The Aonik Archives

There was a roundtable. One of pure marble. Surrounded by emptiness, by void, an endless expanse of nothingness. At this roundtable sat eight... entities. Entities without shape, without form, without color. Entities within whom the light and life of everything that existed spiraled and coiled. Infinite masses of energy.

At this roundtable sat the Vessels. The containers for the elements. For the time being, they took human forms. Each unique in their own right. Without the pressure exerted from their very souls, which went beyond any imaginable concept of power, they might have been seen as regular people.

“Far too much time has passed...” one started, leaning heavily against the cold marble. “...since the Calamity.”

“Far too much time sincehetook Oblitus,” added another.

Hedid this. Destroyed everything.Him.They dared not say his name.

Another of the Vessels leaned back in their seat, tracing circles on the table with one finger. “It’s time we find a new Death Vessel. To continue Oblitus’s job.”

“A new Death Vessel? Surely with the cycle broken, that won’t be possible.”

“Won’t be possible?” a different Vessel repeated, standing up. A pulsating, suffocating aura enveloped them. No human form covered their being, unlike the others. Pearly black eyes, like a starless night sky. Only darkness emanated from their soul. Almost a miasma. “No... it’s already been set.”

“You’ve found one?”

“A suitable candidate?” replied the Darkness Vessel. “I have. There’s a human, lots of potential in this one. All it will take is some... molding. Shaping. A process of transformation.”

“You can’t mean-”

“The rebirth of the Death Vessel will bring back the perfect age we once ruled. The rebirth of the Death Vessel will break this barrier,” the Darkness Vessel continued. “Whatever process necessary for a human soul to twist into that of the Death Vessel... will be worth it.”

“Who’s to say that a new Death Vessel is sure to help us against him?” asked another. A different Vessel this time, with the human form of a female.

There was silence for a moment, before the Darkness Vessel continued. “Not an entirely new Death Vessel. ‘Rebirth’ doesn’t mean reset, does it? All that’s needed for Oblitus to return is a suitable carrier. If we can whittle a suitable soul down enough, the wandering fragments of Oblitus’s soul could latch onto it. Then Oblitus could fight for control of that body.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“It won’t be any loss to us if it fails. We can find another candidate.”

“Well... I don’t see a problem with it.”

“Right. To remove him, forever... any cost will be acceptable.”

Another Vessel looked the Darkness Vessel in the eyes, a smirk on their face. “Just what tribulations will you put this human soul through?”

And then there was nothing. Emptiness followed as the Vessels returned to obscurity. The plan was in motion.

The suffering of one human means nothing. Any cost necessary... we need Oblitus to return. For the sake of reality...

...and for our chance at the power of the Death Vessel.

- - -

[Christopher Jenkins’s POV:]

...there was a rewind. A fault in time. After the Calamity, there was silence.

In the Calamity, he destroyed us. He destroyed you.

But no more.

I’m going to fix you.

A sharp pain in my head made me space out for a moment. Maybe more than just a moment. I must have been unresponsive for nearly a minute, judging by-

“-is?”

My brain was flung to the front of my skull as I was woken up by a violent slap on the back of the head.

“Chris!”

“Huh?” My surroundings came back into focus, the moving parts around me sliding back into place.

“What’s wrong with you? Were you even listening to my story?” It was my closest friend, Jake. Rowdy, unintelligent, aggressive. He originally had black hair, now dyed blonde, with a middle part and brown eyes. He must have been trying to talk to me for a while.

Oh.

“Wait, what?”

“You’ve been staring at the floor for a good minute. I thought you had a stroke or some shit, dude.”

Is this guy stupid?

Compared to Jake, I was easily the more perceptive one. The more responsible one. Even as we... dangled our legs off the roof of our English class. How did we get up here? The ladder that was left in the storeroom to fix the hole in the ceiling. Then again, this was normal for me and him. We were nowhere near the smart side, so we were instead troublemakers. But I was basically on lookout duty for teachers.

Anyways. Christopher Jenkins, brown hair, brown eyes, an average build. Not much to talk about. I lived only with my dad, since I lost my mom when I was young, and he hadn’t been able to move on since. I didn’t remember much about her.

“I’m fine,” I responded, holding my head. What was that? My imagination was seriously getting the better of me. I was, like, hearing stuff. Information was in my mind that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Calamity?

“Well, listen now. You remember Alicia, right? From our class last year,” Jake continued, not minding my ignoration.

“Yeah? The one who’s switching schools soon?”

“She wanted my number, bro. Like, after Eco, she just straight up asked me for my number. She said she wanted to hang out sometime.”

