The whispers were the first thing to reach me.
I awoke to the faint sound of voices—distant at first, but growing louder with each passing second.
An odd smell hung in the air, something like old—maybe dirty, musty cloth, seeping into my nostrils, overwhelming me with its thickness.
It was just a clothy smell.
The sound of what was like the rustling of thousands of voices caught my attention once more, all murmuring in some twisted language I couldn't understand. The whispers were thick with malice, and I could feel them digging into my mind, tugging at the edges of my sanity. I clutched the arms of the chair tightly, trying to steady my breath. What was that? Was this the Darkling? Or was it something worse?
A cold sweat broke out across my brow. The air turned thick and heavy, a suffocating presence pressing in from all sides.
In the very next moment, a chill washed over me. The air seemed to warp, bending unnaturally as something began to emerge from the darkness itself. It moved like a fluid, like ink spilling across a page, dark and unshapely.
The whispers grew louder, now almost unbearable, crashing into my mind like a storm of voices.
Whatever that creature was, it was straight from a nightmare, its form appeared to be neither living nor dead but a twisted amalgamation of shadow and decay. Its form is constantly shifting, flickering like a broken reflection in a shattered mirror. Where its body should be solid, there are gaps in its structure, as though pieces of it have been eaten away
But then its body emerged.
Its figure was oddly tall—at least over two meters. Its body seemed to flicker like a corrupted mirage, its form a mass of only darkness, seemingly shifting in and out of reality, a semi-corporeal blend of darkness and decay.
Its skin—if it can be called skin—was an oily obsidian black that seemed to absorb any amount of the moonlight that dared to touch it, making it difficult to truly determine its form. When I attempt to look at this thing, my eyes unfocus becoming hazy, only leaving me to stare at a blurry distorted image.
Its face—one that could drive one to madness just from a single glance—is a constant shifting nightmare. At times it resembles faces—faces that I feel like I had long forgotten—that made my very soul crawl. But the face it seemed to take most pride in was that of a hollowed skull, its eyes were sunken pits of abyss which seemed to swirl with a dim eerie light.
Its mouth—whenever I caught fuzzy glimpses of it—had numerous expressions, from an expression of that of a sad child to that of a murderous predator.
Catching a momentary glimpse, its mouth had the form of a jagged slit of gaping grayish-teeth, that were far too disjointed, then its mouth switched to a smile that stretched to the edges of its face illuminating it with the grays of its teeth which seemed to be twitching and shifting in unknown—but I had to assume malicious—intent.
Its limbs were unnaturally long, stretching like long branches of obsidian and moved with fluidity similar to that of a small wave. Each finger elongated, ending with nails that were a razor-sharp dull gray.
The creature's legs were far too long, its knees bending in ways that shouldn't be possible.
The Darkling moved at a pace that was neither too fast nor too slow. It would move in such a way where you could see it but not attack it.
The presence was a chilling, oppressive force pushing down on my body, even emitting an overpowering scent that clung to the back of my throat, an extremely fetid odor of something burnt beyond repair, and an overwhelming smell of rotten meat assaulted my nose almost immediately causing me to gag.
My entire body tensed as it further approached but it seemed like I was latched onto the chair, my body wouldn't move yet it screamed for me to get far away from whatever it was.
Its odor became so unbearable that my head began to pound in resentment.
Reaching out to my core it thrummed to life and actively searching for a way to escape I could feel my core sucking up the ambient mana around me.
My core had replenished most of its mana while I was sleeping but still craved for more.
I sent a pulse of mana throughout my body giving me the strength to move then layered my body with a dense layer of mana.
The Darkling now was standing a few meters from the chair the woman had sat in before it made it way through the chair ignoring it as if it was never there, my pulse hammered as its long lanky arm reached for a face—my face. I had to move now but I wouldn't be quick enough to dodge, its range which I thought was shorter was enchanted by its odd figure and made its range unpredictable.
As its obsidian hand inched closer I knew what I had to do, I had to use Shadow Step once more.
But I was afraid—afraid of The Eclipsed.