Death. Such potent word it was. Not even all that long ago, it was one that terrified Miles to the very depths of his core, both in its promise of agony and in the cadaveric stillness it bestowed. Now? It felt like an old companion, an awaited lover whose cold embrace he couldn’t fear anymore. Something to welcome in some sort of perverse intimacy.
“Can you stop the cryptic bullshit!? Be clear, for fuck’s sake! What is coming!? How can we stop it!?”
The detective did have a point. Miles had always been prone to melodrama. It’s not like he had set to cover himself in a blanket of empty pretenses from the start. More rather, it was simply all he ever knew.
Sophistry brought along comfort, a delicate veneer that masked the profound hollowness, especially with how often he found his intellect lacking in any form of brilliance.
Miles was, too, already weary of such facades.
No, not just weary. So deeply, soul-crushingly exhausted…
If there was any tiny speck of a feeling left in him over his own passing, it was relief. Pure, and unadulterated. The kind of surrender that comes after decades of struggling against an unyielding current. There was no longer any reason to fight, no more desperate attempt to prove his own worth, and no one there to drag him forward.
Were death to arrive now, he’d greet it not as defeat, but as an old friend. Perhaps in the ineffable beyond, a new meaning could be ascertained. He was almost capable of witnessing her silhouette again, emerging from the darkness. Utopia.
Though no hues could ever give justice to what existed beyond representation, though eyes would dissolve at the very dare of capturing her essence… Oh, words failed to describe how much did Miles long to attempt it.
Yet the guillotined hesitated, refusing to fall.
“Are you sure this is the resolution you wish for?” Miles spoke with unnerving calm, conscious of the room’s metamorphosis though he beheld no sight. “Mirage Asylum won’t be as merciful as I have. Are you not aware that you need to hurry?”
>> “Otherwise…”
“Shut up.” Cavendish’s desperation leaked through every syllable, thick enough to suffocate the detective. “Just… Let me think for a second.”
No good. The sole person capable of bringing him closure had already fallen victim to horror, overwhelmed under the weight of the impossible. Miles supposed it was nothing to be blamed for, especially since the artist could envision the unfolding events by heart alone.
Not like he needed to. The two men’s trembling spirits as well as the vibrations running through his haunted grounds were more than sufficient to paint a clear picture for the blinded artist.
The blank canvas, his perennial tormentor, was lifted from its forsaken position, previously abandoned amidst the chaos of conflict. The seething mass of black tendrils coalesced beneath it, bubbling through the surface like clotted blood forcing its way into the fabric. Boundaries of plausibility defied, the white confines of the frame began to swell and expand, reshaping itself into a vast mural stretching wide —taller and more immense than all of them combined, eclipsing even Miles’ corrupted body.
Seconds stretching taut before their audience, the passage of time quantifiable only by a drone ambiance of dread and seeping liquid, generously provided by the world itself rumbling in a disjointed tempo, like the clicks of a terrible clock. A slow torture-ballad punctuated by neck hairs standing on end, a natural reaction to the approach of something higher than life itself.
Colours invaded the expanded canvas from within, a breathing painting that created itself. At first, it was just impossibly long fingers crawling from around the edges, not as unified limbs, but as individual entities —each digit a separate consciousness, seeking but one thing only. Escape. A dozen became hundreds, then thousands, interweaving and pulsing with horrifying sentience as they pressed themselves against the fabric.
‘Paint monster’. Such was the name bestowed upon Mirage Asylum by the unfortunate few that confronted it in the past. A descriptor far too lacking, deceitful, almost insulting in its simplicity. Its insufficiency would come to full display once the outlines of its head peeked in from beneath the confines of the mural, around the moment when the fingers penetrated the layers of their confinement to cross into their dimension.
To mix all colors of the spectrum together in a palette would inevitably result in black, such a thing was an undeniable law. The same did not happen to all the paint conforming Mirage Asylum’s manifestation. In its chromatic composition pigments danced yet never quite converged, weaving and layering with one another in seamless control —like a masterful impressionistic work given life, frightening and beautiful in equal measures.
Behind it, anchoring it to whatever forsaken plane of existence it crawled out from, the canvas continued to expand. It grew larger than the room, larger than the mansion, larger than every imaginable horizon.
And from there, it finally emerged. Its head was a bloated nullspace of terrible potential, featureless save for two peeking exceptions. Mirage Asylum’s eyes were but a scribbled mimicry, swirling vortexes of almost childish glee. Fractured lines and ink-stroke red pupils desperately jumping back and forth. Orbs that should have never been allowed to exist, let alone move.
The next detail to be revealed in the slow dimensional trespassing was its maw —for the term mouth would be far too generous; presenting itself not as a suggestion to consumption, but only to unnerve further in a smile that dominated more than half its head. Its contours oozed and dripped, sploshes of paint falling in unstable uniformity.
