The stars had shifted.
Not metaphorically—literally. You saw it when you emerged from the Sunken Mouth, the dying light of the Cantor's essence still seething beneath your skin. The night sky above Vorthalheim had always been wrong—too many constellations with too few names. But now?
Now the sky was watching you.
[Script Notification]
The Eye is upon you.
Effect: +10% to Sanity Degradation
Effect: Aberrant activity increased in current region
Effect: Entity Class [SEER] has marked your progress
The air felt colder, though the sands still burned beneath your feet. In the distance, something howled—not a beast, not even a monster. Something older. You instinctively took cover behind a half-buried husk of a crawler-mech. Your tendrils retracted, armor plates folding back beneath your skin.
Even the predators of the waste had grown silent.
The Watcher had arrived.
But not in form. In influence.
Wherever the Eye gazed, the veil between flesh and truth grew thin.
And you were no longer beneath it.
You were within it.
...
You traveled under moonless light for three days, navigating by memory, instinct, and glitch-beacons scattered across the broken terrain. The Pillar drew closer, a spire of obsidian cutting the horizon like a forgotten god's blade. But something else pulled at you now—voices buried in static. The memories of the Cantor had left more than essence behind.
Memory Fragment Unlocked: [Project E.D.E.N]
Entry 1: "The Pillar is not a god. It is a womb. We didn't climb it—we were born from it."
Entry 2: "They weren't mutations. They were reversions."
You staggered, the implications digging into your bones like cold needles. Had the world always been this way? Had the Pillar not fractured reality—but simply peeled it back?
You couldn't answer.
But someone else might.
That was when you found the Ascendant Graveyard.
Black monoliths, each carved with the jagged remnants of Script, jutted from the sand. Bodies—twisted, towering things with half-formed wings, fused limbs, and crumbling glyph-eyes—lay half-buried, ossified in mid-transcendence. They had tried to climb the Pillar.
They had failed.
New Location Discovered: The Grave of the Unfinished
Passive Effect: Mutation Threshold increased by 20%
Risk: Sanity loss accelerated in this zone
Hidden Objective Triggered: [Consume the Dreams of the Dead]
The thought repulsed you.
Which is why you did it.
You stepped toward the largest corpse, placing your clawed hand against the cracked remnants of its skull. The bones hummed, and your tendrils latched on, piercing into its cranium like roots into rotten soil.
You dreamed.
...
In the vision, you saw it clearly: the Pillar opening, unfurling like a flower of void. Not welcoming. Not wrathful. Indifferent. And at its base—hundreds like you. Crawling. Devouring. Evolving.
Then, one ascended.
And the Pillar tore them apart, not out of malice—but to see what was inside.
When you woke, your limbs were longer. Your thoughts were stranger. Your heart pulsed sideways.
Mutation Acquired: Viral Cognition – You can now absorb knowledge from slain intelligent foes. Sanity cost applies.
Essence Progress: 1/3
Mental Stability: [FRAGILE]
You stood.
The next Greater Essence would not come to you.
You would have to hunt it in the Lacuna Depths—a fracture beneath the earth where time bled backwards and creatures forgot they had died.
You had no guide. No allies.
Only the whisper of the Witness…
"Climb. Or be consumed by those who will."