field with a starless black sky above him. Two figures emerged from the snow.

The newcomers had dark blue skin with a tiny baby blue veins crisscrossing their naked bodies. Both were short and wore no clothing. One was clearly male while the other was a female. They held hands and stared at Todor.

"Good job, Tioais," the male creature said.

"Good job, Prunaiest," female one added.

"Are you like that red guy before? Some sort of manifestation of emotions?" Todor asked as he observed the strange pair.

The male tilted his head while the female one chuckled.

"We are the end," the boy said.

"We are the death," the girl added.

"We are the twins of misfortune, we are the heralds of the finale," they said in unison, "And the final push for new beginnings."

The world shifted again and he heard a whisper. "Carry on our words, herald of the Unlikely Three, carry on Sanginuon Geistroch Tioais Prunaiest."

The light came back as piercing as ever. It was like it attacked him over and over again. It started to burn so he screamed in defiance of it. It vanished leaving him alone in the street.

It was the street he lived at, grandfathers house looming over him, his house now. But the neighboring homes were not the ones that he remembered seeing in the last seven years. They were the old houses like they were in the Mother Globe. The world before the Knitting, his world. The world he understood, the world that made sense. The world in which he had hope for a brighter future. He was finally home.

Something tugged at his awareness. Like when you all of a sudden get a feeling you forgotten something. He shrugged it off and entered his home. Jilly was there, holding her laptop.

"I am sorry I run away," she said, sitting on the couch and opening the laptop. "We can start this new expansion together as we did before. Remember? Doing all-nighters, getting a realm first boss kills? Just the two of us?"

Yes, this is what the world is supposed to be. You escape to the world of magic with games and stories. Not actually live in a world where a vampire is hunting you, cults are sending assassins after you. That simply doesn't happen. It was all a delusion. There is no need for you to deal with any kind of justice.

"Are you going to play with your samurai?" he asked her as he put his laptop in front of hers.

"As always. You are going with your spearman?" she inquired back.

"As always. Don't run away like that, alright?"

"I will not, it was stupid, deleting myself from your life. Making you worry where I am and what I am doing."