The underground lake stretched before him, the water rippled and Armin heard a deep voice resonate in his head. "Welcome young voidling, I've been wanting to meet you since the day you were born". The words carried a sense of curiosity, tinged with something sharper—anticipation, perhaps.
"Pleasure to make your acquaintance", he replied with forced friendliness.
"Please step onto the water", the voice commanded, its tone calm, as if issuing a routine order.
Armin took a tentative step, expecting his foot to sink. Instead, the water held firm, rippling faintly under his weight. His eyes widened. 'Am I… walking on water?' He took another step, then another, moving toward the lake's center. Below, in the dark depths, something stirred—a massive, indistinct shape just beyond the edge of visibility.
"This will be sufficient", the deep voice said.
'That's it? Just had to walk like Jesus for a bit? That was eas—', his thought cut off as the water beneath him softened, then collapsed. The lake swallowed him whole, and as he tired to swim up and reach the surface, the water moved like tendrils, coiling around his limbs, squeezing his chest and dragging him further down. 'Let's not panic', he remembered Veyr's last words. Visibility was worsening as he descended, but he could finally see what lay in depths of this forsaken lake. A grotesque mass of writhing, pale limbs fused into a single, monstrous form was moving down below, at its center, a head loomed, vaguely olm-like, its wide sinister maw gaping to reveal rows of sharp teeth. Its eyes, milky and unblinking, locked onto him with an intensity that felt like a dissection.
With every meter the pressure was rising and the air in his lungs was closer to depleting. 'I won't be able to hold my air much longer, what the hell is this guy's plan here?' As the seconds continued to tick by, the lack of air was getting serious. Yet nothing happened to alleviate his situation. The strange monster had not talked to him again and just continued staring at him silently. Armin tried to communicate by signalling and waving with his hands, but the water around him tightened up, making him unable to move his arms any further. At this point his lungs were on fire and panic started to set in, he didn't have a lot of time left and he was so far away from the surface that he might not even make it there. His body screamed for air, but he suppressed it… for now. Every moment seemed to become longer than the previous and all his focus was concentrated on just not breathing in. His body involuntarily twitched to break free from the water that was holding him down, but wasn't able to move an inch. He started convulsing, his need to take a breath unbearable, all the while the abomination below was simply observing him. His vision started narrowing and slowly fading to black, until he finally wasn't able to hold it back anymore and inhaled deeply.
Water quickly flooded his lungs and made him cough violently, each spasm pulling in more water. The agony of drowning permeated every fiber of his being. He had expected to die quickly after this, but the sweet release of death never came, instead the cycle of breathing in and coughing out continued seemingly endlessly. Time flowed viciously slow and every moment seemed like an eternity. 'How am I not dying?', Armin questioned, after what seemed like hours to him. He tried slowly stopping his body's coughing and after a couple of tries it became less and less frequent. What he was left with was just pure and silent agony, but this gave rise to a surprising clarity of mind. For the first time in a while, he was able to pay attention to his surroundings. Nothing had really changed and he met the uncaring gaze of his torturer. After a couple of seconds he could feel himself being dragged down further towards it. Still unable to move, Armin could only watch as his body moved towards the open maw, each one a promise of pain. He saw the sharp teeth as they slowly closed in on his body. He acutely felt every single one of them sink slightly into his flesh before stopping.
'I want this to finally end, but I don't want to die', the thought was crystal clear, within the murky dread he felt. Just then, his flesh started knitting itself together again, growing around the teeth and pushing them out. Armin noticed this, and a flicker of hope lit up inside him, just before the maw effortlessly bit down and nearly split him in half. The pain was sharp and excruciating, though in a completely different way than the drowning was. He felt his skin, flesh and bones tear completely. The Spellwither let go of him again and for while his two halves just floated there, barely attached to each other through a couple strands of flesh and sinew. He felt his hope breaking and a sense of terror settling in.