Wonderful Insane World

The progression became a waking nightmare, a funeral march through the entrails of the world. Their footsteps echoed with a muffled resonance, swallowed by the smooth, unnaturally calm walls. The noise they produced now felt pathetic, a pitiful last stand against the complicit silence of the mountain. They were intruders, tolerated for now.

The smell shifted again. The mold and salt gave way to a metallic tang, acrid, like old blood and ozone after a storm. The air vibrated with a dull energy, tangible even to the non-Awakened. A faint, phosphorescent glow began to seep along the walls, replacing the waning light of their torches.

"Look," Inès whispered, her voice strangled, as she pointed her bolt toward the ground.

They followed her gaze. The floor was littered not with rock debris, but with scraps of rotted fabric, broken blades, fragments of armor gnawed by time… and bones. Human bones, stripped clean, scattered with chilling indifference. The remnants of past expeditions.

"She left them here," Zirel remarked, his tone flat, as if commenting on the weather. But his fist was clenched tight around the hilt of his dagger. "As a trophy. Or a warning."

Rony spat on the ground, his face hardened by a blend of disgust and powerless rage. "Or leftovers."

They moved among the macabre relics. Each step was a desecration, each breath inhaled the dust of those who had come before. Fear twisted into grim resignation. Now they understood their fate. They, too, would add their bones to this collection.

The tunnel opened into a vast gallery, a cavern so immense their torches couldn't touch the ceiling. At its heart lay a lake of black, stagnant water, mirroring the phosphorescent shimmer of the walls with a spectral, trembling glow. The air was heavier still, rank with a rot so thick it felt almost solid.

And that was when they saw her.

Not the creature itself, but her work.

Across the lake, the stone wall had changed. No longer rock, but something organic, pulsating, veined with luminescent filaments that throbbed in time with an unseen heart. It resembled a colossal spider's web made of flesh and nerves, stretching across meters, burrowing into the fissures. And within it, like insects trapped in amber, were shapes.

Bodies. The missing. Not skeletal, but preserved—horribly distorted. Their mouths gaped wide in a silent scream, their eyes replaced with the same phosphorescent substance that coated the wall. They had become part of it, absorbed, digested slowly.

This was its lair. Its pantry.

A sound reached them—not a murmur or laugh, but a whisper perfectly clear, emanating from everywhere at once, carried by the stagnant water and the vibrating flesh of the wall.

"You… are… late."

The voice was a patchwork of all the voices it had stolen, a grotesque mosaic of terror and arrogance.

The plan, the noise, the anger—everything evaporated in an instant of pure, absolute dread. They had arrived. And it had been waiting.

The lake's surface rippled as if stirred by an invisible breath. Rings spread outward, betraying the emergence of something lurking beneath the black water.

Then it appeared.

First came the limbs—pale, glistening like titanic worms—sliding out of the water with obscene slowness. They unfurled and recoiled in rippling waves, coated in a viscous sheen that caught the phosphorescent light of the walls. Each ended not in a hand or claw, but in a tapered extremity—half-tentacle, half-muscle, half-nightmare.

These appendages soon coiled toward a central core, a throbbing mass, alive, glowing faintly amber. Its pulsation was not a heartbeat—it was a war drum, a predatory cadence that reverberated in the guts of those who beheld it.

"The Silent Reaper…" Inès breathed, but her voice vanished at once, stolen by the echo.

It rose to its full height, limbs curling protectively around that incandescent core. Each step of its tentacles on stone left a wet print, a stain. It did not rush. It watched, savoring, weighing them as one weighs tools meant to be broken.

Armin, seized by impulse, hurled his flaming spear. The torch cut through the air and struck the glistening core. Sparks flared, crackled… and died. The torch was swallowed, smothered as the flesh opened to drink it in.

Moments later, the creature convulsed. With brutal force, it spat the spear back, propelled with such speed they barely had time to react. It smashed against Rony's shield with a violence that hurled him backwards, his arm numb as if struck by lightning.

"It… absorbs," Zirel gasped, his breath ragged. "It absorbs and gives back."

Already, the tentacles were in motion. One slammed into the ground, splintering stone, the shock vibrating up their legs. Another coiled around a column of rock and crushed it like clay.

But the worst was not its brute strength. It was the sensation—intangible, relentless—that their vitality waned with each breath. As though the creature drained something from them invisibly, merely by existing. Their muscles felt heavy, their thoughts sluggish. The lake, the wall, even the air conspired to siphon their energy, feeding the amber core, whose throbbing grew ever stronger.

It was in no hurry. It didn't need to be. This beast was patient. It would feed on them, down to the last breath.

The core flared, its pulse quickening. The tentacles, slow until then, suddenly lashed outward, slicing the air with a wet, hissing crack. One whipped across the space where Armin had stood seconds earlier. He rolled aside, barely, as stone exploded behind him like shrapnel under a war hammer. Shards cut his cheek, leaving a trail of hot blood.

The ground trembled. Each impact of the beast rang like a funeral bell. The few torches still burning flickered, their flames guttering in the ozone-choked air, robbed of breath by the heavy aura that leeched life itself.

"We can't hold…," Inès gasped, her wide eyes locked on the glowing veins running along the central core.

Zirel didn't blink. His pupils reflected the amber light, his breath ragged, as though the creature was already drinking him dry.

Rony staggered back to his feet, shield splintered, still gripping his sword. "Then we rip its fucking heart out!" he roared, his voice echoing through the cavern.

He charged, battered blade raised. But as he swung, a tentacle slashed from the side and struck his ribs. The blow was no mere strike—it mirrored his own attack, amplified. His shield shattered. Rony was hurled into the organic wall.

A sickening crack followed. The pulsating flesh opened like a maw to receive him. His screams lasted only a second before the wall sealed shut, swallowing him whole.

Silence fell. A silence broken only by the thunderous beat of the core, faster, stronger. The beast had fed—and reveled in it.

"It grows stronger with us," Inès whispered, trembling, mouth dry.

Zirel said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the black lake, where more ripples spread outward, betraying that what they saw was not the whole of it… but only a fragment.

And the Silent Reaper, towering before them, hadn't even begun in earnest.