The walls pulsed with veins of raw hunger, souls screaming silently through the stone. The Seer etched a symbol into Aelric's chest with a bone needle.
Not ink, not blood, but a distilled memory, liquefied essence of the Chainlord had devoured. It burned through him like molten ice.
Then came the offerings, a demon core, still bearing, still laced with will. A fragment of an ancient Devourer beast that had once feasted on an entire fortress.
"Eat," the Seer Whispered.
Aelric hesitated for only a second. Then he crushed the core in both hands and ate it.
It was not a physical act. It was inward. A pull across dimensions, as if his soul reached forward and bit down on something vast and impossible.
His body convulsed. His mind shattered. He saw memories not his own, but of a soldier screaming as chains flayed his mind. A priest begging the void to stop swallowing his family. A mother offering her child to the Maw for protection.
He saw himself from the outside, a black silhouette with bleeding eyes, devouring and devouring and devouring, until even his shape became distorted.
Until Aelric was no longer a man, but a shifting shape of mouths and his voice and screaming pasts.
Through it all, the Voice struggled to stay anchored.
[You must remember who you are! Gluttony is not your identity! It is a tool!]
But the hunger whispered louder.
"You are becoming. Let go, feed and change."
And then silence. Aelric opened his eyes. The ritual was complete.
He stood in the center of the cavern, covered in ash and sweat, the symbol on his chest now a scar that glowed.
His shackles floated around him like serpents with eyes. And behind his irises now flickered an inhuman flame, something more than Gluttony.
The Seer bowed.
"You know, the world of the Devourer's Maw. With it, you 'may' consume abilities, digest essence, and reforge it into weapons of will."
Aelric turned slowly. But something inside him remained fractured. The shippers hadn't gone. They had simply frowned, quietly, and waited.
When he returned to the surface, Veyra stared at him with a mix of relief and horror. She opened her mouth to speak, but paused.
"...what did it show you?"
Aelric looked at her, and for the first time since arriving in the Abyss, he lied.
"Nothing important."
But inside him, a single voice remained louder than the rest. It is not the Voice of the Abyss. Not Gluttony. Not even the Cult.
It was his voice whispering, over and over.
"You are what you eat, and you have eaten monsters."
The wind had changed. It wasn't the toxic currents of the second layer or the shrieking gales that came with Abyssal storms; this was subtler, like the edge of a knife pressed just near the throat, not cutting, but threatening.
Something about Aelric was different now, something even the land seemed to notice.
When he stepped, the chains shifted. Where he breathed, the ash held still. The Devourer's Maw had awoken.
But it wasn't just power he had returned with. It was something else, and an echo behind his eyes, a pressure in the room that Veyra could feel even when he wasn't speaking.
The shackles floating near his arms hummed not with raw strength but with intention, like they were hunting.
They walked in silence for hours after the ritual. Veyra had tried twice to speak. The words withered before they left her lips.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly, it was hesitation, the kind born not from battle or terror, but from care.
From knowing that once something was said, it could never be unsaid. That once the truth was offered, it might shatter the fragile bridge still left between them.
But when Aelric knelt at the edge of a collapsed sanctum, gazing into the black horizon that led deeper into the Wastes, she finally broke.
"Aelric."
He didn't respond immediately. His fingers hovered near the ground, his palm brushing the fine ash. It clung to him like a memory.
"You are not alright."
He exhaled slowly. Not a sigh, a measured breath, too calm to be natural.
"What makes you say that?"
"You didn't come back the same," she said, stepping closer. "You came back quietly. Heavy. Your presence…it bends the air now. The hunger doesn't sleep inside you anymore. It's watching."
"I made a choice," Aelric replied, still not looking at her. "To survive here, I had to change."
"Change is not the problem." Her voice trembled slightly. "Forgetting is."
That made him turn slowly. His eyes glowed faintly with the afterburn of the Maw's mark, twin embers in a storm-worn face.
Veyra stepped closer, her voice rising. "You think I haven't seen it before? The Cult thrives in turning desperation into transformation. They offer strength, yes, but what they take is identity. Piece by piece. You think you are wielding the Maw? Give it time, it will be wielding you."
Aelric stood. "I know the risks."
"No, you don't." She pointed at the scar glowing faintly through his torn tunic. "You don't understand what they planted in you. I have seen it. I have seen people scream in languages they never knew. I have seen them forget their names, their memories, until all that's left is hunger. And when the Devourer's Maw fully opens when it awakens, there is no going back."
Her voice cracked. "I don't want to watch you become something I will have to kill."
Aelric flinched. It was the first real crack in his expression since the ritual. Not anger nor pain, something quieter. Guilt. And something he buried quickly.
"You think I want this?" He said softly, eyes narrowing. "I didn't come here to lose myself. But in this realm, this Abyss, it doesn't reward restraint. If I don't evolve, I die. And you know what happens if I die, Veyra? You are left alone, again."
"That's not fair…"
"No, it's not," he snapped. "But neither is this place. We both lost something in the First layer. I lost control. You lost faith. We are still bleeding from it. So don't talk to me about fairness."