Raelyn's heart thundered in her chest, each beat a desperate drum urging her forward. Her legs burned with every step, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps, but she couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop.
Behind her, the laughter chased her, high-pitched and distorted like a skipping record.
"No escape," the voice hissed, slithering along the walls.
"No escape," it whispered again, scraping against her ears like rusted nails on bones.
The sound of claws scratching along the walls followed, unnervingly close. She dared a glance back and saw him—the man in the top hat. His gaunt frame twitched and spasmed unnaturally, glitching forward in short, jarring bursts. His nails, elongated and jagged, dragged across the walls, leaving being gouges that bled a thick, black substance.
Raelyn swallowed a scream and ran faster.
The hallway closed in around her, its walls narrowing until they pressed against her shoulders. She turned sideways, squeezing through, her skin scraping against the cold, damp surface. The air reeked of decay, making her stomach churn, but she pressed on.
Finally, the suffocating passage gave way to a vast chamber.
This room was different. Unlike the suffocating darkness of the previous halls, this space existed in an eerie limbo. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't light either. Shadows and light played together. creating an otherworldly glow that illuminated the countless pillars rising toward an unreachable ceiling.
Raelyn staggered forward, her steps echoing in the silence. She ducked behind one of the massive pillars, her back pressed against the cold stone. Her lungs burned as she struggled to quiet her breathing.
The laughter returned.
It started as a low chuckle, distant but growing louder. The sound warped, becoming a cacophony of overlapping voices that made her skin crawl.
The man in the top hat appeared.
He didn't walk into the room—he glitched into it, his body flickering and twisting as though reality itself rejected his existence. His crooked frame swayed unnaturally as he surveyed the room, his hollow eyes scanning each pillar.
"No escape," he whispered. The words came from everywhere and nowhere, an echo that seeped into her mind.
"No escape."
Raelyn pressed her hand to her mouth, suppressing a sob. She didn't dare move.
Then the ground trembled.
A low, guttural growl filled the chamber, vibrating through the pillars. Raelyn's breath hitched as one of the walls began to crack and crumble. The sound was deafening, like the world itself was splitting apart.
Through the rubble stepped a colossal figure.
The Butcher.
He was a grotesque nightmare given form.
His massive frame towered over the pillars, his hunched shoulders casting jagged shadows across the chamber. His head was encased in a mask stitched together from human faces. their vacant eyes staring lifelessly into the void. Black ichor oozed from the seams, dripping down his chest and pooling at his feet.
His torso was a gruesome patchwork of exposed muscle and rotting flesh, stitched together with barbed wire that dug deep into his skin. His ribs jutted out unnaturally, some of them broken and protruding through his decayed flesh. Beneath the thin, translucent skin of his abdomen, organs pulsed and squirmed as though alive.
His arms were monstrous, ending in hands that seemed more like weapons. Each finger was a rusted blade, jagged and uneven, with dried blood caked along the edges. His right hand gripped a clever the size of a small door, its blade chipped and stained with layers of congealed gore.
Every step he took left a trail of blackened blood and rotting flesh, the ground beneath hi sizzling as if burned by his presence.
The man in the top hat stopped laughing.
For a moment, the two horrors stared at each other. The air grew heavy, the silence oppressive.
Then, the man in the top hat tilted his head, his crooked grin widening impossibly. His glitching form twitched violently as he let out a guttural roar, his nails elongating into wicked spikes.
The Butcher responded with a deafening snarl, raising his cleaver high as he charged.
They collided with a force that shook the chamber. The cleaver met the man's claws in a shower of sparks, the sound a deafening screech that made Raelyn's ears ring.
The Butcher swung his cleaver in brutal, bone-crushing arcs, each strike shaking the ground. The man in the top hat darted and twisted, his glitching movements making him almost impossible to hit. When he attacked, his claws tore through the Butcher's flesh, ripping away chunks of muscle that dripped back ichor.
The room began to change.
On the Butcher's side, the walls turned into a nightmarish tableau of skulls and shattered bones. Rivers of blood poured from the ceiling, pooling on the floor.
On the man in the top hat's side, the walls became flesh—wet, pulsating, and grotesque. Eyes and mouths emerged from the surface, their whispers growing louder: "Die. Die. Die."
The battle reached its peak, each blow more savage than the last. Blood and ichor painted the walls, the air thick with the metallic stench of violence.
Then the ground shifted.
Both monsters froze as the floor beneath them came alive. Tendrils of flesh and bone erupted, wrapping around their legs. The ground pulled them down, their struggles futile as they were consumed.
Screams of rage filled the chamber as their forms were fused into one.
When the transformation was complete, the merged entity rose.
The creature was a grotesque amalgamation of the two monsters, its form a nightmare that defied logic.
