- Rommulas
ROMMULAS + KATIE
The deepest region didn’t announce itself.
It didn’t open into a chamber or reveal a throne-room void the way a mind wanted it to. It simply… tightened. The air grew denser without it becoming hard to breathe. The purple glow that had guided them down stopped behaving like light and started behaving like pressure—present everywhere at once. Not illuminating so much as reminding them they were hiding something that did not care if they could see.
Rommulas felt the Hole in the Earth as anatomy now. Not metaphor. As if the city’s underside had been folded into a body that never asked permission to become alive.
The four of them walked in a line that kept changing shape because the ground refused to finish being ground. Each step landed late. Each sound arrived wrong. Their shadows didn’t match their feet. The architecture around them looked like fragments of Frankfurt—walls, stairwells, the suggestion of doorways—compressed and layered like memory stacked too thick.
Mira kept her hand close to the wall, not touching, just measuring. Julius watched his own breath more than the path, Lullaby humming faintly like a restrained animal. Katie moved without hesitation, as if the Hole in the Earth’s refusal was finally honest enough to respect. Rommulas walked last—not because he was afraid, but because the weight kept trying to decide whether he belonged at the front.
Then the Hole in the Earth shifted deliberately. A low groan rolled through the space, the sound of geometry being rewritten. A building fragment—half a stairwell fused to a hallway—slid sideways through the air as if it were on rails. The floor dipped. A wall appeared where there hadn’t been one. The path in front of them split into two corridors with no seam between them.
“Mira—’ Rommulas started.
But the Hole in the Earth didn’t wait for language.
A section of concrete rose between them like a closing eyelid, smooth and fast. The world reconfigured with the calm efficiency of a system correcting for variables it didn’t want grouped together.
Rommulas lunged forward, palm slamming against the new barrier. It wasn’t warm. It was neutral, like it had never been anything else.
“Mira!” Katie shouted, voice cracking hard against the wrong acoustics. Her hand hit the barrier too, fingers splayed.
On the other side, Mira’s face flashed into view for half a second—eyes wide, jaw clenched—then the corridor behind her folded and she was pulled away, dragged sideways not by force but by the simple fact that the path no longer connected.
Julius’s voice cut through, strained. “Don’t fight it—!”
And then they were gone. Silence snapped shut. Not the absence of sound. The absence of correction.
Rommulas turned sharply, scanning for any seam, any gap, any place where weight could pry reality open. The corridor they stood in was narrower now, a compressed avenue of cracked tile and exposed rebar.
Katie stood beside him, breathing hard, eyes furious. “What the fuck was that?” she demanded.
Rommulas didn’t answer immediately. He pressed his palm to the wall again—not to break it, not to command it, but to read it. The weight beneath his hand didn't react.
It acknowledged. That was worse than resistance.
“It separated us,” he said finally.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Katie snapped, then immediately exhaled like she regretted the edge. “Sorry. I—”
“It’s fine,” Rommulas said, though his voice was tight. “It did it on purpose.”
Rommulas listened to the space. Not with ears, with the part of him that had become responsible for pressure. “It responds to decision,” he said quietly. “Not presence.”
Katie’s expression hardened. “So what—it decided we’re inconvenient together?”
Rommulas didn’t know how to answer that. He could feel Julius and Mira somewhere in the system—distant, muted, like a heartbeat heard through water. He could also feel the Hole in the Earth itself tightening around them, as if testing what would happen if it removed the comfort of alignment.
“It wants us to choose without consensus,” he said.
Katie scoffed. “Great, a fucking philosophical labyrinth.”
Rommulas started walking.
The corridor shifted as they moved, not blocking them but refusing to give them a straight line. A staircase fragment led to nowhere. A doorway opened into a wall. A street sign from the surface was embedded sideways in the concrete like an artifact trapped in bone.
Katie followed at his shoulder, boots loud against tile that didn’t want to be walked on. “Can you feel them?” she asked after a while, voice quieter.
“Yes,” Rommulas said. “Barely.”
“Then pull us toward them, love.”
Rommulas swallowed. “It doesn’t work like that down here.”
Katie’s eyes flicked to him. “Then how does it work?”
