Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is purely a fanfic for enjoyment.
Cross-over from various games, books, anime, manga, and movies.
The familiar characters you see here belong to their respected authors and owners.
"Speech"
Arc 7: The Journey - Chapter 5
I snapped Kino's neck in one swift motion, ending her life instantly. Not stopping there, I tore her head from her shoulders and crushed it in my bare hand, bone and flesh collapsing with sickening ease.
In that moment, a violent hunger surged within me, primal and overwhelming, as the Heart of Eldritch pounded furiously in my chest. The corpse of Kino withered unnaturally, shrinking rapidly as though her very existence was being devoured by something unseen. The insatiable craving clawed at me, unbearable for a heartbeat—then, just as suddenly, it dulled, settling into a deep, gnawing hunger that lingered beneath the surface.
But there were other matters that demanded my attention. Hunger could wait.
"Alright, there." I muttered to Yuko, following her instructions after she had spent the entire night persuading me into this choice.
"You sure didn't seem all that mad or sad about killing her." Yuko remarked, one brow arched in sharp curiosity. "If I hadn't seen the branching timelines woven by your power—the paths you glimpse through space and time itself—I would've assumed you had some special attachment to that girl. Yet you tore her apart without hesitation, not even giving her the dignity of asking why before you crushed her like nothing."
"I barely knew her, and she wasn't part of the Eldritch pantheon." I said coldly, my voice stripped of warmth. "No one informed me she was even a candidate for recruitment." Now, with the Heart of Eldritch having devoured Kino, I can feel its pulse tethering me deeper to this world. "The question is—what's the next step?"
"Cause mayhem." Yuko replied without hesitation, her tone calm and eerily detached. "Make them all suffer. Death is mercy, but suffering is eternal. Every man, woman, and child must drown in horror and hatred, begging for release, only to find that death offers nothing. That is true despair—when even the grave is no escape." Her eyes, vacant and depthless, bore into me with a serenity that made her words all the more dreadful.
"Does that include you?" I asked, my gaze narrowing as the hunger clawed at me once more, darker and stronger than before. The Heart of Eldritch beat violently within my chest, urging me to feed.
Yuko's form blurred before my vision, no longer just a woman standing across from me but something delectable, desirable in a way that was both lustful and tasty. My mind twisted the sight of her into sustenance, and the thought that I now saw her as both flesh and food made bile rise in my throat.
A brief moment of sobriety cut through the madness. I blinked, frowning as the realization struck me: my concept of food had shifted completely. Food no longer meant bread, meat, or fruit. It meant existence itself—life, identity, essence. In human logic, that was madness. In eldritch logic, it was instinct.
Crap. Maybe the normal ego I come up with isn't going to survive this at all. Maybe what I thought was a split ego—a way to excuse the thoughts clawing their way through my head—wasn't a split at all. Maybe it's just my mind unraveling, thread by thread, sinking deeper into the abyss with every beat of the Heart of Eldritch.
"Sure, if you can even touch me, that is." Yuko smiled faintly, but the expression withered as quickly as it appeared. "Sadly, you don't meet the requirements for that. Anyway, I've helped Yui enough by letting you glimpse one of the potential paths—one where you devour worlds." She gave a slow nod, then turned and walked toward the nearest wall. Her figure dissolved into its surface as though it were liquid, until nothing remained of her but the echo of her words.
"Wait, she just… left? Just like that?" I muttered, baffled. A beat passed before the gnawing ache returned, clawing at my insides. "Forget about her. I'm hungry…"
The River of Time flared within me, its currents trembling against my perception. My eyes lit up as I gazed out across the vast lands of the present—people, monsters, and entire swarms rushing toward my location—all potential prey.
"Good." I whispered, my voice low and feverish. "Time to test something."
With a thought, the log house unraveled and vanished, reality folding in on itself as if it had never been built. I didn't bother waiting for the first victim to cross my line of sight. Instead, I closed my eyes and surrendered to instinct. The Heart of Eldritch thundered within me, urging me onward. I opened my mouth and inhaled.
And I heard it. Not with my ears, but deeper—an alien register where sensation and perception blurred. The sound of screams tore through me, not from mortal throats but from the will of the world itself. The land cried, the air shrieked, the unseen bones of existence itself keened as I consumed it.
Everything around me bent inward, collapsing, being devoured, stripped down to raw essence that poured into me. The hunger raged, worse than any torment I had endured, harsher even than the countless agonizing deaths under Nyarla's crushing embrace of her lovely breasts. This was no mere appetite. This was a compulsion—a demand.
"Fuck, who the hell takes a bath in cracks?!" I gagged mid-inhale, coughing harshly, my throat burning as I spat, trying to scrape my own tongue clean of the grotesque aftertaste. The flavor was impossible to name—something beyond rot, beyond poison, like tasting the concept of wrongness itself. At the same time, fragments of history slammed into my mind, half-digested, a chaotic stream of memories and truths from what I was devouring.
I staggered, but clenched my jaw. "No… can't stop now. Got to keep this up…!"
