The thing on the ceiling began to twitch. Not move, but twitch, as if something dormant for centuries stirred, its limbs recalling motion in fragmented spasms. Joints jerked. Limbs bent inward, then snapped backward. Chitinous plates scraped across the stone as it descended, head first, arms dangling, a grotesque mockery of a spider's deliberate crawl. Silence cloaked it. Even as its limbs grated and clicked against the rock, no sound escaped its form.
Shun stepped forward, hand hovering near his weapon. His senses burned, every nerve alight with warning.
Then light erupted.
Carvings on the stone floor ignited one by one with a sharp click, a cascading reaction like a machine waking after eons of slumber. Ancient, alien glyphs flared with an eerie cyan glow, casting spectral shadows across the cave. The air trembled, vibrating at a frequency too low to hear but heavy enough to feel. Each breath grew denser, each heartbeat louder, as if the cavern itself pulsed with intent.
Shun's eyes darted to the runes beneath his boots. These were no mere carvings. They formed circuitry, a language etched in a forgotten techno-arcane dialect, fused into the bones of the world. The glow surged through channels in the floor, flowing upward toward the central crystalline monolith, a towering structure that pulsed like a living heart.
Then the soldier's body vanished.
Not lifted, not dragged, but gone. One moment, a blood-slicked torso sprawled across the stone. The next, nothing. No ripple, no distortion, only absence, as if reality had erased its existence without ceremony.
The group stood frozen. Even Bahari and Habari, the beastmen twins, normally loud and unshaken, went still. Their ears flattened, jaws clenched, instincts screaming of a threat beyond comprehension.
Then the rock moved.
Not shimmered, not glowed, but moved.
The crystalline monolith at the chamber's heart split. A crack formed down its center, slow at first, then widening. Shards curled back like petals of obsidian glass, revealing not a core but darkness. Endless, writhing darkness that seemed to pulse with hunger.
And then it looked at them.
Not with eyes, not with a face, but with something deeper, something that clawed at the edges of their souls. Shun stumbled back, nausea and dread flooding his senses. His spine twisted inward, as if trying to collapse. His knees buckled. His throat turned to ash.
He had fought monsters. Warped mutants, rogue dragonbotnr, possessed artifacts. This was different. This was wrong in ways that defied naming, like staring into a concept that refused to be understood, a mirror of existence turned inside out. Looking at it felt like being remembered by something that had never forgotten you, something that had waited for you across centuries.
Shadows around the cracking monolith flickered, twisting into shapes that never fully formed. Arms, hands, wings, spines, all mere suggestions, dissolving before they could solidify. The light in the room dimmed, color draining from the air, as if reality itself recoiled from what was unfolding.
Then came the sound, faint and crawling, like fingers scraping wet metal or a thousand wires unraveling in unison. Not a growl, not a voice, but recognition, cold and absolute.
Shun's ether flared without his command. His draconic blood stirred, not with rage or pride, but with unease, a primal sense of being beneath something vast and unyielding. He could not recall ever feeling it before, but it was there now, raw and undeniable.
A whisper flickered in his mind: Omega Hollow.
He did not know its origin. Perhaps his ancient blood recognized it, or perhaps the ether itself named what should never be named. This was no mere monster. This was a remnant of a dead civilization, a creation of gods for their amusement, or something far worse.
The creature emerged from the monolith, not stepping but pouring, its form refusing to settle. One moment, it resembled a tall, spined humanoid with elongated limbs; the next, it was bone and glass, shifting under its own mass as if gravity barely applied. Its head, if it could be called that, was a crown of crystal spikes arranged like a broken halo, but the center was hollow, not broken, simply absent. Its surface shimmered with half-reflections, as if it existed between this world and another.
Bahari tried to speak. His voice cracked. "What in the hells is that?"
Torren reached for his weapon.
The creature twitched.
A lurch, almost casual, and it was no longer there. No sound, no motion, it had simply shifted. It appeared halfway between the group and the monolith, arms unfurled like razors of refracted light and raw bone. Steam hissed where the ether in the air touched its skin, as if existence itself rejected its presence.
Shun stepped back, his chest tightening. His instincts screamed to flee. His pride demanded he stand. His mind offered no guidance, only a question: How do you fight something never meant to be seen?
He glanced at the ground. The runes beneath them burned brighter, now red, not blue. They pulsed in time with the creature's movements, its breathing, as if the cavern itself had become its vessel, its arena, its ritual.
A sound, not a voice, cut into his thoughts like static.
The creature let out a noise, a chittering, echoing crack, like collapsing data and tearing sinew.
It raised one jagged arm.
A screen flickered to life before them, its surface shimmering with impossible glyphs:
ㄴOmega Hollow: He Who Refracts the World.ㄱ
The air fractured.
No fire, no light, no visible energy. Only silence, heavy as a sealed tomb.
Then the screaming began.
Soldiers unraveled. Flesh peeled away like thread snapped taut. Bones shattered inward, collapsing like brittle glass under unseen weight. One man turned to shout for help, only for his upper body to vanish. No wound, no gore, only absence. A woman fled, her legs crystallizing mid-stride. Her scream echoed off the jagged walls before her lungs solidified, her mouth frozen in a silent wail. Her body stood, then split down the center, as if something had struck her from within.
Another soldier fired his weapon in panic.
The arrow froze mid-air, then reversed, piercing his forehead with such force his skull caved inward like a sinkhole. He twitched for a heartbeat, then collapsed.
Shun did not see the creature move. It had not stepped, not shifted. It had raised one grotesque limb, an arm of jagged light and twisting crystal, and eighty percent of their force was obliterated. No clash of steel, no honor in battle, only annihilation.
A wet snap sounded to his left. Bahari, shielding his brother Habari, was yanked upward by an invisible force. His arms clawed the air, legs dangling. Then his body folded from chest to pelvis, collapsing inward as if crushed by an unseen hand. Shun turned in time to see it, his stomach lurching. No weapon could do that. No creature they had faced in these cursed mountains held such power.
This was not battle. This was punishment.
Survivors wept, minds fracturing under the weight of the incomprehensible. Others ran, colliding with walls, with each other, with death.
Shun's breath caught. The ether screamed, the spiritual realm buckling under the creature's presence. Its existence warped reality itself. The runes had not activated to contain it but to warn of it, too late.
Torren knelt beside a dying soldier, only to watch the man's skin liquefy in his hands. He recoiled, wiping his palms, but the residue clung, burning into his flesh like acid.
The creature remained still. Silent. Watching. Perhaps breathing, though even that seemed uncertain. Its form flickered, serpentine limbs becoming insectoid pincers, then vaguely human, then something entirely other. Staring at it too long made the mind falter, like gazing into a shattered mirror reflecting memories that did not belong to you.
Shun gripped his blade, not from courage or defiance, but to anchor himself, to prove he still lived.
Then he heard it. Not a voice, but an idea, spoken in no language, heard by no ear, yet understood completely.
The punishment of weakness.
The weak do not deserve to stand.