The wall did not so much open as it *unwound*—stone fibers peeling back like rotten flesh, revealing a passage that smelled of copper and wet earth. The crimson veins pulsed brighter, guiding the way forward.
Kael stepped inside.
The stone stitched itself shut behind him.
---
**The tunnel was alive.**
Walls glistened with a thin sheen of fluid. The air clung to his skin, damp and heavy, like the breath of something sleeping. His boots sank slightly into the floor, which yielded like packed muscle.
*Not a tunnel.*
*A throat.*
The System flickered:
**[Warning: Organic Corruption Detected]**
**[Assimilation Risk: 12% and rising]**
Kael exhaled. The numbers meant nothing. Fear meant less.
He walked deeper.
---
**The chamber at the tunnel's end was not meant for mortal eyes.**
A vault of rib-like arches, throbbing in time with the light. A pool of black liquid dominated the center, its surface perfectly still. And around it—
*Bodies.*
Not corpses. Not quite.
They knelt at the pool's edge, their backs hunched, their fingers fused with the stone floor. Their skin had taken on the same veined luminescence as the walls. Their mouths hung open, slack, threads of crimson light dripping from their lips like saliva.
*Feeding.*
*Being fed upon.*
Kael's Skill Analyzation stuttered, then spat out fractured data:
**[Subject: ???]**
- **Status: Harvesting**
- **Soul Integrity: 4% remaining**
- **Estimated Time Until Assimilation: 12 hours**
One of them twitched. A head lifted—slow, creaking—revealing hollow eyes filled with that same pulsing light.
*"You… are new."*
The voice was not a voice. It was the sound of teeth grinding against bone, transmitted directly into Kael's skull.
Kael tilted his head. *"What is this place?"*
The thing that had been a man smiled. Or tried to. Its lips cracked, leaking light.
*"The Church's first truth."*
A hand—skeletal, glowing—gestured to the pool.
*"Drink. Or be drunk."*
---
**The pool was not water.**
It was thicker. Darker. When Kael crouched beside it, his reflection did not appear. Instead, the surface showed—
*A throne of bone.*
*A crown of hollow eyes.*
*A figure, seated, its fingers tapping in time with Kael's own heartbeat.*
The System screeched:
**[ALERT: BLOOD OF THE HOLLOW DETECTED]**
**[PROXIMITY: ZERO]**
Kael reached out.
The figure in the pool mirrored him.
Their fingers touched.
---
**Pain.**
Not the petty sting of flesh. This was the pain of *unmaking*—of his very blood reversing its flow, his bones dissolving to dust and reforming, his mind splitting at the seams.
Visions flashed:
- *A dying sun.*
- *A crown slipping from rotten fingers.*
- *A voice whispering: "You are the last."*
Then—
Silence.
Kael gasped, wrenching back. His hand was dry. The pool undisturbed.
But something *stirred* in his veins now. Something old.
Something *hungry.*
---
**The Third Inquisitor found him at dawn.**
Kael was back in his cell, seated cross-legged on the straw, his palms upturned on his knees. The wall showed no sign of ever having opened.
The Inquisitor's boots halted just outside the bars. *"You are… intact."*
Kael looked up. The man's right eye—the blind one—was weeping thin trails of blood.
*"Disappointed?"* Kael asked.
The Inquisitor bared his filed teeth. *"The night breaks many. You did not scream."*
*"No."* Kael flexed his fingers, feeling the new weight in his blood. *"I listened."*
---
**Final Line:**
Some truths are not learned.
They are *inherited.*