In a dark, silent void, Koby floated—weightless, thoughtless, untethered. There was no up or down, no light, no sound but the low, resonant hum of his own fading consciousness. Slowly, sensation returned. He felt the phantom chill of the nothingness against his skin, the dull, throbbing ache in his shoulder where the Shoggoth had struck him.
Am I dead? he wondered, the question forming in his mind before he could give it voice. He tried to move his limbs, but there was no resistance, nothing to push against. He reached out, feeling only empty, cool space. It was like being submerged in deep, still water, but without the pressure, without the need to breathe.
"This is supposed to be my incarnate?" A voice erupted through the void. It was vast, ancient, layered with echoes of countless other sounds—scraping stone, cracking ice, the sigh of a dying star. It held no single direction; it simply was, everywhere at once.
"Pathetic." The word dripped with such profound disgust that Koby felt it like a physical blow. Cold fear, sharp and primal, trickled down his spine. He forced himself to turn in the featureless dark, searching for a source.
"Who's there?" he finally called out, summoning courage from a well that felt frighteningly dry.
"Who do you think?" the voice chuckled, a sound that vibrated through Koby's very bones.
Koby's fear began to curdle into defiance. If this was death, he would not cower. "If you're going to kill me, make it quick. Don't keep me in suspense."
The entity ignored his challenge completely, as if he were an insect chirping at a thunderstorm. "The only good thing about you is your hate," it mused, its tone analytical, almost clinical. "You have an innate hatred for your own existence."
That struck a nerve, raw and exposed. "What do you know about me?" Koby snapped, annoyance flaring. The idea of this disembodied presence prying into his deepest, most private self was a violation worse than any physical attack.
"In your entire lifetime, you have been beset with problems that have made you hate existence itself," the voice continued, unfazed. "The last time I saw that type of hate… was from myself."
As the last word faded, two ghostly points of light ignited in the darkness ahead. They were eyes—vast, luminous, and utterly alien. Beneath them, a wide, crescent smile of pure light stretched open, a grin that held no warmth, only an eternity of cold amusement.
"What are you?" Koby breathed, the question barely more than a whisper.
"It does not matter for now," the voice replied, the glowing eyes narrowing slightly. "Let me in, and I'll help you survive the world the Supreme Beings have laid out for you."
A bitter, exhausted laugh escaped Koby. "The typical 'deal with the devil.'"
"You don't seem to have a problem with it," the voice observed, its tone tipping toward curiosity.
"If you want my soul, why not just start with that?" Koby shrugged, a gesture lost in the void but conveyed in his tone.
"Your soul is of no meaning to me," it stated flatly. "I just want to take a look inside your anger."
"Why?"
"Fate won't allow me to take your soul."
"I don't understand."
"Your time is ticking," the voice intoned, the smile widening. "You're on death's door, young one. You need to decide now."
Koby's mind, trained by a life of negotiating unfair odds, latched onto a thread. This thing was offering, not just taking. That meant he had leverage. "If I let you do what you want, what do I get in return?"
"That all depends on you, young one. You can either have it all… or you can have nothing."
"I won't accept you if you can't even give me a clear answer," Koby said, arching his brows in annoyance he hoped it could sense.
"Then you'll die."
"So be it," Koby declared, putting all his will into the bluff. He was trying to bargain, and the voice seemed to need him. It had to.
His fragile hope was shattered by the laugh that followed.
It was not a human sound. It was the sound of continents splitting, of mountains crumbling, amplified a thousandfold in the confined emptiness. Koby recoiled, his nerves screaming as primal terror flooded him. He was utterly, completely spooked.
"Do you think your death will be the end of it?" the voice boomed, the laughter cutting off abruptly. "Your friends will die. Close acquaintances will be made to suffer, until you're inevitably alone. I can wait for another incarnate, while you'll just be another fleeting memory. No matter how you look at it, you lose."
Before Koby could form a protest, the void vanished, replaced by a flood of searing, horrific visions.
He saw Kai, impaled through the chest on a jagged, crystalline staff, his blue eyes wide with shock. He saw James on his knees, multiple swords protruding from his back like a grotesque metal spine. Raya lay nearby, her throat slit open in a crimson smile. Rachael stared blankly at the sky, a gaping, empty hole where her heart should be. The vision pulled back, revealing a sun-bleached valley carpeted with countless bodies, black birds descending in a raucous, feasting cloud.
The grief, the guilt, the sheer loss hit him like a physical tsunami. He couldn't breathe.
"This can be what you make it," the voice whispered now, intimate and insidious, "or you can change it entirely."
"What do you want from me?" Koby cried out, his voice cracking under the emotional onslaught.
"Stop running from what you're meant to be, young one. Accept what you are."
A new scene flashed—not of death, but of memory. He was a child, younger, smaller, curled in a corner as raised voices echoed somewhere he couldn't see. The loneliness was a tangible thing, a cold stone in his gut. "If I stop running, everyone is going to leave me behind," the younger version of himself whispered, the words echoing from Koby's own lips in the void.
The voice's response was a thunderclap of fury. "Run away? Who's running? Running where?" A terrifying pause, then a scream that felt like it would tear the fabric of reality: "WHY WOULD I RUN?!"
At that moment, Koby felt his body move.
It was not by his will. He was a passenger, locked behind his own eyes. Sensation returned with brutal clarity—not to the void, but to his physical form. He was back in the mansion, on the ground floor, surrounded by the reeking, shrieking mass of Shoggoths. His body was a furnace, burning with a heat that was both agonizing and empowering. He could feel every muscle fiber, every tendon, thrumming with a dark, unfamiliar energy.
