Feast of the Hollow
The tunnels narrowed.
Twisting veins of Void crystal pulsed along the ceiling, casting sickly lavender hues over the jagged stone floor. Their light flickered in rhythmic spasms, like a dying heartbeat. Every breath Mephisto took burned—metallic, acrid, tainted. The air wasn't stale. It was alive, saturated with an unseen pressure that pressed against his chest.
The deeper he moved, the less natural everything became.
There was no true darkness here.
Just the presence of something watching.
[Void Saturation: 53%]
[Warning: Exposure Accumulating]
[Corruption Risk: Moderate]
The system's warning hovered at the edge of his vision. Mephisto ignored it.
He'd grown used to the ache behind his eyes—the whispering at the corners of his thoughts. The Void didn't scare him anymore.
It fed him.
His fingers tightened around Hollowfang's grip. The obsidian blade pulsed faintly in return, its edge coated in dried black blood. It craved more. So did he.
Then it began.
A sound like bones rattling through wet gravel.
Then the screech.
High-pitched. Wrong. Echoing from all directions at once—sharp enough to rattle his skull.
Then came more.
Not one. Not two.
A chorus.
From the cracks in the walls. From behind the stone. From beneath the floor.
They came crawling.
[Hostile Entities Detected: Masked Wretches x12]
[Threat Level: Swarm | Coordination: Low | Aggression: High]
They poured in like vermin—shapes of twitching limbs and pale masks. Jerking like broken marionettes, necks twisted at grotesque angles, their arms too long, fingers ending in claws that scraped stone. Some sprinted upright on all fours, others leapt like predators from the shadows above.
The Wretches had no eyes behind their masks.
But they saw him.
And they wanted him dead.
Mephisto exhaled once.
Then moved.
The first leapt, screeching. It never reached him.
One clean arc of Hollowfang cleaved it from shoulder to hip, spraying black ichor against the wall. The second lunged low—he slammed his boot into its jaw mid-charge, crushing bone before driving his blade into its spine and ripping it free in one savage pull.
They surrounded him in an instant.
But Mephisto thrived in the storm.
He twisted, stepped, struck—each motion clean, deliberate, violent. Hollowfang whirled through the darkness like a demon's fang. He wasn't just fighting.
He was evolving.
[Enemy Defeated: Void Essence +2]
[Enemy Defeated: Void Essence +2]
[Enemy Defeated: Void Essence +2]
[EXP Gained: 148 | 91 | 135]
The numbers flashed across his vision, but he didn't pause to register them. He didn't need to.
He could feel the difference. Each kill flowed into him. Each death sharpened his reflexes, strengthened his limbs, darkened his thoughts.
He ducked beneath a clawed swipe and drove Hollowfang upward through a Wretch's ribs, splitting it in two. Another leapt onto his back, screeching madly.
Mephisto didn't flinch.
He rammed himself backward into the stone wall, hard enough to crush its torso, then spun and tore its head free with his bare hand.
Black ichor sprayed in a wide arc, dripping from his coat, his hair, his face.
More came. A tide of twisted bodies and masked shrieks. They clawed at him, tried to pull him down beneath them like insects devouring a corpse.
But Mephisto didn't falter.
He roared—a guttural sound, raw and defiant. Not rage.
Something deeper.
A hunger. An answer to the Void.
A Wretch dropped from above, mouth open in a silent scream. Mephisto snatched it mid-air by the throat and slammed it into the stone.
Once.
Twice.
A third time—until its skull crumbled and its mask split down the middle.
Another flanked him from the side.
Too slow.
Hollowfang severed its head in a single sweep. The body twitched, then collapsed.
The swarm began to falter.
But Mephisto didn't.
His eyes blazed, cold and empty. His movements had become smoother, more monstrous. He no longer dodged.
He devoured.
And then—
Silence.
The tunnel floor was soaked in black blood. Severed limbs and shattered masks littered the ground. The faint glow of Void crystals flickered across the carnage.
Mephisto stood alone amidst the bodies, breath heaving.
Hollowfang dripped from its edge, humming with satisfaction.
[All Hostiles Eliminated]
[Void Essence +20]
[Current Total: 30]
[EXP Gained: 340]
[Level Up Available]
But something else shimmered across his interface.
[System Warning: Corruption Threshold Approaching]
[Void Saturation Prolonged]
[Symptoms: Hallucinations | Voice Distortion | Sensory Bleed]
Mephisto staggered—just a step.
His vision swam. The walls around him moved, pulsing like flesh beneath the crystal veins. The heartbeat rhythm returned—louder, closer, as though something enormous slumbered behind the stone.
A high-pitched ringing echoed in his skull.
He clenched his jaw.
Fists tight.
The whispers came next.
So soft.
So familiar.
"Take more…"
"Kill more…"
"You are becoming…"
He pressed a hand to the side of his head.
"Shut up," he muttered.
But they didn't.
They never did.
[Corruption Level: 62%]
[Visual Distortions: Active]
Blood dripped from his cheek. He didn't remember when he'd been cut.
He didn't remember feeling it.
The pain was gone.
Only the hunger remained.
He sheathed Hollowfang with a deliberate motion. The silence was almost worse than the screams. The Wretches had been the gatekeepers.
But what had they been guarding?
The stone arch ahead yawned like a gaping maw. Cracked, half-collapsed, veins of Void pulsing around its edges like tendrils. The air beyond it was dead—not stale, not quiet.
Dead.
And it called to him.
[Next Area: The Chamber of Silence]
[Estimated Threat: Unknown]
[Warning: Corruption Limit Nearing Critical]
Mephisto stepped forward, past the arch.
Not a moment of hesitation.
There was no return now.
Only descent.