The air twisted like a filthy rag being wrung out, making a sound that defied description—a grating, endless "skree."
The fractured worlds had lost all boundaries. Sky and ground swapped places. Streets rolled up like sushi rolls into black ribbons, whipping around and occasionally slapping across some poor soul's face.
Ethan stumbled forward, clutching a warped fragment of soul in his arms. It was what remained of Carl—broken, like a secondhand puzzle barely glued together with despair.
"You sure this thing still counts as a person?" Ethan muttered at the fragment.It vibrated faintly, as if offended.
But before he could continue talking to himself, the storm of fractures intensified. The Void's breath burped across reality like an overstuffed drunk, regurgitating chunks of space. The ground beneath Ethan's feet peeled away, exposing a raw black chasm.
There was no time to hesitate.
The fragment surged into his chest.
——And instantly, Ethan felt like he'd swallowed a drum of concentrated bleach.Agony exploded through his body. His vision split: one half from his own eyes, the other from Carl's leftover memories.
"You're still alive, you bastard?" Ethan cursed through the chaos."No shit. I'm harder to kill than you." Carl's voice rang inside his skull, carrying that same maddeningly cocky tone he'd always had in life.
Their minds overlapped—two songs shoved into a broken speaker, both blaring at once.
Ethan tried to walk, but his body refused to obey: his left leg stepped forward, while his right decided to break into an awkward dance.
"Stop moving like that! This is my body!""Wrong—it's ours! You think I died just to be dead weight? At least now I get some joystick time."
The result was absurd: Ethan charged through collapsing streets while arguing aloud with an empty patch of air—looking like a schizophrenic clown sprinting through the apocalypse.
Black buildings toppled like dominoes. The Core's pull roared in the distance. But Ethan and Carl wrestled for the controller in the middle of it all.
"Left! The Void's going to eat us!""Right! At least there's light over there!""Shut the hell up!""First one to shut up's a loser!"
Together, they surged forward—and dove headfirst into a void crack.
Strangely, they weren't immediately devoured. Instead, they floated in the dark, like two goldfish trapped in the same bowl.
Their souls had turned transparent. Ethan could see Carl's broken essence clinging to his own intact one, like a parasite refusing to leave.
"Honestly, I think we make a good pair," Carl finally said. "You've got the body, I've got the smart mouth. World's ending? Between the two of us, maybe we can last a few more minutes.""A few minutes? Can't even cook instant noodles in that time." Ethan rolled his eyes."Half the seasoning packet, then."
They both laughed—harsh, grating, absurd. Black humor echoing in the Void. Ethan realized: even on the edge of total annihilation, humans could still dig up meaningless scraps of joy.
When the laughter died down, Ethan felt lighter. Their merged soul moved sharper, faster—enough to resist the Core's gravity, if only briefly. Carl's essence flickered, burning like a battery running itself dry.
"You're pushing too hard," Ethan muttered."So what? I'm already shattered. Let me be your cheat code one last time." Carl grinned.
Ethan stayed silent, nose stinging.
Then Carl added, casual as ever:"Oh, and if you survive—delete my accounts. Don't let my porn history follow me into the afterlife."
Ethan froze, then spat a curse:"…Fuck you."
The Void still swallowed relentlessly. But their fused soul flared, a fragile flame in the dark.
It might go out. It might light the way.
At least, in this absurd collapse, they weren't completely alone.
——Soul Convergence wasn't romance. It was a black joke.And until the joke was finished, neither of them was allowed to die.