The world never truly returned to normal after contact with a Witness. Your surroundings still shimmered at the edges, colors bleeding where they shouldn't, angles that refused to sit still. The Fracture had deepened in you.
And something else had awakened.
New Objective: Initiate Ascension Protocol
Requirement: Consume 3 Greater Essences
Progress: 0/3
The Script had changed.
No longer just a passive HUD—it now pulsed with strange glyphs, icons that flickered between languages, some you recognized, others that made your thoughts bleed when you looked too long.
Your hunger for Essence had sharpened into a purpose.
You needed to grow.
You needed to ascend.
The first step lay in the ruins ahead—what remained of a pre-Fracture facility once known as Helion Research Site 9. The locals, when there were still locals, had called it the Sunken Mouth. A pit of broken earth and rebar-riddled architecture, swallowed by the desert during the first surge of Distortion. Rumor claimed it still pulsed with power. And more importantly…
It was home to a Greater Aberrant.
You arrived at dusk. The sun bled violet behind sick clouds. The ruins yawned before you, the entrance a ribcage of twisted metal. Every surface pulsed faintly—heartbeat-like. The air buzzed with static and the whisper of data too corrupted to die.
Environment Status: Distorted Zone
Hostile Entities: High Probability
Greater Essence Signature: Confirmed – Level: ███
You stepped inside.
The darkness did not welcome you. It consumed you. Even with your new mutations—infra-sight, tremor sense, void-adapted skin—you felt blind. Something here watched. Not with eyes. With intent.
The descent was slow. The walls were covered in spidery script—mad etchings carved into steel and flesh. Some were written in blood, some in glyph-light. One repeated phrase burned across the corridor:
THE FIRST TO ASCEND WILL NEVER RETURN
Then came the noise.
It began as a low hum. Grew to a wail.
And then—it emerged.
The Greater Aberrant was once human. That much you could feel in your bones. Now it was a bloated mass of limbs and mouths, dragging itself through the ruin with grotesque grace. Tubes pulsed in and out of its flesh. Its body sang—literally. A hymn of glitching binary and mournful wails echoed in the chamber.
It saw you.
And it screamed.
BOSS ENCOUNTER: [THE CANTOR]
Health: ████████
Traits:
Psionic Feedback Aura
Soundwave Disruption
Unstable Regeneration
Fragmented Mind (Vulnerable to Madness-based attacks)
Your Script pulsed. Instinct kicked in. You moved—tendrils whipping forward, claws elongated from your mutated limbs. You struck low, aiming for the joints—but the Cantor twisted, belching a wave of sound that shattered the walls and flung you like a ragdoll.
You skidded across broken tile and bone.
SANITY LOSS: Moderate
Mutation Threshold: +12%
Fatigue: Building…
You grinned.
You hadn't bled like this in days.
The fight became a blur of violence and distortion. Time slipped. The Cantor shrieked hymns in dying frequencies. You answered with rage and instinct, claws drenched in black ichor, your tendrils impaling vital nodes. It regenerated—but slowly. You were learning its rhythms. Its code.
And then—you saw the core. A pulsing organ embedded in its warped chest. A place where all its sound began.
Your body responded.
You didn't choose to mutate—you needed to.
Mutation Surge Triggered
New Temporary Trait: Locus Spike – Condenses all internal Script into a singular destructive strike. Usable once. Costs 30% Max Sanity.
You drove the spike forward—an appendage of your very will. The Cantor saw it coming. It tried to sing again.
But your song was louder.
The spike tore through it, silencing the hymn forever.
The Cantor fell.
ESSENCE ABSORBED: +1 Greater
Mutations Stabilizing…
Script Synchronization… Complete.
Trait Unlocked: Echo Devourer – Gain temporary power boosts from defeated psionic entities.
You stood over the corpse. Breathing. Trembling.
Stronger.
The first step toward Ascension was done.
But as the Cantor died… it whispered.
Not from its mouth—from the walls, the wires, the darkness itself.
"You are seen, Little Ascendant. The Eye opens."
Far above, the stars shifted.
And far below, the Pillar stirred.