Neil, the beast, spoke, its sixteen red eyes staring down at Sin. But this wasn't Sin—he was controlled by the Shadow Demon. Fissures in the ground slowly closed up, the earth sealing itself. The beast stood on long limbs that nearly dragged along the ground, its two blighted hands and multiple blades on its shoulders, elbows, and back all pointed toward Sin. The uncertainty in the demon's eyes vanished as it smiled again.
Sin walked forward, an uncanny smile widening. The uncertainty was gone.
"Kneel," the beast commanded, preparing to fire its hundreds of blades toward Sin's body. But unlike what the beast expected, the shadows didn't kneel to it.
The Shadow Demon laughed as it created two blood swords beside itself. Knox and Dice, both spawned entities, moved to Sin's side, their dark eyes fixed on the beast.
"Come here," Sin said with an ecstatic voice. He jumped forward, throwing the blood swords toward the beast. It shot one of its blades—the projectile simply growing back in its body. The blade it had shot zipped forward to strike down the blood sword, but the weapon maneuvered, dodging out of the way as it continued its trajectory toward the monster. The beast swiped at it with its bladed hand, but the blood sword dodged and maintained its course. The monster tried everything, but the sword simply evaded. Eventually, it connected. The blood sword sank deep into the monster's darkened flesh.
Its eyes burned. All sixteen locked on Sin again. It removed the blood sword from its body. The blood instantly evaporated, flowing back toward Sin and absorbing into his form.
But suddenly, the crazed, unnerving demon that had possessed Sin paused. The expression fell away. The uncanny smile vanished. The dark, shadowy eyes disappeared. His eyes turned blood red. The shadow armor dissolved, and blood armor became evident as it crawled up his body, his veins pulsing with white energy coursing through them.
This wasn't Sin. This wasn't even the Shadow Demon version of him. This was something new—a new identity.
"No. You kneel," he said, stepping forward. "You obey me."
As soon as Sin spoke those words, he created a shadow portal and instantly teleported into the air behind the monster's neck. He created a gigantic shadow scythe and severed the monster's head.
"Or die," he said as the head fell to the ground.
Sin walked forward toward the monster's falling head, but somehow it could still speak. It laughed.
"Thought that was it? You thought I'd just fall? No, no. I won't die without getting my—"
Sin cut it off, splitting its head in half with a giant blood sword.
"You speak when spoken to," Sin said as he stomped on the rest of the monster's head, crushing it. He looked back toward the Hollows, the dark eyes gleaming. All of them stood there, their undead features clearly evident.
Sam and Edward stood atop a building, both shocked.
"How? Isn't that Sin?" Sam asked.
"No," Edward said, looking at him. "That's not Sin. When I last saw him, he was weak, beautiful, naive. This thing—it's unlike the crazy version or the normal version of him. It's something different."
Blood aura pulsed around Sin's awakened armor. Waves of blood energy burst out, knocking the Hollows back.
Suddenly, Sin faltered. His eyes returned to normal—still bloodshot red, as they had been since his transformation weeks ago, but with a sliver of humanity. The blood armor disappeared. The waves of power ceased. Now he stood in his normal darkened clothes.
He looked at Knox and Dice, who had spawned above. They walked toward him, having no choice but to follow, no matter what.
Suddenly, memories hit him like a train. He fell, grabbing his head. The memories of the entire fight—the Shadow Demon attacking the monster, the Hollows, his new transformation—everything rushed back.
He looked at Edward.
"Wait, didn't I kill him? Didn't the demon version of me kill him? How in the world is he alive?"
As if knowing his thoughts, Edward responded. "How am I alive, you ask? Rage keeps us alive. We Hollows were once dead, but we reanimated. Rage won't let us stay dead for good. You can kill us all you want, but it won't do a thing. We will destroy everyone, and I will personally kill you. The Hollows have their own personal reasons for anger, just like I have mine. But we all stick together because we're all angry toward the people who killed us. No matter if we let people live, there will always be someone out there who will kill another person. I'm not trying to have that tragedy happen to someone else, so it's best to get rid of all of you for good and let us Hollows reign supreme."
Edward stepped forward, nearly reaching the edge of the building he stood on. Sam walked beside him.
"They have black eyes," Sin observed. "And they don't seem stiff and unnatural like actual zombies. They move just the same—even better than they did alive."
Sin looked around the battlefield. Thousands of Hollows stood before him. A monster whose head had been cut off, stomped on, and split in half. Knox and Dice standing a few meters from him.
Suddenly, a man stood up. He grasped a wooden sword in his hand.
"Oh, it's you," he said, standing and walking toward Sin. He stopped time for everyone else except Sin and himself.
"Before we fight each other or do whatever you're going to do, allow me to tell you my abilities."
"That's not dumb?" Sin said. "I can just exploit your weaknesses."
