Suddenly, a horrible wail cut through the silence of the forest.
It was not the scream of one creature, but the scream of thousands of souls that died cursing their own existence.
The air trembled.
The trees stiffened.
The stones cracked as if the wail passed through them like a blade.
On the head of the giant abomination, the dozens of human faces stuck to its skin began to open one after another.
Each face cried blood, screamed, howled, tearing its throat in a terrifying funeral chant.
The faces looked as if they were remembering their deaths and reliving them all at once.
Then something happened, as if a primitive seal inside the creature had broken.
A sinister aura exploded from it.
An animalistic, instinctive, ancient aura.
It felt older than civilizations, older than language, older than reason itself.
Its huge vertical eye began to glow, not with only blood light, but with dark red fire dancing inside the pupil, like a flame from hell that lost its way into this world.
Suddenly, the remains of the zombies around it moved.
Severed limbs, skulls, livers, ribs, clotted blood...
All of them trembled, then shot toward the creature like arrows.
They were not being pulled; they were running toward it as if they had a will of their own.
They stuck to its body one by one, merging into it, sinking into its flesh, forcing its form to become a mass of renewed sin.
But the real horror was not that.
The true horror came next.
In one instant, dozens from the Corpse Purification Faction screamed.
They were not human screams.
They were the screams of beings whose souls were burning.
A black fire ignited around them, burning flesh not with heat, but with the idea of nothingness itself.
Their skin shriveled.
Their eyes melted.
Their muscles tightened on their bones.
And in a few seconds, they turned into charred mummies.
Then the mummies broke apart into a bloody paste that rose into the air like magic threads and flew directly toward the creature.
The human faces on the creature's head opened their mouths and swallowed the remaining soldiers all at once.
The sound of chewing, the grinding, kept echoing like forbidden chants.
At that moment, the creature's aura rose to madness.
Its wounds cracked, then closed, then healed.
Even the areas shattered by Ashen's strike returned as if untouched.
The monster became something closer to a catastrophe than a living being.
Only the commander and his deputy remained.
The commander spoke in a trembling voice, as if trying to understand something beyond his mind:
"What… what is this?
Did it break the spell? Did it turn it back on us?"
The deputy did not raise his head.
His body shook like a leaf in a dark wind.
"No… not that.
This… something awakened it.
Something triggered its primitive instinct.
As if the fight, or the blood, or something else reminded it of what it was before it became a monster."
He looked at the creature, his voice breaking:
"Commander…
this is no longer ours.
This… returned to its origin."
A heavy silence followed after the human faces swallowed the last remains of the Corpse Purification Faction.
But the creature did not stop.
This was only the beginning.
Its body staggered and trembled as if trapped in an endless primitive hunger, and then it began devouring.
Like a beast descending from a thousand-year-old famine, it rushed toward the scattered corpses on the ground:
Dozens of human bodies
Bodies of blood wolves
The remains of the crimson giant wolf
Pools of blood
Even the blood soaked into the earth
All of them began to shake, then rise into the air as if a hidden force was pulling them from the ground, flying into the creature's mouth and disappearing like sparks.
The air filled with crushing sounds.
Bones grinding.
Flesh smashing.
A heavy hiss followed by a breath that sounded like a dead man returning to life.
With each thing it devoured, its body began to grow.
Then distort.
Then grow again.
Then distort again.
Its ribs stretched outward, then pulled back into itself.
Its skin tore, then grew back over the torn areas.
Its mushroom-like head shook like a lump of flesh kneaded by a demonic force.
Suddenly, a long whistle came from the creature's core, and the blood around it began to boil.
Ashen, standing on a broken rock, moved his right hand.
His hand lit up with crimson red light, and a long blood chain shot out like lightning.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
The chain pierced the air with deadly force, but…
Dozens of giant blood arms exploded out of the ground.
They formed like hellish plants, rising to create a terrifying barrier around the creature.
The arms were breathing.
Their flesh trembled.
Black veins pulsed on them like separate hearts.
Then, without warning, the arms began to curl.
One over another.
Then another.
Then dozens more.
Until the creature was trapped inside a cursed sphere made of pulsing flesh and boiling blood.
It looked like a giant womb.
A demonic womb creating something that should never be born.
Silence.
Only one second.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOM!
A blood explosion turned into a massive shockwave, throwing rocks away and tearing down trees in a large radius.
Chunks of flesh flew.
Severed arms scattered.
Red steam rose like steam from hell.
From the center of the destruction, from the heart of the ruin, the new thing appeared.
It had grown to fifteen meters tall.
But the size was not the problem.
The horror was in the shape.
Its head was no longer a deformed mushroom.
It had become the head of a giant wolf, with long twisted jaws and black teeth dripping burning acid.
In the middle of its forehead was a huge vertical eye that moved like an independent being, shrinking, expanding, watching, and smiling in a terrifying way without a real smile.
On each side of its head were dozens of human faces.
Eyes crying blood.
Mouths twisting.
Some screaming.
Some laughing.
As if each face carried a trapped soul suffering inside.
Its torso had swollen in a disgusting way.
Under the skin, hundreds of small arms moved like human worms.
Beside its two giant gorilla arms, two new blood-human arms grew, each the size of stone pillars.
On its back, a forest of human arms moved constantly, scratching the skin and fighting each other like separate creatures living on it.
Its lower body had become a horrifying hybrid: the legs of a giant black wolf surrounded by four bloody spider legs that dug into the ground with cracking sounds.
Every step it took shook the earth.
Every breath it released spread black poison into the air.
When its aura finally appeared, it was not energy.
It was an existential curse.
Something foul, ancient, twisted, hating life itself.
A black blood aura crashed like storms, its pressure alone cracking the ground in wide circles.
The air between it and the factions collapsed, and the sky turned pale red.
Everyone present stared in terror.
They all fell to their knees.
Some fainted.
Others began crying from the pressure.
Even the commanders collapsed like broken dolls.
Except one…
Ashen.
He remained standing.
His stance was simple and calm, as if he were looking at something insignificant.
No fear.
No dread.
Even when the aura hit him directly, half of it bounced back from him like a stone hitting a mountain.
Ashen looked at the new creature with no emotions and no expression, as if what was happening was normal in a life filled with hell and blood.