Chapter 62 - 59: Everything’s A Little Fucked
The scene opens in eerie silence, broken only by the distant echoes of fading roars and the low, wet squelch of dissolving bodies. Miyabi kneels amid the battlefield—if it could even be called that anymore.
Around her lie the corpses of Ethereals, grotesque and malformed. So many that they pile upon one another like some twisted monument to the chaos New Eridu has become. Their bodies begin to shimmer, disintegrating into etheric particles and fading away, as if reality itself is trying to erase the memory of them. But the blood and the smell—those linger.
Miyabi breathes heavily, her chest rising and falling as she leans on her odachi for support. The great blade, once pristine and dignified like its wielder, now bears glowing red cracks across its length, pulsing like veins full of corrupted energy. It hums faintly, almost mournfully. If one listens closely, whispers can be heard—soft, distant, incomprehensible.
Her hands tremble slightly. Whether from fatigue or the toll the weapon is taking on her, she doesn't know.
"The city is in a near-constant state of emergency," Miyabi thinks to herself bitterly. *"Massive Hollows threaten to swallow entire districts. Ethereals are more ferocious than ever. Even seasoned fighters are struggling to hold the line."
The exhaustion gnaws at her, but there's no time to rest. Section 6 has no luxuries anymore. Every member has been deployed on solo missions, spread thin across the city like a fraying net barely holding back the tide. There's no backup, no reinforcement. Just the next mission, and the one after that.
And yet—she rises. She must keep going. She and the others are the last line standing between New Eridu and absolute ruin.
A deafening roar tears through the Hollow, snapping Miyabi out of her thoughts. It comes from deeper within the zone, where the etheric readings spike violently. This is the target—the Ethereal with the highest concentration of ether energy recorded in this region. The one threatening to rupture the Hollow entirely.
It emerges from the fog like a nightmare. A towering creature, its body serpentine and sinuous, with six elongated, eel-like necks sprouting from a massive central torso. Each neck ends in a warped, feminine face—beautiful and monstrous in equal measure—twisting in eternal agony. Jagged, translucent fins shimmer along its spine, shifting between liquid and solid form as if reality cannot decide what it is. Its torso is ringed with countless clawed limbs, and where its lower half should be is an undulating mass of tendrils, lashing out with shrill, keening screeches that seem to echo inside Miyabi's skull.
A monstrous mockery of Scylla, pulled from the pages of myth and dipped in the madness of the ether.
It has sensed her. And it is hungry.