Errorborne (Timeloop, Grimdark, Fantasy)

[Ultimatedaywriter]

Oxygen screamed from the vents in a final, agonized hiss, then vanished utterly. The pod door groaned open like a rusted tomb lid, its ancient hydraulics shrieking protest. It jammed instantly, caught on thick, obscenely fattened vines that pulsed with sickly, internal light. They glistened, swollen to bursting on the thick, viscous amniotic fluids that had sustained my stolen flesh. The motors shrieked, metal grinding against metal, forcing a narrow, jagged gap. Inch by torturous inch, the resilient, luminescent vine peeled back, its surface slick with biological residue. Outside, a nightmare vista unfolded: a cavernous ossuary choked with glowing moss that writhed like living carpet. Other pods were monstrous cocoons, strangled by the same vines, long, spindly roots burrowing deep into skeletal occupants who glowed with a faint, fading luminescence from within their translucent ribcages. A cemetery of failures. The silence was absolute, suffocating. How was I the only one breathing?

Then, it hit. A memory – not mine, never mine – slammed into my skull like a mule kick. Vivid, raw, sickeningly foreign. It surged like a tidal wave of sewage, trying to overwrite my essence, to drown me in its pathetic mediocrity. But it failed. Divine ichor, even diluted in this cloned vessel, would not bow to a sniveling interloper. I saw it: the life of a chronic daydreamer, a miserable wretch who'd squandered every shred of potential on childish fantasies of heroic isekai adventures. Pathetic. With brutal efficiency, I seized the useful scraps – fragmented knowledge, context, desperate warnings – and ruthlessly discarded the clinging emotional baggage, the useless yearning for a life unlived. Fool. You could have clawed for survival, instead of just dreaming of glory.

Gritting my teeth until my jaw ached, I squeezed through the jagged gap. Cold, unyielding metal scraped raw, newborn flesh from my ribs and shoulders. My trembling hand brushed the exposed surface of the vine.

Agony detonated. Not pain, but pure, incinerating oblivion. A thousand microscopic hypodermic needles – venomous hairs coating the vine – plunged deep beneath my skin. Paralysis screamed up my arm, a wave of liquid fire that locked muscles and seared nerves. Somehow, primal terror overrode the shock. I convulsed forward, a spasming puppet, tumbling headlong out of the pod and crashing into a brittle sea of ancient bones tangled with more of those hateful, glowing vines. Rolling, gasping air that tasted of decay and ozone, I froze. A corpse lay beside me, disturbingly fresh, limbs twitching in a final, macabre spasm. My face. Staring back with dead, clouded eyes. My own reflection in a decaying mirror. The poison, thick and burning, clawed its way from my poisoned fingers up my arm, turning flesh to cold, dead stone. My hand went numb, a useless, leaden weight.

New Skills
Poison RST lvl1
Physical Fitness lvl1

The awareness slammed into me, cold, clinical, utterly devoid of fanfare. No shimmering blue screens, no cheerful, mocking chimes like in the dead dreamer's pathetic fantasies. Just… hard, undeniable knowledge. Instinct carved into my screaming nerves. Did this mean… survival? Hope was a razor blade in my throat. Sweat, thick and stinging, blurred my vision as I stumbled to my knees. The molten lead poison crept inexorably towards my chest cavity. Each breath became a shallow, ragged gasp, fire spreading through my lungs. Why no Pain Resistance? Where's the goddamn skill to stop this?! The sheer, suffocating unfairness choked me as fiercely as the toxin itself.

I looked up, defiance warring with soul-crushing desperation… and screamed my raw throat bloody.

Above me, perched impossibly on a cluster of throbbing vines, a figure coalesced from the gloom. A woman's unnervingly beautiful, sculpted head sat atop a body woven entirely from spindly, razor-sharp metallic wires that hummed faintly. Its eyes – twin voids of absolute zero, utterly devoid of warmth or recognition – fixed on my writhing form. The sheer audacity of its passive observation ignited fresh fury. How dare it watch me die?

"Do something!" I rasped, the demand tearing from my tightening throat like barbed wire.

It merely observed. No help came. No new skill flared to life. No divine intervention. The poison reached my diaphragm. Each gasping inhale was a serrated knife twisting in my chest. How dare this abominable world do this to ME? Darkness surged, a ravenous beast swallowing the cold light, the impassive wire-thing, the all-consuming agony. Back to the suffocating void.

…

My eyes snapped open. Thick, lukewarm fluid drained from the pod with a sickening gurgle. The same damned, hateful vine constricted the opening as the hydraulics whined their familiar, metallic death rattle. Déjà vu twisted my gut into knots of ice. Again. The vine hung there, a silent, patient executioner. What happened? How long? The memory-flood hit harder this time, a tsunami of the interloper's useless life. I braced my stolen mind, sifting through the garbage with ruthless precision. Skills. Attributes. Stats. Foundations. This hell demanded structure. I focused inward, past the lingering phantom terror of dissolution. Not screens, but… cold, distant motes. Two points of stark, sterile light floating in an inner void, radiating their names like frost – Poison RST lvl2, Physical Fitness lvl1 – concepts etched in ice, not words. My mind parsed them: resistance strengthening minutely, baseline strength unchanged, pathetic. Infuriatingly cryptic. Survive. Just survive.

The vine offered lethal proximity. No. Not this time. Planting my bare feet against the pod's cold inner wall, I braced my back against the curved rear panel. Cold metal dug into vulnerable flesh. I pushed. Muscles, still weak, screamed in protest. The motors groaned, a deeper, more tortured sound. I roared, a sound ripped from the core of my stolen existence, pushing with every fiber of divine fury. Centimeter by agonizing centimeter, the gap widened. The resilient vine peeled back, its luminescence flickering, finally yielding to stubborn, brute force.

Just wide enough. I slithered through like a gutted eel, landing hard on the unforgiving, calcified graveyard below. Naked. Exposed. But alive. A looper. The knowledge crystallized, sharp and cold: the memory-dreamer's final, desperate gamble. A wish to a djinn, a pathetic attempt to overwrite my consciousness with his own fading spark. His cleverness had been his undoing. The overwrite failed on the first loop, shattered against the divine echo resonating in this blood, however diluted. His soul-fragment was weak, insubstantial. Now… I was free. Immortal. Trapped in infinite loops, perhaps, but his failsafes, his pathetic contingencies, were meaningless against the legacy I carried. He'd been played by forces beyond his comprehension, and I… I was the sole, furious beneficiary.

That was the inheritance. A world warped by a djinn's cruel caprice. Grim satisfaction warred with the terrifying unknown yawning before me.

I moved cautiously, bare feet crunching on brittle bone fragments, through the ossuary corridor. Focus. Escape. A muffled thwack, like a wet branch snapping. White-hot agony blossomed in my side, stealing my breath. I looked down. Three vicious, barbed thorns, dripping viscous sap, protruded obscenely between my lower ribs. A tripwire vine, perfectly camouflaged among ivory debris, recoiled into the shadows, bearing blood-flecked, fleshy flowers. Wrenching the thorns free sent fresh waves of nauseating agony spiking through me. Poison, familiar yet heavier, more viscous, slithered into my veins like molten lead. Blood pulsed hot and thick from the wounds, defying my frantic, clumsy pressure. Rage surged, white and hot. Burn it. Burn it all to radioactive ash.