I let go of my head, looking around for a moment. “Oh, good for you, bro.”

“Nah, I don’t know my number.”

“Damn. I mean, I’ve got my phone if you want it.”

“It’s a little too late now. I can’t catch myself chasing after a girl to tell her my number. It is what it is. I’m not that interested anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re right... Well, she’s gonna move soon anyway,” I hummed. “Where’s-”

We heard voices from underneath us. We peeked over the edge of the railing.

“Get down from there! Mister Keek is walking around here!”

“Dumbasses!”

That would be Julia and Erica, the other members of the group. The former, Julia, was definitely the quieter one, with blonde hair and blue eyes, the one who’d rather study than go out to the mall with the rest of us in exam week.

Erica was basically the opposite. She was just as much of an instigator as me and Jake. Actually, no. She was definitely more serious than Jake.

Jake glanced at me, motioning for me to follow him. We made our way back down the ladder, trying to keep quiet, and snuck around the classroom block, making it to the field, where Julia and Erica were waiting for us. Recess would probably only last another fifteen minutes.

More explanation. This time concerning... Anomalies. Though our group could have been considered ‘normal’, the world in which we lived was far from it. We’d heard... no, probably everyone had heard stories of beings that took the form of humans, but weren’t. Beings that could manipulate the elements and bend reality.

They were called Anomalies.

Even though I’d never seen one in person myself, there was no doubting they were real. Their existence was no secret. They made themselves quite well-known whenever they destroyed a city or killed an entire building’s worth of people.

Something within an Anomaly gave them a natural urge to destroy. Like the natural urge of a predator to hunt. A natural chaos followed them wherever they went. The number of massive terrorist attacks caused by Anomalies in the last few years alone was uncountable.

They were humanity’s biggest enemy. Hunted.

Entire organizations existed solely for the purpose of eliminating the threat of Anomalies for the safety and security of mankind. Ignoring the hundreds of motley Anomaly-hunting gangs scattered all over the world that sought bounties, the leading force in the forever-long war against the Anomalies was easily VEX. Nobody could argue against that. VEX was like a government that ruled the entire globe. Its control over everything couldn’t be overstated.

Especially in the US, where VEX patrols were regular around the whole country, and verifications were done at most public places to confirm whether the examinee existed in the VEX database as a human or an Anomaly. Admittedly, the latter was an unlikely result, since most Anomalies that crossed paths with a well-trained VEX Agent would end up dead, and VEX always did a decent job of cleaning up wherever they spilled blood.

I’d always thought exterminating their entire species was a little too much. Being born an Anomaly must be a nightmare.

Jake, Erica, Julia and I went to hang out at the mall close to us after school. We had a tradition of going out to the same ice-cream place every second week, and this cycle, it was my turn to pay. Walking through the crowd, we stopped around a corner, loaded with the most expensive items on the ice-cream menu, costing me a heavy sum of chore money.

“Did you guys hear VEX is doing a public announcement tonight? It’s gonna be on the news,” Erica mentioned, brushing her ink-black hair out of her face.

“VEX?” repeated Julia. “I wonder what that’s about.”

Jake shook his head, taking a bite out of his ice-cream. “Are Anomalies, like, even real? I wish I could see one.”

“I... don’t think that would be fun,” hummed Julia. “They would probably try to kill us.”

“Maybe to see one in a museum or something...” Erica started.

I thought aloud, “But they just look like humans, don’t they? There might be some in this mall right now.”

“Nah, not with the VEX people here,” argued Julia. “I don’t think Anomalies are much stronger than the average VEX Agent. With their weapons and stuff. They wouldn’t risk it.”

Then, I felt that sharp pain in the back of my head again. The same one that had made me space out for a while back at the school. It was a steady, ringing kind of pain. It wasn’t like an up-and-down kind of pain. It was only going up.

...ascension...

...rebirth...

...metamorphosis...

Voices.

“You good?” Erica asked, nudging me in the side.

“Huh? Oh, I’m fine,” I looked back at the others. I must have lost focus again, staring at the ground or something. But seriously, it hurt. Really bad.

The adventure around the mall continued for a while, and I just couldn’t shake the rising, stinging trill in my skull, like a nail was constantly being hammered into it. I would have loved to be at home trying to sleep it off at that moment.

I didn’t get much time to think about it, though, because it didn’t take long for us to bump into another group from our grade waiting in the ice-cream line.

