The Lazy Chronicles: Apartment of the Apocalypse-Chapter 118 - 119

Path 1 – The World Moves On

Mallory had seen many kinds of fear. The raw terror of facing the undead, the slow dread of starvation, the cold realization of betrayal.

But this? This was different.

The people they met in the northern settlements whispered about shadows that moved on their own. Entire families disappearing overnight. A village elder swore he had seen a woman with Mallory’s face standing in the fog before his son vanished.

They feared her.

Mallory stood before a burning pyre, her cloak drawn tight against the wind. The villagers had gathered the bodies of the missing, those who had returned only to collapse, drained of life. Their hollowed-out corpses burned as the scent of charred flesh filled the air.

Elara murmured a spell under her breath, the flames turning blue for a brief moment—an old ritual to ensure no dark force clung to the dead.

Greg watched the fire, arms crossed. "I hate this."

"You think I don’t?" Mallory asked.

"You saw the parchment," Greg said. "’Beware the Shadow of Mallory.’ We thought we sealed the gate, but whatever’s out there—it’s using your name."

Mallory clenched her fists. "Then we find it. We stop it."

Alex frowned. "If this thing carries even a fragment of the Forgotten King’s power... that won’t be easy."

Quinn adjusted his daggers. "Nothing ever is."

They had faced nightmares before. But this time, the nightmare wore Mallory’s face.

---

The Hunt Begins

The first clue came from a merchant caravan heading south. They had been attacked in the night—not by bandits, but by distorted figures that moved like smoke. The merchant, a grizzled man with a jagged scar over one eye, described a woman standing among them.

"Ain’t human," he muttered, clutching his drink. "Looked like her." He pointed at Mallory. "But when she smiled? Gods above, it weren’t right. Teeth too sharp. Eyes too deep. Like she saw through me, like she already knew how I’d die."

Mallory exchanged a look with Greg.

"Where did this happen?" she asked.

"Two days west," the merchant said. "Near the Black Hollow Woods."

Mallory turned to her group. "We leave at dawn."

Quinn sighed. "And here I was hoping for an easy trip."

"Nothing’s ever easy," Greg muttered.

The truth was, Mallory wasn’t sure she was ready to face whatever waited for her in those woods.

Because what if it was her?

What if part of her had never left the Forgotten Gate?

And what if, when she found it—

It tried to take her place?

---

Path 2 – The Breaking of Reality

The world no longer fit.

Mallory had fought to reclaim herself, to tear free from the entity’s grasp. But something had broken in the process—not just within her, but in the world itself.

Everywhere she looked, reality fractured.

A river flowed upward instead of down.

A man greeted them in the marketplace, only for them to see his corpse lying in an alley moments later.

A child laughed, playing with a toy—until his reflection in the window stopped moving.

The others saw it too.

"Reality isn’t stable anymore," Alex murmured, examining the distorted patterns in the air. "Whatever you did—whatever you became—even though you pulled back, it left a scar."

Greg ran a hand through his hair. "Can we fix it?"

Mallory wanted to say yes. But the truth was, she didn’t know.

She felt... off.

When she moved, she sometimes saw herself move slightly out of sync. When she spoke, an echo of her own voice whispered back half a second later.

At night, when she closed her eyes, she could hear someone else breathing in her head.

Was she still herself?

Or had she only torn away from the entity in body, not in soul?

---

The Rift in the Sky

Their journey led them to a ruined city—once a great capital, now a graveyard of broken stone and shattered glass. The people who remained refused to look at the sky.

Mallory soon understood why.

When she tilted her head upward, she saw—

A crack in the sky.

Not clouds. Not a storm.

A literal fracture, as if something had taken a blade to reality itself. Through the cracks, she glimpsed something else, something vast and shifting, something that should not be seen.

Elara shuddered. "It wasn’t like this before."

Quinn clenched his jaw. "Then this is because of the entity?"

Mallory swallowed hard. "It’s because of me."

Greg stepped beside her. "We’ll fix it."

Mallory turned to him. "How?"

Greg exhaled. "One step at a time."

It sounded so simple.

But the longer she looked at the crack in the sky—

The more she felt it looking back.

---

Path 1 – The Shadow in the Woods

The Black Hollow Woods were silent. Too silent.

Mallory’s group moved carefully through the trees, weapons ready. The further they went, the colder it became, their breaths turning to mist.

Then Mallory heard it.

Footsteps that weren’t theirs.

She turned.

And there—standing between the trees—

She saw herself.

Her own face. Her own body.

But the eyes? They were empty, void-like, filled with something wrong.

It smiled.

And Mallory felt something pull at her—

Like it was trying to drag her out of herself.

She fought back.

And the battle began.

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Path 2 – When the Sky Breaks

The crack in the sky widened.

Mallory felt it, a pull deep within her, like something was trying to drag her up, out of herself, into the void beyond.

She gritted her teeth. No.

She wouldn’t let this thing win.

She reached inside herself, searching for the power that had once threatened to consume her—but this time, she was in control.

She raised a hand.

And for the first time since escaping the entity’s grasp—

She pushed back.

The crack shuddered, resisting—

But then—

It began to close.

Not fully. Not yet.

But it was a start.

Greg grabbed her arm, steadying her. "Mallory?"

She met his gaze.

"I think I know how to fix this."

---

End of Chapter 121

Two Paths, Two Battles

In Path 1, Mallory faces her own shadow, a doppelgänger born from the remnants of the Forgotten Gate. A being that wants to be her.

In Path 2, Mallory fights to restore reality, using the very power that once tried to consume her.

But both paths lead to one truth—

The battle is only just beginning.

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