New Skill
Bleed RST lvl1

A third mote flared into existence in my inner darkness. Instantly, it resonated, a faint harmonic thrum linking with the cold pulse of Poison RST. Synergy. But my traitorous body shuddered. Weakness spread like ice water in my limbs. I slumped heavily against the cold surface of another pod door—fresh, excruciating agony lanced through my back and legs. More hidden vines. More venomous needles. Poison, blood loss, the lingering remnants of old venom—a toxic cocktail flooding my system, drowning my senses. Not again. Not like this… crawling, helpless…

She coalesced from the shifting gloom, the wire-woman – Skuld. Her beautiful, impassive face tilted slightly, those void-like eyes fixed on my trembling, failing form. She settled beside me, wires shifting with a sound like whispering blades on stone.

"Again already?" Her voice was melodious ice, scraping raw nerves. "You almost made it past the first chamber. Dying before the five-minute mark." The cold precision of the timing was an added insult.

The condescension stung worse than the thorns buried in my flesh. "Does my dying… inconvenience your plans?" I managed, each word a labor, tasting of copper.

"Obviously," she stated, flat and absolute. "Perhaps reconsider exiting the pod if you inherently lack resilience."

A spark of pure, divine defiance flared, cutting through the encroaching darkness. My vision blurred, tunneling, but my voice, though weak, held iron. "Denied."

…

Skuld dissolved back into the shadows. Denied. The word echoed in the hollow chamber of my fading mind. This ends now.

Fueled by a fury colder than the void between stars, I braced against the pod's interior and kicked. Muscles shrieked, tendons threatening to snap. Hydraulics shrieked in metallic agony. Again. And again. Bone jarred against unyielding metal. WIDER! With a final, guttural roar that scraped my lungs raw, I kicked with everything – stolen life, divine echo, and utter, consuming hatred.

SNAP.

The thick vine severed with a sound like breaking bone. The pod door slammed open with terrifying force. I tumbled out, gasping metal-tinged, stagnant air, landing hard on unyielding bone. Alive. Unscathed. First, savage victory. Memories surged – the interloper's wasted life, his fantasies – but I slammed the mental door shut with brutal finality. Irrelevant noise. Survive.

A plan crystallized, hard and sharp. The dead offered resources. Hair – long, coarse, tangled in skeletal fingers. My hands, clumsy at first, fumbled. Twisting, pulling, knotting – agonizingly slow work, each movement a battle against weakness and impatience. Persistence, honed by repeated, intimate acquaintance with death, became its own, hard-won skill.

New Skills
Crafting lvl1
Weaving lvl1
Leather Working lvl1 (Dried flesh)
Bone Carving lvl1

Awareness flared. Crafting settled like a cold, central sun in my inner void. Weaving orbited it, its processes suddenly clearer, more defined. Orbit? Did specific resistances circle a core Resistance skill? Tiny sparks against infinite dark.

Hours bled away, measured in heartbeats and the grinding of bone. The result: crude, painful sandals, strips of tough, sun-dried flesh stitched together with rough cord woven from hair. I tied them tightly, the coarse fibers biting into my ankles. A tentative step. Grounded. Protected. Footwear first. Can't walk? Armor's just a mobile coffin.

Next, a weapon. I wrenched a jagged shard of plasteel from a shattered pod – my primary tool. Selecting a thick, dense femur, I ground one end into a rough handle against the pod frame, bone dust filling the air, gritting between my teeth. The absurdity mocked me – fantasy crafting in a charnel house. I focused, carving, widening the other end into a brutal, cleaving blade using the shard. Bone Carving pulsed with each stroke, understanding flowing. Finally, I hefted the heavy bone axe. A savage, experimental swing at a nearby vine. THWACK! It severed cleanly, sap spurting like black blood. Savage satisfaction surged, hotter than the earlier poison. Vengeance.

Armor. Ribcages, scavenged from the largest skeletons, interlocked. Hair-cord sufficed for lashing where direct impact was unlikely. I carved precise notches with the bone shard – bone clasping bone. Bone Carving flared brightly, jumping two levels as the pieces clicked into place with satisfying finality. Lvl4. A tangible surge of strength flowed through me, a reward for understanding. Scavenged arm bones, finger bones painstakingly fused and sharpened into claws using friction and pressure, became brutal fasteners. Lashed tightly, the claw-hands gripped the overlapping rib-plates fiercely. The crude breastplate hung heavy, chafing, but solid. Ready.

Skills
Physical Fitness lvl2
Poison RST lvl3
Bleed RST lvl2
Crafting lvl2
Weaving lvl2
Leather Working lvl2
Bone Carving lvl4

I jogged in place, testing the weight. Brittle confidence propelled me forward. Claws dug into my shoulders, plates scraped raw skin, but I was armored. The ossuary seemed less menacing, the bones mere obstacles. Nothing can touch me.

THUNK. A thorn the length of my finger slammed into the rib-plate over my heart, staggering me. Another step. A sharp prick through the dried flesh of my sandal sole, into my foot. I whirled, heart hammering. Thorn-launchers – bulbous, fleshy flowers growing directly from inactive pods – swiveled silently on thick stalks. A volley hissed through the air. THUD-THUD-CRACK! Thorns hammered the breastplate like gunfire. One punched through a weak joint near my shoulder. Hot blood welled, soaking the crude leather beneath. Bleed RST flared weakly, a faint pulse against the tide.

I sprinted. Armor bounced and ground, each step a fresh agony. Ahead, other flowers released clouds of iridescent pollen, shimmering like toxic fog. Holding my breath, I plunged through the thick haze, lungs burning with the need to gasp.

Fire erupted inside me the moment I sucked a desperate breath. I choked, vision blurring, stumbled blindly. My shoulder slammed into a massive, ancient gate sealed shut by a Gordian knot of thick, pulsing vines. Red infection lines, like angry spiderwebs, crawled up my poisoned arm from the thorn wound. Every gasping attempt at air was torture. A blur of purple movement. THWIP-THWIP. Needle-thorns, almost invisible, buried deep in the side of my neck. Reflex ripped them out, tearing flesh. How DARE they?! My eyes swelled shut instantly, sealed by burning fluid. Darkness, thick and absolute.

Rage, pure and divine, took over. I swung my good fist, fueled by millennia of stolen divinity, at the vine-choked gate.

CRUNCH.

Mind-obliterating pain detonated in my hand – bones pulverized into gravel. I screamed soundlessly, crashing down onto a pile of skeletal predecessors heaped against the gate. Cradling my shattered, useless hand, I flailed wildly with the bone axe held awkwardly in my left. Clang! Clang! Mostly striking unyielding steel. A lucky swing severed a thick vine. Another. A sliver of hope flickered. I forced one swollen, burning eyelid open a crack – just as the overstressed bone axe head snapped clean off the handle with a dry crack.

My legs gave out. Blood seeped warm from multiple wounds. Breathing was a wet, bubbling nightmare. Cold, deeper than the void, crept into my core. Dying. Again.

"Can you hear me?" Melody carved from glacial ice. Close. Too close.

Through the suffocating agony, I forced words past ruined vocal cords: "What... do you... want... from me?"

A pause. Then, utterly devoid of warmth or empathy: "You did better." Better? The absurdity cut through the pain like a shard of glass. She wasn't judging a child's craft project.

Her next words sliced colder, sharper than any thorn: "Skills are determined by the user. Only you decide what's impossible. The higher a skill level..." A deliberate, chilling pause. "...the more it can become." Another pause, heavy with implication. "Think about it."

…

Death reclaimed me. Its embrace felt familiar, yet different this time. Fury, a seething, molten core, burned beneath the draining fluid. Skills are determined by the user. Only you decide what's impossible. Skuld's words burned like brands on my soul.

