Nodus Tollens (n: the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore.)


Your eyes snap open as you feel something coiling between your feet; you can't do anything more than gasp in horror at the sight of inky tendrils looping around your ankles before they lace tight against your skin.

The museum spins in your vision dizzyingly as you're yanked around the painting. You catch one last glimpse of the museum before you're swallowed by the abyss, blinded and deafened by the liquid darkness. It pushes hungrily against your lips; you clamp your mouth shut and fight against the urge to breathe, pressure building steadily in your lungs.

You sink at a snail's pace: moving is all but impossible and it takes all your energy to force yourself into a tight ball.

But even if you could move freely, you wouldn't.

The darkness crawls over your skin like maggots, searching and probing for a weak spot to dig its claws into you. And as it looks, you feel the rancid rot of madness it breathes on your soul-it's a siren call that is as horrifying as it is tempting and you press your hand against your mouth, eyes watering as your body screams for oxygen.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you dig deep for something to hold onto, replaying the melody that brought you here in the first place over and over in your head. Even though every sensation other than the darkness is lost to you, the song sparks a flame in your chest that you refuse to let go of.

Your exit out of the darkness is abrupt. A suctioning noise which pounds on your sensitive ears announces your entrance into reality, immediately followed by a sweeping sensation in your stomach as you fall through air and a spray of stars that bursts in your vision when you land hard on the floor.

You lie there, spluttering and gasping for breath.

When you finally open your eyes, you're greeted by an entirely white room that is almost painful to look at after falling through the abyss.

Sitting up slowly, you rub your head. You lost the umbrella in the abyss but surprisingly, none of the darkness stuck to your skin or your clothes.

Shakily, you stand and glance around yourself. The room you're in is little more than a square big enough to contain you. High above you, on the ceiling, roils the raven wings of the abyss but none of it reaches for you, held back by some invisible force.

You look away and take another breath, embracing the crisp taste of air on your tongue. Then, rolling back your shoulders, you leave the room.

The cool dark gray of the hallway is much more bearable on your eyes. A quiet dread pricks at you to be cautious but it's nothing like how you felt in the museum. At the end of the hallway, you step into the middle of a rectangular room. On either side of you hangs two paintings of an ornate manor, virtually identical except that the one on the right is in black and white and the one on the left is in color.

You peer over to the right and begin to move forward before stopping suddenly. Pausing, you squint over your shoulder to the left-there's something familiar calling to you from that direction and you hesitate only for a moment before letting your feet guide the way.

Next to another door is a decrepit desk that leans against the wall-on its counter lies a small gray key. You pick it up but still feel that invisible sensation tugging at you. Out of the corner of your eye, you spy something metal gleaming at you from the furthest corner of the room.

Pocketing the key, you hurry towards it, mouth dropping wide open as you see what it is.

For being well over a head taller than you, the scythe is astonishingly light. You hoist it above your head experimentally-somehow it feels right in your hands. The snaith is iron gray, save for the line of bright jade running through the middle, and the blade is alternating triangles of gray and green, with winglike curls of metal sitting atop the oval-shaped attachment ring.

Lowering the scythe, you run a hand across the blade's smooth surface and then examine the ring. One of the souls from the Abyss of Madness lies within it, glowing blue and covered by glass; like the scythe, the soul has wings sprouting from the top.

Tracing the soul's outline with a gloved finger, you frown, puzzled at the sense of familiarity running through your body. Through the glass, the soul pulses underneath your fingertip like a heartbeat.

You study it for another minute before gripping the snaith in the middle to hold the scythe loosely at your side. Turning your attention over to the door by the desk, you fish for the key in your pocket with your free hand.

As you insert the key into the lock, a resounding bang from the other side splits a narrow crack down the door's middle.

With a startled yell, you spring back and swing out the scythe in front of you, watching the door tremble from the force of whatever lies behind it and feeling the steady beating of the scythe's soul turn into wild thrumming that sends reverberations all the way down the snaith.

An ominous silence falls upon the room once the door stops rattling in its frame; you eye it warily, not trusting the quiet. No matter how you strain your ears, you can't hear any movement on the other side and the crack in the door isn't wide enough to let you see anything.

Your eyes dart to the right before sliding over to the key, still in the half-turned lock. You bite your lip-there's no way that you can leave it in there.

Tightening your grip on the scythe, you leap forward before you can doubt yourself. You rip the key from the lock, swerving to the side just as blades the size of dinner plates punch through the door and through the space your head was only seconds ago.

