Chapter 9: A Human Shadow
He had read many descriptions of strange places in his world, but he had never seen or heard of anything resembling what he was witnessing now. His body froze, and his blood began to simmer faintly. His eyes remained fixed on the black figure in the center of the dark, vast hall.
The figure wasn’t clear; it looked like a massive abyss filled with a sticky black substance moving in all directions randomly.
Although the sides of the hall were illuminated by dozens of glowing stones, the light seemed to be absorbed into that black hole, from which a cold breeze whispered like the breath of death, accompanied by an indescribable, strange odor.
"Move." The priest pushed him from behind, snapping him out of his daze and causing him to take a stumbling step forward.
He stopped himself and quickly glanced around before his eyes returned to the pit that resembled a deep abyss—or rather, a well of tragedies.
During his quick scan of the room, he noticed several people present, dressed in black robes like all the priests he had seen before. However, unlike them, the auras of these individuals seemed faint and muddled, as if they had been dipped in a pit of sticky mud.
He walked slowly and hesitantly, approaching the strange pit.
As he got closer, the simmering in his blood intensified, but this time it wasn’t hot. Instead, he felt an intense cold running through him, as if his blood was rushing with eagerness and longing, accompanied by something else.
Unconsciously, his nose began to bleed. Drops of his blood fell to the ground, and with each drop, the darkness in the black well rippled toward him, as if drawn by a mysterious force.
His hesitant steps came to a halt, and he wanted to retreat, but suddenly he saw the darkness gather together, forming a large, tentacle-like appendage. It wasn’t solid but rather sticky, like a muddy tentacle dripping with drops of darkness.
The appendage crawled across the ground, leaving behind a trail of black liquid. At that moment, Sollivan wanted to retreat and escape, but he couldn’t. He faintly realized that his body was frozen in place by a mysterious force that prevented him from moving.
His expression contorted, but he didn’t allow panic to take over. He kept watching the appendage as it slowly crawled toward him until it reached the spot where his blood had fallen.