Chapter 3: The Other Me

The void twisted, stretching and folding in on itself like the pages of an unfinished book, every crease a world that had been written and rewritten.

The Other Him stood there, arms crossed, the very image of calm detachment. He smirked at the confusion flickering in the depths of his eyes.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "But trust me, the truth is worse than you can imagine."

Every word seemed to vibrate with hidden knowledge, like he could see into the very core of him. The pressure on his chest grew heavier. A suffocating weight pulled at his mind, as though reality itself was closing in, locking him in place.

"No more games."

"Who are you?" he demanded, voice strained but steady.

The Other Him chuckled, his voice laced with mockery. "Wrong question," he said, his eyes glinting with something dark, something not entirely human. "You should be asking: what are you?"

He clenched his fists, fighting the rising panic, fighting the overwhelming urge to collapse into the unknown. But the truth was: he didn’t know who he was anymore. He was a traveler between worlds, a being with endless possibilities, and yet... none of them seemed to fit.

The Other Him stepped closer, his presence like a shadow swallowing the light around them.

"Let me show you," the Other Him whispered.

The Ninth World – The Broken Tower

The transition was instantaneous—he was falling, spiraling through an abyss of starlight, and when his feet hit the ground again, the world around him shifted into something ancient, something forgotten by time itself.

A vast ruined tower loomed in front of him, its jagged spires scraping at the storm-filled sky. The air felt thick with the weight of old magic, powerful enough to twist the fabric of the world itself. It was a place that had witnessed wars, betrayals, and the collapse of entire civilizations. A place of dark secrets.

A voice echoed across the ruins, booming with authority, "The Exiled King has returned."

He froze.

His pulse quickened as he looked around. Was he supposed to know what that meant? Who was the Exiled King? Why did the voice seem so familiar? So… like him?

Then he saw it—the towering figure sitting on a broken throne at the center of the ruins. The figure was him, but not quite. This version of him had eyes filled with a deep, unyielding sorrow, a gaze hardened by years of loss, yet still burning with the last remnants of hope.

"You don’t understand yet, do you?" The King-Him's voice was a low rumble, each word heavy with unspoken pain.

He felt an urge to approach, a pull in his chest that felt natural, like he had always known this moment would come.

"Then explain it to me." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. The need for answers burned within him. Who was he? What was this world?

The King-Him looked at him with a mixture of pity and regret. "We are all the same person. But we are also different. Every choice, every path, every possibility—you are living all of them."

His head swam with the implications of those words. The Other Him had already said something similar, but hearing it from someone who looked like him, someone who had clearly lived through suffering, made the weight of the revelation unbearable.

"Why?"

The King-Him stood from his throne, his sword appearing in his hands with a quiet, metallic hum. "Because something is hunting us."

He felt a chill spread through his chest, his breath freezing in his lungs.

"Run!" The King’s voice was commanding, desperate. But before he could even react, a deep, rumbling growl echoed across the tower.

The air shifted. Dark clouds swirled above, casting an unnatural shadow over the ruins. A sound, like a scream from the very earth itself, filled the air.

"It found us."

He looked up. The storm was alive. From the swirling vortex of darkness, a figure began to emerge—a shadow that seemed to absorb the very light around it. The figure was humanoid, but wrong. Its body was made of writhing darkness, and its eyes—eyes that burned like twin stars—focused directly on him.

"You are an anomaly." The voice rasped, each syllable filled with cosmic malice. "You do not belong."

The words sliced through him like a blade, but before he could react, the figure lunged.

The Eraser was here.

The Hunter

His body moved on instinct, but his mind couldn’t keep up. He barely managed to duck under the Hunter’s shadowy claws, the air around him thick with suffocating dread.

The King-Him leapt forward, his sword crashing into the Hunter’s form with an explosion of sparks. But the creature didn’t flinch. It simply reabsorbed the blow, its body shifting and writhing like liquid darkness.

"The Eraser will wipe you from existence," the King-Him shouted, "It is relentless. It is inevitable."

He backed away, heart hammering in his chest. There was no logic to this thing. It existed to destroy—to erase all versions of him, to break the chain of possibility.

But the King-Him didn’t give up. He charged again, striking with furious precision. The Hunter countered with a swiftness that defied logic. With every strike, the creature regenerated, pulling its form back together in a grotesque display of impossible power.

It was like fighting the end of time itself.

And then, with a burst of pure energy, the King-Him was sent flying, crashing into the base of the tower. The Eraser stood over him, its eyes narrowing.

"You will not escape," it whispered, as if it knew something he didn’t.

The Escape

Before he could fully comprehend the horror of the situation, the world around him fractured again. The tower, the storm, the creature—they all disappeared in an instant, replaced by the cold, infinite void. He gasped, choking on the strange pressure in his chest.

He was back in front of the Other Him—the one who had been watching him from the beginning, arms still crossed, his expression unreadable.

"Told you."

"Why? Why is this happening?!" The words escaped him in a rush, a desperate cry.

The Other Him didn’t answer immediately. His eyes gleamed with something… deeper. "The Eraser is a force that hunts us—every version, every path. It’s been chasing us across worlds, across timelines, for as long as we’ve existed."

He swallowed hard. "How do I stop it?"

The Other Him’s face softened, just a little. "You can’t. Not yet. But you can run. You can learn. And you can gather the pieces of yourself, the memories, the power, to stand against it when the time comes."

He wasn’t sure if he could do that—gather his pieces, learn what he needed to know—but the fear in his chest was palpable. "I don’t know how much time I have left."

"Then make it count."

With that, the world around him began to shift again. Another world was calling. Another path. Another chance.

The chase wasn’t over. It had only just begun.

[END OF CHAPTER 3]

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