Night of the Hunt
The forest was a goddamn nightmare.
The sky was a black void, split by flashes of lightning that turned the world into a grotesque painting of tangled branches and endless rain. Thunder cracked like a war cry, rolling through the dense wilderness. Rain poured like the heavens wanted to drown the earth itself. The trees groaned, their twisted limbs clawing at the sky, and the mud beneath was a suffocating trap, dragging down anything that dared to run.
He ran anyway.
His lungs burned, his legs felt like they'd been pumped full of molten lead, but he couldn't stop.
"Find that fucking bastard!"
"Cut off his legs if you have to! Just don't let him escape!"
The torches behind him flickered like demonic eyes, shadows twisting between the trees as the hunters closed in. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out even the roar of the storm.
Then—a cave.
A black hole in the earth. Deep. Hollow. Swallowing all light.
There was no choice.
He threw himself inside.
The air shifted. The world outside was deafened, suffocated, as if he had just entered the belly of a dead god. The wet stone beneath him was slick, uneven. He stumbled forward, lungs heaving, heart hammering against his ribs.
Then—the ground disappeared.
The Fall
Gravity ripped him down.
His stomach lurched as he plummeted, his arms flailing in the blackness. The wind howled past his ears before he slammed into rock. His shoulder snapped back, pain lancing through his nerves, but there was no time to react—his body kept tumbling, smashing against unseen ledges.
His ribs cracked. A jagged edge of stone tore open his thigh. The impact sent his skull slamming against the wall, splitting flesh, his vision bursting with white-hot agony.
Then came the final impact.
The lake swallowed him whole.
Freezing. Endless. Death itself.
Drowning in Hell
The cold was an executioner, ripping into his flesh with icy claws. The water violated his lungs, forcing its way down his throat. His body convulsed violently, his muscles spasming as his instincts screamed for air that wasn't there.
Every nerve in his body begged for mercy.
His chest locked tight, his ribs nearly snapping from the pressure. His veins burned as if acid had been poured into them, his vision flickering. His own heartbeat sounded like a fading drum, slowing, suffocating.
Then—it arrived.
The Thing in the Deep
The water trembled.
Something moved.
A sickly blue glow pulsed in the abyss below, faint at first, then growing stronger. It wasn't natural. It wasn't human.
It was watching him.
Then—it struck.
The creature surged forward, its translucent, shifting mass stretching toward him. Five meters long. Glowing. Writhing. Hungry.
And then—it entered him.
Violation
The thing forced its way into his mouth.
It shoved itself down his throat, stretching, expanding. His body convulsed violently. His jaw cracked, dislocating, as the glowing tendrils filled him. His throat tore, flesh ripping open as it burrowed deeper.
His chest erupted with pain.
His organs twisted, reshaped, reborn.
His veins exploded, his blood turned to fire.
His ribs shattered, rebuilt, shattered again. His flesh peeled, his bones warped, his nerves set ablaze by something far beyond human pain.
This wasn't suffering.
This was fucking annihilation.
He tried to scream, but the creature was inside him. It had taken everything.
And it wasn't finished.
Becoming Something Else
The lake wasn't water.
It was power.
Liquid, raw, ancient energy. And now it was filling him.
He absorbed it. Every drop. Every ounce of this twisted, eldritch abyss flowed into his flesh. His body drank it like a starving beast, devouring it, changing.
Time lost meaning.
Seconds. Hours. Years. Centuries.
It was all the same.
He stopped feeling human. Stopped being human.
Then—he woke up.
Rebirth
The lake was gone.
He lay on cracked stone, his body whole—but wrong.
He inhaled. The air shivered.
Slowly, he sat up. His fingers dug into the stone like it was clay. His body was too strong. His senses were razor-sharp, predatory.
Then—his reflection.
A piece of smooth stone, just enough to see himself.
The boy he once was? Dead.
The face staring back at him was inhumanly perfect. Stronger. Sharper. Eyes colder than death.
And his hair—white as a corpse.
He clenched his fist. The air around him shook.
Something inside him had awakened.
Something hungry.
Escape
He had to get out.
So he climbed.
For days, he clawed his way up the cave's jagged walls. The stone tore at his skin, but his body did not break. He felt no hunger, no exhaustion. He moved like a thing that no longer obeyed human limits.
Then—light.
The sky stretched above him, endless and too bright. The wind roared in his ears, cold and unfamiliar.
And then—voices.
"Lord, you are alive!"
The words slammed into him like a hammer.
He turned.
A group of men stood at the edge of the forest, their faces frozen in shock. Among them, one man stepped forward.
His mother's most loyal guard.
But something was wrong.
The guard's breath caught in his throat. His face twisted—not in relief, but in fear.
Because the thing that had just crawled out of that cave was no longer their lord.
It was something else.
Something monstrous.