He hesitated. He hated how little language survived this place. “Weight here isn’t physics,” he said. “It’s meaning. The Hole in the Earth doesn’t move because it’s unstable—it moves because it’s… correcting for intent.”
Katie slowed, gaze narrowing. “So if we keep trying to find them—”
“It’ll keep rearranging,” Rommulas finished. “Because the system doesn’t want the same outcome.”
Katie clicked her tongue, frustrated, and kicked a loose chunk of concrete. It didn’t tumble. It dissolved into dust mid-air, as if the Hole in the Earth didn’t believe in failing.
“Fine,” she muttered. “We find another way.”
Rommulas tried.
They doubled back. They followed a corridor that smelled like wet stone and electrical burn. They climbed a stairwell that led them right back to where they started, except the wall had moved and the pulse in the cracks beat faster now, like the space was amused.
After the third loop, Rommulas stopped.
Katie stopped with him, shoulders rising and falling.
“This is pointless,” she said.
Rommulas closed his eyes briefly and grounded—not outward, not dominant, just inward. The weight inside him settled, heavy and steady, the only thing in this place that still made sense.
“We’re not going to reach them by forcing it,” he said.
Katie looked away, jaw tight. For a moment she looked tired—something rare on her face, something she never let linger. “Then what do we do?” she asked quietly. “Just… wait?”
The word tasted like poison coming from her.
Rommulas opened his eyes “Not wait,” he said. “Recalibrate.”
Katie gave him a sharp look. “That’s what you tell yourself when you’re stalling.”
Rommulas didn’t argue. Maybe it was stalling. Maybe it was the only option that wasn’t delusion. He leaned back against a slanted wall that still remembered being part of a building. The angle forced him into a posture that wasn’t comfortable but was real.
Katie didn’t sit. She paced, then stopped, then paced again, like movement was the only thing keeping her from feeling what this place was doing to her.
Rommulas watched her, and the feeling he’d been trying to keep nameless returned. Not attraction in the way he’d understood it when he was human. Not desire. Not romance.
Something structural.
Katie existed like a refusal.
She injected inherited weight like it was an insult. She moved as if consequences didn’t scare her, as if the only unacceptable thing was delay.
And in a world where the Hole in the Earth fed on systems pretending they were neutral, her defiance felt like a weapon.
Mira had called it unanchoring.
But it wasn’t just that.
It was that Katie made him want to be more than a limit. She made him want to choose.
That thought terrified him.
“Stop staring,” Katie said suddenly, not looking at him.
Rommulas blinked. “I wasn’t—”
“Yes you were,” she replied, finally turning. Her eyes were sharp, but her voice wasn’t mocking. It was too controlled for that. “What?”
Rommulas swallowed. The Hole in the Earth pulsed in the cracks around them, like it was listening, like it wanted this named.
He remembered Mira’s warning: whatever he didn’t name would surface anyway.
So he tried.
“I don’t know what I feel around you,” he admitted. “And that’s… dangerous.”
Katie’s brow lifted. “Dangerous how?”
“Because down here,” Rommulas said, voice low, “weight misplaces. If I choose wrong under pressure, it won’t just affect me. It will reshape everything around me.”
Katie stared at him for a long moment. Rain didn’t exist here. Wind didn’t exist here. Only the faint pulse in the cracks, the slow breathing of a place that responded to decision.
“You’re afraid you’ll hesitate,” Katie said.
Rommulas nodded once.
Katie laughed softly, not cruel—just incredulous. “You,” she said. “The most grounded thing in this hellhole. Afraid of hesitation.”
Rommulas didn’t smile. “I’m afraid of caring about the wrong thing.”
Katie’s expression shifted—something in her eyes softening briefly, like a crack in stone.
“You think I’m the wrong thing,” she said.
Rommulas opened his mouth, then stopped. Language failed again. So he said the only truth he had.
“I think you make me want to be more than what I am,” he said quietly. “And I don’t know if I’m allowed to.”
Katie went still.
The Hole in the Earth seemed to go still with her, as if the system itself paused to see what this would become.
Rommulas forced himself to continue, because stopping now would be cowardice.