I braced. Kicked. Struggled not against the door, but against the concept of failure. Muscles screamed, fibers tearing. The pod groaned, metal protesting. With a final, wrenching shriek, the door slammed open. The severed vine dangled limp, harmless. A savage, silent victory.

I stepped out – August – landing squarely on the dry, brittle corpses. Most were desiccated husks shrouded in dead, fibrous vines. Above, the vaulted ceiling was a nightmare tapestry of glowing phosphorescent moss and thick, pulsating vines that throbbed like diseased arteries. My workstation – a bent, scavenged pod lid – waited nearby. This wasn't just a tomb; it was a slaughterhouse meticulously designed by sentient, predatory flora.

I turned. The vine I'd severed… moved. Slowly, deliberately, with horrifying purpose, it slithered up the pod's exterior, coiled possessively around the door's jagged edge, and with a sharp clang, snapped it shut. Electronic beeps chimed faintly from within. Amber amniotic fluid began bubbling up, refilling the pod with obscene efficiency.

Cold dread, colder than the void, washed over me. Am I the fool? The prey? The thought was anathema. Impossible. But the cold, horrifying calculus… Plotting? Farming… me? The facility wasn't abandoned; it was managed. Harvested. I was livestock in a biomechanical abattoir.

My inner darkness flickered. Poison RST lvl4, Bleed RST lvl3, Physical Fitness lvl3, Crafting lvl3, Bone Carving lvl5… Meaningless noise. The only skill that mattered now was Escape. And for that, I needed to understand my warden. Truly understand.

…

Skuld phased silently through the dense bio-mass. She navigated twisting tunnels choked with luminous vines thicker than tree trunks, past shadowed alcoves where fungal-animated corpses performed silent, grotesque maintenance – pruning, cleaning, reinforcing. Destination: the main blast door. It loomed ahead, colossal, seamless, utterly sealed. Vines as thick as cables bound it in a living straitjacket, roots burrowed deep into the sparking, mangled ruins of the severed control panel. A cage welded shut by biology.

He should have reset by now. Minutes stretched into an unnerving anomaly. Her candidate had survived significantly longer. Not well – starvation was a looming specter – but he was learning. Clones, blank slates, played brutal catch-up at an accelerated, horrifying pace. Would it be enough? Could it ever be enough against the horrors of the Undercity? Could anyone be ready?

She paused near a crumbling statue – Wodin, the mythic founder, his features eroded by time and encroaching moss. Hammer of artifice, spear of conquest, all dust now. Skuld was an artifact of that shattered ambition—a failed bridge between cold Technocracy logic and the raw, chaotic power of Cultivators. An echo bound to a dying clone in a dying world.

How had she imprinted? Staying away hadn't broken the cycle. Each near-death, each moment of desperate defiance, had somehow forced her spectral presence back. She couldn't intervene directly; the rules binding her echo were absolute. Frustration, an unfamiliar sensation, drove her to scout. To find some shred of advantage in this hopeless place.

Her findings: bleak. The fungal mycelial network was vast, decentralized, pervasive. A true hive mind, passive but omnipresent. The "zombies" weren't just animated; they preserved the facility, maintaining the perfect trap. Power was permanently disabled at the source. The hive remained passive… until a perimeter breach. All viable exits were sealed behind meters of reinforced steel or collapsed rock. Escape: statistical zero. An equation of despair.

Phasing back through layers of pulsating biomass, she found August bent intently over a large pelvic bone. Sweat slicked his muscular back, gleaming under the fungal light. Fresh vine stings, self-inflicted, blistered angrily on his arms and torso. He was deliberately poisoning himself, pushing the limits of his resistance.

"What have you done?" Disapproval crackled in her icy voice, sharper than intended.

He glanced up, eyes fever-bright with concentration and pain. Beside him lay a massive femur, meticulously twisted into a dense, spiral pole, its surface hardened and smoothed. "August," he stated flatly, not looking away from his work. "That's my name. Consider it part of the overdue introduction."

"Skuld," she replied automatically, the name feeling strange on her non-existent tongue.

He gave a curt nod, seemingly satisfied, then returned to shaping a curved ilium bone into a wicked, serrated axe blade. An ulna, filed to a vicious rasp, lay nearby, coated in bone dust. "Bone can't effectively cut or shape bone without superior tools," she observed neutrally, stating the obvious limitation.

August smirked, a feral twist of his lips. He tapped the bone rasp against the hardened spiral pole. It rang with an unnatural solidity. "This file? Much harder now. Stronger. Until I perceive the creation complete… it stays brittle." He blew a cloud of fine bone dust off the blade, a grim chuckle escaping him. Crafting lvl4 pulsed, a cold star flaring briefly in her perception.

Silent, she watched him meticulously fit the carved blade onto the grooved end of the pole. Precise indentations locked it in place. He drove sharpened bone needles through pre-drilled holes, pinning it perpendicular. A final, cleverly carved bone pin slotted in, preventing any rotational slip. He hefted the brutal, heavy bone axe—solid, unyielding, radiating lethal intent—and stepped purposefully toward a thick, pulsing vine near a cluster of innocuous-looking flowers.

THWACK!

The hardened blade bit deep into the vine, sap jetting black. August leaped back instantly as the flowers erupted, releasing not spores, but a thick, clinging pollen that drifted slowly downwards. "See?" he rasped, wiping sap from his face. "Not just poison. Adheres. Suffocates. Gas mask… next priority."

"Why not a spear? Or a sword? Greater reach, perhaps?" Genuine curiosity edged into her tone. His choices were brutal, pragmatic, but seemingly inefficient.

August spun, eyes sharp and dangerous. "Better than an axe for this? Vines are thick as my arm. Need impact. Weight. To smash, to cleave." He paused, a concept visibly forming. "Axe Mastery…" He tasted the idea. "…pairs with Gardening. Forestry too, maybe. Stacking skills. Synergy. That's the key." He picked up two large, curved rib fragments, holding them end-to-end, his gaze intense, furious, demanding they unite.

"What are you doing?" Skuld drifted closer, wires humming faintly.

"Fusing them," he grunted, knuckles white with strain, his entire being focused on the bones.

"You acquired Bone Fusion?" A faint, almost imperceptible thread of hope entered her voice. Had he broken another barrier?

"I didn't acquire it," he hissed through clenched teeth, the strain immense. "I demand it. Unity. Strength." Madness blazed in his eyes. "Your Bone Carving and Crafting are sufficient. Why force this impossibility?"

"Limits," August spat the word like venom. "Always limits unless I can fuse. Unless I can make what isn't here!" Bone Carving lvl6 hummed like a struck tuning fork, pushing against an invisible barrier with palpable force. Hours bled into days within the timeless chamber. He barely slept, fueled by rage and an inhuman drive.

Then, the facility shuddered. Not a tremor, but a deep, visceral thrum that vibrated through every bone in the ossuary, resonating in the teeth. A sound like tearing flesh and splintering bedrock boomed from the direction of the sealed gate, impossibly loud. The vines throughout the chamber thrashed wildly, a sudden, synchronized frenzy.

Before either could react, the far wall exploded.

Not collapsed. Exploded. Rock bulged outwards, cracked like an eggshell, and vomited forth a tidal wave of glistening, pulsating flesh—a wall of striated muscle, sinew, and whip-like tendrils, absorbing pods, plants, and bones as it surged forward with terrifying speed. It flooded the corridor, an unstoppable avalanche of ravenous, intelligent biomass.