Its body was a massive, twisted mass of flesh and bone. Its left arm was a cleaver fused with jagged claws, dripping with black ichor. Its right arm was a writhing mass of tendrils tripped with serrated blades.
Its face was the most horrifying of all—a grotesque fusion of the Butcher's stitched mask and the man in the top hat's glitching void. One half was frozen in a lifeless stare, the other a flickering, ever-shifting vortex of darkness.
Raelyn stumbled into a hallway unlike any she had encountered before. The air was heavy, thick with a palpable wrongness that seemed to press against her chest. Her footsteps echoed unnaturally the sound distorted as if it didn't belong to her at all.
She slowed her pace, her instincts screaming that something was wrong. The walls here weren't stone or flesh but smooth, black glass, reflecting her every movement. As she stepped forward, her reflection seemed to lag, its movements slightly delayed.
She froze.
In the glass ahead, her reflection smiled.
Raelyn's breath caught in her throat. Her lips hadn't moved, but the figure in the mirror grinned wide, too wide, splitting its face apart with rows of jagged teeth.
Her reflection stepped forward, breaking away from the surface of the glass. The sound it made was wet, like something being dragged out of a swamp.
The thing was her in every way—her face, her clothes, even her frantic, wide-eyed expression. But its eyes were empty, black pits that seemed to devour light. It twitched and tilted its head, mocking her fear.
Before Raelyn could move, it lunged.
It struck her with inhuman speed, slamming her to the ground. Its hands were unnaturally strong as they wrapped around her neck. Raelyn gasped and clawed at its grip, but the shadow's fingers only tightened, its mocking grin never wavering.
"Stop...struggling..." it hissed, its voice an unholy amalgamation of hers and something far darker.
Raelyn's vision blurred. She thrashed, kicked, and clawed, but it was no use. The shadow leaned closer, black ichor dripping from its mouth onto her skin.
Then the ground trembled.
A guttural roar ripped through the air, shaking the very walls. The shadow paused, titling its head like a curious animal.
From the far end of the hallway, The Bound Horror emerged. Its grotesque form moved with an unsettling grace, its massive cleaver dragging against its ground, leaving deep gouges in its wake.
Raelyn's breath hitched.
The Bound Horror locked its mismatched eyes on the shadow, and for the first time, the doppelganger showed fear. It released Raelyn and scrambled back, its movements erratic and jerky.
The creature spoke, its voice a twisted symphony of growls and whispers: "I am The Bound Horror. She is my prey. My prisoner."
Before the shadow could escape, The Bound Horror lashed out with its tendrils. They wrapped around the doppelganger's limbs, pulling it toward the cleaver.
The shadow shrieked, its cries echoing with a distorted blend of Raelyn's voice and its own. The Bound Horror lifted it effortlessly, its jagged teeth twisting into a grotesque mockery of a smile.
With one swift motion, it tore the shadow in half. Black ichor sprayed across the hallway, splattering the walls and pooling on the floor. The creature's intestines unraveled like ribbons, spilling to the ground with wet, sickening splats.
Raelyn stumbled to her feet, choking back a scream as The Bound Horror devoured the remains. Its form seemed to grow longer, more grotesque, as it consumed the shadow's essence.
Raelyn turned and ran, her legs trembling with exhaustion. She didn't know where she was going—she just needed to get away.
The hallway seemed to stretch endlessly, the walls warping and twisting as if the place itself was alive. The air grew colder, the floor slick with the black ichor left behind by the shadow.
Suddenly, the hallway ended.
She skidded to a stop, nearly tumbling over the edge. Before her was a gaping void, an abyss that seemed to swallow light itself. It stretched infinitely, a black maw that offered no promise of safety—only oblivion.
Behind her, The Bound Horror approached.
Its grotesque form loomed in the dim light, its cleaver dripping with black ichor. Its mismatched eyes locked onto her, and its voice slithered into her mind like a poison: "No escape, little one. You are mine."
Raelyn backed closer to the edge, her heat pounding. The abyss seemed to call to her, its emptiness almost comforting compared to the abomination behind her.
The Bound Horror lunged, its tendrils reaching for her.
With a final, desperate scream, Raelyn turned and jumped into the void.
The last thing she heard was its laughter, echoing in her mind like a curse: "No escape. Never."
A feather falls, it hums, it weeps,
Through cracks where silence never sleeps.
Golden light turned rust and ash.
A fleeting scream, a fleeting flesh.
The angel's hand, it burned, it bled,
But angels never bow their head.
The song it sang, now warped and wrong,
A melody where none belong.
Did it rise, or did it rot?
Memory twists what time forgot.
It watches still, with hollow grace,
A shadow wrapped in a halo's trace.