Chapter 56: Terror
Valens froze. Drops of cold sweat trickled down his neck. He tried to move, to blink, to do something that would tear away his gaze from this abomination, but there was nowhere to move.
The eye was everywhere.
It was pitch-black with no visible spots around it, covered in an ethereal fog. On its giant surface Valens saw his reflection. He looked so little, so brittle, as if the mere attention of this eye, the sheer size of it was enough to swallow him whole.
In the darkness, he was no more.
His body refused to hear the pleas of his mind.
[You have gazed into the eye of a Terror.]
A single line, then he felt a pull at his core, an icy grip around his skin that was invisible to the naked eye. It slithered slowly across his arms, searching, hungry like a beast out for fresh blood. Down through his pores, carefully trailing his veins, leaving its sickly touch all over his being.
It stopped by his chest for a second. Valens tried to breathe as his heart skipped a beat, but there was no air to breathe here. Nothing to alleviate the pressure upon his lungs. And the passage was—
No more.
The Templars were gone, the basalt walls of the crypt vanished, and the Shrieker’s shadowy frequencies had long since given way to this alien being’s unique Resonance.
Its presence was everywhere.
From within the eye spread its existence as if the sky was coming down, as if the earth was failing to bear its weight.