I am adrift in the dark. Alone. There is no sound, and yet I can hear something—something familiar. A beautiful lullaby.
"What is this?" I ask. My voice echoes in the darkness, and the darkness wakes up. It opens its purple eyes, full of teeth. Hungry, always hungry; it is everywhere, and it looms over me. It is going to devour me. I should run. But I don't. I stay there, watching as its teeth sink into my body. I feel how it tears and munches, how it smashes and cracks. It is so vast. So powerful. There has never been an escape. It is the most primordial and purest of all insanities. I do not fear nightmares. I embrace them. I accept them. Because I am one of them.
All that is weak shall be devoured.
I open my eyes to the open window. A translucent notification pulses in my field of vision:
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]Perception has reached its first peak: 100/1,000.Evolution required to unlock further growth.
Passive Skill Acquired: [Mental Fortitude Lv.1]Defends sanity against basic psychic interference. Evolution Path Unlocked: "Clarity" → Sanity → Enlightenment → Illumination → Madness.
Status Effect Detected: [Maddening Song (Active)]Status: DISPELLED. ("Clarity" reached; Immunity granted).
"Maddening song..." I mutter.
My brain now registers the melody. It was so familiar I almost didn't notice it, but it is merely an echo—a refraction of the true song of insanity that dwells in the endless Void. The song that made me. This version is the sound of an inconsolable being crying to a home it cannot reach, like a lost child. It is nostalgic. It is sad.
Beside me, Lilith—naked and slick with sweat—grips my arm with enough strength to crack a human's wrist. She is in agony.
"Honey?" I whisper, shaking her slightly. "Wake up."
She doesn't stir. Before the sleep took us, the "Watcher" had returned, and we had begun our theater again. I had undressed her, and she me; I had felt the smooth, delicate heat of her hands, and I will not lie—the sensation was not undesired. We were moments away from a union that would have been just what she wanted. But the nightmare robbed her of that victory. In the next room, our escorts are trapped in the same trance. But in Aria's room, the being has revealed itself. It is powerful, ancient, and rancid. I feel it lifting her, coveting her essence, and jumping into the fog, vanishing like a ghost.
I turn back to the succubus. I trace a path from the bridge of her nose to her forehead, barely gracing her skin with my fingertip as I spread my will onto the net that has her trapped. "Wake up," I whisper.
Lilith's eyes snap open, wide, filled with horror. "Darling!"
She instantly huddles against me, seeking shelter. Like a terrified girl, her nakedness only emphasizing her vulnerability. Instinctively, I wrap my arms around her.
"It's over... You were under a spell," I tell her, low and grounding. "It is in the air and nobody can hear while awake, but it becomes a maddening melody once you sleep. It is the source of this fog, and everything else rotting in this town."
Lilith gulps, looking up at me as she trembles.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION] Your Lilith is now sheltered by your [Clarity]. My Lilith? I grin reading that.
"A song...?" she whispers, getting my attention.
"The responsible just kidnapped Aria," I explain, my gaze hardening. "I have to go and save her soon. Do you know anything about this? What kind of creature uses a melody and fog to paralyze a city?"
She tightens her grip on my hand as if refusing to let me go, but she understands that I must move. "It... it must be a Pale Elder," she utters, trembling. "They are beings from the depths of the ocean... children of the primordial entities the gods call parents, maybe. Who knows? But what is certain is that they are... powerful. One alone could destroy a nation."
"Do they have weaknesses?" I ask.
"Can't we just leave?" she asks, her eyes pleading. "Please. Let's just leave this place."
"Weaknesses?" I repeat, cutting her off. "I won't let Aria in its hands. Tell me anything useful, then you can leave if you want."
She glares at me, looking genuinely offended and hurt—an unexpected reaction that I hadn't calculated. "You are mine," she says with a flash of her old fire. "It's not you who decides when I leave."
