Emil didn't sleep.
How could he? Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Chen's face pressed against the translucent wall, mouth open in a scream that had no sound. Saw the flesh dissolving, layer by layer, until bone showed through. Saw those eyes still moving, still aware, as the Feeding Ground digested him alive.
He sat on his bunk in the barracks, watching the clock.
23:47.
Thirteen minutes until midnight. Thirteen minutes until he descended to Level 13 and chose which Fear would eventually eat him from the inside out.
His hands were shaking.
"You're really doing this."
Emil looked up. Torres stood in the doorway, still in his blood-stained uniform from the mission. His too-long fingers—Stage 1, The Stranger—flexed nervously, bending at angles that made Emil's stomach turn.
"Yeah," Emil said simply.
"You saw what happened to Voss." It wasn't a question. Torres stepped inside, his face—currently his own, though Emil knew he'd stolen others—drawn with exhaustion. "You saw what she became. Smiling as she turned into a fucking tumor. And you're still going?"
"People are dying, Torres."
"People are always dying." Torres's voice cracked. "That's the world now. The Hollow Year didn't change that—it just made it more obvious. You can't save everyone, Cross."
"I can try."
"And when you're at Stage 2, smiling while your body does things bodies shouldn't do, will it have been worth it?" Torres grabbed Emil's shoulder—the human hand, thank god. "Will saving a few dozen people be worth forgetting who you are?"
Emil thought about Mara. About her laugh, the way she used to steal his books and read them before he could finish. About watching her get pulled into The Buried's domain three years ago, walls becoming flesh, swallowing her whole.
About how he'd been powerless to stop it.
"Yes," he said. "It will be worth it."
Torres stared at him for a long moment. Then his hand fell away, and something in his face shifted—literally shifted, his features becoming slightly flatter, less distinct. The Stranger's influence, making him forget which face was really his.
"Then good luck," Torres said quietly. "And Cross? When you start forgetting things, when the Fear starts taking pieces of you..." He paused at the door. "Write it down. Everything you want to remember. Because once it's gone, you won't even know what you lost."
He left.
Emil sat alone, watching the clock tick toward midnight.
23:58.
He stood. Walked out of the barracks. The sanctuary was quiet at this hour, most people asleep or pretending to sleep. The eastern Feeding Ground had been cleared, but three more pulsed in the distance beyond the walls, their organic towers visible against the dark sky.
The elevator to Level 13 required a special keycard. Dr. Senna was waiting for him at the entrance, her Stage 1 Eyes—subtly wrong, pupils too large and seeing too much—tracking his approach.
"You came," she said. Not surprised. She'd known he would. The Eye saw too much to be surprised.
"Show me," Emil said.
Senna swiped her card. The elevator doors opened with a soft chime that sounded obscene in the silence. They descended.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Emil's ears popped. The elevator shaft was longer than it should be, deeper than Level 13 should exist. When the doors finally opened, the air that washed over him was wrong—cold and thick and tasting of copper and fear.
"This way," Senna said.
The corridor was concrete and bare bulbs, institutional and sterile. But Emil could feel it underneath—a wrongness in the walls, like they were holding their breath. Waiting.
They passed doors marked with symbols Emil didn't recognize. Behind one, he heard screaming. Behind another, laughter that didn't sound human.
"Containment cells," Senna said, not looking at him. "For the ones who reach Stage 3 before we can execute them. Sometimes they linger for days, trapped between human and Consumed. We keep them here until... until they finish changing."
Emil's stomach clenched. "And then?"
"Then they're either Consumed and we kill them, or they're something else." Senna's voice was flat. "Sometimes people hit Stage 4 and retain themselves. Not human, not Fear, but other. The Architects. We don't know where they go after that."
She stopped at a door marked with thirteen symbols arranged in a circle. Each one made Emil's eyes hurt to look at directly.
"Last chance," Senna said, hand on the door. "Once you Bind, there's no going back. The Fear marks you, and it will never let go. You'll spend the rest of your life—however long that is—being slowly digested by something that doesn't understand mercy."
"I know," Emil said.
"Do you?" Senna's too-large eyes locked onto his. "I can see it, you know. Your Digestion percentage. Right now it's zero—perfectly human. But the moment you Bind, I'll see the number appear. Watch it tick up with every breath. Every heartbeat feeding the Fear that's living inside you." She paused. "I've watched a lot of numbers climb, Emil. I've never seen one go down."
Emil thought about Chen. About Voss. About Mara.
"Open the door," he said.
Senna did.