August roared, incandescent with pure, unadulterated rage. "I ALMOST HAD IT!" He threw the half-fused bones down in a gesture of utter, furious contempt.

Tendrils, faster than thought, faster than sight, speared through the air—THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! They punched through his bone armor like paper, impaling him through chest, abdomen, thigh. There was no struggle, no chance. The advancing wall of flesh engulfed him in an instant, tendrils retracting, dragging him into its glistening mass. Defiance flashed one last time in his eyes before they were swallowed by the surging horror. Tendrils pulsed rhythmically against his trapped form. A sickening, wet dissolution began within the engulfing flesh. Liquefaction. Assimilation. Consumption.

Silence descended, thick and unnatural, broken only by the wet squelching sounds filling the newly breached corridor. The pod chamber was now merely an annex to a vast, unspeakable horror.

Skuld hovered, a specter of wire and cold observation. The loop hadn't reset. Not yet. Enough of August – his divine spark, his furious will – was still alive, still fighting dissolution within the ravenous biomass. The cycle held… precariously.




CH2 on Patreon for $5, all future chapters of this work will be $5 to view on my Patreon.

 

[Ultimatedaywriter]

I've been sick with pink eye so I wasn't able to write much but I'm better now. Expect a new chapter of censor slayer monday.

 

[Ultimatedaywriter]

Loop 5: The Clock is Flesh

Death wasn't just an end; it was a prelude to agony. The memory of dissolution – the feeling of organs liquefying like rotten fruit, consciousness screaming within consumed biomass while feeling it happen – was a brand seared onto my reborn soul. This time, I didn't burst from the pod like a panicked animal. I eased the heavy door open, inch by groaning inch, a predator silently assessing the bars of its cage. A dangling vine brushed my bare arm. Needles pricked. The sting was trivial, a mosquito bite compared to the cold, existential dread coiling like a serpent in my gut. Three days. The flesh-monster was coming. I couldn't endure that violation again. I wouldn't.

My hands, steadier now despite the familiar, low-grade poison threading sluggishly through my veins (Poison RST lvl7), moved with grim, mechanical purpose. I bypassed weapons. I needed the tools to make weapons. A dense femur became a rough blank. A shard of pod metal, pried loose with agonizing leverage, became a crude scraper. Bone Carving lvl6 sang in my nerves, a low thrum of understanding as I painstakingly filed teeth into a brutal bone saw blade. Each completed task – the rasp of metal on bone, the curl of white shavings – made the motes in my inner void burn brighter, colder. A constellation of hard-won defiance against the encroaching dark.

Thoughts of bows, arrows – elegant, ranged solutions – withered like poisoned leaves. Time wasn't sand; it was meat dripping through an hourglass. I seized two thick rib sections, pressing the fractured ends together. Focus lvl1 poured from my core, a laser beam of willpower hammering against reality. Fuse. Become one. I visualized lattices knitting, minerals flowing. My muscles trembled with the mental strain. A low, guttural growl escaped my clenched teeth. The bones remained stubbornly separate, mocking my effort. Fine. Indentions. Slots. Crude, mechanical joins would have to suffice. Bone shavings piled like grim, white snow around my workstation, dusting the hollow-eyed faces of my predecessors – my faces. They were me. I was them. Failure etched in calcium, a gallery of the damned.

A chill pricked my spine before the light shifted. Skuld materialized, her wire-form less terrifying now, more a fixture of this purgatory, like the bones themselves. "What do you want?" I rasped, not looking up from the rib I was notching. She only manifested before spectacular death or to dispense cryptic scorn. Was she here to chain me to this bone-yard?

"Angry?" Her voice was a cold scalpel sliding between my ribs. "Good. Channel it. All I perceive is a lazy batch-boy wallowing in self-pity. Five deaths in eight subjective days? Pathetic. You're supposed to be a man. Pull yourself up. The clock ticks. Loudly. In seventy-two hours, it comes. It doesn't just eat you." Her void-eyes fixed on mine. "It rips through the outer gate – the only gate – and floods the Undercity with ravenous biomass. Those doors?" A wiry hand gestured dismissively towards the vine-choked exit. "No power. Six meters of reinforced Chromasteel stand between you and the outside. Your bone axes?" A metallic sneer seemed to ripple through her form. "They won't scratch the paint. So stop whining. Build."

Her words were acid, corrosive and cruel, but they ignited a furnace deep within my stolen marrow. For seventy-six brutal, unrelenting hours, I became a machine fueled by pure dread and the stubborn echo of divinity. Sleep was stolen in stolen, five-hour chunks on piles of dry bone, the cold seeping into my joints. Food was scant condensation licked from cold pod metal, tasting of ozone and despair. My world narrowed to the rhythmic scream of carving: selecting thick ulnas, shaping them into vicious blades with agonizing precision, twisting femurs into dense hafts through sheer, grinding force, slotting, pinning, testing. An axe every six hours. Fourteen brutal instruments of bone, lined up like skeletal soldiers awaiting deployment. Fast Hands lvl1 made my movements economical blurs, reducing waste motion to near zero. Focus lvl1 turned mind-numbing repetition into meditative precision, each stroke of the saw a prayer for survival. The motes flared, brighter with each finished weapon:

Physical Fitness lvl4 (Forged in the crucible of relentless, bone-jarring labor)

Poison RST lvl7 (The constant vine-sting a dull, background hum beneath the fatigue)

Bleed RST lvl3

Sprint lvl1 (Born from frantic dashes for materials)

Focus lvl1

Ax Mastery lvl1 (The rhythm of creation bleeding seamlessly into the rhythm of destruction)

Heavy Armor Mastery lvl1 (Conceptualizing the unattainable plate armor, a mental scaffold)

Crafting lvl5

Weaving lvl3

Leather Working lvl3

Bone Carving lvl6

Fast Hands lvl1

I stared into the constellation within my inner void. Focus and Fast Hands weren't just skills; they were temporal alchemy, compressing hours of labor into perceived minutes. Any task, no matter how soul-crushingly tedious, could consume my entire being, pushing back the terror of the clock.

Seventy-six hours. The facility shuddered. Not the tentative tremor of before, but the gut-deep, visceral thrum of something colossal breaching reality itself. The bone pile beneath my feet vibrated like a struck gong. My hand shot out, grabbing the latest axe, knuckles white on the polished bone haft.

The corridor didn't just crumble; it exploded. Not the gate failing, but the solid wall beside it bulging obscenely outward before vomiting forth the tidal wave of glistening, cancerous flesh. It filled the confined space instantly, a tsunami of ravenous biomass. Tendrils, thick as my torso and tipped with bony spurs, lanced out faster than sight. One punched through my layered, slot-jointed bone breastplate like it was rotted wood, impaling my chest with a wet CRUNCH-THUD. Agony was instant, blinding white, eclipsed a microsecond later by the horrific dissolution. Acidic enzymes, thick and burning, flooded from the tendril's core, turning my organs to hot slurry within their casing. I screamed, a wet, bubbling sound drowned by the entity's wet roar. I tried to raise the axe, a final act of defiance, but my arm was already melting, tendons parting like overcooked meat. My vision swam, registering the final obscenity: a thick, bony straw telescoping from the flesh-wall, plunging into the hole in my chest, sucking out the liquefied contents with a sickening glug-glug-glug. My consciousness clung, a terrified spark in dissolving meat, feeling the cancerous replication flood what was left, taking over cell by screaming cell. Death wasn't quick. It was an excruciating, slow-motion descent into biological hell, each second an eternity of violation, until the blessed, merciful darkness finally swallowed me whole.

