The roar split the air behind him.
It was not a sound — it was a blade.
The stone shuddered, the dust fell like rain.
Orien ran.
Every muscle screamed, every breath burned.
His heartbeat thundered in his skull, drowning out thought itself.
The creature followed — fast. Too fast.
Its steps hit the ground like hammers, the cavern trembling beneath its weight.
A hiss.
He dove sideways.
A stream of black liquid shot past his face and splashed against the wall.
The stone melted, sagging like flesh beneath fire.
The stench that followed was unbearable — acid and rot, mixed with something faintly alive.
He rolled, stumbled upright, and kept running.
The tunnel twisted, dipped, rose again.
The red fissures in the rock offered barely enough light to see — just enough for the shadows to move.
The spider shrieked — a sound so violent it rattled inside his bones.
He didn't look back.
He didn't dare.
He just ran.
A jet of venom struck the ground before him, splattering into smoke and foam.
He jumped over it, landed hard, pain shooting up his legs.
Blood ran from his fingers — he hadn't even noticed his nails tearing on the rock.
The tunnel turned sharply upward.
Light — faint, grey, trembling — leaked through the cracks ahead.
The exit.
He forced his legs to move faster.
The ground trembled under each step.
Behind him, the monster's limbs scraped against the walls, dragging sparks from the stone.
He burst outside.
The world hit him like a wave of cold.
He collapsed, coughing, hands sinking into fine, powdery dust.
Air — cold, thin, metallic — filled his lungs.
He raised his head…
…and froze.
A sea of black stretched out before him.
Not dark water — but something thicker, slower.
A liquid night, glimmering faintly as if reflecting a light that didn't exist.
The sky above was pale grey, washed of color.
And in that colorless sky, a white sun burned — not warm, not kind, but fierce and sterile, a flame of dead light hanging motionless above the horizon.
Its radiance did not illuminate.
It revealed.
The sand beneath him wasn't sand — it was ash, fine and cold, clinging to his skin.
No wind. No waves.
The whole world was holding its breath.
He turned.
The spider had reached the mouth of the cave.
Its huge body filled the opening, its fangs glistening.
It let out a guttural hiss that rippled through the air… then stopped.
It didn't step forward.
Its front legs hovered just above the ashen ground.
It shifted, uncertain, uneasy.
Something in this place — this silent shore — repelled it.
Dozens of glistening eyes blinked, reflecting the pale horizon.
Then, slowly, the creature backed away.
One step.
Another.
And then it was gone.
The darkness of the cave swallowed it whole.
Orien stood there, frozen, staring at the emptiness where it had vanished.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Even his heartbeat felt out of place.
He turned back toward the sea.
The black waves rolled in slow, soundless motions.
Every crest shimmered faintly, as if light was trying — and failing — to be born from within the darkness.
A shiver ran through him.
"Where… am I?" he whispered.
The words barely left his lips before they were swallowed by the air.
No echo. No answer.
The ground beneath his feet pulsed, ever so slightly — like the faint rhythm of something enormous breathing far below.
Then the wind came.
A thin, cold current slid across the dead shore, carrying a whisper he could not understand.
He turned toward the horizon — and froze again.
Something was moving on the surface of the black sea.
Far away.
Huge.
Slow.
It broke the water like a mountain exhaling, too vast to belong to any living thing.
For a moment, he forgot to breathe.
And as he stared, Orien realized the truth:
This world was alive.
And it had just noticed him.
***
His instinct screamed at him to move away.
He cast one last glance at the sea — that endless sheet of ink swallowing all light.
The false white sun glimmered on its surface, frozen and still, like time itself had stopped.
Every fiber of his being told him the same truth:
That thing was not an ocean.
It was a wound.
A mouth that should never have been open.
He turned his back and started walking inland.
The ground rose in slow, uneven steps — vast shelves of gray stone stretching as far as he could see.
The farther he went, the softer it felt under his feet.
Not sand, not rock… something in between.
Something that moved when he stepped on it, sinking slightly, pulsing — as though the earth itself were breathing.
A low vibration rolled through the ground from time to time.
Deep. Distant. Like the heartbeat of something enormous, buried far below.
He walked carefully, each footfall measured.
The silence was total, yet the air carried a faint metallic taste, sharp and bitter — like rust and blood.
Strange pillars jutted from the landscape, twisted and smooth, half mineral, half organic.
Some looked like bone.
Others like trees, petrified mid-growth, their surfaces laced with dull veins of light that flickered weakly, as though trying not to die.
Ash fell from the colorless sky in slow spirals.
It clung to his skin, warm for a moment, before cooling instantly to dust.
There was sound, but it didn't come from any direction he could name — a whispering beneath the silence.
A crackle, a faint rustle, as if claws scraped across stone somewhere very far away… or very near.
He crouched behind a ridge of black rock and peered ahead.
The ground before him was cracked open — deep fissures twisting like veins, exhaling faint steam.
Some of them pulsed.
He could feel it under his soles.
The earth here was alive.
A thick mist crawled across the ground, hugging the surface like a living thing.
It brushed against his legs and recoiled instantly, slipping back into the crevices.
Even the fog here seemed afraid.
He paused to breathe.
His heart was racing again, though nothing moved.
The air wasn't just heavy — it was charged, vibrating softly, like the world was listening.
"What… is this place?" he whispered.
His voice vanished as soon as it left his lips.
Swallowed.
He pressed on.
Every step was careful, silent.
He avoided the cracks, the twitching rocks, the faint glimmers of light.
He could feel the danger in everything — in the air, in the silence, in the way the horizon seemed to lean closer the longer he stared.
Then — cold.
It hit him without warning, like a wave from nowhere.
Not from outside.
From within.
His chest locked, his breath froze in his throat.
Something was watching him.
He didn't know how he knew.