The Binding Chamber was circular, maybe twenty meters across, with thirteen alcoves carved into the walls. Each alcove held something that hurt to look at directly—objects, or spaces, or absences that represented the Fears.
In the center of the room was a stone chair, covered in restraints.
"Sit," Senna said.
Emil walked forward. His footsteps echoed wrong, like the room was both too large and too small. He sat in the chair. The stone was cold enough to burn through his clothes.
Senna began fastening the restraints—leather straps across his chest, arms, legs, forehead. They were stained dark with old blood and other things.
"Why the restraints?" Emil's voice came out smaller than he intended.
"Because the Binding isn't gentle," Senna said, cinching the chest strap tight enough to restrict his breathing. "You have to experience the Fear fully, no resistance, total submission. Your body will fight back. The restraints keep you from hurting yourself when your hindbrain starts screaming."
She stepped back, checking each strap. Emil couldn't move. Could barely breathe.
"Now," Senna said, pulling out a tablet. "Choose your Fear. Choose carefully—this determines not just your powers, but how you'll eventually lose your humanity."
She brought up the list of Thirteen. Emil had researched them all, but seeing them here, feeling their presence in the alcoves around him, made them terrifyingly real.
The Buried - Suffocation, being trapped alive.
The Spiral - Madness, fractals that break minds.
The Slaughter - Bloodlust, the joy of killing.
The Corruption - Disease, insects crawling inside.
The Flesh - Body horror, unwanted transformation.
The Stranger - The uncanny valley, losing identity.
The Lonely - Isolation unto nonexistence.
The Hunt - Being prey, chased forever.
The Dark - Not darkness, but erasure of being.
The Vast - Cosmic insignificance.
The Web - Conspiracy, being puppeteered.
The End - Death itself, being ended.
The Eye - Being watched, having no secrets.
Emil's eyes kept returning to one entry.
The Dark.
Not because it seemed safer—none of them were safe. But because when Mara was taken, it had been into The Buried's domain. Walls of flesh, crushing, suffocating. If he'd had the power to step through darkness, to move through impossible spaces, maybe he could have reached her.
Maybe he could have saved her.
"The Dark," Emil said.
Senna nodded slowly. "The fear of erasure. Of ceasing to exist. It's not about being afraid of the dark—it's about understanding that darkness isn't absence of light. It's the presence of nothing. You'll learn to move through it, become it, but eventually..." She met his eyes. "Eventually you'll understand why nothing is better than something. Why existence itself is the burden."
"I choose The Dark," Emil repeated.
Senna tapped the tablet. Something in the room shifted. The alcove directly in front of Emil—the one that held The Dark's symbol—began to pulse. The lights dimmed, but not naturally. The darkness that spread from the alcove was thick, substantial, wrong.
"The Binding begins now," Senna said, stepping back toward the door. "I'll be here the entire time, monitoring your vitals. If your heart stops, I'll try to revive you. If you go into shock, I'll stabilize you. But I can't stop the process once it starts. You have to survive it on your own."
"How long does it take?"
"However long the Fear wants." Senna's hand was on the door. "For some, minutes. For others, hours. The record is seventeen hours." She paused. "That person didn't survive."
Then she dimmed the lights completely.
And the darkness came.
It started at his feet.
Emil felt it first—a coldness that wasn't temperature, more like the absence of heat had become a physical thing. It crept up his ankles, his calves, and everywhere it touched, sensation stopped. Not numbness. Not pain. Just... nothing.
His hindbrain started screaming.
The darkness rose higher, crawling up his thighs like water but thicker, heavier, and Emil could feel his legs disappearing. Not being amputated—being erased. The distinction was important and terrible.
He tried to struggle, but the restraints held him. Tried to scream, but his throat had forgotten how.
The darkness reached his waist.
Emil looked down and saw nothing below his stomach. No legs. No chair beneath him. Just absolute blackness that hurt to look at because it was more than darkness—it was the space where reality gave up and admitted defeat.
No no no no—
His rational mind gibbered, but the Binding didn't care about rational minds. The Fear needed to taste him, needed to know him, needed to understand what flavor of terror he represented before it would Mark him.
The darkness consumed his chest.
Emil couldn't breathe. Not because his lungs didn't work—they did, he could feel them expanding, contracting—but because there was nothing to breathe. The darkness had eaten the air, eaten the space between molecules, eaten the concept of atmosphere.
His vision grayed at the edges.
And then the darkness reached his head.
Somewhere/Nowhere
Emil opened his eyes that didn't exist in a place that had never been.