He watched, helpless, as his own hand reached down and picked up a fallen hatchet. A deep, shadowy aura—visible as a shimmering, oil-slick darkness—erupted from his skin, clinging to him like a second shadow.
Then his body moved. It was not the practiced, tactical movement of Koby the survivor. It was something feral, efficient, and terrifyingly fast. He dashed into the nearest cluster of Shoggoths. His hatchet moved in arcs too quick to follow, each swing cleaving through rubbery flesh with sickening ease. He didn't dodge; he flowed through their attacks, his dark aura seeming to deflect glancing blows.
The Shoggoths turned on this new, violent threat, swarming him in a wave. His body made quick work of them, a whirlwind of precise, brutal dismemberment.
But as the slaughter continued, Koby's awareness, his sense of self, began to fade. The world tinted red at the edges. The sounds of battle grew muffled, distant. He felt himself sinking, as if into a deep, warm pool. The water was red, thick, and peaceful. It muffled the noise, the fear, the anger. It was so warm… so peaceful… He let himself drown in it, sliding down into welcoming, silent darkness.
At the front lines upstairs, the fighters were nearing their breaking point. Then, Rory noticed it first. The pressure was easing. The endless stream of Shoggoths clawing over the barricade was thinning.
"They're pulling back!" someone yelled, but the statement was wrong.
Zara, leaning against a wall to catch her breath, glanced over the shattered banister down to the ground floor. What she saw made her freeze. "I see Koby down there," she called out, her voice laced with disbelief. "He's fighting them."
Others rushed to look. There, in the center of the seething horde, was a single figure moving with impossible speed, a haze of dark energy clinging to him as he carved a path of destruction.
"Koby!" Kai shouted, relief and hope surging in his chest.
"I don't think he can hear you," Rory said quietly, his analytical gaze fixed on the scene below. The movements were Koby's, but the aura… the presence was something else entirely.
"Let's push forward and help him!" James cried, and without waiting, he vaulted over what remained of the barricade, his sword flashing as he cleaved through two Shoggoths in his path. The sight of Koby alive, fighting like a demon, ignited a second wind in the exhausted survivors. With renewed, desperate vigor, they surged forward, reclaiming the hallway step by bloody step.
Kai provided covering fire, his energy arrows streaking down to pick off Shoggoths turning toward the lone fighter below. Then he jumped down, landing beside the dark-aura-clad Koby, fighting back-to-back with his friend—or what he hoped was still his friend.
Seeing the upstairs nearly clear, Rory caught Zara's eye. "Combine your Turbulence with me." He didn't wait for a full reply, already sprinting ahead to the head of the stairs leading down.
"Alright!" Zara called, rallying her last reserves of energy to follow.
Rory planted his feet at the top of the staircase, faced the remaining Shoggoths below, and clapped his hands together. "Sonic Boom!"
The concussive wave blasted downward, throwing Shoggoths off their feet, stunning and maiming them. Almost before the sound faded, Zara was beside him, arms outstretched. "Turbulence!"
A cyclonic inferno roared down the stairs. Rory's shockwave had scattered the creatures; Zara's fire swept through the scattered groups, igniting them, the force of the combined attack physically pushing the bulk of the horde back down to the ground floor.
With a final, coordinated effort, the survivors cleared the upper level and poured down to join the fight on the ground floor, encircling and overwhelming the disoriented Shoggoths. The tide had turned.
When the timer appeared in their vision—00:05:00 remaining—the Shoggoths began to disengage, retreating with eerie synchronicity back toward the shattered doors and into the dark woods beyond. By the time the countdown hit zero, the mansion was silent, save for the heavy panting and pained groans of the survivors.
A wave of exhausted, disbelieving euphoria washed over them. They had survived the stampede.
James, his face streaked with blood and soot, was the first to move toward Koby, who stood still amidst the carnage, his head bowed, the dark aura slowly dissipating. "We thought you were dead, Koby!" James choked out, emotion overwhelming him as he threw his arms around his friend in a tight, relieved hug.
Koby's head lifted.
His eyes opened.
They were not blue, as they should have been. They were pools of absolute, lightless black—no iris, no sclera, just endless, hungry dark.
In a flash of movement too fast to track, Koby's arm shot out. His fist slammed into James's torso, not with a brawler's punch, but with the focused, destructive force of a piston. The impact lifted James off his feet and drove him into the wooden floor with a sickening crash, splintering the planks and forming a shallow crater. James lay in the wreckage, coughing up thick, red blood, his eyes wide with shock and betrayal.
"I don't think that's Koby," Rory said softly, his dagger already in hand, his body shifting into a defensive stance.
"James! You alright? What's wrong with you?!" Kai yelled, rushing toward the two.
Koby moved. He didn't run; he simply appeared in front of Kai. A straight punch, blurred by speed, drove into Kai's stomach. The air exploded from Kai's lungs as he was launched backward, skidding across the floor until he hit a wall and slumped, gasping.
"He's a possessed Shoggoth!" a voice screamed from the terrified crowd. Weapons were raised, but they were trembling in exhausted hands.
Before a thought could fully form, Koby blitzed toward Rory. A low kick aimed to shatter a knee. Rory barely managed to twist, taking the blow on his shin guard. The force was still monstrous, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing into a pile of debris.
"It's just one person!" a desperate voice rallied.
Three men, spurred by the cry, charged Koby from different sides.
Koby's right hand flickered. A hatchet materialized in it. A single, horizontal swing.
Three heads tumbled from three shoulders, their bodies collapsing in a gruesome, simultaneous heap.
The celebration was over. In the silence that followed, broken only by James's ragged coughing and the drip of blood, the survivors faced not their savior, but something ancient, furious, and was in their friend's body.