When he regained his focus his eyes of truth scanned the under ground room and what he saw made his blood run cold.
At the center of the chamber stood a spire of bone and obsidian, shaped like a thorn and rising from the ground like it had pierced through the earth itself. Around it were statues—dozens—all facing inward, kneeling, hands raised.
But these weren't carved.
They were people.
Or had been.
Bodies frozen in worship, skin hardened into stone, mouths wide open in eternal silence. Some still had hair. One looked like it had been recent. Eclipse's stomach churned. He could see through their body into their soul, they all had Two soul shards and two hearts— Veiled Evil.
At the base of the spire, chained in place by loops of rusted iron, was a shape.
It was breathing.
Huge and coiled like a serpent, but human in parts—a ribcage, arms, a face stretched and veiled, stitched shut. Its chest rose and fell with slow, tortured rhythm. The chains groaned with every breath.
And then… it turned its head.
It shouldn't have been able to. The chains should've stopped it. But they bent.
Eclipse locked eyes with it or better still with its soul, it Soul had two soul shard and two hearts, but they was something strange, the soul of the Stain was carving inward and trying to split, it was evolving and growing a new heart, it was going to become a Veiled Fallen— Inside the spire.
Eclipse was lucky the only leaving thing here was inside the Spire, which also acted as a cocoon— or not.
The Stain released a shierk from Inside the spire, then spire pulsed once—like a signal.
Something else began to stir.
All around the chamber, the statues twitched.
One by one, stone cracked. Limbs flexed. Mouths unhinged.
The worshippers were waking up.
Eclipse layed down shocked, then his body felt a Waze of fear which instead of paralyzing him made him stand up to his feet, all hair on his body stood up. And without hesitation he turned and ran.
The chamber of waking statues was alive with movement now—stone shells splitting, bodies spilling forth, eyes that had long been fused shut now open and gleaming with hollow purpose.
He sprinted back the way he came—but the stairwell was gone. The stone had sealed itself shut, smooth and unbroken as if it had never existed. Trapped.
Panic clawed at his chest, he almost had an heart attack. His eyes caught the glint of another tunnel across the chamber's edge, half-hidden behind a collapsed column.
He bolted for it.
Behind him came the sound of pursuit—claws scraping stone, inhuman limbs dragging over bone. The Hollowed were fast, clumsy but relentless.
Eclipse tore down the passage, lungs burning. The walls narrowed, the ceiling dipped. The glow of the chamber gave way to pure blackness, the only light coming from a dull bioluminescence that ran along the moss-draped walls. And then—
A river
A wide underground current surged before him, moonlit and cold. It gurgled and churned like it was whispering secrets to itself.
On two sides of the river Two stains were pinned to it releasing black blood into the river, he stepped back repulsed and hastily begun to look for other ways to escape. He heard the Hollowed screech behind him.
No time.
He jumped in.
The water was ice, wrapping him in its freezing grip as it pulled him along like a rope. At first it was just a current—but then the floor beneath him fell away.
He was in freefall.
The river turned into a slant, then into a waterfall, the roar deafening as it dragged him toward a black abyss. He twisted in the water, thrashing, gasping for air.
He saw the edge coming.
And he saw death waiting beyond it.
'No, no'.
His eyes steadily looked around for a way to escape, that was when he saw a platform down below opposite the waterfall he was in.
He gritted his teeth, bent his knees, and waited for an opportunity to jump.
As the water dropped away into the abyss, and with a surge of Aether Eclipse shifted his body, pushed off the torrent with both feet, and—
Leapt.
For a heartbeat, he soared—weightless, glowing with a faint shimmer due to the rushing Aether in his body.
Then—impact.
He didn't land on his feet— no far from it he landed of his chest, he hit his forehead on the slab of rock point on, his forehead head spit blood flowing everywhere as his head arched back,— his lower lip hit the slab of rock, splitting it from the middle,— his nose broke from the impact,— because he came from above the pointy end of the slab of rock spit his clothes along with his skin open from his abdomen up to his chest, splashing blood everywhere.
He didn't had time to embrace the pain because he had lost consciousness when he his head to hit the slab of rock, with no consciousness to control the body to anchor itself to the platform, the body slipped into the water and then into the dark abyss of darkness.