He was in darkness, but not the darkness of closed eyes or lightless rooms. This was the darkness behind reality, the negative space between existence and void. It stretched forever in directions that didn't have names.
And he wasn't alone.
Something moved in the darkness. Something vast beyond comprehension, something that had always been here, waiting for light to fail so it could finally be noticed.
THE DARK looked at him.
Not with eyes. Eyes required light to perceive. This was attention—pure, absolute, crushing attention from something that existed in the gaps between moments, in the pause between heartbeats, in the silence before sound.
Why do you fear me? it asked, not in words but in the cessation of all other thoughts.
Emil tried to answer, but he had no mouth. No body. He was just awareness, suspended in nothing.
Why do you fear erasure? THE DARK asked again.
And Emil understood—the Binding required him to answer. Required him to face the core of his terror and acknowledge it. Admit it. Accept it.
He thought about Mara. About how she'd existed—bright and alive and real—and then she'd been taken, consumed, erased. How the universe continued as if she'd never been. How the world didn't stop, didn't care, didn't even notice that something precious had been deleted from existence.
He was afraid of that.
Afraid that nothing mattered. That everything he did, everyone he saved, would eventually be forgotten, erased, swallowed by the inevitable darkness that consumed all things.
Afraid that in the end, he would cease to exist, and the universe wouldn't even shrug.
Yes, THE DARK said, and it sounded almost pleased. You understand.
You fear not death, but the state of having never mattered. You fear that existence itself is a temporary error, and I am the correction.
You fear me because I am inevitable.
Because I am true.
Because everything returns to me eventually.
And you are right to fear.
The darkness pressed closer, suffocating, erasing, and Emil felt himself dissolving—his memories, his identity, his sense of self all peeling away like layers of an onion. Soon there would be nothing left. Just the darkness, eternal and patient.
But then THE DARK asked a different question:
Will you feed me?
And Emil understood the contract. The Binding wasn't slavery—it was symbiosis. The Fear would give him power, allow him to touch the darkness and survive, to move through it and command it. In exchange, he would feed it. Every time he used the power, he would give THE DARK a piece of himself. His memories. His humanity. His existence.
Eventually, he would give everything.
And THE DARK would accept it gladly, would digest him slowly and completely until there was nothing left but darkness in the shape of a boy who used to be named Emil.
But until that day, he could save people.
Could stand between The Fears and the innocent.
Could make sure his erasure meant something before it happened.
Yes, Emil thought into the void. I'll feed you. Take what you need. Just give me time first. Let me matter before I disappear.
THE DARK considered this. In that endless moment of consideration, Emil felt the weight of eternity, the patient hunger of something that had existed before light and would remain after the last star died.
Then:
Agreed.
And THE DARK marked him.
Binding Chamber, Sanctuary-7
Emil's eyes snapped open and he screamed.
The pain was indescribable. Not physical pain—worse. The sensation of something else moving into his body, into his mind, making space for itself by pushing everything else aside. He felt THE DARK curl around his spine like a serpent, felt it sink roots into his brain, felt it whisper through his veins.
The Mark appeared on his chest—a shadow that moved independently of the light, darker than anything around it, shaped like a handprint with too many fingers.
It pulsed.
With every pulse, Emil felt a little more of himself disappear. Not erased—not yet—but... compressed. Made smaller. There was something else living inside him now, and it needed room.
"Breathe," Senna's voice cut through the haze. She was releasing the restraints, her movements efficient despite her hands shaking slightly. "The first hour is the worst. Your body is adjusting to the presence. It gets easier."
"Easier?" Emil managed to gasp. His chest felt too small, too full, like something was trying to hatch from inside his ribcage.
"You'll acclimate." Senna held up her tablet, and Emil saw numbers appearing: EMIL CROSS - THE DARK - DIGESTION: 1.2% - STAGE 0: MARKED
One point two percent.
He'd been Bound for less than an hour and he'd already lost 1.2% of his humanity.
"The initial Binding always costs more," Senna said, reading his expression. "It'll slow down. 0.5 to 1% per power use after this, depending on intensity. You'll hit Stage 1 in six to eighteen months at average usage."
Emil tried to stand and his legs gave out. Torres—when had Torres arrived?—caught him, his too-long fingers digging into Emil's arm.
"Welcome to the club," Torres said, and there was no humor in his voice. "How do you feel?"
How did he feel?
Emil took inventory. His body ached, but not from injury—from wrongness, from hosting something that didn't belong in a human form. His head pounded. His vision was... off. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed deeper than they should be. More substantial.