I chuckle, a slight anger rising in me as well. I pin her under my weight against the mattress, moving so fast her eyes go wide. Her body trembles beneath me, but her legs end apart, spread reflexively, for me, as her breathing becomes heavy.
"Answer," I say, low and firm.
She grins through her fear, a blush creeping up her neck. "It... It can't be killed in its fog. They use women to breed. Aria will die because the offspring drain the essence of the mother to grow, making them age centuries as their womb expands in hours. If the newborn lives, the woman is left as a hollow shell the Elder controls. If the newborn dies, the woman turns to dust."
I release her and stand, the path is now clear in my mind. "We should go..." she repeats, but I'm already dressing.
"What if we go? Wouldn't that make you see me as weak?" I ask, using her own logic against her.
"Don't be silly! I know you are still growing. You will become even stronger, but you can't face this thing right now..."
"All that is weak shall be devoured," I tell her. I lay a hand between her naked breasts, releasing a surge of my own essence to protect her. The dark energy sinks in—a hidden shield that will reflect any attack back at the source. She blushes at the touch. "Wake the others. Use your illusions if you have to. Tell them I'll bring Aria back at dawn. Protect their minds... and don't die."
She shelters my hand with both of hers. Her skin is soft, like delicate petals.
"And dress up," I add. I move to the window, ready to dive into the dark fog. "And Lilith..."
"What?" she asks, clearly unhappy with being left behind.
"What makes you think it's you who gets to say if you leave me or not?"
Her eyes light up, her fear momentarily replaced by a wild, predatory grin. "Fufufufu..."
That cruel, beautiful musical giggle follows me as I drop softly to the pavement below. The fog is thick here, the essence is mixed with the fog, making it difficult for my perception to see further than one block around me. And they are waiting for me. The "Hollow" crowd, standing like statues in the road, their empty eyes tracking my landing.
I land softly, the stone of the road cold beneath my boots. I can barely see my own hands, if not for my perception I'd be blinded. I expand my Perception, and get a third person view of myself and my surroundings.
There are three hundred of them.
They stand in a jagged semicircle, clutching whatever primitive edges they could find: kitchen knives, rusted farm blades, and jagged shards of glass. But as I scan them with Clarity, I don't see the familiar spark of human biology. There is no electrical pulse in their nerves, no essence flowing in and out of their bodies. They are empty, grey, like stones, and it is fog the medium of their animation. It acts as a billion microscopic strings, a gaseous nervous system that moves these puppets at the Elder's whim. Without this mist, they would be nothing more than standing corpses.
"What is the purpose of a being who can do this?" I mutter.
I raise a hand, and the air before me ripples with the familiar, hungry chill of the Void. I activate my primary skill: [Void Gate: Level 3].
A massive, circular rift tears open beneath the feet of the forward crowd. It isn't a hole in the ground; it is a hole in reality. Fifty of the "Hollow" drop instantly. There are no screams. My Perception follows them into the darkness, studying their transition. Without the fog to provide a "will," they go inert. They are no longer puppets; they are just raw matter. Soon they are food for the beasts of the void I sent them to.
The portal snaps shut as if nothing has happened.
The sudden drop in the crowd's density allows my Perception to catch something I would have missed before. Hidden in the thickest part of the mist, near the edge of a nearby building, I detect a subtle concentration of essence. It pulses with a rhythmic, wet frequency, the same that is wrapped around these puppets.
Signal amplifiers designed to control the fog? I can't see the source through the physical gloom, but the power is there—a well-hidden, vibrating node. It feels like the presence that took Aria, but slightly different, smaller.
"What are you?" I whisper.
I push off the ground, vaulting above the rooftops. I land softly on the slanted shingles, my cloak fluttering in the damp wind as I walk toward the node. The more I get closer, the clearer it is.
"Ohh... What a fascinating thing you are, little one... You are like the Elder... But weaker..." I feel a grin appearing on my face as I keep approaching. "All that is weak shall be devoured."