The air in the lower chamber did not merely sit; it rots. with the smell of burning blood and hatred.
As Kenshi stood over the fading blue particles of what had once been Haruki, sapphire transparency of the Divya Drishti began to pulse with a rhythmic, heavy thrum.
The "Beast of Kurukshetra" had finished his hunt, but the spiritual pressure in the room remained like the weight of dead body, pressing on Kenshi, making him unable to breathe as he looks at the lab.
Kenshi turned his gaze away from the empty floor where the farmer had found his peace. The laboratory was a womb of glass and rust, a "spiritual forge" that turned human souls into geometric nightmares.
The shifting shapes, different body parts being stitched together. Humans turning into monsters.
His gaze fell upon the central stone table, where the Golden Lotus Pendant now lay cold and dim. Beside it, bound in a material that felt disturbingly like cured human skin, sat a logbook. The pages were spread open, as if waiting for a witness to acknowledge the atrocities recorded within.
The text was a jagged hybrid of Quincy script and an ancient dialect from the human realm, vibrating with a "Wrongness" that made his sapphire eyes flare.
As if the words themselves contain the malice of the person that wrote it, as if the language is created.... to spread despair.
LOG ENTRY: SUBJECT 092 (DESIGNATION: HARUKI)
Year: 1322
PHASE 1:
"Subject secured from the Human World.
Essence profile: Latent human spiritual energy, remarkably stable despite the 'storm' of grief.
Familial termination was executed with clinical efficiency to catalyze the transition.
Subject watched the drinking of the blood. The despair generated has germinated an unstable 4th dimensional void according to the Ritual."
PHASE 2: The experiment
"The soul is a canvas of void. We have begun fusing non human biology onto the subject.
The Hollow Spine: An ivory-white Hollow signature has been fused to the base, ensuring a rhythmic, parasitic hunger to drive the subject's aggression.
The Ribs: Quincy reishi stabilizers were nestled against the core. The frequency is set to 'purify' the blood constantly, an agonizing terminal loop of unmaking and restitching.
The Heart: Removed. In its place, we have successfully anchored the Shifting Matter from the Ash Fields. The cubes and tetrahedrons now obey laws alien to the Soul Society.
To reduce the humanity in him we broke the souls into different pieces, combining with the hollow souls to create unsatiable hunger in him.
We used his families remains as rations for the beast, where the void encased in shifting matter appeared to be reacting as the human eyes leaks blood tears."
PHASE 3: The observation
"The subject has shown increased aggressiveness towards the black robes and his strength continues to increase radically overtime.
The subject destroyed the chains and caused widespread throughout the lab.
The main branch transferred the subject to a separate base with all the previous subjects.
The White masks are stationed along them to maintain secrecy from the Reapers."
When suddenly the pages start to shift without air, reacting to malice in the air.
The logbook's shifting pages were not the only thing reacting to the malice in the air.
Kenshi did not hesitate. He moved like a shadow cast by a dying sun, his feet making no sound on the slick stone. He stepped into the deeper tunnel, the air dropping another ten degrees. Here, the cave walls were no longer stone. They were calcified bone, smooth and ivory-white, pulsing with a faint, sickly light.
As Kenshi stepped into the deeper passage, the bone-white walls of the tunnel began to lose their calcified rigidity.
The sapphire light of the Divya Drishti flickered, struggling to parse the biological horror unfolding. The walls didn't just ripple. They contracted. The smooth, ivory bone softened into wet, translucent muscle that thrummed with the same "Great Drum" heartbeat he had heard earlier.
Kenshi realized with a jolt of cold iron in his gut that he wasn't walking through a cavern anymore. He was walking down a stomach.
Massive, floating cubes of obsidian that had been grinding in the forge now lined the walls like teeth, rotating with a sound that tore at his senses.
The cages containing the previous subjects were being swallowed by the walls, their geometric hearts being absorbed into the greater whole.
