999.M41 — A few minutes after the fall of Cadia
Follax IV; Segmentum Ultima; Imperium Nihilis
I slumped to the ground, feeling the cold concrete scrape against my bare skin.
Looking down, I realized I couldn't seem to replicate my clothes either. Great.
With a sigh, I scanned the dark room. It was large, windowless, and completely devoid of furniture or decoration. Just cold, unyielding concrete on all sides.
My fingers brushed against something sticky on the floor. When I looked closer, I saw it—a ritual circle, painted in blood.
I was sitting near its center, right next to the broken orb I had crawled out of. That didn't bode well.
There was no sign of the demon that had dragged me here. No fire, no brimstone.
Hadn't I heard it speak, though? I could barely process it at the time, but I was almost certain I had heard "For Chaos."
It didn't matter now. The thing was gone, leaving me alone once more. Not that I wanted its company. The mere thought of it sent a violent shiver down my newly human spine. My hands trembled, my vision blurred, and the lingering revulsion twisted my stomach.
Unfortunately, the moment I focused on that feeling, my awareness expanded again—stretching beyond my body, beyond the physical world.
Suddenly, I was floating above an endless, churning black ocean.
I hovered far above its surface, but even from this distance, I could feel it. A nauseating, eldritch presence.
Things lurked beneath the waves—things that made the most grotesque horror movies seem tame in comparison. At a glance, the surface looked like a sea of shadows, but I knew better. This was just the upper layer of something far, far worse.
I didn't want to know what lay in the depths.
If I had been religious, I probably would have thanked God for keeping me above the water. But I wasn't.
And why wasn't I falling in, like all the others?
I saw countless tiny souls flickering beneath the waves, so small and weak they seemed less than me. They drifted helplessly with the currents, easy prey for the horrors lurking below. The brighter a soul shone, the more of those things gathered around it.
But they didn't pounce. Not yet. They waited.
A sickening dread curled around my mind. None of this made sense.
I wrenched my awareness back into my body and forced myself to stand.
Here I was—a naked 23-year-old girl, standing in the middle of a blood-drawn ritual circle in a pitch-black underground room. At least I wasn't dead.
I should have been panicking, but I wasn't. I just needed to get out. Questions could wait.
Luckily, I had an exit—a faint light flickered through an opening in the wall.
I stumbled toward it, nearly slipping on the slick blood coating the floor. The realization made my stomach churn. It wasn't even dry yet. That meant… it was fresh.
No. Focus.
Get out first. Ask questions later.
I reached the opening and braced myself against the wall, breathing deeply—
Big mistake.
I gagged, coughing violently. The air was thick with the stench of stale blood and decay.
Beneath it all, there was something else… something artificial. This wasn't the fresh air of Earth. It was wrong.
Still, the further I got from that ritual chamber, the steadier my legs became.
The flickering ceiling lights did nothing to calm my nerves, though. The narrow, abandoned corridors felt ripped straight from a horror game. Every room I passed was the same—deserted, bloodstained, and riddled with signs of brutal combat.
Concrete walls were gouged by deep slashes, some areas pockmarked with small craters. Ruined furniture and rusted machines filled the rooms like forgotten relics.
No windows. No natural light. No signs of life.
I wandered through the maze for what felt like an hour, time slipping away in the endless concrete halls.
Then, at last, something different.
The stench hit me before I even saw it. Thick, putrid, suffocating.
I rounded the final corner, and—
A massive chamber stretched before me, its ceiling towering at least twenty meters high.
In the center of the room stood a grotesque monument: a mountain of human corpses, stacked halfway to the ceiling.
My heart pounded in my throat. My breath hitched.
I gripped the doorframe for support, struggling to process the scene.
The floor was covered in the same blood-drawn markings as before. Ritualistic, deliberate.
Every human instinct I had screamed at me to run. To get out. To forget I ever saw this.
But something deep inside me held me back.
Something ancient. Something hungry.
I knew I could use this.
My new body didn't run on prayers or hope. It needed sustenance.
The eldritch thing I had become was starving. And suddenly, this pile of corpses didn't seem like a grotesque crime scene anymore.
It looked like a feast.
Unconsciously, I stepped forward. Then again.
I found myself staring down into the lifeless eyes of a man.
Terror was frozen on his face. His lower half was missing—just like so many others.
I knew why. They had been drained. Sacrificed.
For me.
That was what this was—a ritual. A summoning.
It had dragged my lost soul into this reality and bound it to this thing I now called a body.
And as horrifying as it was, I couldn't even complain.
Wherever this was, whatever kind of nightmare I had been thrown into…
It was still better than spending eternity as a forgotten soul in purgatory.
The stench of blood was overwhelming.
I swallowed hard, staring at the grotesque offering before me.
…Bon appétit, I guess.