There was Damon and Ruth Alan, the twins, two guys in my Bio class. They had black hair, green eyes and looked nearly identical, but their getup was totally different. Damon was the louder, more confident one, who seemed to like causing trouble just as much as the next rebellious high school kid. Ruth, on the other hand, was more reserved, and actually tried at school, but he still socialized and played sports and all. He was like the kid someone’s parents would compare them to. I’d always wondered who in their right mind would name a boy Ruth, though.

And there was Hazel Qzoro, the captain of our grade’s girls’ hockey team, a team that Julia was a part of. She was brown-skinned with piercing, well, hazel-coloured eyes and was quite heavily dressed for such a hot day. We couldn’t help but notice the mismatched orange and purple spaceship socks she was wearing.

“Hazel!” Julia instantly hugged Hazel, smiling brightly.

“Oh, Julia!” Hazel smiled back, returning the hug with no hesitance. Then she looked at the rest of us, tilting her head. “Hey. What are you all doing here?”

“Same as you, I guess,” replied Erica with a shrug. “But we got here before there was a massive queue.”

Damon sighed, leaning against the wall. “This is so stupid. Can we just go to some other ice-cream place?”

“But the other ones don’t make it like this place,” Hazel complained. “It’ll be worth it.”

Jake and I were pretty much quiet the whole time, letting Erica and Julia do the talking. Damon and Ruth looked equally as awkward.

...ascension...

My head throbbed again. Overwhelming, piercing pain.

It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts-

It was like something was building up. Like something was about to happen. My head was seriously going to explode. I felt like collapsing.

Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!

Everyone went silent and for a moment I looked around, wondering whether I had done or said something I shouldn’t have.

Hazel silenced the group as soon as Erica spoke. Then, she looked over at Damon, who was equally as focused all of a sudden, and then at Ruth.

“Do you... feel that?” she said quietly.

We all shot glances at each other. Julia shook her head. “What are you-”

Ruth’s eyes widened suddenly. “Something’s coming.” His voice was dead serious. He wasn’t so laid-back anymore. “Hazel!”

Hazel locked eyes with Ruth, and a somewhat stressed expression flashed across her face. Like she had to act quickly to do something.

“Come on, we need to get-”

-...

--...

---...

Everything seemed to stand still for a moment. There was a sudden impact, a sudden stop. In that instant, though it happened faster than our minds could ever comprehend, everything was destroyed.

And with a resounding crash, material was reduced to powder, the mall and the surrounding building blocks reduced to rubble, to debris, to almost nothing. As one single pressurized explosion that must have let loose the impact of a nuclear bomb tore through space and time, and tore through us, I skidded to a halt against the sharp rubble, having been blasted hundreds of meters from where I originally stood.

My body was shredded apart, my limbs mangled and broken. I was missing fingers and toes and even an eye, and my face had all but been ripped off. Still, I gasped for air, desperately clutching the rubble below me, the glass shards and the dirt. The rough ground, the blood spilling from every part of me.

I wanted to get back up. To know what happened. But I couldn’t think.

“Gh... ahk...”

When the pain hit, it was unlike anything that could be described in words. It was like I had died a thousand times over. It was hell.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-------------------

Surely, I should have died. So why was I alive? Crawling, squirming, writhing.

Footsteps.

Even with the ringing in my head, I could make out heavy footsteps, thick with a distinct aggression, making their way towards me.

I forced my working eye open, being bombarded with unimaginable brightness and unfamiliar colors. My brain screamed at me to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even comprehend space anymore, let alone the passing of time. My brain had lost any understanding of the concept of three-dimensional movement.

But I could see this person. More clearly than anything else.

A towering, menacing figure, cloaked in black, wearing a metal mask that only had one eye slot. An eye that glowed red. With an outstretched arm, he held the end of a dagger to my forehead.

There wasn’t one human thing about him.

“You survived that?” Then he looked over me, at somebody behind me. “Dominic, check this kid out.”

I was lifted by the collar of my shirt. Coughing and spluttering as I choked on blood and dust, I tried to protest, but I was held firmly.

Another guy examined me, holding me in the air like a child. This one was more casually dressed, with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He showed a look of disappointment, sighing and shaking his head before he dropped me.

“He can’t be the one. I don’t sense a thing.”

“I don’t sense anything anywhere,” the masked one argued. “Either we killed the one we’re looking for already, or he’s hiding.”

The blonde guy, Dominic, opened his palm towards me.

There were a few moments of suspense as I waited for something to happen. Then, with the speed of a mouse trap shutting closed, my body was sent into a spasm as I was cut thousands of times at once. By nothing. By air. Blood splattered all around me like a fountain, and millions of tiny gashes appeared all over the surface of my skin like I had just rolled through barbed wire.