I inhaled again, deeper this time, forcing the River of Time into silence, refusing its endless whispers. I didn't want to read every thread of the history of what I consumed. The Heart of Eldritch and the River together would protect me, would filter out anything truly fatal… or so I told myself.
But then it happened.
The world shuddered—and vanished.
In the blink of an eye, everything around me collapsed into pitch black. My lungs filled with emptiness, my senses scrambled. Then, far ahead, I saw it: a sphere, blue and green, so achingly familiar it made my chest twist. Earth. Or something like it. And it was shrinking.
"What…?" My thoughts stumbled. My brain finally processed what I was seeing, and horror turned to fury.
"Hey! Don't you fucking run from me!" I roared, my voice reverberating through the void. My raging hunger for what had slipped from my grasp. The will of the world—it had fled.
I snapped my fingers, forcing a gap to rip open in space. Reality split, and I stepped through—only to be spat back into the void. Again and again, the planet receded, shrinking further, faster, until it was little more than a marble fleeing from me across the abyss.
And then even that marble began to fade.
I snapped my fingers again, this time tearing open a gap that tunneled straight into the planet's core. I inhaled with all the force given to me by the Heart of Eldritch.
A chorus of screams erupted—not from throats, but from the world itself. Panic and horror rang in my skull, echoing across the planet as if every grain of sand, every drop of water, every root and stone carried its own agony.
What felt like years was only minutes. Until, at last, silence fell. I had devoured my first world.
And yet… I was still hungry. The ache gnawed at me without pause.
"Wait." I muttered, staring into the void around me. "How the fuck am I still breathing in outer space or even speaking, for that matter?" The thought lingered for half a heartbeat.
Without hesitation, I raised my hand and tore another gap wide open, my will latching onto a random thread of existence that led to another world.
And I stepped through.
I emerged into a forest, tall trees whispering overhead, their leaves trembling as though they already sensed something wrong with me.
"Okay… I'm starting to see a pattern here." I muttered, scanning my surroundings with a faint frown. With a thought, I stretched the River of Time outward, threading it across the planet like a net. The scan unfurled before me—histories, presents, possibilities. And then my expression froze. "Well, I wasn't expecting this… Eh?"
"Hello, Jin. Long time no see."
The voice came from behind me—soft, familiar, and unsettling in its suddenness. Before I could react, slender arms draped around my neck, a woman's chin resting lightly on my left shoulder. Her warmth pressed against me in a way that made the hunger gnarl deeper.
"I didn't expect you to come visit me while I'm still learning how to improve my cooking skills." She teased gently.
I forced my body to stay still, suppressing the sharp instinct to open a gap and flee.
"Same here, Yor." I said evenly, as calm as I could manage.
This wasn't just a world—it was once Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma. But Yor had bent it, reshaped it, claimed it. She had turned the entire planet into her personal kitchen, a sprawling test site where every river, forest, and city existed only to expand her craft, to refine her endless pursuit of cooking mastery.
The irony didn't escape me. Here I was, carrying a cheat from this very world—or rather, one of the countless versions of it scattered across the multiverse. And yet, instead of a battlefield, I stood in a kitchen-world, staring down an old acquaintance who wielded culinary ambition like a blade or poison in Yor's hands.
"Oh! I can sense you're hungry—perfect!" Yor exclaimed brightly, her tone bubbling with cheer. In a single motion, she spun me around, forcing me to face her directly. Her crimson eyes sparkled with delight. "I just recently learned how to make udon noodles! You must try it!"
Fuck. The memory of that disastrous cooking incident with Ruby and Weiss back at the high school slammed into my head. And even then, it hadn't been pretty. But with Yor? With her, this was going to be so much worse. Catastrophically worse.
"Come on now." She continued, smiling sweetly as though nothing about her words was wrong. "It's a good thing I held back and waited before attacking when I sensed you slip into my world, uninvited. Otherwise…" Her smile widened, sharp and gleaming, though her tone remained casual—like she was commenting on the weather. "I would've flayed your skin from your body, drained your blood like wine, and begun processing your flesh into a proper dish."
And suddenly, I remembered why exactly I like Nyarla more than Yor. At least with Nyarla, I knew exactly what kind of madness I was dealing with. Yor, on the other hand, was a far subtler nightmare, wrapped in an apron and a smile.
"That's… kind of you." I said carefully. My eyes flicked to hers, checking for that telltale glow. Nothing. Relief seeped through me. As long as her eldritch ego remained dormant, I wouldn't have to deal with the other Yor. That was something.
Still, she tugged me along with the ease of someone guiding a guest rather than a prisoner. I allowed myself to be dragged, not that resisting would've changed anything. Her grip wasn't iron, but her presence was.
With everything I'd gained since the past, the awakening Heart of Eldritch, the River of Time, etc, surely I stood a better chance now than before. Surely.
And yet, as I followed her toward whatever meal she had prepared, the truth sank in like a stone in my gut.
Would I even survive eating Yor's cooking?
Who was I kidding?
I was fucked.