Loop 6: Faces in the Bone

Rebirth. Panic surged first, a cold fist squeezing my heart. I checked the void-motes frantically, desperate for Acid RST, Dissolution Immunity, anything. Nothing new. The monster worked too fast, bypassing resistance with overwhelming, biological horror. I slammed a fist into the pod door, the impact jarring but clean, the sting of raw knuckles a grounding sensation. Air. I sucked it in, deep and ragged, then seized the dangling vine with deliberate, cold fury, stepping fully under its obscene embrace. Needles bit deep. Poison flowed, thick and familiar. But the agony was muted, distant (Poison RST lvl7). My hand, already gripping the bone saw I'd started carving before the pod was fully drained, didn't tremble.

The axes came faster now. Bone Carving lvl6, Fast Hands lvl1, Focus lvl1, and the nascent Ax Mastery lvl1 flowed together like dark water. A femur blank became a polished, balanced haft in minutes. An ilium blade took shape under my flying hands, its edge honed to a wicked, glassy gleam that caught the fungal light. When finished, it didn't just look like bone – it shone with an inner resilience, cold and hard as forged steel, humming faintly with potential. I adjusted the grip, tested the balance, each micro-improvement a tiny victory against the relentless clock. Every level gained wasn't just progress; it was peeling back layers of limitation I hadn't known shackled me. I was scratching the surface of true, terrifying potential.

Five axes stood gleaming in two hours. A new record etched in sweat and bone dust. But the specter of the flesh-wall loomed larger, its deadline a suffocating pressure. Plate armor. Real armor. Not slots and ties. Fusion. I seized two thick, curved rib sections. Focus lvl1 locked onto the join like a targeting laser, a beam of pure will. I pushed not with muscle, but with raw, demanding intent, visualizing the calcium matrices knitting, merging, becoming one seamless, unbreakable whole. It has to happen. This power is the key. The only key. Hours bled away in silent, furious concentration. Sweat beaded on my brow, stung my eyes, mingling with the fine, white dust coating my skin. The bones remained stubbornly separate.

A shift in the air, a subtle drop in temperature. Skuld. She drifted closer, almost absently reaching for one of the gleaming bone axes. Her wiry fingers passed through it. A flicker of… something… frustration? Annoyance? crossed her impassive features before her gaze settled on me, assessing, calculating. Like a rancher sizing up a prize bull before slaughter.

"Going to check my teeth next?" I grunted, not breaking my iron stare from the stubborn ribs in my hands, the mental pressure never wavering.

"You're moving too slow," she stated, her voice flat as a tombstone.

"Compared to what? The fucking apocalypse hurtling towards us?"

"Unless you escape this facility within hours of waking," she countered, her tone chillingly logical, "reaching a shielded Upper City spire before the breach is statistically zero. Or unraveling whatever perverse logic allows such an entity to exist? You lack the foundational skills. The time."

"I'm not a damned investigator!" The words tore out, raw with frustration. "I'm trying not to be liquefied!"

"Perhaps," Skuld said, her tone shifting to something colder, sharper, like ice fracturing, "you need to learn to see the world you're trying to survive. Not just the bones you hack at."

I turned away, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. See? What good was observation against six meters of Chromasteel? Against dissolving enzymes? I needed power. Fusion. I redoubled my mental assault on the bones, pouring every ounce of stolen divinity into the command. FUSE!

Practicality won, a bitter pill. I crafted a new breastplate – selecting smoother, denser bone, carving a better fit, adding crude bone latches in the back for easier donning. I pulled the heavy thing over my head, the interlocking ribs settling onto my shoulders with familiar, grinding pressure. Then, the cloak. A grisly, stinking tapestry. I moved among the desiccated clones, selecting the driest, toughest patches of leathery skin from dozens of my own wasted selves, layering them like grotesque scales, sewing them together with thick cords of braided hair (Weaving lvl3, Leather Working lvl3). Flesh was just material now. Hide. Three thick layers – a hideous, stinking barrier, but hopefully thorn-proof.

Two days left. I moved. Sprint lvl1 propelled me down the ossuary corridor, a ghost running through a graveyard of his own failures. I dodged the trip-vine locations seared into my memory, leaped over pressure plates disguised as pelvic bones. The sealed gate loomed ahead, choked thick with pulsating, luminescent vines. I raised my best axe, the haft cool and familiar in my grip, Ax Mastery lvl1 guiding the swing with instinctive precision. THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! Luminescent sap spurted, thick and acrid. Vines parted like rotten rope. Sparks flew from the exposed, mangled control panel as I severed a root burrowed deep within. With a final, decisive chop, the last thick root binding the mechanism fell. Deep within the door, massive, rusted gears groaned. Hydraulics hissed, starved of full power but straining. With a tortured shriek of metal on stone, the colossal door scraped open, revealing impenetrable darkness beyond.

A savage grin split my grimy face. Freedom. Air, stale but not tainted by decay and poison pollen–

A guttural, wet croak echoed from the darkness beyond the door. Something lurched into the dim fungal light. A clone. My face. But corrupted beyond recognition. Vines pulsed like thick, green worms beneath its mottled, grey skin, threading through muscle, erupting from its scalp in a grotesque crown of writhing tendrils. It stood a head taller, its eyes bloodshot voids, throbbing green filaments visibly writhing beneath its jawline like parasitic snakes. It saw me. Snarled, a sound like tearing meat. Charged.

Instinct and Ax Mastery took over. I pivoted on the balls of my feet, the bone axe a silver blur in the gloom. A single, powerful overhead chop bit deep into the creature's neck with a sickening THUNK. It staggered, a wet, gurgling sound bubbling from its ruined throat. I wrenched the axe free – and a dense cloud of shimmering, iridescent pollen erupted from the gaping wound like smoke, engulfing my head before I could react. I choked, eyes instantly burning, lungs seizing as if filled with ground glass.

The corrupted clone didn't fall. It lunged through the blinding pollen cloud, tackling me with shocking, vine-enhanced force. We crashed to the bone-littered floor in a tangle of limbs. The axe skittered away, lost in the haze. I gasped, pinned beneath its unnatural weight, the clone's vine-strengthened hands closing like iron vices around my throat, crushing my windpipe. Focus lvl1 snapped my world into horrifying, slow-motion clarity: the stench of rot and cloying pollen, the inhuman strength pinning me, the desperate scritch-scritch of my axe sliding further away over dry bone. I threw a desperate, panicked punch. It connected with the clone's jaw – like hitting solid rock. The thing didn't even flinch. Its bloodshot eyes, my eyes, stared down with vacant, fungal hunger, devoid of anything recognizably human.

Air. I needed air. Black spots danced, blooming like toxic flowers across my vision. A shadow fell over us. My straining eyes, streaming and burning, flicked up. Another corrupted clone. My face. Holding my gleaming bone axe.

The clone raised the axe high, its movements jerky but purposeful. I tried to twist, to scream a warning that died in my crushed throat, reduced to a pathetic wheeze. The axe fell.

THUD.

The impact hammered into my layered flesh-cloak and the bone breastplate beneath. The cloak absorbed some force, the dense bone deflected more, but the sheer, brutal weight of the blow drove the breath from my already constricted lungs and snapped my collarbone with an audible crack. Pain, white-hot and utterly shocking, ripped through my upper body. I screamed, a soundless agony trapped behind crushed cartilage.

