I wake up in a white room. No walls, no ceiling, no floor—yet there is complete visibility. The space itself is infinite, yet claustrophobic, as if the very concept of "room" is being challenged. My body feels weightless, yet firm against something unseen. Then, as if responding to my thoughts, the void fractures.
A single stone hallway materializes ahead. Rough-hewn bricks, old and cracked, stretch forward into an unknown distance. The air shifts; where before there was nothing, now there is the scent of damp stone and something metallic, almost like blood. I hesitate, but a whisper brushes against my ear—though there is no one behind me.
Go forward.
The voice is neither warm nor cold, neither male nor female. Just an existence. I take a step forward, and the floor solidifies beneath my feet. There is no going back—because behind me, the infinite white void has collapsed, swallowed by an endless abyss.
I press on. The corridor narrows, the walls seemingly pressing inward. Then, a sudden click. I freeze.
The ground beneath my foot sinks slightly. A trap.
Instinct takes over, and I throw myself forward just as spears shoot out from the walls, filling the space I had just occupied. The air hums with danger. My breath quickens. This place wants to kill me.
I rise to my feet and tread more carefully, scanning for anything unnatural. A second trap would be too predictable, but I do not trust predictability in a place like this.
Then, I hear something—footsteps. Someone else is here.
I whip around, only to find a figure standing at the edge of the torchlight. No features, only an outline, but I feel its gaze piercing through me.
"Who are you?" I demand.
No answer.
The torches flicker, and in the next instant, the figure is gone—but a soft chuckle echoes through the corridor.
Not alone. Not safe. Not yet.
I steel myself and press on, taking careful, measured steps. The further I go, the more elaborate the traps become. Spiked pits, pressure plates that release arrows, even shifting walls that threaten to crush me. I manage to avoid most of them, but not all.
A blade swings from the darkness—I duck, but not fast enough. A sharp pain flares across my chest, and warmth spreads as blood seeps through my shirt. A deep cut, but not fatal. I grit my teeth and keep moving.
Further ahead, I spot a thin golden thread stretched across the corridor. I step over it, but as I exhale in relief, the floor beneath me crumbles. My left hand shoots out to grab the edge, but jagged metal bites into my fingers. Pain. I scream as one of them—my ring finger—snaps clean off. The agony is overwhelming, but there's no time to dwell on it. I haul myself up, pressing my hand against my chest to slow the bleeding.
Breathing ragged, body wounded, I push forward. There is no turning back, no stopping. Only survival. Only the mystery ahead.
I ascend a crumbling stairway, each step unsteady beneath my weight. As I reach the next level, a guttural growl rumbles through the air. My heart pounds. From the shadows, monstrous figures lunge at me, moving at an incredible speed.
Fear grips me, and I stumble backward, barely avoiding their razor-sharp claws. The momentum of their charge sends them tumbling into a deep pit. Relief washes over me—but only for a second.
One of them clings desperately to the edge, snarling, its blood-red eyes locking onto mine. It resembles a hyena, but its fur is a deep crimson, and black smoke oozes from its body like a living curse. I freeze, but then instinct kicks in.
Gripping a massive stone with trembling hands, I lift it high and bring it crashing down onto the creature's skull. A sickening crunch echoes through the chamber, and the beast lets out one last, gurgling snarl before slipping into the abyss.
Panting, bloodied, and shaking, I wipe my brow. I am still alive. But for how much longer?
I sit against the wall, catching my breath, exhaustion weighing down my limbs. As my breathing steadies, my gaze drifts downward, into the pit where the creatures fell. Then, I see it.
A faint glow, distant but growing brighter. At first, I think it's some trick of the mind, a hallucination born from fatigue. But no—the shine is real, and it's getting closer.
My instincts scream at me to run. I scramble to my feet, heart pounding, but before I can take a step, the glow streaks upward, faster than I can react. It shoots straight at my back.
