Chapter 1
A pale young woman with green hair and brown eyes wakes in a damp, dark cave.
Her surroundings are unfamiliar, the humid air sticks to her skin, her vision scans the place but to no avail—all she sees is black.
As she moves around, she feels and hears leaves rustling below her alongside a scent of floral note filling her head.
She wears an 'antique' pajama gown, torn and soiled. Her feet are bare, her limbs scratched and bleeding from sharp rocks.
Her body aches with sensations buried deep in her mind, an emptiness glued onto her stomach and hundreds of little holes draining spit in her throat.
Her mind is foggy, her senses distant. She moves forward, unsteady and disoriented, hands brushing against jagged walls as she searches for something familiar, something to anchor her in the sea of confusion.
The unknown sound of water dripping echoes faintly in the distance.
She follows the strange sound, hoping it will lead her somewhere.
Then, a drop of coldness lands on her.
With terror, she jolts and falls on her behind. Her head staring upwards, the coldness entering her warm throat.
Her body shakes, her eyes widen—those holes were flooding.
It not just coldness, a part of her was being filled in.
Desperate for the same sensation, she gazes upwards with her mouth—moving desperately to catch that coldness again.
Her feet touches something, her toes surrounded by the same thing she's longing for.
Inside a crevice of the cavern floor, that 'coldness' pools like a bowl.
She quickly kneels down and slurps it up, she had beaten this lingering feeling that forces her to drink.
Still, there was this emptiness gnawing away inside her core, her stomach. Nevertheless, she kept going—not knowing what it truly is.
The cave stretches on endlessly. Eventually, she notices something unknown yet familiar ahead. A faint warmth contrasting this coldness that surrounds her.
This 'warmth' emanating around a corner, uncovering the cave's textures.
Then, her movement halts,—some spots of 'coldness' in the midst of warm, bobbing up and down..
There were six of them, some overlapping but she could differentiate them.
She closes in on the corner, her head peaking in.
"YEAARGHH!!" she yelps in agony, her hands immediately covering her eye as she tumbles and falls on her side.
In the same instance, a guttural growl and multiple raspy, high pitched noises came from the warmth.
Her eyes felt as though they were pierced by needles, her previously wide pupils now as small as pinpricks.
Still, she gathered strength to lift up some of her fingers—revealing figures that looks towards her direction
They're short and decrepit, long ears and noses hunching over something the same as them — No, something better, bigger more majestic than they could ever be.
It looked familiar, yet broken.
Those figures' faces finally glimmering in the 'warmth', their long noses and ears now visible but they're covered in something similar to that liberating 'coldness' which perched on her throat.
Fear claws inside her, dismissing all else she's feeling.
Two of the figures stand, picking up some phallic sticks along the way — now, running towards her direction.
Her body was stiff, her face in confusion but her arms and legs started to crawl, her eyes falling with tears.
The creatures manage to catch up, her desperate attempt ending when her heels is pulled upwards, dragging her across the jagged floor.
Her body now bleeding and coated in the same thick red 'coldness' that covered its mouth and neck.
Her piercing screams seem to be absorbed by cold, that was her plead reaching the ears of no one.
Those figures didn't seem to care.
No—they did care.
Their depraved laughter fills her brain, they danced in her terror—dropping that broken 'thing' they were toying with.
She tries to fight back, her heels kicking, her body rocking upwards from her belly but it was useless.
The figure positioned her dangling in front of it, kicking her towards the middle of that warmth.
The sensation and brightness originates from sticks stabbed into the ground, each with yellowish orange hair that seemed to flow upwards.
Next to her—a mangled mess of broken shards deep in her bones.
It's stomach filled...
It's stomach empty, now pooling with that thick red 'coldness'. It's head hanging on by one thread of skin, it's lower half seemingly missing.
Her tears flowing heavier, she tries to make noise—she tries to move–but it was in vain.
Her eyes as hollow as the coldness which devours the cave around them,
she was broken too.
And just like how they kicked her in, they picked up that broken 'thing' and kicked it out into the cold.
It's head rolling back in from the impact, its eyeballs popping out—slithering with some sort of rope connected from inside.
Those figures' attention went back towards her, grinning with evil.
Their chattering, teeth grinding on teeth, feet stomping on stone and their laughter looms the atmosphere.
One of them grabs her by her hair, holding it like some sort of trophy while others restrain her limbs.
Now, suspended in air—she couldn't take it anymore.
She's broken beyond living, it's dawned on her that she'll be the next 'thing' that lays in the middle of these halls.
her consciousness fades as those things bite into her limbs and body.
—–———
Time passed.
By some miracle, she's alive.
Unconscious, yet still breathing.
Shallow cuts of her chest rising and falling accompanies her erratic breath.
Her surroundings different, still the same place but it was as if death walked through it.
Out of the seven torches, all died through but one—flickering in loneliness.
Those figures which were dancing and rejoicing over her fears now mangled and unrecognizable—the same as that 'thing' they defiled earlier.
Their upper bodies, legs, arms, head, lower half, all cut up—smashed.. destroyed.
All but one.
One detached torso.
The young woman, holes caused by teeth in her abdomen—fingers missing and one breast bitten off — lays in the middle of the cave hall.
Her body, atop a bed of evergreen leaves with white flowers of cup shaped petals surrounding their bundles of gold stamens.
Vines, maroon in colour and growing the same leaves & flower—littered all over the hall with them slithering in holes freshly created on the cavern ceiling.
Her eyes flutter open, hollowed as before.
But it was a blessing.
Her body is numb, this muting sensation overtakes her body. She tries to move her arm but it was shaking and slow — her body was losing control.
Slowly getting up, her missing fingers almost causes her to slip. The surroundings, filled with gore.
Her stomach lurches but something else inside longs for it, her mind gradually piecing back together—her comprehension of the situation getting clearer.
And so is that emptiness gnawing deep inside her.
But then she feels pain.
Pain she's never felt before.
The entire body stings and aches and burns and.. no words could relay her agony.
As though the world pitied her, she notices the same flower dotting her bed falling from the ceiling—falling atop the figure's intact chest.
This time, it turned black—absorbing the creature's blood through the stem.
Her stomach clawing at her, wanting to break out.
Her mouth salivating, her throbbing injuries reach out for it.
She walks closer, stumbling with every step — but she never stops.
Her instincts drive her towards it, a single hole on top revealing its heart.
She falls face first, her head filling that hole—her mouth gnawing at the heart.
She swallows.
And redness tints her vision, her pain still there—but now, melting away.
She bites more, tears more, DEVOURS more.
Sounds of squelching and splashing echo from the walls, her own bones and meat appears to swim under her skin.
Her fingers growing from bone, constructing each nerve and tendon with every swallow
the holes in her abdomen filling with flesh
fat and flesh building up from her missing chest.
Her emptiness, filling with satisfaction.
Just like they were, her face now coated in the dark red, thick 'coldness'.
She stands, sturdier than before—yet broken in her psyche.
Picking up one of the phallic sticks laying on the ground, she staggers back in the cold with that last torch flickering its last embers.
The vines moves slowly, flowers trailing from above her.