The thought, "The hunger begins," was not a mere intellectual curiosity; it was a visceral, gnawing emptiness that bloomed in the pit of Kaelen's stomach, spreading like tendrils of ice and fire through his limbs. It was a craving unlike any physical hunger he had ever known, or that the memories of Klein Moretti could recall. This was a hunger for… something more. Something fundamental. The warmth from the absorbed particle of dissolving reality had been fleeting, a momentary satiation that only served to awaken a deeper, more profound need.
He stumbled forward, his gaze still fixed on the distant, menacing silhouette of the Bleeding Tower. Each step was an effort, not just against the physical debris and the treacherous, shifting ground of the unraveling city, but against the growing clamor within him. The hunger was a raw, aching void, demanding to be filled. His senses, already heightened by the anomalous stillness that had saved him, now seemed to sharpen further, twisted by this new, desperate craving. The chaotic energies pulsing through the dying world, the shimmering particles of dissolving reality that drifted like malevolent snowflakes – they no longer seemed just a backdrop of horror. They were… sustenance. A grotesque, terrifying feast laid out before him.
What is happening to me? The question was a frantic whisper in his mind, drowned out by the rising tide of this unnatural appetite. He clutched his stomach, a low groan escaping his lips. The revolver felt heavy and useless in his other hand; what good was a mere firearm against a world that was unmaking itself, against a hunger that threatened to consume him from within?
He passed a crumbling storefront, its display window shattered, revealing a scene of frozen chaos within. Mannequins, their plastic smiles eerily intact, were slowly dissolving, their forms fraying at the edges like old cloth. One of them, a female figure in a tattered, once-fashionable dress, still held a particle of shimmering, multi-colored light in its outstretched hand, a captured moment of entropic decay. Kaelen felt an irresistible pull towards it. The hunger surged, a wave of desperate need that overrode his fear, his disgust.
His hand moved, seemingly of its own accord. He reached out, his fingers trembling, and touched the shimmering particle. As his skin made contact, the particle pulsed, then flowed into him, not with the gentle warmth of the first, but with a searing, almost painful intensity. It was like swallowing molten glass, a brief, agonizing burn that was quickly replaced by a momentary, blissful satiation of the gnawing void within. He gasped, a shudder running through him. The hunger receded, just a fraction, but the relief was palpable. He felt… stronger. More focused. The chaotic energies of the world seemed less overwhelming, more… comprehensible. He could almost see the invisible threads of reality as they unraveled, could almost taste the raw, untamed power that was being unleashed.
But the satiation was short-lived. The hunger returned, more insistent this time, a deeper, more resonant ache. He needed more. He looked around wildly, his eyes scanning the devastated street for other sources of this strange, terrifying nourishment. He saw them everywhere – shimmering motes of light, fragments of dissolving buildings, the fading echoes of erased lives. The world was a banquet of decay, and he was its newest, most unwilling guest.
He began to move with a new, desperate purpose, no longer just fleeing the chaos, but actively seeking out these pockets of unmaking. He absorbed another particle from a dissolving lamppost, then another from a puddle of iridescent goo that might have once been a person. Each act of consumption was a mixture of horror and a perverse, addictive relief. He was becoming a scavenger of reality, a ghoul feeding on the corpse of a dying world. The memories of Klein Moretti, the scholar, the gentleman, recoiled in disgust, but the primal hunger, the desperate need to fill the void within, was too strong to resist.
With each consumption, a strange transformation occurred within him. His vision shifted, colors becoming more vivid, more alien. The crimson moon overhead seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat, as if acknowledging his newfound nature. The air around him shimmered with previously invisible currents of entropic energy, flowing like rivers of liquid light between the dissolving structures. He could sense these currents now, could feel their ebb and flow, could almost predict where the next fracture in reality would appear. It was terrifying, yet also oddly beautiful – like witnessing the death throes of a star, a catastrophe of cosmic proportions rendered in exquisite, terrible detail.