“I told myself it was instability,” he said. “That you disrupted where I placed weight. That you unanchored me. But that isn’t the whole truth.”
Katie’s throat moved as she swallowed. “Then say it.”
Rommulas looked at her and felt the weight inside him settle in a new shape—heavier, but clearer. Not a burden. A consequence.
“I don’t know how to say this properly,” he admitted. “But I want you in a way that isn’t casual. I think… I think that’s romantic.”
“You’re serious,” she said.
Rommulas nodded. “Yes.”
Katie stared at him, then looked away sharply like the act of being seen was too loud.
For a second, Rommulas thought she would shut it down. Joke it away. Turn it into sharpness so it couldn’t touch her.
Instead, she exhaled and laughed once, quiet and almost broken.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
Rommulas didn’t move.
Katie turned back, eyes bright—not with tears, but with something close to them. Something human.
“I didn’t want to say it,” she admitted. “Because saying it makes it real. And real things get taken.”
Rommulas felt something in his chest tighten that had nothing to do with pressure.
“Do you—” he started.
“Yes, fucker,” Katie said immediately, too fast. Then she swallowed and slowed herself down. “Yes. It’s definitely mutual.”
The words hung between them like a new weight placed carefully on a table that might collapse.
Rommulas closed his eyes for a moment, not in relief but in recognition. This didn’t lighten anything. It made everything heavier. And that was the point, because now beating Isaac Roan wasn’t just about stopping harm. It wasn’t just about responsibility. It wasn’t just about Noah trapped inside some configuration of his body. It was about letting the world become a place where consequence was owned by the worst person in it.
Rommulas opened his eyes.
Katie stepped closer—not touching him, not yet, but close enough that her presence altered the air.
“We’re still going to find them,” she said, voice firm again, the crack sealed. “We’re still going to go deeper if we have to. And we’re still going to end him.”
Rommulas nodded.
Katie’s gaze sharpened. “And if you hesitate—”
“I won’t,” Rommulas said, and for the first time the certainty wasn’t borrowed from weight. It was his.
The Hole in the Earth pulsed faintly in the cracks, not approving, not disapproving, just acknowledging. As if the system had gotten what it wanted from this separation: a decision made without consensus, a truth named without escape.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Katie turned toward the corridor. “Come on, love,” she said. “We will try another route.”
Rommulas pushed off the slanted wall, the new weight inside him steady and real. They walked deeper into the Hole in the Earth, not as two people lost in a shifting city, but as two people carrying a truth that would not let them descend unaware anymore.
And somewhere far away, through layers of folded space, Rommulas felt Mira’s presence flicker faintly—like a heartbeat heard through stone.
Not gone.
Just separated.
For now.
MIRA + JULIUS
The corridor Mira and Julius moved through did not stay a corridor.
It narrowed, widened, folded inward, then pretended it had always been that way. Walls leaned too close for comfort, then retreated just enough to make movement feel possible again. The purple pulse in the cracks throbbed slowly, like something sleeping badly.
Mira stopped walking.
Julius nearly ran into her. “Warn me next time?”
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
He nodded, jaw tight. “Yes.”
It wasn’t pressure. Not weight. It was absence—a pocket where something should have been responding and wasn’t. The Hole in the Earth hadn’t shifted to block them. It had simply…paused.
Mira closed her eyes, pressing her good hand lightly to the wall. Infrunami stirred, water collecting in hairline fractures, condensing from air that felt too dry for it. She reached for empathy instinctively—
—and felt nothing answer.
Not resistance.
Not rejection.
Just… nothing.
Her stomach dropped.
“That’s not right,” she murmured.
They heard it then.
A scraping sound, wet and heavy, claws dragging across concrete that didn’t remember being concrete. Heat followed—not ambient, not environmental, but directional. A smell like scorched iron and ozone bled into the air.
Julius whispered, “Don’t move.”
The sound grew louder.
Around the corner ahead, purple flame licked along the floor—low, controlled, deliberate. The light it cast wasn’t chaotic like earlier manifestations. It was focused. Disciplined.
A shape emerged.
Rottweiler.
