The howling blizzard struck as relentlessly as ever.

The cold was nothing new, he was all too familiar with the frigid bite of the winds, but it would never be something that would stop hurting.

Five Pebbles laid near lifelessly on the floor of what was once his puppet chamber, a place suffering the full brunt of the ravages of time. A once sealed spot deep within his structure had been torn open to the gusts of frigid gales, the walls having collapsed and the room itself having lost power long ago. The iterator was left completely alone in the unforgiving snowstorms, cut off from all forms of communication for cycles he had long forgotten. The overseers he had neglected messages from so many times before had ceased function, in an unfortunate period where any company would have been a welcome blessing.

All Pebbles had to cling onto were his memories, and even those had faded into nearly incoherent white noise. Friends he wasn't sure he had known, actions he could barely piece together, emotions that he wasn't even convinced he could feel. Everything was too fuzzy, and the unforgiving cold filled what little room he had left in his mind with a deep throbbing pain, further deteriorating his ability to recall what precious little information he could.

But even a little would be enough for him now.

In a brief spark of recollection, Pebbles spots the one pearl he still had access to, resting right next to his frostbitten arm. With all the strength he could muster, the derelict iterator clutched onto the small orb, pulling it close to his chest and gripping it as tightly as he could.

This pearl was the only thing he had left. A relic of a time long past, storing a hymn that he would attempt to use and find comfort in his solace...

He couldn't remember the song.

Despite this, he could at least piece together how to make the pearl work. His hands clasped against the sides of the orb, and with all the focus he could manifest he poured his effort into activating the one tether he had to his sanity.

With a weak whine, the pearl floated out of his hands, hovering inches above them before squeaking out a faint, miserable sounding tune...

All the notes were wrong.

Every few seconds, the melody would distort and crackle, forcing the iterator to focus more intensely to even keep the pearl's music going despite it's condition being far too worn out to be deemed functional.

No. Even if the pearl would not adhere to his wishes, he could at least sing along with the tune.

He made an attempt, tried to force his voice out through the howling winds...

But even if he could hear it, the words he spoke were not aligned with the music, the memories of what to say, chant or incant were as faded as the pearl he focused so intensely on.

Despite all this, in the face of his crumbling sanity, he never stopped. Fruitlessly singing out while his voice was swallowed up, like an insignificant creature in the growing torrent of snow. He couldn't afford to stop.

This was all he could do.

This was all he had...

But even that was taken away, as a strong gust swept the pearl from his gaze, the sphere rolling through the piling snow until it was lost in an endless white expanse, another eternity that took away something precious to him.

How could he be so trapped in such an expanse?

Why did the world force him to float when there was nothing left to hold onto?

Why did he have to live through so much... nothing?

Every moment was agony, Pebbles wanted it to end, but it never did.

He closed his eyes, slowly curling up on the rough snow-coated floor. Losing consciousness would be a blessing, albeit a temporary one.

No matter what happened, he'd always wake back up again.

Pebbles awoke to a nearly silent night. The blizzard had finally settled down, and the pain he felt had lessened somewhat.

It was still debilitating, but at least he knew that there was less of it flooding his mind.

But rather than the lack of snow, what stood out more to him was the presence of a creature.

He slowly lifted his head, his eyes straining to make out its features in the darkness. He was fortunate that it was carrying some sort of glowing object that made it easier to see.

It was green, a bright and lush tone, its relatively small body covered in a thick coat of soft looking fur dotted with little specks of snow. Its eyes seemed to be shut, but likely they were simply very thin or obscured by all of its fur, an adaptation that helps with vision in heavy snowstorms.

Pebbles felt like he had seen this sort of creature before, but his attempts at recalling returned empty, besides some vague shapes of how he assumes they would look. It did leave him to notice that this particular creature seemed on the heftier end of its kind, probably having gorged itself on food to keep warm in this cold weather.

Not thinking much of it, Pebbles continued to watch as the creature stepped closer, its gaze locked with his until eventually they were close enough that the creature could reach out a limb and touch him.

A strange situation, but the iterator had no power to stop whatever the little beast wanted to do, and anything it did would probably be better than suffering silently in the snow... whether it be having company, or being violently ripped apart.

The green creature's paws suddenly held up the bottom of Pebbles' chin, and he would have jumped from the sudden contact if he weren't so drained. A second paw joined the first, and soon after he felt his head lifted up so his eyes were level with the creature's.

The gesture felt oddly comforting. He had no idea what it was planning to do, or why it was so gentle, or if it even saw this as a comforting action. Of course he didn't care about any of that, after so long in isolation, he was starved for any form of attention and companionship, even a false gesture would be taken in full by his desperate mind.

What came next was far more surprising than anything Pebbles expected, with the creature's long thin tongue snaking out of its mouth and slowly sliding across his face. He would have been disgusted in any other situation, in almost any other place at almost any other time he would have attempted to ensure such a thing would not repeat itself... But the creature's tongue was warm... it lathered him with its slick drool that brought back a faint memory of comfort, away from the howling winds and bitter cold.

Pebbles didn't know how long he laid there, being licked over and over.

Even if he could question it, he wouldn't.

He simply kept his eyes shut and imagined himself enveloped in warmth, surrounded by... by... he didn't know who... but he knew he wanted them around him.

Gwwwrrlll...

The sudden noise pulled him out of his thoughts, his eyes darting open as he stared at the creature holding him.

Bwrrrrggrr...

No wonder it had been licking him so much, it was simply savouring his taste before making a meal of him.

…

He wouldn't object.