And underneath it all, coiled in his chest like a sleeping serpent, he could feel THE DARK. Could feel it waiting. Hungry.
"Like I swallowed something that's eating me from the inside," Emil said honestly.
"Yeah," Torres nodded. "That never really goes away. You just get used to it."
"Come on," Senna said, helping Emil to his feet. "We need to run some tests. Verify your abilities, establish baseline Digestion rate, and—"
The alarm shrieked.
All three of them froze. That wasn't the normal alarm—it was the emergency broadcast, the one that meant something catastrophic.
Senna's radio crackled: "All Marked report to staging immediately. Multiple Feeding Grounds manifesting simultaneously. Eastern, Western, and Southern sectors. Estimated civilian casualties: 400+. This is not a drill. Repeat: All Marked report—"
"Fuck," Torres breathed. "They're coordinating. The Fears are working together."
Emil looked at Senna. "I need to—"
"Absolutely not," she cut him off. "You Bound less than an hour ago. Your body is still adjusting. If you use your powers now, you could burn through 5%, 10%, hit Stage 1 immediately—"
"People are dying," Emil said.
The same words he'd told Torres earlier. The same justification. The same trap.
Senna stared at him, her too-large Eyes seeing too much. "You really are going to burn yourself out as fast as possible, aren't you? Save everyone until there's nothing left of you to save?"
Emil thought about Mara. About Chen. About Voss smiling as she became a tumor.
"Yes," he said simply.
Senna closed her Eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. When she spoke, her voice was clinical, detached: "Fine. Torres will accompany you as training oversight. Use your powers minimally. Shadow Step only—no extended duration, no experimentation. If you feel your Digestion accelerating, you retreat immediately. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Liar," Senna said. But she stepped aside.
Torres grabbed Emil's arm—both arms now, the too-long fingers and the human hand. "Stay close to me. Don't try to be a hero on your first day. The Dark will want you to use it—the Fears always want us to use them. But every time you do, you're giving it permission to eat a little more."
They ran for the elevator.
As they ascended, Emil felt the Mark on his chest pulse again. Felt THE DARK stir in his veins, eager, hungry.
And underneath that, barely audible, he heard it whisper:
Feed me.
Eastern Sector Wall
The Feeding Grounds had manifested all at once—three massive structures blooming like cancerous flowers against the dark sky. But these weren't like the one from earlier. These were different.
The Eastern one was The Corruption's domain—a structure that wept pus and crawled with insects, its walls alive with maggots and rot.
The Western one pulsed with The Slaughter's influence—a building of crystallized blood and bone, screaming architecture that promised violence.
The Southern one spiraled impossibly upward—The Spiral's madness made manifest, angles that hurt to perceive and geometry that shouldn't exist.
Emil stared at them from the wall, his new Marked senses picking up details he'd never noticed before. The way the Feeding Grounds breathed. The way they sang, each one a different note in a symphony of terror.
And underneath, in the darkness between the floodlights, he saw other things moving. Shadows that weren't cast by anything. Shapes that existed in the gaps between moments.
THE DARK had always been here, he realized with dawning horror. He just hadn't been able to see it before.
"Alright, Cross," Torres said, checking his rifle. "You're with me. We're clearing the Corruption site—estimated forty civilians trapped inside. It's going to be ugly. Rot, disease, insects in places insects shouldn't be. You ready for this?"
Emil looked at the pulsing, weeping structure. Looked at his hands, which cast shadows that were too dark, too substantial.
Felt THE DARK whisper in his chest: Use me. Feed me. Let me taste the fear of others.
"No," Emil said honestly. "But I'm going anyway."
They descended the wall.
The Corruption's Feeding Ground waited, drooling disease and crawling with things that should be dead.
And in the darkness between the floodlights, Emil felt something watching. Not THE DARK—something else. Something that recognized what he'd become.
A Consumed, maybe. Or something worse.
It smiled with too many teeth and whispered: Welcome to the feast, little brother. Welcome to the family.
Emil's Mark pulsed.
DIGESTION: 1.8%
He'd used no powers yet, but just having THE DARK inside him was feeding it. Slowly. Inevitably.
The clock was ticking.
"Move out!" someone shouted, and Emil moved with the squad toward the Feeding Ground, toward the rot and disease and horror.
Toward his first real mission as one of the Marked.
Toward the slow, inevitable consumption that would end with him smiling as he forgot his own name.
But for now—right now—he was still Emil Cross.
Still human enough to remember why he was doing this.
Still sane enough to care.
The question was: how long would that last?