"G–gift..?" I asked.
My eyes had started glancing around my surroundings, instinctively searching for something—anything—that might reveal what she meant. Perhaps some kind of glowing status box, or a rare piece of equipment lying nearby. My mind clung to familiar possibilities, as if reality still followed rules I understood.
"Yes, child. I've bestowed to you a power that only you possess." The deity explained in a light, almost soothing tone.
Though I didn't know for sure what she had given me, something about the way she said it made me feel… calmer. Safer. Like standing beneath a warm sun after wandering too long in the cold.
Protected, even.
The feeling settled over me so easily that part of me wondered if it had been placed there deliberately.
"Well… what is it?" I questioned. The suspense was almost killing me.
"Secret~ hehe, you'll figure it out soon enough~" she said in an almost joyous tone.
Her reluctance to tell me about the "gift" should have bothered me more than it did. In fact, for a brief moment, it did. A faint itch of unease crawled through the back of my mind, like a thought trying to surface but being gently yet firmly pushed back down.
But the moment I looked at the goddess's warm smile, my worries drifted away like leaves in autumn wind.
"Aaaaanywho~ is there anything else you would like to ask of me?" the goddess said, swaying slightly as she spoke.
"Yes, actually. Who are these 'criminals' you were talking about… and who leads them?" I asked, trying to squeeze out any information I could get.
"For that I—"
She stopped.
The pause was small.
But it was there.
"For that I… cannot say. Anyways, off you go Leonal. Best of luck!~"
The way her voice faltered made something in my chest tighten.
Though her hesitation scared me, I brushed it off. I was likely going to find out soon enough anyway.
"Bye Miss goddesss!" I replied back.
Even as I said it, the feeling of nervousness crept up on me like an assassin suddenly striking their victim. Quiet. Sudden. I couldn't tell where it had come from, only that it was there now, sitting somewhere deep in my stomach.
My consciousness began to fade.
It felt as if I were slowly sinking toward the ocean floor, the weight of invisible water pressing in on me from all directions. My limbs felt distant. My thoughts sluggish.
The world dimmed.
My vision blurred.
And it was then—just before the darkness could swallow me entirely—that I glanced upward.
At first, I thought it was simply my fading mind distorting what I saw.
The goddess still stood where she had before.
Smiling.
But that smile… kept stretching.
Longer.
Wider.
Too wide.
Her once breathtaking smile had split open into rows of teeth—endless rows, stacked behind each other in ways that made no anatomical sense. They curved inward like the spiraling maw of some deep-sea horror.
I felt my heart skip.
Then stop.
Then stutter violently against my ribs.
What I was seeing now could hardly be anything reminiscent of a human.
Monster.
Monster…
Monster…
My thoughts repeated the word as if clinging to the only explanation my mind could comprehend.
But even that word felt wrong.
Unlike the figure of divine beauty that had blessed my eyes moments before, what I saw now was something else entirely.
Something vast.
Something wrong.
Her—no, that thing's skin was no longer skin. What I had mistaken for robes, for flowing cloth, for divine elegance… twisted and separated into writhing tendrils.
Tentacles.
Countless tentacles, coiling slowly through the air as if moving through water that wasn't there.
And that... that face—
What was once a face of divine perfection had been replaced with a single monstrous eye.
It swallowed the rest of her form.
An eye so large it seemed to consume her entire body, staring outward in a way that made my mind recoil. The pupil did not sit still. It shifted and twisted like a whirlpool of darkness, spiraling endlessly inward.
Looking at it felt like standing at the edge of something infinite.
Something that had no beginning.
No end.
Something that should never have been perceived by a human mind.
For a terrifying moment, I had the sickening sensation that the "goddess" had never truly been speaking to me at all. That the kind voice, the warm smile, the gentle demeanor—those had merely been shapes my mind created so I wouldn't shatter the moment I saw her.
A mask.
A lie my brain told itself.
Because whatever that thing truly was…
It was not a goddess.
I wish I could even call it a monster.
It was something that induced more fear into my body than that of some simple 'monster'.
The physical embodiment of something cosmic... incomprehensible.
And somehow—
Somehow—
That thing had just given me agift.
My thoughts were slipping away. Even the effort of being terrified was becoming exhausting.
As my consciousness sank deeper into the darkness, one final thought drifted through my mind, fragile and desperate.
I wish never to see that "goddess" ever again.
Because if I did…
I wasn't sure my mind— no, I wasn't sure that I would survive.