The notebook he had taken from Klein's room, with its ominous message in the Hermes language, felt heavier in his waistband. "Everyone will die, including me." Had the original Klein sensed this coming? Had he glimpsed the unmaking before it began, before his consciousness was replaced by Kaelen's? The thought sent a chill through him, a momentary distraction from the hunger. Perhaps there were clues in those memories, fragments of knowledge that could help him understand what was happening, what he was becoming. But the hunger wouldn't allow him to dwell on such thoughts for long. It demanded action, consumption, satiation.
As he moved, he noticed other changes. The stillness within him, the cold, empty void that had protected him, seemed to expand with each particle he absorbed. It was as if he were hollowing himself out, becoming a vessel for… something else. And his perception of the Tower… it was no longer just a distant, menacing silhouette. He could feel its presence, a cold, ancient intelligence that seemed to watch him, to acknowledge him. It wasn't a benevolent gaze, but it wasn't entirely malevolent either. It was… appraising. As if he were a new, unexpected variable in its grand, incomprehensible equation.
The journey through the ruined city was a blur of surreal horror and desperate consumption. He saw things that would haunt his nightmares for eternity, if he even survived long enough to have them. Buildings that wept tears of molten stone. Streets that twisted into impossible, Escher-like geometries. Figures that were no longer human, their forms warped and reshaped by the entropic energies into grotesque parodies of life. He avoided them when he could, his instinct for self-preservation still strong, but the hunger, the relentless, gnawing hunger, drove him ever onward, towards the source of the unmaking, towards the Bleeding Tower.
He found himself in what might have once been a grand plaza, now a cratered wasteland. In the center, a fountain, its statues broken and disfigured, still spouted a trickle of black, oily liquid that shimmered with captured, dying light. And around the plaza, he saw them. Other… things. They weren't dissolving like the unfortunate citizens he'd witnessed earlier. They were… changed. Twisted. Creatures of the new, entropic reality. Some were vaguely humanoid, their limbs elongated, their features distorted into masks of primal hunger. Others were amorphous, shifting masses of flesh and shadow, their forms constantly changing, their movements jerky and unnatural. They seemed drawn to the plaza, to the strange energies that pulsed from the ruined fountain, and to… each other.
Kaelen froze, his hand instinctively tightening on the revolver. These were not the passive victims of the unmaking. These were predators. And he, with his strange, reality-consuming hunger, probably smelled like a feast to them. The void within him pulsed, a cold, warning thrum. The hunger, for a moment, was overshadowed by a far more primal emotion: fear. He had to get out of here. He had to find a way around them. But as he began to back away, one of the creatures, a tall, gaunt figure with eyes that burned with a cold, crimson light, turned its head, its gaze locking onto him. It let out a low, guttural hiss, a sound that promised pain and a swift, brutal end.
It lunged.
Kaelen reacted on pure instinct. He raised the revolver, his hand surprisingly steady, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, the roar of the shot deafening in the oppressive silence of the ruined plaza. He didn't know if he'd hit it, or if bullets even mattered in this new, insane reality. But the creature recoiled, a shriek of what might have been pain tearing from its lipless mouth, before it turned and lunged again, faster this time, its elongated claws outstretched, aiming for his throat.
This is it, he thought, a strange sense of calm descending upon him. This is where I die. But even as the thought formed, the void within him surged. The hunger, no longer just a craving for dissolving reality, but a hunger for… something more, something vital, erupted with a ferocious intensity. He didn't consciously decide what to do next. His body moved, an instinctual, desperate act of self-preservation. He dropped the now-useless revolver and met the creature's lunge, not with a weapon, but with his bare hands.
As his fingers made contact with the creature's strange, clammy skin, he felt a jolt, a shockwave of energy that coursed through him. The creature shrieked again, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony, and Kaelen felt… a flow. He was drawing something from it, something vital, something that fed the void within, that satiated the hunger in a way the mere particles of dissolving reality never could. The creature thrashed, its crimson eyes wide with terror, its form beginning to shimmer and distort, not from the external unmaking, but from… him. He was consuming it. Draining it. And as he did, he felt a new, terrifying power awaken within him, a power that was both exhilarating and profoundly, deeply wrong.