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Irene and Hans, after hearing the words "Who the hell is Sarah?" widened their eyes in shock. The pieces of the puzzle were suddenly falling into place in the most horrifying way possible. All of them had come to the same terrible realization they had been tricked from the very beginning.
"My, my. You caught on pretty quickly."
The voice didn't come from any direction they could pinpoint. Instead, it rang directly inside all of their heads, bypassing their ears entirely and resonating through their skulls like the tolling of a funeral bell. The moment the words finished echoing in their minds, the world around them turned completely dark.
When their vision returned, the scenery had shifted dramatically. They now stood on a completely flat surface that stretched endlessly in all directions, smooth as polished marble but dark as obsidian. The oppressive silence was broken by an unsettling sound that made their skin crawl countless voices laughing in unison, a chorus of mirth that held no warmth or joy, only malicious amusement.
They had been surrounded by countless Skin Walkers.
The creatures formed perfect circles around them, row after row extending into the darkness beyond what their eyes could see. Each one stood perfectly still, their bandaged faces turned toward the small group of hunters. The sound of their synchronized laughter created a wall of sound that seemed to press against their minds from all sides.
"I thought we were a team," came Sarah's voice, sweet and mocking.
"My cute little hunters, why are you glaring at me like you want to kill me?"
Above them, Sarah floated in a relaxed position, as if she were lounging in an invisible chair. Her face was full of that same mocking smile they had seen countless times before, but now it carried a weight of malevolence that made their blood run cold. Her blonde hair drifted around her as if she were underwater, and her blue eyes held a light that was definitely not human.
Irene and Hans tensed immediately, pulling out their weapons with movements sharp with panic and desperation. Their breathing came quick and shallow as the full scope of their situation became clear. They were surrounded, outnumbered, and facing something that had been playing with them like toys.
Sarah's smile grew even wider as she watched their fear.
"My little Doctor, why don't you pull out your weapons as well?"
Nox thought for a while, his mind racing through calculations and possibilities. When he spoke, his voice was calm but filled with the weight of grim acceptance.
"It's no use, isn't it? We can't fight all of these Skin Walkers."
He looked up at Sarah floating above them, his eyes narrowing behind his mask.
"And you…you should be on the same level or even stronger than that Avatar of the Obsidian God we just fought, right? Sarah?"
He paused, letting the name hang in the air like an accusation.
"No, I should call you by your real name." His voice dropped to a deadly whisper.
"Isn't that right, Avatar of the Skin God?"
Sarah's smile grew impossibly wide, stretching her face in ways that human anatomy shouldn't allow. Her transformation began immediately, starting with that horrifying grin.
Her beautiful human features began to melt and shift like clay in the hands of a mad sculptor. Her blonde hair darkened and grew longer, becoming stringy and unkempt. Her skin took on a sickly pale color, almost gray in the unnatural light of this realm. But most disturbing of all was her face.
Multiple faces began to emerge from what had once been Sarah's head. They sprouted like grotesque flowers blooming from flesh, each one bearing a different expression but all sharing the same malevolent intelligence. Eyes opened where there should be skin, blinking independently of one another. Some faces were young, others old, some human, others decidedly not.
Her body stretched and twisted, growing taller and more imposing. Her arms elongated grotesquely, fingers extending into claw like appendages that dripped with something that might have been blood or something far worse. Her clothes dissolved away, replaced by what looked like a patchwork of different skins sewn together a macabre quilt of flesh that shifted and moved as if the pieces were still alive.
The faces that now covered her head and neck all opened their mouths in unison, revealing rows of teeth that were all different shapes and sizes, as if they had been collected from various victims over countless years. Some were human teeth, others belonged to creatures that had never walked the earth in natural form.
Her eyes all of them glowed with the same malevolent light, but now there were dozens of them scattered across her transformed visage. They blinked at different intervals, creating a hypnotic and deeply unsettling pattern that hurt to look at directly.
The Avatar of the Skin God stood before them in all her terrible glory, a being that represented the ultimate violation of the human form. She was everything that humanity feared about losing their identity, their skin, their very essence. She was the nightmare of transformation taken to its most extreme conclusion.
The countless Skin Walkers around them began to laugh louder, their voices joining with the multiple voices emerging from their goddess's many mouths. The sound was deafening, overwhelming, a symphony of madness that threatened to shatter their sanity.
When she spoke again, it was with all of her mouths at once, creating a chorus of voices that ranged from the sweet tone they remembered as Sarah's to guttural growls that belonged to no human throat.
"We finally met again," she said, her smile somehow becoming even more horrifying as it spread across multiple faces simultaneously.
"What should I call you now Yellow or Plague?"