Shrouded Seascape

"Dad, what's wrong?" Sparkle asked with a hint of concern on her visage upon noticing her father's unusual reaction.

"I don't know how I should describe this feeling to you. Something feels wrong." Charles moved the window and pushed it open. His brows furrowed as his gaze locked onto the endless black expanse of water beyond.

Suddenly, he heard a voice that belonged to him entered his ears. It was laced with extreme urgency and seriousness.

"All of you, come to my plane. A very critical situation has happened."

Hearing the summon of his other self from an alternative plane, Charles gently pushed Sparkle out of his embrace. "Stay here first. I need to leave for a bit. Someone's looking for me. It has been bad news for so many years, so hopefully, it will be good news this time."

Entering the room that was only restricted to himself, his well-worn boots clicked against the floorboards in a steady rhythm. Upon reaching the end of the hallway, a section of the smooth wall slid open to reveal a hidden stairway caked with a layer of dust.

It was the staircase of V12 Containment Site. Everything on the site, including the corpses with gold teeth strewn across the floor from years ago, had been left untouched. No changes had been made.

Charles silently climbed to the seventh floor—the floor that allowed him to move into another place.

This was the gateway to parallel planes, and going through this hallway would allow him to reach other planes.

Dimensional planes, parallel worlds, frequencies, melodies—they were all different names for roughly the same concept. The fundamental essence of all matter was just energy.

The reality in which energy existed in varying frequencies of vibration was merely an intricate layering of multiple dimensions, all coexisting in a complex, overlapping symphony.

Through deeper understanding, the current Charles had completely mastered the secrets of these special vibrational melodies. He could now easily traverse freely between parallel planes. His expertise in the knowledge of plane dimensions was now nothing short of masterful.

If he wished, he could weaponize the gap between two parallel worlds to easily slice through any physical matter.

However, his growing power was a double-edged sword. The more knowledge he mastered meant the closer he was to godhood and the lesser time he had to keep his humanity.

Knowledge was power, but at the same time, it was a curse.

It was a huge sacrifice but some things couldn't be avoided. For example, he had to pay the price for mastery of planes and dimensions.

Charles entered the room and took a step into the space that connected him to the other parallel planes.

Due to the gravity of the situation at this time, Charles came as his complete self and was not just a mere human avatar like before.

The visual reality of it manifested in the form of a ferocious beast devouring itself; a massive, fleshy island collapsed inward before eventually disappearing from view.

When Charles emerged from another plane, he found himself in the deep sea. A rusted submarine rode the current and silently drifted past him.

Apart from himself and the Charles of the current plane he was on, the other Charleses from every other plane answered the same call.

In the crushing pressure of the lightless depths, several identical human figures floated in the water, presenting a rather bizarre scene.

Every single one of them had their brows furrowed as they exchanged tense whispers about the strange sensation that they felt earlier.

"It wasn't just me. Where did that feeling come from? What does it mean? I hope I was mistaken, but I can sense that something terrible happened."

Seeing that everyone had arrived, Charles turned toward the one who belonged to this plane and asked, "What happened? Did you find something?"

Current Plane Charles raised his metallic left hand and pointed downward into the pitch-black abyss. It was only then that the others realized that they were above the Dark Abyssal Trench where Fhtagn was sealed.

"The moment I felt that sensation, I started to track the source. Eventually, I was led here. I don't know if the two are connected, but anything that involves Fhtagn is never trivial."

In unison, the Charleses descended toward the abyss. The seal broke effortlessly in an instant, and the sprawling, strange green metropolis appeared before their eyes.

The structures in the city slowly peeled back like a colossal curtain to reveal the amorphous, shifting figure lying in the distant, absolute dark. Fhtagn, the strongest god in all of the Subterranean Sea, came into view.

With each inhale and exhale of Fhtagn, an alien sound seemed to claw at the sanity of any who heard it. Fortunately, Charles was no longer the same Charles from his earlier days. These whispers held no more effect on him.

Fhtagn remained the same—still in slumber. However, one detail stood out so much that Charles could feel terror tickling at his scalp.

Fhtagn's left hand with webbed claws.

Fhtagn's hand, like the rest of himself, was always shifting between various amalgamations of forms and colors. But no matter how it shifted, his hand was open. Yet now, it was clenched tightly into a fist.

Charles had no doubts about his memory when it came to Fhtagn's sleeping posture. When the Pope freed the Light God from the depths, the image had seared itself into Charles' mind so deeply that it was impossible to forget.

"I'm confused. Wait here. I need to go back and confirm something," a bald-headed Charles said without any context and his form vanished into thin air.

The other Charleses were taken aback for a split second. The next moment, as if linked by some unseen thread, each of them disappeared in rapid succession and retreated to their respective planes.

The massive island that was Charles' physical form flickered rapidly across the dark Subterranean Sea as it moved with urgency. Consumed by anxiety, he teleported with such haste that he couldn't even pay much attention to the vessels on the ocean's surface.

A few seconds later, he reached the Dark Abyssal Trench of his own plane. He tore open the seal and saw the same scene he had seen in the other plane. The fingers of Fhtagn's left hand were curled inward at the same eerie angle to form a closed fist.

One by one, the Charleses that left returned to the plane they had gathered earlier, their faces dark with the weight of what they'd each witnessed as they shared their accounts.

"This may be a bad sign. But at the very least, it confirms one thing: all versions of Fhtagn are unified across all planes. He is a being that transcends all planes—a singular existence."

Charles lifted his gaze to look at his somewhat flippant counterpart with a solemn expression. "That doesn't help us much right now. The real question we need to consider is why Fhtagn's hand is curled up and what its significance is."

"The rest of you can discuss first. I need to reseal Fhtagn, or his aura will influence the other humans in the Subterranean Sea."

The green city groaned as flesh and blood pulled it back together, hiding it beneath its original disguise once again. The whispers in their ears slowly diminished.

At the same time, the Charleses exchanged glances before speaking in unison.

"I don't know what the rest of you think, but I feel that we're running out of time. That feeling wasn't just a warning. Fhtagn is waking up."

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