I gasped for breath, tried to push myself off of the ground, and dripped blood everywhere. I could barely see my own skin anymore. I was covered in gore and blood. And my mind was reeling with pain. There was only pain. But somewhere beyond the shock, beyond the agony, there was an urge to flee. An urge to survive.

So I took off. Even with my legs buckling beneath my weight, every fiber of every muscle torn and rebelling against my body’s commands, I knew I had to get away. So I didn’t look back, and sprinted as fast as my overwhelming rush of adrenaline could take me.

I felt their eyes follow me. I was just as surprised at my ability to escape as they were... by all means, I should’ve been dead. But I was running.

My body was taken over with fear. With a panic I never thought I’d experience.

Anomalies. Anomalies. Anomalies.

Attacking me.

I’m going to die.

All that was left of my surroundings was dust and smoke. The pillars of the mall still stood. The ceiling had collapsed, the entire floor brought up by the sheer force of the explosion. The piles of rubble were basically a maze now. I threw myself around a corner and collapsed, hoping I was out of sight. My chest was heaving so quickly that I couldn’t breathe.

My blood ran cold.

Julia. Erica. Jake. Hazel. Damon. Ruth.

What happened to them? I was in a totally different part of the mall now, right by the back alley. There was no way I’d be able to find them in this kind of wreckage. Especially not with two Anomalies trying to kill me.

I crawled out of the mall through a massive hole in the wall and into the alleyway where the trash was taken out. There were collapsed houses and buildings all over the place in front of me, the air still thick with dust.

I was bleeding too much to keep going. I was losing strength.

So I fell limply against a broken brick wall, unable to fight any longer, watching the world around me slowly fade away. I couldn’t move anymore.

It’s over.

My breathing slowed. My heart rate slowed, slowed, slowed, until I slipped out of consciousness, trying with a failing spirit to hold onto life.

There was darkness. Cold, empty darkness.

I don’t want to die.

My thoughts reverberated around my mind, materializing in fragments, the will to cling on to the real world overpowering.

I can’t leave them behind...

And leave my dad behind.

No.

I can’t.

No.

I have to hold on.

No no no no no no no no no no no no.

I won’t let that happen. I won’t disappear.

An unrelenting, unwavering determination not to be pulled away from the world took hold of my every thought.

I... won’t... die...

Not while they’re all alone.

There was a chance my friends were still alive. I needed to help them.

My father was waiting for me to come home from school. I had to see him again. I had to.

NO!

...

“Hold on. You can’t die yet, can you? Wake up.”

“But I can’t... I’m not strong enough.”

“Don’t give up. Keep struggling.”

“But...”

“You need to protect them.”

The darkness shifted into red. Into a piercing, alarming red. Time and motion resumed. I felt. I saw. I heard. I could smell. I could taste.

My hand moved over the hills of skulls holding me up. The sea of blood at knee height, blood that wasn’t my own. An expanse of blood, flesh and bone for millions of miles in any given direction. A dense fog rolled over the landscape, enveloping everything in a layer of scarlet.

“Stand up. Your battle isn’t over,” spoke the voice.

With the last of my will, I stood back up, atop a mountain of death and carnage. My body, though, was repaired. My limbs, my skin, my eyes. I was unscathed. Wherever I was... this wasn’t real.

The voice belonged to a young man, with hair as white as snow and eyes green like those of a serpent. His facial features looked similar to mine, but he must have been in his mid-twenties. There was something inherently unhuman about his presence though. Something in his eyes, in his demeanor.

He wasn’t human.

“Who... are you?” I breathed, stepping back. The piles of bones under my feet shifted under my weight, nearly sending me tumbling down to the bottom of this hill, into the sea of blood. “Where am I?”

I had just died. Right?

“Kaio Tsetseia,” he said, looking down at the skeletons beneath us. His voice held some hesitance. “That’s... who I am. It’s been so many years since I’ve been able to say that.”

Kaio Tsetseia? What the hell kind of name is that...?

He looked back up at me. “Shit, how am I supposed to explain all of this right now...?” He turned around, pacing slightly, the ground shifting with each step. “Oh, I know what to say.” And he turned to me again. “You’ll find someone named Shadow. He’ll explain everything to you better than I ever could...”

“Shadow?”

“Yeah, he’s an old friend of mine... He should be able to help you, and I know you’ll find him soon enough. For starters... you’re an Anomaly now. Or... not really, you’re just a human with my Anomaly powers, so you can decide whether that makes you one or not-”

I froze. For a few long seconds, there was silence. “I’m... what?”

