The cold sloshed against his ankles. Dark water, thick as ink, rippled around him as he waded deeper into the chamber. The prison walls curved inward, strangling what little space remained. Cracks in the ceiling wept stagnant drips, their echoes lost in the vast, suffocating silence.
Something was down here.
He did not hear them. There was no sound, no whisper, no stir, but he felt them.
The moment his foot touched deeper water, the surface shifted. Movement, slow and patient.
He took another step, and the ripples curled, then stopped. A moment of stillness, too still, he tensed.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, there were hands.
Small, many, too many. Fingers emerged from the dark, thin and skeletal, their nails long and jagged. They did not grab, they dragged.
His breath hitched. He lurched backward, wrenching his leg free as hands clamped onto his calf. They did not grip like men, they gripped like shadows that had drowned long ago.
He stumbled, fell, and the water closed over his head, and darkness engulfed him. Something unseen brushed his cheek. Cold, not like ice, but like a grave.
His chest tightened. The surface...he could not see it. Up or down, he could not tell. The water shifted, and a shape slithered closer.
His lungs burned, and he twisted, threw himself back with all his strength, crashing onto the stone floor outside the flooded chamber. His body rolled, drenched, gasping, the hands did not follow.
They waited, and the water stilled, featureless, glassy, waiting for him to step forward again. He sat up, dripping, shaking, cold.
He forced himself to breathe, long and slow. He counted his heartbeats. One, two, three.
The silence pressed in. Not just silence, but absence. The prison breathed, but nothing else did. The rot in the jails did not stir, the corpses did not move, this place was dead, and so was he, if he stayed here.
A thought slid into his skull, slow and serpentine. A whisper that was not a whisper. His own voice, but twisted.
"You could eat them."
His stomach clenched. That was wrong, abnormal, aberrant.
"Like before, like the last one. They're already dead, but you... you don't have to be."
A shiver crawled down his spine, he swallowed, but his throat was dry. The hunger from before had receded, but it had not disappeared. It lay dormant, waiting, watching.
He clenched his fists.
No.
He turned back to the black waters. The drowned things waited, and here was no other path.
A choice. Forward or die.
The whisper returned, curling around his mind like a slow noose.
"You could make them part of you."
He closed his eyes, and breathed. Then, slowly, he stepped forward.
The water swelled as they rose.
Dark figures, half-seen, half-formed, rose from the black, their shapes flickering like candlelight. The Drowned Shadows did not scream, they did not breathe, they only pulled.
Hands clawed at his skin, too many to count, too strong to resist. Cold, wrong, endless. His legs locked, his breath hitched, his body sinking... no, no, no!
Panic clawed at his chest, but something deeper coiled underneath. Not fear, not weakness, but something older, something waiting.
Move.
He twisted, driving his foot into the chest of the nearest shade. It should have done nothing, it was made of shadow, of water, of something less than flesh, but it staggered.
It reeled, it bent, it could be harmed, and if it could be harmed, then it could be killed. His body knew this before his mind did, and his new arm burned, not with pain, but with power.
Dark veins pulsed beneath his skin, twisting, writhing, and something inside him uncoiled.
He reached, shadow answered.
The darkness rippled, not from the Drowned, but from him. A hand, a claw, an extension of himself. It shot forward, tendrils lashing through the water like starving serpents.
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The first shade vanished, not with a scream, not with a struggle, just a shuddering wisp of blackness that slid into his core.
He felt it, not flesh, not blood, but essence.
He felt full. Not hunger, not warmth, just full. A fullness that did not belong to him.
The Drowned Shadows hesitated, he did not.
His hands moved. One real, one not, clutching, taking, devouring.
More of them collapsed, swallowed by his will, their forms unraveling into vapor. He did not eat them, he absorbed them.
It should have been revolting, and it was, but it also felt right.By the time the last one fell, the chamber was still again, silent, and watching.
His breath came in ragged gasps, water dripping from his clothes, and his hands shook.
He looked down at his new arm. The numbers burned onto his flesh, surfacing like wounds reopening:
Eclipse - 4
Core - 3
Assimilation - 2
He almost screamed. He bit down on it instead. The whisper was back, his own voice, twisted.
"You're changing."
He clenched his fist, and willed the numbers away, they sank beneath his skin like ink fading into paper.
No time for this.
He turned toward the tunnel ahead, a shaft stretching upward. Light, and beyond it, a name he had never heard, yet somehow knew.
The Maw of Despair.
A shiver crawled through him, but there was no time for fear, no time for doubt, no time to question what he was becoming.
He climbed.
The tunnel walls were slick, uneven, crumbling with every movement. Stone jutted out at odd angles, too brittle to trust, too smooth to hold. His fingers ached, he wasn’t strong enough for this, but he climbed anyway.
