I froze, then straightened slowly, the voice still coiling through my thoughts like a parasite that had found its home, lingering in every corner of my mind.
"What even was that voice..."
I murmured under my breath, my throat tight as I stepped into the narrow, dust-choked passage revealed by the walls, which had pivoted with a deep, grinding sound that sent a shiver down my spine.
As I advanced, I scanned the walls etched with crude scenes, every line telling stories of pain, fear, and worship.
"Who is it that they are worshipping... or is it fear?" I murmured in a pale, trembling voice as I studied the carvings where people knelt before a towering faceless shape, their bodies twisted in submission or desperation.
Others were running with arms outstretched to flee, their faces twisted in terror, while some writhed on the ground as if caught in invisible chains of agony.
I looked forward, and to my surprise, a pale, eerie light spilled ahead, illuminating the dust particles dancing in the air.
"Well... rank one isn't that tough to get after all,"
I declared, a grin etched across my features, though it felt forced, as if my lips were trying to keep my fear at bay.
I followed the light, each step crunching softly in the dusty floor, echoing strangely in the confined passage.
The glow widened as the passage began to open, revealing shadows that danced along the walls in strange, contorted patterns.
I turned the corner and froze.
In a hollow, vast space that looked like someone had tried to carve the sand into a pentagon but failed, two bodies hung from the ceiling, twisted around each other, slowly spinning, their movements almost ritualistic.
With each turn, blood streamed down from them in five perfect arcs, each drop finding its way to a jagged frame in one of the hollow's five corners.
The metallic scent of it filled my nose, making my stomach churn.
I spotted a man by the central fire, wrapped in a long coil of cloth that swayed gently with his movements.
He caught the viscous liquid that seemed to seep out whenever the jagged structures overflowed with blood, collecting it carefully in a bowl, then hurled it into the flames with a hiss as the fire consumed it, sending sparks into the air.
"Where the hell did that bullhead push me into?"
I growled in a low voice, recalling the moment when I had felt an invisible force shove me while I examined the slab.
My foot slipped onto the blood running down into narrow channels in the floor, the liquid sticky and cold against my boots.
Then, I heard footsteps behind me, soft but measured, moving closer.
They came—half a dozen figures, almost naked, moving loosely, circling me.
They jumped, sometimes hitting themselves or colliding, making the whole scene seem even more surreal.
I couldn't utter a word as they carried out their wild, animalistic acts, making strange, guttural noises that echoed off the walls.
However, they didn't seem to do any harm.
Not yet.
Past their shifting shapes, the man who had been murmuring something turned.
His face was completely obscured by shadow and cloth, making it impossible to tell if he was staring at me or past me, as if he were aware of something I could not comprehend.
"Thousand years after the people had stopped dying..." he spoke aloud in a dreadful, haunting, yet distant voice, the sound reverberating in the hollow chamber.
"An invincible insectoid creature emerged from the sea... it consumed people, adding their faces to its body...
Those faces, the witnesses say, could only scream in horror and beg for help."
He halted, silence filling the air like a living thing, as he hastily moved toward a book-shaped emblem kept across the fire.
"Look, I am really sorry for all the loss you had to suffer, and I despise that insectoid to the core from what you have told me. So could you please ask these bonemeats to step aside?"
I shouted at him in a desperate attempt to escape the lunatics;
however, none of them reacted to my taunt, their movements fluid yet unnervingly detached from my presence.
"The viscavore must be brought back with us again before those above bring their wraith upon us undeads,"
he snapped in anger; yet his fury was not directed at me, not even a little.
As he prepared to hurl that emblem into the fire, my instincts screamed at me to stop him.
Or maybe... I just wanted to mess with him.
"I do not have an idea of what you are trying to achieve, nor do I have any interest in it—which is obviously a lie—but you and these bastards are getting on my nerves,"
I growled as I slipped past the gap, my heart hammering in my chest.
The figures who had been encircling me attempted to follow, but I subtly shifted the texture of the ground beneath them, removing the frictional force it had.
The man who was first to react slipped off the ground, flailing, and I quickly grabbed the spear hanging at his waist, its metal cold and heavy in my grip.
Ducking down to dodge an attack aimed at me, I launched the spear with a sharp snap.
It cut through the air, catching the book-shaped emblem before it could drop into the fire, the wind from its motion rustling the pages.
In my peripheral vision, I noticed a barrage of spears rushing toward me;
however, they stopped inches away as I quickly altered the behavior of air particles, forming an invisible wall that hummed faintly with energy.
The emblem spun with the shaft, carried toward the far wall. Mid-flight, many pages curled inward, lines deepened, and skin seemed to form where paper once was.
A woman's face blinked into existence, its mouth frozen open in silence, the skin pale and lifelike, yet unnerving.
It struck the wall.
The face screamed in a jagged, piercing voice, filling the chamber with an echo that made my bones rattle.
From the corners of the emblem, black-silver spines erupted, jerking upward, twisting and curling like serpents.
They swelled, split, and twisted until they bloomed into faces, grotesque and lucid, pressed together as if fighting for space.
Cheeks merged with foreheads, mouths growing from eyes, features twisting over one another like molten clay.
I stood there watching in horror, and so did the others, their silent shapes frozen in the dim light.
Then the woman's face tore itself from the emblem, drifting slowly across the wall, brushing against the others, sinking into one, sliding out of another.
Each time it passed, the surrounding mouths twitched as if trying to taste her, devour her.
The face climbed higher.
It met the ceiling, where a face the size of a doorway stared straight at me, its jaw hinged, teeth almost like stone.
The smaller face slid silently into the mouth, but the jaw stayed open, as if trying to find something.
Instinctively, I rushed toward the emblem from which the face had just detached, propelled by a mixture of fear and adrenaline.
I slammed the spear against its surface once again, the force reverberating up my arms.