Not the thing from memory, the manifestation of Noah’s anger because of his schizophrenia. It wasn’t even the one Roan had used, the chaotic construct from the massacre. This one was refined—leaner, denser, its body composed of flame and structure interwoven so tightly they looked inseparable. Its eyes burned a deep violet, intelligent and patient.
It stopped.
Not lunging.
Not snarling.
Assessing.
Mira’s breath hitched. “That’s… not an animal.”
“No,” Julius said softly. “That’s intent.”
The dog’s head tilted slightly, as if acknowledging being named.
Then it moved. Fast.
Mira reacted on instinct, slamming her palm down and forcing Infrunami outward. Water surged from the cracks in a controlled wave, slamming into Rottweiler’s side with enough force to throw it into the wall.
The impact cracked concrete. Steam exploded outward.
Rottweiler skidded, staggered—
—and stood back up immediately.
Unbothered.
The flame around its body dimmed for half a second, then reignited brighter.
Mira felt it then.
Nothing inside it echoed back.
No fear. No confusion. No pain in the way living things understood pain. Empathy had nowhere to land.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
Rottweiler charged.
Julius moved without thinking. Lullaby surged outward, not to quiet the beast, but to slow the space around it, to blur intent, to introduce hesitation.
Nothing happened. Julius froze. Lullaby didn’t respond, not weakened—
—but gone.
The realization hit him a split second before Rottweiler leapt.
“Move!” he shouted, Mira aside the flaming jaws snapped shut where her torso had been.
Instead, they closed around her arm.
The pain was immediate and indescribable—heat and pressure and tearing sensation all at once. Mira screamed as Rottweiler’s teeth sank in, purple flame wrapping around bone.
Julius screamed her name as he fell.
Still screaming, Mira reacted, without restraint, unleashing Infrunami again—no empathy, just force. Water slammed into Rottweiler’s head again and again, driving it back inch by inch.
Rottweiler released her, staggering this time, flame guttering unevenly.
Mira collapsed to one knee, clutching her arm—what was left of it—teeth clenched hard enough Julius thought they might shatter.
“My Fracture…” he gasped. “It didn’t answer.”
Mira didn’t have time to respond.
Rottweiler lunged again.
This time, Mira met it head-on.
She summoned everything Infrunami could still offer—not emotion, not connection, but mass. A towering wave formed in the narrow space, slamming into the dog and pinning it against the wall. The water hissed violently, boiling where it touched flame. Steam filled the corridor, visibility dropping to nothing.
Rottweiler pushed back.
It dug its claws into the ground, carving furrows into material that should not have been able to be carved. Step by step, it forced itself forward, jaws snapping, eyes locked on Mira.
Effort without leverage.
She could slow it.
She could even hurt it.
But she could not stop it.
Julius forced himself up, vision swimming. He reached for Lullaby again—
—desperately—
Nothing.
It was like screaming into a void that used to answer.
“Roan,” he whispered, understanding dawning in horror. “You abandoned abstraction.”
Rottweiler surged through the last wave and slammed into Mira, knocking her into the wall hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. Pain exploded through her shoulder.
She barely managed to roll as flaming teeth snapped inches from her face.
She raised her other arm to block—
—and felt it tear.
Not severed.
Not clean.
Just… wrong.
She screamed.
A raw, animal sound tore out of her chest as she stared at her arms—skin charred, flesh warped, something missing that should have been there. They didn’t feel like part of her anymore. They felt foreign, dead weight attached to a body that was trying to reject it.
Julius stumbled toward her, vision blurring. “Mira—Mira, stuh—stuh—stay with me—”
Rottweiler turned its head slowly toward him.
Evaluating again.
Mira’s scream echoed off the walls, breaking into sobs as shock set in, “It’s not—It’s not mine—It’s not—”
The Hole in the Earth shifted subtly.
Not to help.
Not to hinder.
Just observing.
Rottweiler stepped forward, flames brightening, posture lowering for a killing strike.
Julius dragged himself between it and Mira without thinking, raising his hand towards the dog. “You want abstraction?” he rasped. “Fine! Take me! Just like you took Lullaby!”
Rottweiler paused.
Then struck anyway.
Not killing. Not yet.
A burst of heat and force slammed into Julius’s chest, sending him skidding across the floor. He hit the wall hard and went still.