Faces came and went between its irregular jaws, rising and submerging back into the paint as they changed and transformed vividly. Samantha Marlowe. Anthony LaCaze and his gang. Shelley, Ethan, and him. Their heads ruptured the paint to wallow in suffering, displayed by Asylum almost like trophies, ripples resembling multiple tongues savoring the abominable visage.
Even the detectives were not spared in the somber demonstration. Realized it or not, their assimilation began the very moment they stepped into his purgatorio.
The primordial, receding blackness that lurked beneath surfaces rose with purposeful malevolence. Fingers crawled and tightened around his body, like thousand ravenous children, dragging what remained of him towards the canvas with an inexorable pull.
Miles did not resist. Why should he? Survival and demise felt so similar by now, their differences as meaningless as any choice he might muster. Cavendish acted, attempted to tear at the dark tendrils once he realized the artist was being taken away. It was far too late —his sole, fleeting chance had already been squandered.
Then it came again. Dissolution. The only word that could begin to capture his unholy communion with the painted demon.
As his flesh was anointed in tribute, Mirage Asylum penetrated his essence not as a violent invader, but as a returning component. They recognized each other, remembered each other. Wings freed. Souls aligned. Their touch, a recollection of some contract his hands were forced to sign without knowing.
Overriden his surrender was. Unraveled his spirit. There was no violence in his undoing, only the practiced methodology of an artist concealing a pentimento blueprint in their most intricate of creations. Once again, Miles Seagrave ceased to be, subsumed yet not laid to rest.
His new form rose from that original, cambric potential like wet paint bleeding free from containment. A single disoriented, pale-blue eye scanned the horrified expressions before them, every other feature concealed by cascades of impossibly long dark hair that hung in sodden ropes, dripping with viscous fluids. From beneath that shroud, a crown of red thorns erupted in blasphemous mockery of a halo. The skin of his naked torso had ruptured, stretched far too much over an enlarged frame, splitting in bloodless fissures that exposed restless churns of bone and muscle.
And somewhere within that transformation, a singular, ruthless purpose took over his silenced vocal cords. To slaughter those who threatened Mirage Asylum’s design. Claude Cavendish, Cole Benoit, Ethan Seagrave. None of them would leave this sanctum alive.
The thought brought him neither pleasure nor pain. There was only cold certainty, like paint dripping to fill a predetermined outline.
Once the confusion of renewal subsided, Miles’ found himself suspended inside the widened jaws of his Punisher, emerging from the center mass like the figurehead on some nightmare vessel —everything below his waist dissolved in Mirage Asylum. Paint coalesced in his left hand like a bestial sword, invoked from the dark and the blood of his lord with an edge that shone like fresh ink upon paper, its purpose evident even to his half-addled mind.
Motion happened to him with an almost somnolent grace, belying the chaos of paint crashing outside of the canvas like a raging sea under storm. There was no resisting it, no options but to be subservient to the midnight pull of the tide. When Cavendish’s Punisher swung at him, walls of colour rose to meet it, parting around the ethereal edge only to reform in their wake. Unimpeded, Miles flowed through the gaps like water, inexorably advancing towards his more vulnerable targets.
Ghostly, invisible slices carved him as he approached —the ability of Cavendish’s Punisher, no doubt— yet even these paradoxical cuts could not truly harm him now. The gaps that were left in his body sealed themselves instantly, paint flowing to fill the negative spaces. Bullets from a desperate last stand sunk into Miles’ malleable flesh with dull percussion, lost like pebbles in an ocean’s depths.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Benoit attempted a makeshift retreat in the face of imminent danger, but the paint flooding the chamber would allow no such thing. It latched onto his legs with the consistency of tar, anchoring him in place as Miles performed a wide swing of his arm, almost dance-like in its tempo. The artist’s blade carved a lethal gash on Ethan’s back, eliciting an agonizing cry from his pitiful son. A roar of primal ire erupting from the officer followed, but even this rebellion was merely a grace note in the requiem.
One of Asylum’s massive appendages crashed down upon them both like a tsunami of paint, following Miles’ blade like paint follows brush.
No satisfaction or joy crossed his face, even as he encountered himself in possession of a power to prevail over all. Had choice remained his, he would have granted them cleaner deaths, swifter passages into the world beyond. Now their memories would join the others, preserved eternally in his gallery of the damned.
There was no point in lamenting it now. Artist and abomination moved as one, every trace of regret concealed beneath thick layers of paint.
“Seagrave!” Cavendish’s voice cracked through the viscous air, his expression a masterwork of torment, raw fury mixed with the disbelief of a wounded, cornered animal. It was the face of a man losing his grip on the last threads of hope he desperately clung to. “Where did you take them!?”