The force of the door breaking knocks you off your feet and you narrowly avoid impaling yourself on your scythe by falling on your side.

Scrambling up, you brandish the scythe wildly, squinting through the dust and debris at the large shadow emerging from the doorway. You intake sharply as the air clears.

The monster of the Jack the Ripper statue from the museum leers at you greedily, mouth filled with serrated teeth spreading wide in a demonic grin. The blades serving for fingers glint in the light, moving in time with the wings of fluid darkness erupting from its waist.

You don't have time to think about it any further as the creature launches itself at you with a burst of speed, dodging just in time to keep its blades from running you through.

The clang of metal striking against metal echoes as you whip the blade of the scythe up instinctively, blocking the creature's strike from its other hand. It adapts quickly, however, hand wrapping around where the head of the blade meets the snaith and jerking violently.

You cry out, a sharp pain shooting through your head, and barely manage to keep your grip on the scythe only through sheer will. But that is a mistake because instead of letting go, the creature drags both you and the scythe as one easily. Your feet dangle helplessly in the air as it pulls the scythe upward and lashes out.

The scythe is ripped from your hands and you sail across the room and into the wall, crashing onto the desk heavily; it crumples under the strength of the creature's throw and you land on the ground face-up.

Your vision bleeds black and red, something liquid and sticky trickling down the back of your head and neck. Groaning between gasps for breath, you roll onto your side, tasting blood.

The creature still has your scythe-it tosses it to the side as it approaches you menacingly.

You hiss in pain when the head of the blade strikes the floor, clutching your head which boils with an intensifying pain. As you feel a shadow cross over you, you open your eyes, forcing yourself to sit up.

The creature stands in front of you, head scraping the ceiling as it rises to its full height and raises an arm.

Swallowing your fear of certain death, you meet the creature's gaze defiantly, hand wrapping around a fragment of the desk.

You hurl it at its face as it begins to bring its arm down, not waiting to see if it has met its mark and diving through the space between its legs, only reflexes and a single-minded focus as you dash for the scythe.

You're moving too fast to stop and pick up it so you use your momentum to skid on your knees, seizing it and swinging in an arc behind you. Your chest heaves, breaths coming out in shallow pants as the scythe trembles in your hand.

Something metal grazes at the back of your neck. You swallow hard, bracing yourself, and twist around slowly. The point of one of the creature's blades winks at you, centimeters away from your eye.

It is kept from plunging into your brain by the blade sticking out of the creature's chest. Its body twitches in starts and stops, arm falling to the side as inky blood flows freely from the wound. Its eyes, endless tunnels of pitch-black, find yours before it goes limp and falls forward.

You drop the scythe and clamber backwards, the sound of bone crunching and flesh tearing apart bouncing off the walls as the blade pushes through the creature's back and splits it open.

For a moment, you do nothing but watch as blood continues to ooze from the dead creature. Then, you prod the creature's shoulder once with your shoe, tension releasing from your body when it doesn't move.

Your eyes water as you inch back and immediately wince, adrenaline wearing off and the number the creature did on you setting in. You stagger to your feet and glance down at yourself, suddenly struck by a fierce compulsion to laugh.

One that makes no sense given the ugly bruise starting to form on your thigh, the fact that both of your knees are scraped up beyond recognition and your entire body aches from colliding with the wall. Worst of all is the pounding in your head that matches time with your heart-it sets your world spinning and throws a hazy light over your vision that tints everything a reddish black.

But somehow it is astonishingly easy to wrench the scythe from the creature's body.

Twirling the scythe in your hands, you watch with feverish fascination as the black blood comes to life and envelops the creature's body in undulating coils, pulling it within its depths until there is nothing left of it but a black stain on the ground.

You totter as you take a few steps backwards and tip forward, catching yourself with the scythe and grinning at your reflection in the blade before your gaze moves to the soul in the ring. Tittering, you rub hard at the smudge of darkness encircling the soul, humming as you rock back and forth on your heels, before remembering the glass.

Tapping the glass reprovingly, you wheel around the scythe in a circle, ducking your head just before you're about to smack into the blade. A voice whispers warnings at the back of your mind but you don't care enough to listen.

A flash of white amid the debris catches your eye and you stop abruptly on the balls of your toes to pluck it up.

The smudged words on the piece of paper are just discernible through the dirt.

Do not open door.

The room echoes with your laughter as you crumple the paper in your hand, toss it on the ground and whirl around again, ambling away without a backwards glance.