The man laughed. "What weaknesses? I don't have any weaknesses. Unlike you, in your little logic, you think everything must have a weakness. The only weakness I have is my strength at the moment, but I do have room to improve. That's the only weakness you'll see in me. But allow me to resume my power instruction. My first power is time stop. I can stop time within a certain radius—around one hundred meters, even more if I put a lot of energy into it. You see this wooden sword here?" He held up his wooden blade. "I can change its properties. Yes, its properties. I can't change it from a wooden sword to a metal sword. I can only change the properties, meaning it'll still stay as a wooden sword; it'll just have different properties. Its first property—and its only property—is to become a real sword while still being wooden, by the way."
The man continued to explain all of his abilities to Sin. His wooden sword's switching ability and his time stop ability were both strong. The man was right—Sin could not find any loopholes or weaknesses.
But there was one weakness. If Sin managed to get out of the radius for the time stop, it would not affect him.
Sin proposed this to the man, but the man quickly shook his head. "No, because if you get within that one hundred meter radius, time stops for you as well. So you basically cannot get close to me. The trick doesn't work."
"How about if I just tire you out, make you become serious and exhaust all of your energy, or fight something too strong for you?"
"Fight me," the man said. "If I become serious, you wouldn't even last a second. I fought head-to-head with that monster. My strongest attack, my strongest reserves, were enough to nearly decapitate it. But of course, it didn't work. The monster was strong. You couldn't compare. You'd last a day if I tried to kill you."
He resumed time.
"Anyway," the man said, "I have to go hunting."
"Hunting?" Sin replied. "Yeah, hunting for what? Magical monsters? There are no magical monsters here."
"Sin," the man replied, staring at him, "there are demons. Powerful ones. I won't give other details now. After all, I was supposed to be hunting hours ago, but I stopped to see what in the world this racket was. Now I'm in this situation."
"What's your name?" Sin asked. "And how do you know my name? People keep saying my name recently, so I'm just wondering."
The man smiled. "That'll have to be a mystery solved for another day. As for your other question, my name is Aaron."
"Aaron," Sin repeated.
The Hollows looked around while the two were having their conversation. Edward was planning his next move, while Sam just stared into the distance. He had nothing to do. He was too lost in his thoughts to plan anything. He didn't even glance down at Edward—just kept staring up at the sky.
"If whatever that thing—if whatever came out again—we won't stand a chance. Whatever Sin turned into was way too powerful for us. I'm sure Edward knows this. I'm sure he's planning something right now. But I can't shake this terrible feeling that if that thing ever comes out, we need to run. The first time it came out, I just had this instinct to run, dash out of here. But I couldn't. But then again, why did I have that instinct?"
Sam began to ponder. His body was afraid—afraid of whatever was in Sin. He wasn't afraid of the demon version of him, the side that was crazed, psychopathic. He was afraid of the other side of him—the one that demanded respect, the one that pulsed blood aura from its body while wearing blood armor. That one was the one he was terrified of.
"All right," Edward said, looking up. "I know something we can do. We could make a faction."
"What?" Sam responded.
"You know, a faction. A group. We can make a base. We could call it the Hollow Faction."
Edward continued his thoughts, but Sam cut him off. "Will that even work, though? Do you even have enough experience to build a base? And also, to fit five thousand Hollows and new Hollows in there? I mean, come on. Do you really think you've thought this through?"
"I guess you're right," Edward said, standing up finally. "Right now, we need to go into hiding. I have a place to go."
He opened a portal. Sam looked at him.
"Since when can you—"
Edward interrupted, opening up thousands of other portals. All of the Hollows went inside. Sam and Edward also went inside the portals.
Sin looked around the desolated area. Aaron had decided to leave to finally go hunt demons.
"There's a demon infection. If a demon faction even exists, it probably is one. There's a demon family, and now the actual demons. What other surprises are in this world?" he said as he walked off into the distance, ready to go back to the demon mansion.
But before he did that, he had something else to do. He had to learn how to go back to the mindscape—the endless void.
He needed to go somewhere far away where no one would see him. He went into a desolate field filled with trees, a giant forest. He went far off into the forest and began to think, to ponder.
How would he enter the mindscape? Every time he wielded his power, he never entered the mindscape. He tried over and over and over again, but it never seemed to work. He never entered the endless void, which meant he would never see what controlled him. He knew about that Shadow Demon, that crazed freak, but he didn't know about the other personality inside him.
He closed his eyes.
And finally, he entered the mindscape.
The void stretched before him, infinite and suffocating. But he wasn't alone.
A figure stood in the distance, shrouded in crimson light. Its eyes—blood red and burning—locked onto his.
"You finally came," it said, its voice echoing through the emptiness. "Now we can begin."
Sin's breath caught. Whatever this was, it had been waiting for him.
And it was far more terrifying than anything he'd faced before.