Mira tried to crawl toward him.
Her strength failed.
The last thing she saw before darkness closed in was Rottweiler standing over them, flames steady, gaze unreadable—not victorious, not cruel.
Just obedient.
Then everything went black.
ROAN, ROMMULAS, MIRA
The deepest region here does not look like depth.
There is no down here—no orientation that survives contact. The Hole in the Earth has shed the lie of gravity entirely. What remains is decisions made solid. Buildings are not buried so much as folded, their interiors turned outward, their bones threaded together with rebar and cable and broken signage like a body that learned anatomy by dissection.
Roan stands at the center of it.
Not elevated. Not enthroned. Central.
The Hole in the Earth answers him the way muscle answers nerve. Glass floats until he gestures and then accelerates, turning into shrapnel. Antennas bend inward, warping into spears. Distance compresses or stretches depending on whether he wants something close enough to be ended or far enough to be inevitable.
He does not raise his voice. He does not need to. “You’re suffering,” he says, calmly, reasonably, as if explaining something to a child. “You still feel consequence, Left to Right.”
Rommulas does not answer immediately.
He stands opposite Roan on a path the ground insists is the only way forward—concrete plates interlocking into a bridge that feels intentional unless you notice it curves slightly wrong, guiding them closer whether they want to be or not.
Oblivion hums inside him. Not black anymore. Purple.
The same color it had been in Miami, when the city learned that gods like Aerials were not necessary for devastation. The anchor settles deep in his chest, heavier than it’s ever been, resisting displacement with quiet violence. Wing Ridden Angel manifests behind him—not spread, not aggressive, but present. Sharp white wings folded tight, like restraint given form.
Katie stands beside him.
Hands empty.
Posture relaxed.
Laughing.
A short, incredulous sound that cuts through Roan’s measured cadence like glass snapping underfoot.
“Oh my god!” she yells. “You still talk like that, you sadistic fuck?”
Roan’s gaze flicks to her. The Hole in the Earth responds instantly—rebar twitching, cables tightening—but Rommulas grounds, weight snapping downward. The vectors hesitate, recalculating.
Roan tilts his head.
“See?” he says. “This is the inefficiency I’m talking about.”
The arena is lying.
That’s the first thing Rommulas understands.
The ground creates paths that feel correct—bridges that look stable, corridors that suggest progress—but every option funnels toward collision. The Hole in the Earth is not chaotic. It is selective. It removes alternatives quietly, leaving only the illusion of choice.
False inevitability.
Rommulas steps sideways instead of forward.
The path behind him collapses.
Good, he thinks.
Katie grins, sharp and delighted. “Oh, he’s gonna hate that.”
Roan sighs.
“You’re proving my point,” he says. “Consequence demands hesitation. Hesitation gets people killed.”
He lifts a hand.
The Hole in the Earth responds with terrifying intimacy.
A streetlight—no, what used to be a streetlight—detaches from a half-fused wall and launches itself toward Rommulas, bending mid-flight to strike from the angle that costs the most effort to block.
Rommulas doesn’t block it.
He anchors.
Oblivion surges outward, purple pressure collapsing space just enough that the impact disperse inward instead of through him. The streetlight folds like wet paper, dropping harmlessly at his feet.
The ground shudders.
Not from force, but disagreement.
“You’re still trying to hold it,” Roan says—hinting at annoyance. “That’s your mistake.”
Katie steps forward.
Right into the danger.
She doesn’t dodge the next wave of glass. She walks through it, Taboo flaring—not as power, not as defense, but as refusal. The shards hesitate, trajectories snapping wrong, some dropping uselessly, others skidding past her shoulders with screeching protests of physics being told no.
“Stop fucking narrating!” she says, spitting to the side. “If I was looking for a TED Talk, I would’ve gone home.”
Roan’s jaw tightens. The Hole in the Earth recalculates.
NOAH
This is wrong.
Not morally—structurally.
Noah Vale feels it from inside the pressure, from the place where thought used to be separate from execution. He’s been quiet for so long that the silence feels like a punishment, but this—
This is not mercy.