The outburst was regarded by Miles with the detached curiosity of someone observing insects beneath glass. His silence spoke volumes. Morality, purpose, justification —forlorn concerns of a past composition.
Whatever composure had stayed Cavendish’s hand shattered like brittle glass, his blade now aimed at him with the clear intent to kill. Conviction ignited the detective’s fierce eyes as his Punisher sang an ethereal dirge in a long descending arc. Sadly, it was too little too late to try and strike him.
A similarly violent wave of paint rose to meet the attack, not in mere defense but also calculated viciousness. The dark tide congealed as it met the ethereal steel, turning into a substance between liquid and solid, an unyielding trap that halted its edge in place.
Cavendish’s frame was bound to the blade by a rope that emerged from his chest, and such connection would become an instrument to his undoing. Mirage Asylum flowed into humanoid farm, seizing the detective like a puppet master claiming abandoned strings, hauling him skyward with terrible, undefiable strength.
The detective had his body whirled off the ground and into the dense air, fingers white-knuckled against the spectral rope in the face of the brusque ascent. The paint Punisher toyed with Cavendish briefly, though the intensifying acceleration of its motions telegraphed the destruction about to come.
Whether it was tactical clarity, instinct, or simple exhaustion, Cavendish made the only choice available to him. The link tethering him to the captured blade dissipated, leaving him suspended in an agonizing moment between ascent and fall —a perfect, helpless target.
The living tide of paint that composed his renewed flesh drew Miles into position. His arm’s muscles coiled on their own accord, preparing his ink blade for a lunge to impale Cavendish’s frame with, to punctuate his fall in a violent flourish.
A killing blow that never landed.
Reality splintered violently when a steel tempest burst through the threshold of the chamber. It moved like lightning, a beast of corroded iron and voracity. Its three heads worked as one, tearing all of Mirage Asylum’s attempts at containing it. Spectral jaws snapped shut once they reached Miles’ shoulders, disrupting the paint’s cohesion enough to scatter his limbs like ink in water.
It was poetry in violence, rows of phantom teeth and claws rending the encroaching paint with savage ruthlessness. Corrupted pigments sprayed in all directions as the spectral hound carved its path, twisting mid-leap to focus on its true objective —Cavendish’s plummeting form.
His rescue was as precise as it was spectacular. The cerberus powerful ethereal muscles rippled beneath iron plates as it snatched the detective, each bound carrying them further away from Miles’ reach. Wherever paint rose to reclaim them, to drag them back into their embrace, phantom fangs flashed in tripled synchronicity, keeping Mirage Asylum at bay.
“I made it just in time…” The voice that pierced through the suffocating atmosphere, though ragged, carried a firm undertone that seemed to make even the crawling darkness hesitate. “Sorry for the delay.”
Detective Gianmarco Aerugino, Miles recognized. Despite how his clothes were matted crimson and his breath remained labored, there was an unmistakable pride in his stance —stubbornly refusing to fall into weakness.
Mirage Asylum pulsed around the artist in acknowledgment of the new threat, returning to its full humanoid shape as it lifted Miles into its core, forming a protective cocoon around him. The two men kept themselves just beyond their reach, the Punisher practically hissing in impatience, yet it remained tethered to the canvas from where it originally surged.
"Cole and Ethan! They''re… I couldn''t…" Cavendish’s voice fractured with the raw kind of horror reserved for those who had witnessed the world crumble. His lungs fought for air as he scrambled to his feet, eyes darting between Aerugino and the writhing mass of paint, practically begging the older man for any hope to latch onto.
“Claude, get yourself together. They’re still alive.” Aerugino’s words came to halt his partner’s spiral with a calm certainty, his gaze meeting Miles’ single, unmoving eye. “Panicking here only helps that thing.”
Though the detectives’ subsequent exchange faded into whispers Miles could not discern, their intentions could still tasted through the very air, each heartbeat singing its own distinct melody —in fear, determination, or desperate strategy.
“Seagrave has to die. It’s the only way to end this.”
“But how!? Look at him! Anything we do is just…”
“There is a way. A weakness, somewhere. I can smell it.”
>> “Follow my lead. I’ll give you an opening, but you have to make it count.”
>> “Only you can do this, Claude.”
A shadow of amusement ghosted across Miles’ paint-slick features, tugging at purple lips that could no longer properly smile. How fascinating that they should grasp such a truth. Death loomed for all of them as both salvation and damnation, and the artist didn’t truly care about any outcome. The end would come, one way or another.
Yet… Despite this acceptance, something almost like excitement stirred in what remained of his soul.