***
The air grew heavier the deeper he went.
Not hot. Not cold. Just… dense.
Each breath felt like a struggle against invisible weight.
Even silence had substance here.
Orien stopped for a moment, squinting at the endless gray plain ahead.
The pale sky hung motionless above him, a sheet of dull silver stretching forever.
The false white sun gave no warmth, no shade — just a steady, colorless light that never changed.
Nothing moved.
Not even the dust.
He swallowed.
The taste of iron lingered on his tongue.
Everything — the air, the ground, even the light — tasted of metal.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath. "If I were a nightmare, I'd probably live here too. Great neighborhood."
He chuckled quietly — not from humor, but from nerves.
The sound died almost instantly, eaten by the stillness.
The ground beneath his boots wasn't really stone.
It was too soft.
When he pressed down, it flexed slightly, like muscle.
Sometimes it shivered, sending faint tremors through his legs.
As though the land itself was… breathing.
The blue mist thickened, swirling lazily around his ankles.
It clung to his clothes, retreating only when he moved.
Now and then, faint shapes drifted inside it — like silhouettes of faces, blurred, dissolving when he tried to focus.
He walked on, every sense sharpened, his instincts screaming without cause.
It wasn't silence that scared him.
It was how the silence listened back.
No sound. No life. No reason. That means something's waiting.
Ahead, the terrain narrowed into a forest of translucent pillars.
They rose from the living ground like veins of glass, tall as towers, glowing faintly from within.
Light pulsed through them — steady, rhythmic, in perfect time with his own heartbeat.
He reached out and touched one.
Cold.
Too cold.
The pulse skipped once.
And for a heartbeat, he thought he felt something touch him back.
He jerked his hand away.
A ripple passed through the glass — faint, but visible — and beneath the surface, for a moment, he saw a shape.
Not quite human.
Not quite there.
Then, the sound.
A faint click.
Sharp. Wet. Close.
He froze.
Nothing moved.
The mist swayed, but there was no wind.
Then, another click.
He turned his head slowly.
The vibration came again — deep, resonant — from the ground itself.
No… not again…
The blue fog rippled outward.
A shape rose from it — black, angular, twitching.
First one leg. Then another. Then six more.
The creature crawled into view.
It was tall — taller than him by far — its body a twisted lattice of plates and sinew, black and wet with reflected light.
Its limbs ended in hooked claws.
Where a head should have been was a segmented mass of shifting plates.
Between them pulsed thin lines of amber light, like veins glowing from within.
It hissed.
The sound was wrong — too deep, too long.
Orien's throat tightened.
His instincts screamed run.
His body refused.
"Okay," he whispered hoarsely. "So… you're a bug. A big, ugly, murderous bug. Fantastic."
The creature lunged.
He threw himself sideways.
The impact shattered the ground where he'd stood, scattering black shards.
The vibration hit his chest like a hammer.
He stumbled, rolled, came up on one knee.
His back hit a glass column.
It thrummed under the contact, letting out a pure, ringing tone that spread across the valley like a ripple in water.
The monster recoiled, twitching.
Its limbs shivered violently.
"You don't like music? Me neither!"
Orien grabbed a rock and hurled it at another pillar.
Another sound — lower, deeper — answered.
Then another.
And another.
The pillars began to sing, their tones weaving together into a strange, harmonic resonance that filled the air.
The creature screamed.
The sound split the silence like thunder, distorted and painful.
Its shell vibrated, cracking faintly under the invisible pressure.
"Yeah! Sing it, you—"
He didn't finish.
The creature charged again.
Its claw struck him across the chest, throwing him backward.
He hit the ground hard, rolling through shards of glass and dust.
The air left his lungs.
He gasped, eyes wide, seeing nothing but white spots.
Pain bloomed through his ribs.
"Ah—damn it! …Oh sure, acid blood next, why not?"
The creature's steps shook the ground.
It was limping now, sluggish — but still fast enough to kill him.
Orien's gaze darted.
To his right: a cracked pillar, leaning at a sharp angle.
He ran, slipping on the damp stone, dove beneath it just as the monster lunged again.
The beast's claw struck the weakened column.
It shattered with a deafening crack, releasing a burst of sound that rolled through the valley like an earthquake.
The shockwave hit both of them.
Orien felt it in his bones.
The creature convulsed, its limbs seizing.
He snatched a long shard of broken glass, its edge glowing faintly, and thrust it into the beast's throat — the soft gap between two plates.
Black ichor burst out, steaming as it hit his skin.
He screamed, half from pain, half from fury.
"Die! Just die already!"
The creature thrashed once more, then went still.
Its body collapsed into the mist with a heavy thud.
For a moment, there was nothing.
No sound.
No breath.
Then — light.
The air shimmered.
The ground pulsed once.
And a voice spoke.
It wasn't sound.
It was inside him.
Cold. Perfect. Unmistakably not human.
[You have slain: Chitinous Offspring — Rank: Unknown.]
Orien froze.
His heart stopped.
"…What?"
Then came the heat.
A pulse started in his chest, spreading through his veins like liquid fire.
Every nerve lit up.
Every thought slowed.
He felt his wounds knit slightly, the pain dimming.
His breathing steadied.
His awareness sharpened.
And underneath it all — something else.
A presence.
Not within him, but looking out from him.
It didn't feel like strength.
It felt like being seen.
"No, no, no…" he whispered, backing away. "I don't want this… whatever this is—"
The warmth spread to his skull, humming like a vibration beneath his skin.
Then, silence.
And in that silence, the Voice returned — soft, almost gentle:
One step closer...
To Initiation...
Orien fell back onto the ground, panting.
He stared up at the lifeless sky.
Then, weakly, he laughed.
"Great," he rasped. "I kill one nightmare… and now I'm part of it."