The clone raised the axe again. No hesitation. No flicker of mercy in its borrowed, corrupted eyes. The blade, polished to a lethal gleam by my own hands, caught the faint fungal light as it reached its apex, poised to cleave my skull and finish what its kin had started. The pollen choked me. The clone on my chest pressed down, relentless. The axe descended. My world narrowed to the falling edge of bone, the crushing weight, and the suffocating, iridescent dark.

Loop 7: The Taste of Ashes and Bone

The echo of that suffocating silence, the image of my own corrupted face wielding my axe with mindless intent, felt like ice water injected directly into my reborn veins. This loop began not with panic, but with cold, surgical fury. I moved before the pod finished draining, the amniotic fluid still sloshing around my ankles. A dense femur, selected for its unyielding grain, became my immediate focus. Bone Carving lvl6 guided my hands as I shaped not an axe, but a cruel, six-inch dagger – a tool for the intimate, desperate brutality I knew awaited me in the dark beyond the gate. The blade curved wickedly; the handle, wrapped in leathery skin peeled from a nearby desiccated clone, fit my grip like a grim, blood-slick promise. A sheath, carved from the bone's other half, completed the set. Close range was suicide against the pollen-spewing horrors… until I crafted a gas mask. Until then, this dagger was my last, choked whisper before the fungal chokehold.

Fusion remained the siren song, the key to real armor. Hours bled away as I pressed Focus lvl1 like a physical weight against two rib fragments held end-to-end, demanding union. Merge. Become one. I tried willing an Observe skill into existence, straining my senses until my temples throbbed, trying to pull knowledge from the glowing moss, the pulsing vines, the very metallic tang of the air. Nothing. The silence in my inner void, save the familiar, cold motes, was mocking. Power wasn't given; it was clawed from the world's throat with bloody fingernails.

Pragmatism won another battle. I moved down the corridor with the cautious, meticulous precision of a sapper in a minefield, Focus sharpening my senses to a razor's edge. I disarmed trip-vines with my dagger's point, identified pressure plates disguised amongst scattered vertebrae, cleared narrow paths through the calcified remains. Each cleared trap was a silent, grim victory against the facility's passive, vegetative malice. My body, however, was the ultimate, flawed trap. Physical Fitness lvl4 was insufficient. Sprint lvl1 faded too quickly, leaving me gasping. My resistances were shields, not engines. A grim strategy solidified: every few loops, I would dedicate myself solely to the forge of my own flesh. Push the limits. Break them. And before the flesh-wall came… I would flood my system with thorns and pollen, wringing every drop of resistance XP from the ensuing agony. Survival through self-torture.

Corridor cleared, I donned another hastily assembled breastplate – interlocked ribs, bone latches biting into the meat of my shoulders. Then, the absurd, necessary horror began. Focus partitioned my mind. One relentless stream held the image of seamless bone fusion, a mental battering ram pounding against the immovable wall of reality. The other stream ignited my muscles. I sprinted.

Down the ossuary corridor. Past the pods where I'd died countless deaths. Past the silent skeletons wearing variations of my stolen face. Back again. Knees screamed protest within minutes, joints grinding. Sweat stung my eyes, plastering filthy hair to my forehead, dripping in salty rivulets onto the bone-dust floor. My breath sawed in my lungs, a ragged, desperate counterpoint to the silent, furious pressure in my mind. I must have looked ludicrous – a naked, bone-armored man sprinting in frantic, gasping circles through a tomb, face contorted in a rictus of dual efforts: physical agony and mental defiance. A phantom sound teased my ear – a dry, metallic giggle. Skuld? Hallucination born of exhaustion? I didn't care. I ran.

Half an hour in, the sprint devolved into a gasping, stumbling jog. Two hours in, my legs were leaden weights, trembling violently. I collapsed onto a mound of femurs, the hard edges digging into my side, my chest heaving like a bellows. The world swam, grey at the edges. The watching corpses blurred into a ghastly audience, but the motes in my inner darkness pulsed – Physical Fitness lvl5, Sprint lvl2 flaring brighter, hotter. Others – Poison RST lvl8, Bleed RST lvl4 – glowed with steady, hard-won resilience. Progress, paid in pain and sweat.

My bleary, sweat-stung gaze fixed on the moss. It glowed an eerie, inviting blue on the pod surfaces, soft and dewy. Tantalizing. Moisture. My throat was raw sandpaper, my stomach a hollow, aching pit. Logic screamed poison. Desperation whispered try. I lurched to the nearest pod, plucked a handful of the cool, spongy moss, and shoved it into my mouth. It tasted like wet grave dirt, ozone, and something unnervingly sweet. My stomach revolted instantly, violently. I retched, doubling over, bile and bitter, blue-tinged moss splattering the white bones at my feet. Point brutally taken.

Defiance, fueled by nausea, exhaustion, and the memory of my own corrupted face, flared like a dying star. I glared at the smug, dangling vine that had stung me loop after loop. With a snarl ripped from my core, I drew my bone dagger and slashed. The vine segment fell, writhing like a severed limb on the bone-dust floor. Thick, luminescent sap, glowing faintly, welled from the stump above. You fed on me. You gorged on my clones. The thought was primal, feral. Now feed ME. I cupped my hands under the viscous flow, letting the cool, glowing liquid pool until it nearly overflowed, then drank deeply, gulping it down before my body could rebel.

No immediate vomit. Just… a spreading numbness. A cold wave radiating from my gut, turning my insides to ice. My legs dissolved beneath me. I crumpled beside the twitching vine segment, the bone breastplate suddenly icy against my numb skin. I stared at the dying plant, hatred warring with the creeping paralysis locking my jaw. "I will eat you," I rasped, the words thick, slurred. "Not survive you. Eat you."

The numbness held, a terrifying void where sensation should be. Then, as the sap flow ebbed, feeling returned like a thousand white-hot needles stabbing every nerve. Cramps locked my muscles in agonizing vise-grips. Cold sweat drenched me, yet my skin burned with fever. Violent shivers wracked my frame, teeth chattering uncontrollably against the cold bone breastplate. I lay curled on the unforgiving floor, a broken thing wracked by biological betrayal, breathing in shallow, agonized gasps. The human part, the echo of the dreamer, screamed for it to end. The clone, the looper, the vessel carrying diluted divine ichor, endured. Focus lvl1 became my sole lifeline, a tiny, unwavering flame in the blizzard of pain, holding onto the idea of survival.

At some undefined point, through sheer, bloody-minded will that felt scraped from the bedrock of my being, I pushed myself up onto trembling arms. Focus narrowed to a laser point, pushing back the lingering agony. I looked at the bone dagger clutched in my still-shaking hand. My bones. My gaze swept the ossuary, taking in the countless skeletal forms. All of them. Me. Each a failed escapee, poisoned, trapped, consumed by the green hell surrounding us. A surge of kinship, cold and furious and utterly devoid of pity, washed over me. They didn't escape. I will.

New Skill
Bone Mending lvl1

The awareness bloomed, sudden and profound. Not fusion. Not yet. But… repair. An instinctive understanding of structure. The flow of life within the mineral matrix. A foundation laid in agony.

And then, a shift deep within. Poison RST lvl10. The cramping agony didn't vanish, but it receded, pulling back like a tide from a poisoned shore. The shivering lessened, becoming tremors. Clarity, hard-won and fragile, returned. I seized two rib fragments again. Held them end-to-end. Poured Focus lvl1 and the nascent, instinctive understanding of Bone Mending lvl1 into the join. Not a demand this time. A command. A precise visualization of lattices knitting, minerals flowing and bonding. Become one.