I brace for pain, for impact—but there is none. The light dissipates as it makes contact, sinking into my body like mist absorbed by the air. For a moment, I feel nothing.
Then, a cold shiver runs through me.
A searing pain erupts in my chest, like hot iron branding my heart. I clutch at my shirt, gasping, as an intricate rune of blood forms just over my heart, pulsating with an eerie glow. It vanishes in an instant, compressed into a single, deadly mark.
I don't know what has just happened, but I feel... different.
Then, a new fear grips me as a distant howl echoes through the corridor. A blood hyena. More than one.
The creatures charge, a blur of crimson and black smoke. I dodge one, barely, feeling its claw graze my shoulder. Another slams into me, sending me sprawling. My vision tilts as sharp teeth sink into my arm. I scream, kicking wildly, but another beast looms over me, ready to rip my face apart.
At that moment, a burning sensation surges from my chest. The rune unfolds, carving itself across my body in searing red lines. My vision turns crimson, and suddenly—I see their blood. Their veins, the flow, the pulsating streams of life within them.
Before I noticed one of them charged at me, The weight crushed down on me, its putrid breath hot against my face. The blood hyena's jaws were clamped around my left arm, its serrated fangs sinking into my flesh, gnawing—chewing—like it had all the time in the world. Agony flared through me, sharp and raw. My vision blurred with pain, my muscles locking up as I struggled beneath its bulk. My free hand clawed at its matted fur, fingers slick with my own blood.
I kicked, twisted, fought, but the damn thing was too heavy. Every frantic movement only made the teeth drive deeper, crunching through tendons, scraping against bone. A choked scream tore from my throat as my own blood dribbled down its chin. The pain was unbearable—so much that my body wanted to give in, to let the darkness swallow me whole.
But then I saw it. The second hyena.
Its crazed, soulless red eyes locked onto mine, and I knew. I knew what was coming. It was leaping—jaws wide open, ready to rip my face apart, to tear into my throat and end everything in an instant.
Instinct took over. Desperation twisted into something else. The rune—my rune—blazed to life. The searing heat in my chest exploded outward, spreading through my veins like molten fire. My vision flickered, then sharpened with an unnatural clarity. The blood. I could see it—their veins, their pulsing, throbbing insides. A grotesque, living map of everything keeping them alive.
And then, I pulled.
The hyena above me jerked violently, its growl warping into a strangled whimper. Its body convulsed, limbs spasming as its own blood betrayed it. The flow reversed in an instant, twisting and surging against its organs. It tried to move, to snap at me again—but its body had already started tearing itself apart from the inside.
Then—pop.
A sickening rupture echoed in the chamber as the hyena's chest exploded, painting the stone floor with a grotesque display of crimson and blackened gore. Bone fragments scattered. Viscera splattered onto my face, warm and slick. The pressure on my arm vanished as the beast collapsed into a heap of twitching meat and shredded fur.
The second hyena never even made it to me. Mid-leap, it spasmed midair, a guttural shriek cutting through the cavern as its body twisted unnaturally. Its eyes bulged, veins stretching and bulging grotesquely under its skin. Then, with another sickening burst, it erupted midair—chunks of flesh and splattered blood rained down around me.
Panting, shaking, I forced myself up, cradling my shredded arm. Blood loss. Exhaustion. Pain. My body screamed at me, but I had survived. Somehow, I had survived.
But the rune… the rune was still glowing.
Their bodies jerk unnaturally. One convulses, its movements erratic. Another lets out a strangled yelp. Their veins bulge grotesquely, their insides twisting against them. One by one, they burst—flesh tearing, blood spraying like shattered glass.
The rune activated again, glowing vibrantly as the blood oozing from the hyenas was absorbed, forming black sweat on my body. The hyenas charged, but anything within a 10-meter radius was instantly crushed from the inside.
As the battle raged on, exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I lost consciousness. In the silence that followed, unbeknownst to him, another rune flickered at the nape of his neck—a faint lime glow pulsing before fading into obscurity.