Every inch upward was a battle. His arms burned, his chest heaved, his grip faltered. He had no memory of training for this, no memory of training for anything, but his body still knew how to move, how to survive, how to fight.
A crack split open beside him. A hiss, a whisper, a clicking sound, wet, skittering, hungry, and claws came out, something latched onto his leg.
He nearly lost his grip, fingers slipping against the stone. His head snapped downward, and he saw it.
It wasn’t human, it wasn’t anything. A thing shaped like hunger, like suffering. Its head twisted unnaturally, eyes hollow pits, mouth a chasm of broken teeth.
It didn’t scream, it just opened its jaws and lunged.
His body moved before thought. His new hand lashed forward, shadow twisting into shape, not a weapon, but a claw, a talon, something inhuman and lethal.
It slashed through the abysswretch’s skull. The creature writhed, convulsed, but did not die. Its body snapped inward, collapsing like wet paper. Then, it surged forward again, limbs bending, reshaping, refusing to fall.
He ripped it apart, not once, not twice, but again, and again, and again.
It still crawled, it still climbed. A second one burst from another crack, skittering toward his arm, then a third, slithering from the tunnel’s edge.
Too many, too fast, he couldn’t hold on. A claw raked across his side. Pain, bright, sharp, real. His vision blurred, his grip loosened, the world lurched.
He fell.
No, he almost fell.
His shadow moved before he did.
A tendril lashed outward, anchoring into the stone, halting his fall inches before the abyss. His arm burned, his bones strained, but he did not let go.
Not now, not here.
With a final, desperate pull, he swung himself upward, over the ledge, onto solid ground.
The Abysswretches screeched below, their limbs twisting toward him, but the cracks that birthed them did not follow.
He had escaped..... for now.
He collapsed onto his back, gasping, his heart pounding like a war drum. His body ached, his lungs burned, his arms trembled.
The numbers surfaced again, unbidden, unwanted.
Eclipse - 5
Core - 4
Assimilation - 3
He clenched his teeth, willed them away once more, and they sank into his flesh again..
Above him, the tunnel stretched endlessly, light flickered at its peak, impossibly distant, but he had climbed this far, and he wasn’t done yet, not even close.
The stone was cold beneath his back. His breaths came slow, heavy, each one thick with exhaustion. The tunnel stretched above him, endless, a throat of stone swallowing all light.
He needed to move, but he didn’t, not yet. His fingers twitched, raw and trembling from the last fight. The Abysswretches had nearly torn him apart. He had won, he had climbed...
Something shifted in the dark, a wet snap, a slow creak. Not from above, from below.
He pushed himself upright, instincts screaming. Something moved at the edge of his vision, unraveling from the tunnel walls like marionettes cut free from their strings.
Blood Puppets.
Their bodies weren’t flesh, they were red sinew and twisting veins, strung together by something that pulsed, something that breathed. They did not walk, they hung.
Strings of blood connected them to the ceiling, stretching, shifting, pulling them forward. Their heads lolled unnaturally, empty sockets staring through him. Not dead, but waiting.
He rose to his feet.
One of them twitched, another lurched, a third snapped forward. His shadow struck first, blades forming, sharp enough to carve through flesh.
The first Puppet lunged, he slashed, it fell. The second snapped forward. He ripped through it, sending its veins unraveling into liquid gore. The third dropped from above, too close, too fast, he barely twisted in time.
A clawed hand raked across his side, slicing flesh, but he didn’t stop, didn’t feel it. He tore them apart, again, and again, and again.
Frustration burned through his veins, mixing with something deeper, something darker. Anger, fear, and then, silence.
He stood among the carnage, chest rising, falling. They were gone.
Then...more of them, emerging from the far end of the tunnel, more than before. So fast, so many.
The air felt colder, the walls trembled, as if the tunnel itself knew.
He had to run, no choice. He did not wait, he jumped. His hands caught the stone, fingers digging deep, and he climbed.
Faster, higher.
The puppets below lunged, bloodstrings stretching, pulling them forward. The cracks in the walls widened, and the whispers began again.
The Abysswretches were coming too, but so was the light. It was closer now...blinding, golden, warm.
His arms screamed, his body burned, but he didn’t stop.
The whispers turned to screeches, something grabbed his ankle, he didn’t hesitate. His shadow struck, the limb snapped, the thing fell.
The light was just ahead, one more pull, just one more, and...
He was out.
The cold air hit him like a wave. Bright, open sky, crumbling ruins, a world beyond the prison, but he had no time to take it in. He twisted, grabbing the massive gate of the tunnel, and with the last of his strength, he shut it.
The creatures slammed into the other side, snarling. Clawing, wailing, but they could not pass.
His legs buckled, his vision blurred, and he slumped against the gate, body failing him.
The last thing he heard before unconsciousness claimed him was the sound of the prison breathing below.
