The Shroud did not release him.
Days—or what passed for them in this dreamless, starless abyss—bled together into one long, gray twilight. There was no sunrise, no moon, no comfort of shifting skies. There was only the endless expanse of black, glass-like plains under a ceiling of roiling haze, and the occasional, heat-shimmer of something truly alien lurking at the edge of the fog. Kairon had thought surviving the courtyard of the Hollowed would be enough to earn his release. The Shroud thought otherwise.
He trudged on, the gnawing hunger a constant companion. The wounds from that first fight had closed in sickeningly unnatural ways, the skin puckered over threads of black, scar-like tissue that sometimes pulsed with a faint, cold heat. But the exhaustion was real, a soul-deep weariness that weighed heavier with each step.
Then—movement.
A shape slouched from the mist, its limbs dragging with a sickly, boneless grace. Another Hollowed. But this one was horribly different. Its emaciated body was wrapped in hundreds of slithering, semi-corporeal shadows, like leeches of pure darkness feeding on its frame. They writhed and coiled, occasionally lashing out into the mist. Its mouth, a lipless gash on a featureless face, opened wider than any human jaw should, spilling a discordant chorus of whispers that grated against his mind.
Kairon froze. The black veins in his own arms began to burn, and his stomach coiled into a tight, painful knot. The feeling was a nauseating paradox. Part of him recoiled in terror, but a larger, more insistent part of him wanted it. The same ravenous hunger that had surged in him during that first desperate kill now rose like a tide of black water, clawing at the foundations of his sanity.
Feed, the whispers inside him urged. The voice was no longer entirely foreign. It had echoes of his own.
The Shadow-Gorged Hollowed lurched, its movement a fluid, unnatural blur. It was too fast, too close. Kairon threw himself sideways, the creature's shadow-wreathed claws grazing his ribs, leaving trails of icy fire on his skin. He staggered, then retaliated with the raw desperation of a cornered animal—fists, elbows, knees, anything to create distance. But the creature didn't bleed. It didn't even flinch. It only absorbed the blows, the shadows covering it writhing faster, thicker, as if feeding on his kinetic energy.
His body screamed at him to give up. His mind whispered of the sweet release of surrender. And yet, his hunger roared louder than all of it.
With a final, guttural cry that was more beast than man, he surged forward, slamming both hands against the Hollowed's throat and letting himself sink. He wasn't fighting it anymore. He was joining it. His jaw opened—he didn't remember choosing to, it just happened—and he tore at the writhing shadows clinging to its form.
They poured into him like smoke, a torrent of hot, electric agony and ecstasy. The taste was of bitter cold, stolen life, and the intoxicating fizz of raw power. It filled his veins, his marrow, his very soul.
The Hollowed convulsed, its psychic whispers turning into a single, piercing shriek like breaking glass. Its form destabilized, and it collapsed into a pile of fine black ash.
Kairon staggered back, clutching his stomach, a guttural retch tearing from his throat.
The hunger was gone. No, not gone. It was sated. Pacified. For now.
The black haze around him seemed to thin, the world snapping into a sharper focus. He felt… more. Stronger, his senses honed to a razor's edge, as though some invisible veil had been torn away from his perception. He could see the subtle, flowing currents in the mist, hear the faint, chitinous echoes of things skittering in the far distance. But alongside that terrible clarity came a deep, persistent itch under his skin, like invisible teeth gnawing at him from within. The consumed essence was now a part of him, a parasite in his blood.
The Shroud was silent, watching, its presence a palpable, judging weight.
Kairon spat a glob of black saliva onto the glass-like ground. He forced his trembling legs to move, to carry him away from the ashes of his meal.
"You're feeding me to them… or them to me," he rasped, his own voice sounding alien to his ears. "What the hell are you turning me into?"
No answer came from the abyss. It offered no justification.
But he knew one thing with chilling certainty. The Shroud wasn't done with him. He hadn't been tested for survival alone. No, this was a forging. It was shaping him, digging hooks of hunger and power deep into his soul, ensuring that if he ever emerged, he wouldn't be the same man who fell in.
And somewhere in the deep, quiet place where his own thoughts used to be, the hunger whispered back, its voice now almost indistinguishable from his own.
More.