“An Anomaly,” repeated Kaio blankly. “But like I said, whether you are or aren’t one is in the eye of the beholder...”

“Wait, s-so I’ve got your powers? You’re an Anomaly? How does that work? Where even are we?”

“Simply put, I’m basically just a soul, but I’m living in your mind. So both of our souls are there, get it? I could just take control over your body and then there would bemewith your body. Make sense?”

No comment.

“Relax. I won’t steal your body,” he sighed, fidgeting with his fingers. “I’ve been here for maybe... five years? When was 2014?”

“That was ten years ago...”

"Whaaaat! Time really does fly, huh?”

“You can’t tell me your soul has been living in my mind for ten years...”

“Well, time definitely passes differently here, that’s for sure... It was 2014 when I died. I could’ve sworn it’s only been, like, a year at most... my guess of five was just a joke...”

“So you’ve just been watching my entire life play out? Since I was seven?”

“I... can’t do that. My mind’s been in a kind of dormant state until now. But your death has let me wake up. Which just happened. Although now that your journey has actually started, I probably could spectate your life with permission from your soul...”

“Wait, so that really happened? I really... died?”

“Yes... but not exactly. You died, but you’ll wake up. You’ve got another chance... but there’s something I need from you. A promise.”

I paused. “What promise?”

He looked me in the eyes, dead serious. “I give you all my power, all my strength, but you need to kill Skarra. To save reality, to save your family and what’s left of mine... destroy him.”

“Who’s Skarra?”

“He’s... the embodiment of all evil. The catalyst for any negativity that exists in reality. Beyond Anomaly, beyond human, he’s an entirely different being. A being like him shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the same reality as anything else.”

I let out a slow breath. “And you want me to... kill him?”

“Yes. The journey to defeat him is going to be a long one, but to protect your friends and your family... you’ll do it, right?”

I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready for a challenge as monumental as this.

“The two Anomalies attacking you in the real world are his minions. You could try to kill all of his minions first if that suits you,” he said with a shrug, as if this was nothing special. “That might weaken him. And... Skarra is going to be after you from now on, so you don’t exactly have a choice.”

“After me? Why?”

“Because you’re the one housing my soul. There’s other reasons, which I myself don’t even know, but all I know is... he’s going to hunt you. And he’s going to find you. So you need to become strong enough to protect those you love. Like I failed to do.”

“Will you... be here... to help me?”

“I’ll be like a voice in the back of your head. You should still be able to communicate with me... and I’ll try to steer you in the right direction as often as I can. Teach you how to use your powers, give you the knowledge I have left from my last life... But I need you to promise me this.”

He held out his hand.

“Promise me you’ll end this. Kill Skarra... and protect everyone. Promise me you’ll devote your life, however much suffering may come your way, to this goal.”

I looked at his hand hesitantly. Why was I devoting my life to kill some being I previously didn’t know existed? What did I owe this guy?

But if what he said was true, that Skarra was going to start hunting me down... if he was now aware of my existence, and his minions were already attacking me... then I really didn’t have a choice. I had to get a lot stronger, very fast, if I wanted to keep my friends and my family safe.

And Kaio had said my friends were alive. Maybe he was just guessing, but it was enough for me to believe with some sliver of hope that there was a chance. A chance for this to be fixed.

“I don’t have a say in this, do I?”

“Whether you pursue this path is still your choice. This path is going to make you suffer. You’ll go through more pain than you could ever conceive of.”

“But will it be worth it?”

“That depends on how hard you fight. You’ll struggle, but if you really truly want things to end up right, then you’ll make that happen.”

I half heartedly motioned to shake his hand.

“Promise me... and I’ll let you wake up.”

I stopped, looking into his eyes. With a firm nod, I took his hand. I had to protect my friends. Protect my family. Protect everyone. If this was something only I could do, then I had to do it.

I will kill Skarra.

I wasn’t aware then of the things this life would cause me to experience. But I’d rather go through any amount of pain than watch the ones I love die.

So... my mind was set. This was what I had to do. This would be worth the suffering...

I will protect them.

This promise would mark the moment my entire life, my entire world would flip upside-down. When everything would change. This was the start of the journey that would bring me to the depths of despair and back. The journey that would take away any chance I had of living a normal life. This was the journey that would shape my transformation into an entity beyond the limits of humanity.

This is the story of my ascension.

This is the story of how I became the Death Vessel.

...

“I promise.”