Their poise awakened a strange tenderness in him, like watching children picking up drawing techniques through blind practice. Paint would gladly drink their blood at the smallest mistake, transmute their struggle into yet another layer of this underworld… But they still refused to give up.
And so, Miles waited with genuine curiosity to see which canvas would ultimately claim this final exhibition —Mirage Asylum''s, or theirs.
As expected, the cerberus moved first. Aerugino’s presence burned behind it in quiet intensity, his lined face carved from marble as he commanded the Punisher with astonishing expertise. The beast moved in adamant brutality, its metallic bulk destroying all of Mirage Asylum’s efforts to restrain it. Wave after wave of paint tendrils rose to fall victim to its savagery, torn asunder beneath phantasmal teeth.
The artist observed their advance with dispassionate detachment, no concern reaching his unblinking eye as his barriers fell away like curtains, leaving fleeting windows through which the detectives followed the hound’s vanguard. Paint hurriedly reformed in their wake in a ravenous chase, but always a fraction too slow, always just shy of taking their flesh.
Such resistance entranced Miles, even when one could only do so much in a fight against the open sea. Though inexorably fierce, the canine Punisher began having its movements impeded bit by bit, stray droplets seeping between its iron plates to crystallize into obsidian needles to pierce the immaterial flesh. The mighty charge began to falter, thunderous steps becoming labored, weighed down by the accumulating pollution, but not enough to stop it entirely.
Once the hound forced its way close enough, the cocoon surrounding Miles began to peel away. His frame was carried into a plunge, one to puncture the canine beast with his falling ink blade. The artist figured that this, too, was a part of Mirage Asylum’s ploy —a staged protection opening up to the illusion of vulnerability. His reformed flesh held no value. It was but an underhanded bait.
Yet somehow, the older detective saw through the feint, operating under a strange awareness that transcended mere tactical prowess. With a soul-rending roar, Detective Aerugino bypassed Miles entirely, diving instead to the towering mass Mirage Asylum that originated him. The older detective’s hands plunged into the writhing paint with reckless abandon, heedless of its vile, corrupting essence.
Panic surged through Miles’ muscles —not his own, but Mirage Asylum’s. The Punisher tried to wrench his blade free from its deadlock with the cerberus, but the trinity of maws snapped to trap the sword in an unyielding vise. Behind him, Aerugino’s hands worked with savage determination, excavating through layers of what resembled soft necrotic tissue far more than the solidified paint that it was.
And in there, suspended in a web of darkened veins, lay the artist’s still-beating heart —pitiful and withered, a ticking clock counting down for oblivion.
Upon the exposed organ, Aerugino’s mouth opened, no doubt compelled to call for his younger partner, to urge him into seizing this moment that would never come again. Mirage Asylum moved faster than his voice, flooding the old man’s throat and airways, invading his trachea and collapsing his lungs with paint.
Not that there was any need for the veteran to scream. The younger detective had already locked onto his path long before anyone could even utter a word.
And though the two of them did not cross gazes, Miles saw, if for a moment, the breathtaking beauty of soft black stars in his gentle amber eyes.
Surging from the ether beyond, Cavendish’s pendulum blade returned, emitting a pale radiance that made every grasping dark tendril writhe in response. It didn’t come alone. A translucid echo of its edge mirrored its trajectory in reverse, phasing through every obstacle like a reflection in still water. Miles was rendered into a mere enraptured audience member, witness to the moment in which both blades converged in one singular point —his disembodied heart.
Pain, acute and unbearable, crushed the hollow replica of his frame, forcing Miles to release the ink blade from his trembling grasp. Mirage Asylum’s vibrant tones turned into a surging flood of crimson, a spectacle the artist couldn’t focus on. Suffering was far too all-consuming. He fought desperately for breath, his hand clutching his chest even though nothing was there, choking on death.
A sensation that was cut short abruptly, as fiercely as it arrived.
Corporeality seemed to fold inwards, creating depths that should not exist in three-dimensional space. Memories and visions not his own bloomed before his mind’s eye, fragments born of wrath and anguish combined, whispering answers to darkness and dreams in full.
So, this was what the cards revealed. Every struggle, every agonizing step, was justified. Much more compelling than blindly following Mirage Asylum’s machinations, but how ironic it was that the hand too close to see was the one destined to slay and claim it all.
If he held a single regret, it was the inability to linger long enough to witness the aftermath of his exhibition —the way everything would blissfully dissipate before the final curtain fell. Yet this was a tolerable trade, for in exchange he was granted a glimpse beneath the opaque mask of deadened time, a privilege denied to all others.
Fine, then. It was a resolution he could accept. To let his spirit exhale into the fleeting night air of the void, a shadow among shadows, untethered to the sunlit world. What was one more temporary slumber, after all, if it was only to last for the fleeting seconds of eternity unfolding?