Warmth. A faint, internal vibration, like a tuning fork struck deep within the bone. The fractured ends… fused. Not perfectly, not seamlessly, but undeniably joined. Like crude arc welding on calcium, a visible seam but structurally sound. I pulled. The join held firm… then snapped under significant, deliberate force. But it had held. A crack in the wall of impossibility. A fissure of hope.

Triumph, fierce and feral, surged through me, burning away the last dregs of poison-weakness. I grabbed the severed vine segment I'd spat out earlier. With the dagger's keen edge, I meticulously scraped off the fine, venomous needles. Then, I lifted the oozing stump and drank the remaining sap pooling within. No numbness. No fire. Just a faint, acidic tang on my tongue. Poison RST lvl10 held. I took a savage bite from the tough, fibrous vine. It was like chewing rubbery celery filled with bitter, fatty pulp. I forced it down, jaw working against the resistance. Waited. Nothing but the lingering ache of my earlier trials. Victory. A small, brutal conquest.

"Feels fitting, doesn't it?" I muttered to the half-eaten vine in my hand. "You gorged on my clones. Now I devour you." I finished the tough segment, the act less about sustenance, more about symbolic annihilation, the taste of ashes and bitter pulp lingering on my tongue.

Revitalized by grim triumph, I resumed my sprints. Heavy Armor Mastery lvl2 flared as I adapted to the constant chafing grind of the plates. Sprint lvl3 pushed my speed to new, desperate heights. Physical Fitness lvl6 burned brighter, a sun of resilience forged in suffering. I was hardening myself, cell by screaming cell, into a weapon designed solely for escape.

In the final, desperate hours before the inevitable, I turned predator. I stalked the silent corridor, Focus dialed to its peak, finding one of the needle-flower ambushers hiding behind a shattered ribcage. I severed the stem with a swift dagger cut, careful not to jostle the petals concealing its chemical sacs. Curiosity warred with practicality. I used the needle-sharp tip of my dagger to prick a sac from a safe distance.

POP! The sac exploded violently on contact with air. A thorn shot out like a bullet, ricocheting harmlessly off my breastplate with a sharp ping. Triggered by oxygen exposure. Valuable. One less unknown.

Then, the final, necessary test. Focus locked in, a vise on my mind. I drove my own bone dagger into my forearm, avoiding major vessels but opening a deep, welling gash. Bleed RST lvl5 flared, slowing the crimson flow to a thick ooze, but not stopping it. Focus helped me compartmentalize the bright flare of pain, but the blood loss was real, relentless, a chilling weakness spreading from the wound. I watched my life seep into the thirsty bone dust, a grim timer synced to the flesh-wall's arrival. I grew cold. My heartbeat slowed, a sluggish drum echoing in the hollow silence of the ossuary. The world narrowed to the rhythmic drip of my blood onto white bone and the cold, unyielding pressure of the breastplate against my slowing chest.

I heard it then. Not the shudder, but the catastrophic rending of metal and stone. The gate didn't just burst; it was annihilated, torn apart from the other side. The tidal wave of glistening, multi-eyed, multi-mouthed flesh didn't bother with targeted tendrils this time. It saw the cold, bleeding thing kneeling amidst the bones, barely clinging to life. With a wet, hungry roar that vibrated the very air, it simply surged forward, a wall of ravenous, indifferent hunger. It didn't stab. It engulfed. The impact was like being hit by a collapsing mountain. Bone armor cracked like eggshells. Consciousness flickered out in the instant before dissolution began, consumed not by targeted violence, but by overwhelming, insatiable, impersonal hunger. The last sensation was the crushing weight, the wet heat, and the terrifying absence of malice – just endless, consuming need.

Loop 8: The Song of Snapping Bone

The familiar sting of the vine's needles was a ghost sensation now, barely registering against Poison RST lvl10. I ripped the damned thing from the pod frame with a savage twist, casting the writhing segment aside like the garbage it was. Time was a noose pulled tight around the throat of this loop. My hands, guided by Fast Hands lvl5 and honed by countless deaths, moved with machine-like, terrifying precision. Bone shavings flew in a constant white haze as I carved, not axes this time, but the components of a more distant killer. A killer I needed now.

Long, flexible strips of rib bone, shaved thin and resilient, emerged under my blade. These weren't for armor; they were cordage. Weaving lvl3 guided my fingers as I twisted and braided them into a tough, sinewy string, the bones groaning faintly under the tension. The true challenge, the crucible, lay in the bow itself. I selected the densest femur I could find. Bone Carving lvl6 allowed me to shave it down with meticulous, almost loving care, feeling the grain, seeking the elusive balance between flexibility and fatal weakness. I bent it slowly, agonizingly, towards the breaking point, muscles in my arms and back screaming. Then, Bone Mending lvl2 flowed from my fingertips – not crude welding, but a deeper, cellular command. Hold this shape. Become resilient. I felt the minute vibrations, the internal groaning as the bone structure realigned under my will. Release. Bend further, into territory no untreated bone should endure. Mend again. Repeat. Centimeter by agonizing centimeter, the femur acquired a deep, arcing curve, humming with trapped energy.

A second femur underwent the same brutal ballet of stress and repair. I fused their tapered ends using sturdy, shaped vertebrae as connectors, Bone Mending singing a silent hymn as the join solidified into something stronger than the sum of its parts. Filing smoothed stress points, but the core tension remained, a palpable thrum in the air. This wasn't assembly; it was torture transformed into potential energy. I strung it with the braided bone cord, the tension singing a high, dangerous note. Heart pounding, not with fear, but with the cold anticipation of inevitable failure, I drew the string back.

SNAP!

The bow exploded violently, shards like bone shrapnel embedding themselves in the nearby pods with wet thunks and stinging my own skin (Bleed RST lvl5 flared, stemming the minor flows instantly). The failure points were brutally clear – the mended sections, still the weakest links, giving way catastrophically. Frustration? A luxury eradicated by the ticking clock. A grim, humorless smile touched my lips. Progress. The weapon hadn't been declared complete by the system. Its structural integrity remained fragile, conditional, until that final, successful draw. Until then, it was just bone under duress, waiting to fail.

Loop 8 became a relentless symphony of splintering bone. Fast Hands lvl5 turned hours into perceived minutes. Bow after bow took shape under my furious focus. Bend. Stress to the screaming edge of failure. Mend. Shape. String. Draw. SNAP. Each explosive failure taught me. Where to carve thinner for flexibility without sacrificing core strength. Where the mend needed deeper, more fundamental integration, reinforcing the molecular bonds. How the braided cord's tension interacted with the bone's innate resilience. Bone Mending climbed to lvl3, then lvl4, the mends becoming smoother, less like welded scars and more like naturally reforged sections. Bone Carving strained towards lvl10, my understanding of the material becoming intimate, instinctive. Crafting lvl8 pulsed with the accumulated knowledge of dozens of near-weapons, understanding flowing into each new attempt. I noticed a crucial pattern: even unfinished, my axes, born from Ax Mastery lvl2, possessed an inherent, supernatural sturdiness the bows lacked. Mastery imbued the making as much as the using. But Bow Mastery remained locked, tantalizingly out of reach, barred by the act itself.

On the thirty-fourth bow, as the air grew thick and heavy with the oppressive, greasy stench heralding the flesh-wall's approach, Skuld coalesced from the shadows near a cluster of unnervingly bright moss. Her voice was flat, devoid of urgency, yet carrying the finality of a sealing tomb. "Four hours. What is your plan, August?" The use of my name felt like a cold blade.