The air inside the "stomach" was thick with the scent of burning blood and the rhythmic, heavy thrum of a great drum.
As Kenshi sprinted down the pulsating, bone-white tunnel, the walls contracted around him like a closing throat. The sapphire light of the Divya Drishti flared, illuminating the biological horror. the obsidian cubes embedded in the muscle were rotating like teeth, grinding everything in their path.
Suddenly, the bone walls bulged. From the muscle itself, dozens of white, featureless creatures—Transitions began to peel away. Their limbs bent backward, and their bone-white masks fused into their skin, weeping black Blood as they lunged at the Kenshi.
The first creature lunged with a jaw that unhinged into a jagged blade. Kenshi dropped into a low Chuvadu stance, but as he moved, the scene flickered.
The grey mud of the Great War trenches. He saw his past self, Arjun, frozen in the blood-soaked earth as the grand war elephants trampled his countrymen.
He watched in stunned silence as the day he let the little girl leave the battlefield, the day his father died.
Kenshi spun, the Talwar severing a Transition's arm mid-air. Its arm flying into air as black blood splashes onto his face.
His face dark with flowing blood as his sapphire eyes shine. As if blue stars are watching a grand slaughter.
"I left the slaughter," his own voice echoed from the past. "I chose peace".
when suddenly the ancient entity hummed with mocking satisfaction.
"And yet, here you are, ankle-deep in the gore of a new world. Repeating the life you thought you escaped from.".
As the number of white creatures tripled, the atmospheric pressure in the stomach spiked, making it impossible to breathe. Kenshi's hazel eyes dissolved into a piercing, icy sapphire. He utilized Marmam, striking the geometric "knots" of the attackers with supernatural speed.
(Scene changes to memory)
The mist-shrouded peaks where he had tried to hide. He saw his father, standing amidst the burning granaries, his face a mask of disappointment.
(Reality)
A Hollow-signature spine tackled Kenshi, its talons sinking into his shoulder. Kenshi didn't flinch; he drove the pommel of his blade into its geometric core.
(Scene changes to memory)
"You are the one teaching her how to dig graves," his father's voice thundered over the wet growls of the monsters.
As his memory travels to the time Himawari dug graves for the Villagers and him walking alongside her into the village.
When suddenly a deep pain stuck him stuck him in the arm.
The Transitions, they are biting into his arm.
Surrounding him from every side.
When the pressure that was on him recedes like a tide.
Swoosh.....
Appendages from the surrounding walls tie him up, dragging him deeper into the cave as the transitions stop in their tracks.
Their eyes following him as he is dragged deeper into the cave.
The tunnel widened abruptly, the muscular walls peeling back to reveal a chamber that smelled of sin and something more... something darker. The appendages slammed Kenshi onto a floor of cold, violet-etched stone. Bones growing along the edges as muscle forms a cold floor.
Through the haze of his sapphire vision, Kenshi saw the "Main Branch" members, the men in midnight-black cloaks. But they were not standing. They were screaming.
The figures in black were positioned in a geometric circle, their bodies vibrating with a high-tension static. As Kenshi watched, their forms began to liquefy, melting into a slurry of shadow and shifting matter.
As the members shift in form they are absorbed by the walls surrounding them.
That's when he saw it, a throne made of blood and bone.
Where a heart is placed, pulsing with unnerving energy. Sending vibrations throughout the cave.
As Kenshi raises his leg towards the throne. a swishing sound is heard, as something is traveling through air fast.
Slick...
A bloody gnash is strike across Kenshi's torso, blood spraying in a wave as he is sent flying into the bones at the edge.
As he raises his blood soaked eyes, a long spine comes into his view. Surrounding the throne. Expanding and contracting as a snake. Ready to strike at the slight movement.
Kenshi looks at the bone, his gaze complicated and dazed as his fathers voice echoes in his mind once more.
"Why do you protect her, Ar... Kenshi? Why?"