You said removal was mercy, Noah thinks, panic rising. You said—
He doesn’t get to finish.
Rottweiler moves instead.
The dog does not appear fully—only parts of it, flames threading through the architecture like veins. Jaws form out of heat and cable. Claws scrape across glass and steel as the Hole in the Earth gives it shortcuts, folding space so it can strike without crossing distance.
Rommulas turns just in time.
Wing Ridden Angel unfurls.
The wings cut the air, white edges slicing through purple flame, scattering it in explosive arcs. The impact throws Rommulas backward, smashing him into a wall that remembers being an office building.
Pain flares.
Roan watches, expression almost gentle.
“You’re suffering because you still feel consequence,” he repeats. “I can remove what makes you hesitate.”
ROAN + KATIE
Rommulas gets up again.
Of course he does. He always does. That’s the problem.
Roan gestures, and the Hole in the Earth obeys with more enthusiasm than it should. Antennas bend inward, forming a lattice that closes around Rommulas, paths narrowing, angles sharpening. The arena wants resolution.
Katie laughs again.
Not nervous.
Mocking.
She steps onto a piece of floating glass and jumps, landing somewhere she shouldn’t be able to reach, Taboo snapping the distance in half because she refused the implication that she can’t.
“You know what your fucking problem is?” she calls. “You think meaning is something you optimize.”
Roan’s patience fractures.
“Remove her,” he says.
The Hole in the Earth pauses.
Then chooses the most efficient vector.
A building fragment twists violently, an antenna ripping free and slamming sideways through space. Katie turns just in time to see it—
—and has just enough time to grin.
“Oh,” she says. “That’s dirty.”
The antenna impales her through the torso, pinning her against a wall in a burst of blood and metal. The sound is wet.
Final.
Rommulas screams.
NOAH + ROAN
STOP. Noah’s voice tears itself raw inside the pressure.
Mercy this—mercy that—you think this is mercy? You said—this is what you are now? This?
Rottweiler hesitates.
Just for a fraction of a second.
Enough.
Enough for Roan to feel it.
His expression flickers—confusion, irritation, then something like betrayal. “Don’t,” he snaps. “You don’t get to hesitate.”
That’s not mercy, Noah begs. That’s erasure!
Roan pushes him down.
Hard.
ROMMULAS
The world narrows.
Katie’s blood steams where it hits broken glass. The Hole in the Earth hums, satisfied with its efficiency. Paths rearrange, offering Rommulas the most direct route to Roan now that the variable has been removed.
False inevitability again.
Rommulas does not take it.
He anchors so hard the ground cracks.
Oblivion surges—not outward, but down, purple pressure slamming into the Hole in the Earth’s logic like a wedge. The arena buckles, vectors misfiring, rebar screaming as trajectories snap wrong.
Wing Ridden Angel spreads fully.
Not to attack.
To refuse collapse.
“You think mercy is subtraction, Rommulas roars. “You think removing what hurts removes harm!”
Roan’s voice rises. “Consequence is inefficient!” he shouts. “It kills people!”
“Yes!” Rommulas snaps back. “That’s what makes it real!”
The Hole in the Earth shrieks.
Not in pain.
In confusion.
Cracks spiderweb outward through Frankfurt’s structure far above them, buildings trembling as the logic holding them together starts to argue with itself.
Roan feels it immediately.
He’s overextended.
Removing Oblivion’s influence earlier—severing Rommulas from part of his anchor—has destabilized the system. The Hole in the Earth thrashes, pressure spiking unpredictably, no longer cleanly obedient.
Roan staggers. Just once.
Rommulas steps forward, not to kill—to end the lie.
“You don’t get to decide what people are allowed to feel,” he says. “You don’t get to call erasure mercy.”
Roan looks at him, eyes burning violet.
“Then you’ll die,” he says quietly. “Like she did.”
Rommulas looks at Katie.
Pinned.
Bleeding.
Still smiling, somehow.
“Fuck off,” she coughs.
Rommulas turns back.
“No,” he says. “This is where you lose the right to… narrate.”
The Hole in the Earth convulses.
And somewhere inside the pressure, Noah screams—not in pain, but in recognition—
because Roan is no longer the only one deciding what comes next.