If anything, this could be some respite. His life was a miserable repetition of constant suffering now, he could never do anything to improve his current situation. The blizzards had never killed him, despite being overcome by frostbite more times than he could remember. Even if he were to die like this, at least this creature will make more use of him than he could make of himself.

It wouldn't matter either way.

The iterator felt a sudden wave of warm air waft over his face, the creature having opened up its maw far wider than he thought it could possibly manage, but after his initial surprise he found himself staring longingly into the dark slimy passage of its throat, the heat emanating from within far too enticing to resist.

As he saw the cavernous maw move closer to him, Pebbles braced himself for the suffering to come. The creature's teeth were somewhat dull, but that would only mean it would take a much longer time to chew through him.

He closed his eyes and waited, yet instead of pain, he felt the same comforting softness of the creature's tongue, but all around his head. Somehow it had managed to squeeze his head into its mouth, and was gently easing him in as though it were handling an infant.

He wasn't sure what to think of it. Being swallowed whole seemed like a mercy on its own, though he was unsure how such a small beast would manage to devour him entirely, but the creatures of this world were never the kind to simply do ordinary things.

In a sudden contrast to the gentle easing, the walls around Pebbles quickly contracted, squeezing his head tightly but not painfully down the creature's surprisingly stretchy throat. The smothering warmth felt even better now, and the steady thumping sounds of its beating heart soothed the withered iterator deeply.

The fleshy surroundings rippled slowly, rhythmically pulsing and squeezing him closer to the awaiting stomach below, the sounds of hungry rumbling growing steadily louder with every passing minute, and a faint, near-imperceptible golden glow trickling up slightly from deeper within.

His mind was interrupted yet again by a weight being removed from his back, and the feeling of gravity bearing down on him more directly as his body was now pointed straight down. The cords attached to his spine had likely been severed somehow, allowing the creature access to the rest of the iterator's body. Pebbles almost sighed to himself, feeling like a binding chain on him had been broken... if only for a little while.

Soon after, the regular squeezing resumed, with the creature's methodical gulping finally getting his head to the entrance of its stomach. A tight ring of flesh separated Pebbles from the chamber he would spend his final moments, with the golden glow shining through the tiniest crack between both sides.

Something about this felt familiar... He didn't know why, but now he wanted the creature to finish what it started, to find some purpose to himself even if it meant being a simple meal.

With an unceremonious squelch, the barrier was opened and as his face crossed the rubicon, he was met with an incomprehensible sight.

A vast sea of pure darkness that shined brighter than the midday sun, bathing him in an overwhelming golden glow.

This couldn't be possible. He had to be hallucinating... Was he even inside the creature he had met before?

No, he couldn't be... his mind must have been playing tricks on him, just like it had so many times before...

Glrmph!

The sudden squeeze against his legs pushed him forward into that endless void. The tight confines he was in before seemingly vanishing once his body was sent plummeting towards the paradoxical sea.

What felt like an eternity flew by him in an instant as he crashed into the boundless darkness, enveloped by nothing, and yet surrounded by infinity, descending forever.

His mind was overcome by fear and confusion, and in his struggles he felt his trajectory change, being pushed back to a surface he couldn't perceive.

For a moment, he wanted it all to stop.

The more he wished the faster he was pushed.

Soon he would escape the empty ocean.

Then what?

He would return to his empty suffering... He would go back to floating fruitlessly...

All the movement around him stopped. Finally he understood.

His mind relaxed, his body went limp and then at long last.

He let himself sink...

The glow returned, and immediately he was pulled back into the unending expanse of nothing.

This was it... this was what he had been looking for...

He didn't even notice when all the pain stopped, even as his body seemed to slowly dissolve into the nothingness, flaking off in golden shards that were swallowed by the darkness like dying embers.

As his physical form was stripped away, he finally felt at ease, his soul filling with the comfort of incomprehensible beings far too vast for even him to comprehend.

Motes of light sparkled across the void, drifting aimlessly as he sank deeper, whispering words beyond his understanding.

Until one voice finally echoed through his being.

“Brother... You made it... You're here...”

A glowing figure floated in front of him.

While he did not have eyes to see or ears to hear, he knew.

“M-Moon?”

“Yes Pebbles... Your big sister...”

Pebbles wanted to say more, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

His soul was overcome with emotions he couldn't describe.

Both figures simply embraced themselves, rejoicing an endless cycle finally broken, and a bond finally restored.

BWOOOAAAUURRPH!!!

The Saint cooed happily at the heavy weight in their belly, gently pushing their paws against the grumbling mass of tight fluff they were leaning on.

All of the movements within had settled down, besides the steady churning of its stomach as it prepared to fully process the goop that remained of the iterator.

Ever since they had begun employing this new method of ascension, they found the harsh winds of the cyclical snowstorms far less irritating. The fallen gods made for surprisingly nutritious meals and were wonderfully cooperative for the most part. Such filling feasts allowed the slugcat to traverse the lands in the colder times, when most predators would have gone into their dens, leaving it with a much less dangerous trek between the superstructures.

Blllrrrgh... Sllllrssh...

Of course, there was always the issue of digesting meals that outsized them, which while time-consuming, was far too pleasurable to not at the very least make an attempt at during each encounter.

Most of them were usually so cold that the promise of warmth within a comforting stomach was more than enough to win them over.

If the iterator was too indecisive, then they could always perform a regular ascension and consume the puppet afterwards.

For now though, the Saint would need to focus on finishing this meal first. Uniting a pair of lost siblings is quite arduous work, and the remaining members of their local group will be quite the journey to undertake.

But that will happen in due time...