Chapter 252
Accept (4)
IAM could feel the cold dark pressing against his skin, the creature's grip forcing him still as if it wanted him to feel every second of what was coming.
Then—without warning—a burst of pale fog exploded into his face, it was point-blank. It hit with the force of a gale, flooding his mouth and nose before he could even react.
He tried to clamp his lips shut, to hold his breath, but it didn't matter. The fog was alive. It twisted and writhed like something sentient, forcing its way past his clenched teeth, snaking up his nostrils, and crawling down his throat. He could feel it burning through his insides, slithering deeper until it merged with it, as though it had always belonged there.
He couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. His mind began to fracture under the onslaught as the poison spread, and soon, the world around him dissolved into chaos.
Faces began to appear in the dark—bloated, eyeless, whispering his name in voices that gurgled like water rushing through broken glass. His own reflection stared back at him from every surface, but each version of himself was wrong—one with his mouth sewn shut, another missing its head entirely.
The walls pulsed like living flesh. Blood trickled upward instead of down, and somewhere, distant but clear, a child was laughing—a hollow, echoing sound that made his stomach twist.
Then the laughter turned into screams. His hands weren't his own anymore; they were rotting and twitching with movements he didn't control. The fog thickened, filling his lungs, his veins, his thoughts—until everything became a single, unbearable blur of sound and color and pain.
He didn't know how long he remained trapped in that nightmare—seconds, minutes, maybe hours—before the creature finally released him. His limp body fell to the ground with a heavy plop, hitting the cold floor like discarded meat. The echoes of the hallucinations still lingered behind his eyes, crawling through his mind even as his consciousness began to fade.
...
When IAM woke, it was with a sharp, shuddering gasp— the air tearing into his lungs as though he'd been drowning. For a moment, he didn't know where he was. Then he felt it.
Something was crawling over his face.
Not something... Many things.
Tiny legs scraped against his skin, moving in frenzied patterns across his cheeks, his forehead, his lips. The sensation sent a violent shiver down his spine. He jerked upright instinctively, flinging several of them off, their faint thuds echoing in the carven. But there were still more, clinging to his clothes, his arms and neck.
He slapped at his chest, brushing them away, and when his hand closed around one, he froze. The thing writhed between his fingers—small, slick, and horribly familiar. He held it closer to his face, and his stomach turned. It was a miniature version of the creature.
His eyes darted around, but the massive one—the real one—was gone. Only these smaller copies remained, crawling across the floor like an infestation.
The tiny creature in his hand squirmed harder, its legs scraping weakly against his palm. Something inside IAM snapped. He squeezed.
There was a crack as it burst in his grip, spilling black liquid between his fingers.
For a heartbeat, everything was silent. Then a low giggle escaped him. It came unbidden and almost manic. His face twisted, his eyes glinting with a strange delight as he stared at the crushed remains.
He grabbed another. Crushed it.
Another giggle—louder this time—slipped from his throat, shaking with something between pleasure and release. He didn't stop to question it. The sound of cracking bodies filled the room, echoing off the walls as he went from one to the next.
And unlike before, unlike the illusions or trials he had faced—these didn't fade or vanish when he killed them. They stayed.
Just like that—caught between madness and release—IAM descended into fits of insane giggles. He stomped, flung, crushed, and squashed every creature in sight. Each movement was frantic, desperate, almost joyful in its brutality. The sound of cracking shells and wet smears filled the air, mixing with his laughter until it all became one distorted noise.
The spawnlings didn't resist. They didn't flee. They simply allowed him to rampage freely, their twitching bodies offering no protest as his hands and shoes tore through them.
Time lost meaning. His laughter came in waves—sometimes low and shuddering, other times breaking into sharp, high-pitched bursts that echoed unnaturally across the room. The more he destroyed, the lighter he felt, until finally, only one remained.
Still giggling, IAM bent down and picked it up delicately, almost tenderly, as if handling something fragile and precious. The tiny creature squirmed weakly in his grasp, and with one last trembling laugh, he closed his fingers around it.
A faint crunch sounded. The giggling stopped.
He watched it fall from his hand, its remains tumbling toward the ground—yet before it even touched the floor, it vanished. And as it did, so did all the others, their bodies evaporating as if they'd never existed.
The silence that followed was absolute.
IAM stood still, his breath heavy, a solemn expression replaced the twisted grin. The fog in his head had cleared; the poison had finally worn off, leaving behind only the hollow ache of awareness. He looked around the empty room, his memory flickering back to what had happened inside the creature.
He shivered.
IAM took a moment to examine himself and confirmed that, once again, his injuries were gone. The deep punctures, the torn flesh, the pain that had consumed him—it had all vanished as if it had never existed. It seemed that when he woke, his body had already been restored.
He stared down at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. The skin was smooth, and untouched. The absence of pain felt unnatural.
His mind began to wander, circling around the same unsettling truth—everything about this place was wrong.
The creatures he had fought, the words that came into his mind—"Deadline," "Spawnling, KASSARA "—all of them came and went without reason, fading like hallucinations. Every time something appeared, it vanished just as suddenly, leaving no trace behind.
The place itself twisted his sense of time. He couldn't tell how long he'd been here; moments bled into each other until they felt meaningless. The black liquid that birthed arms, the walls that sealed him in—all of it made him question if this was even real.
He couldn't remember much—only his name and some fragments of knowledge that felt like they belonged to someone else. Everything else was a blur. But the one thing he was sure of—the one thing that refused to fade—was how wrong this place felt.
He turned slowly, his eyes falling on the far side of the room where the ceiling had begun to drip again.
He turned toward the sound and watched as the black liquid began to drip once more from the hole above, each drop twisting midair before solidifying into another pale arm that joined the pile below. Then another. And another.
IAM watched the process repeat over and over, the steady motion of the falling liquid shaping new arms like some grotesque heartbeat. He eventually realized he would have to wait—wait until the pile reached that hole again so he could climb and escape this place.
He sank down onto a mound of arms, their cold touch pressing faintly against his skin, and waited in silence.
When the heap finally reached the right height, he began to climb. A drop of the black liquid landed on his face midway, but he ignored it, his eyes fixed on the hole above. It was impossible to see what lay beyond—only darkness greeted him.
He paused for a brief moment, staring into the void. This was it. He had been trapped here for too long, and whatever waited on the other side couldn't be worse than staying.
He looked around, his gaze sweeping over the twisted chamber one final time. He had been trapped here for what felt like an eternity, and now it was time to move on—to accept his reality and escape.
With a deep breath, IAM gripped the edges, pulled himself upward, and pushed through the curtain of black liquid into whatever waited beyond.