I didn't look up. I nocked an imaginary arrow on the newly strung bow, my calloused fingers finding their grip by pure muscle memory. "The course remains unchanged." Focus lvl5 narrowed my world to the flex of the bone, the tension of the string vibrating against my cheek. I drew. The bow resisted, groaning like a living thing in protest, but didn't fracture. Further. Muscles across my back, shoulders, and arms corded, Physical Fitness lvl6 pushed to its absolute screaming limit. My drawing arm trembled violently, sweat stinging my eyes, blurring the ossuary. Further still. The braided string pressed cold and unyielding against my cheekbone. I held the impossible tension, breath trapped in my burning lungs, veins standing out like ropes on my neck. Not yet complete... Not yet...

Slowly, agonizingly, millimeter by screaming millimeter, I released the string.

THRUMMMMMMM...

The string thrummed, a low, powerful note that echoed long and deep in the ossuary, vibrating the very bones beneath my feet. As the tension bled away, a ripple of silvery-white light, cold and sharp, flowed through the entire bone structure of the bow. It solidified the form, hardened the curves to diamond-like density, sealed the countless microscopic mends into a single, unified, impossibly strong whole. Bow Mastery lvl1 ignited in my inner void, a new, fierce, demanding star. The bow felt different now – denser, heavier, humming with contained violence, yet paradoxically harder to draw. A true weapon, forged not in fire, but in the sheer, bloody-minded repetition of failure.

Time screamed its final warning. I snatched a long ulna, Fast Hands a frantic blur as I carved a crude arrow shaft, filed a viciously sharp point, and sliced paper-thin fletching from a thin scapula bone. Bone Mending lvl4 fused the vanes into slots with a mere thought, the bone flowing like molten wax for an instant before hardening. Two dozen arrows materialized in less than an hour, their fletching shimmering faintly with the residual energy of their hasty creation.

The gate vines fell before my bone dagger like wheat before a scythe, sap hissing on the dusty floor. As the heavy gears groaned and the door scraped open, the cacophony from beyond hit me like a physical blow: guttural roars, wet snarls, the frantic, mindless scrabbling of bone on metal. Madness stared back. Corrupted clones, vines pulsing like infected arteries beneath their grey skin, bloodshot eyes fixed on me with pure, fungal hunger, charged through the widening gap, a wave of rotting flesh wearing my stolen face.

I planted my feet, Sprint lvl4 coiled like a spring in my legs but held. I nocked an arrow, the silvery bow coming up smooth and fast despite its new weight. Focus lvl5 sharpened the world to unbearable clarity. I aimed for the lead clone's throat, a pale, pulsing target amidst the charging horror. Release.

The arrow flew – a pale, deadly streak. But Bow Mastery lvl1 was raw, untested under pressure. It struck high, embedding deep in the clone's shoulder muscle. The creature roared, staggered, but didn't stop. Three more clones surged past the wounded one, closing the distance in terrifying heartbeats, their corrupted mouths gaping.

I dropped the bow, the thud lost in the snarls. Drew my dagger. Sprint lvl4 ignited, a desperate burst of speed sideways. I met the first clone head-on, ducking under clumsy, vine-thickened arms, driving the bone blade up with brutal precision through its eye socket and into the brain. As it fell, something impossibly heavy slammed into my left leg from the blind side. CRACK. White-hot agony exploded as my fibula snapped cleanly. I screamed, the sound cut horrifically short as another clone lunged over its falling kin, its mouth opening not to bite, but to exhale – a thick, choking cloud of iridescent pollen filled my face, mouth, and nose.

I choked, lungs instantly aflame, eyes swelling shut in searing agony. I hit the ground hard, the broken leg a nova of white-hot pain obliterating all else. Through blurred, burning vision and the suffocating, glittering haze, I saw shapes loom over me. Arms raised – my arms, corrupted and grotesquely strengthened – and slammed down onto my breastplate with crushing, unnatural force. Ribs buckled inward with sickening crunches. Air exploded from my ruined lungs in a final, desperate wheeze. I tried to scream, to curse Skuld, to curse this hell, to fight, but only a wet, drowning gurgle emerged, bubbling with blood and pollen. More blows rained down, a relentless, mindless drumbeat of annihilation on my broken chest. Consciousness faded not to peaceful darkness, but to the horrifying, suffocating sensation of drowning in my own hot blood and the thick, poisonous pollen, silenced forever beneath the fists of his corrupted selves.

Loop 9: The Forge of Repetition

The echo of that suffocating silence, the taste of my own blood and pollen, the sound of my ribs breaking under my own corrupted fists, fueled the next awakening with cold, purpose-driven fury. If Bow Mastery lvl1 wasn't enough for speed or accuracy under the chaos of combat, then the weapon was worse than useless. It was a death sentence. I wouldn't die fumbling again.

Loop 9 was dedicated entirely to the grindstone of muscle memory, the brutal forging of instinct. The first hours vanished in a whirlwind of familiar, perfected motions: crafting the silvery bow (Crafting lvl8, Bone Carving lvl10 making the process faster, smoother, the bone seeming to yield more readily), then producing quivers full of arrows until my hands moved in autonomous, efficient blurs. Fast Hands lvl5 was a relentless, tireless engine.

Targets were erected – stacked ribcages trembling with each impact, a specific pod door scarred by countless near-misses, the dangling, accusing stump of the cursed vine. I stood twenty paces back. Draw. Focus lvl5 aligning breath, posture, sight picture with inhuman precision. Release. Walk. Retrieve. Repeat. Draw. Release. Repeat. The motions became a mantra, a brutal prayer etched into my nerves, my muscles, my bones. My back muscles screamed in protest, then adapted, thickening. My fingers blistered, split, bled, then calloused over into leathery pads. Physical Fitness climbed steadily, relentlessly, the grueling draw of the powerful bow transforming from agonizing effort, to difficult strain, to merely demanding, then to a powerful, fluid motion. lvl7... lvl8... lvl9... The arrows flew straighter, faster, hitting their marks with satisfying thwacks that sent bone fragments flying. Archery lvl1... lvl2... lvl3...

But progress inevitably stalled. Archery lvl5. Hitting static targets in the sterile, predictable silence of the ossuary offered diminishing returns. The true test was the screaming chaos of combat, the blind terror of the charge, the desperate need for instinct over conscious aim. This silent tomb couldn't replicate that. I needed the hunt, the smell of decay and pollen, the fear, the moving target wearing my face. My body, however, was undergoing its own metamorphosis. Physical Fitness lvl10 blazed in my inner darkness like a captured star, a sun of pure, unyielding resilience. Drawing the heavy bow was now an act of powerful, controlled fluidity, not desperate, joint-popping strain. Stamina felt boundless, a deep well I hadn't yet found the bottom of.

On the third day, as the oppressive, greasy weight of the approaching entity began to thicken the air like poison gas, I geared up. The familiar interlocking rib breastplate settled onto shoulders now thick with hard-won muscle. The gleaming bone axe, humming faintly with Ax Mastery lvl2, was slung securely across my broad back. The bone dagger, cold comfort and final resort, rested snugly at my hip. The silvery bow felt like an extension of my own sinew and bone now, a quiver of bone-tipped arrows bristling like porcupine spines at my shoulder. I stood before the vine-choked gate, not as a desperate survivor, but as a hardened instrument of escape, forged and tempered in the relentless fires of repeated annihilation. I raised my bone dagger to the pulsating vines. The door groaned open. Beyond lay impenetrable darkness, the overwhelming stench of decay and fungal rot, and the certain promise of violence wearing my own stolen face. The hunt began. Again.




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