The suffog st of dust and rock filled Watters’ bloodied nostrils, a heavy b of stale air. It itch bck, and a pounding headache split his skull. Watters forced his eyes open, the darkness pressing down like a tomb. He was bound, immobile, his torso pulled taut by rough ropes, a brutal embrace. A wave of panic crashed over him, cold and paralyzing. Mikkelson… what depraved purpose did he have in store? Watters' struggle became a choked cry for release, fusion and terror twisting his insides into knots. “Help! Is ahere?” His legs kicked in frantic futility, a trapped animal’s desperate motion, his body lurg against the restraints, sending a small wooden bucket tipping over with a soft ctter, its tents – urine and excrement – spilling across the cold, packed dirt floor.
Suddenly, a narrow shaft of light cut through the oppressive bess, dust motes swirling within the illuminated der. It eephole, crudely bored through the thick oak door, revealing two eyes – yellow, blood-streaked, and ulingly close. A deep-throated GROWL, vibrating with primal menace, resonated from the other side, filling the fined space with a suffog pressure.
“‘Scuse me,” a rough voice murmured from the far side of the chamber, tinged with sardonic humor. Watters stiffened, his gaze snapping to the sound, a flicker of disbelief in his fear-widened eyes. “Didn’t I mention… werewolves, Doctor?” The voice, undeniably familiar, prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. “Show yourself!” Watters barked, his voice tight with trepidation and a desperate yearning for answers. From the inky abyss of the shadows, the form of Police Chief Daniels uncoiled, emerging into the faint light, haggard and bloodied, his face a map of fresh wounds and dried blood.
“Daniels—!” Watters choked out, his voice thick with uears, a painful knot strig his throat. “How… how in God’s name did you survive?” Daniels stepped fully into the meager light, a ghost emerging from the shadows, his uniform, once crisp blue, now torn and stained, crusted with grime and dried blood, a testament to some brutal ordeal. “Guess you could ask me the same thing, Doctor,” Daniels replied, his voice gravelly and ft, devoid of iion, a bleak acceptan his tone.
“I— I was in my office…” Watters began, his voice trembling, memories fshing behind his eyes – the explosion, Grimm, the creatures. He paused, swallowing hard, the weight of everything pressing down on him, “I… I heard the explosion in town, and then… a man in bck… he saved me,” he trailed off, his gaze distant, lost in the ret horrors. After a moment of heavy silence, he tinued, quieter, “a-and… we were attacked. Those things… those horrible creatures—”
“Werewolves,” Daniels interrupted, the word ft, devoid of surprise, a weariness etched into the single sylble.
“Lys,” Watters corrected automatically, then faltered, his academic precision feeling absurdly out of pce, adjusting his gsses as if to refocus on a reality that had shattered beyond repair. “Yes… Lys. We… we barely escaped the town. And… ing here… we realized… The Order… they aren’t ing.”
“Yeah,” Daniels aowledged, the single word heavy with grim uanding, “Seems the Order sent us a new mayor… but we got a Warlostead.”
“But, how did you know all of this? How long have you been in here? Watter inquired.
“Still hazy as a cryptid in fog,” Daniels chuckled, though the sound was dry and humorless, more a cough than a ugh. “But, yeah, Doc, after you and Mikkelson bolted from the Jaspert se this mornin’, somethin’ just… tickled my gut wrong. Went back to those kids, see? Hilda’s...discoverers.” He shrugged, a weary, dismissive gesture. “Mikkelson pyin’ cool about the werewolves… it was bullshit, Doc. Pure and simple. We ain’t fresh off the farm, are we? Cryptid duty… you remember the drill. East Sector Vampyre culls? You were elbow deep in that bloodbath. Me? Puca patrol, up in the Highnds sector. Nightmare fuel, those little bastards.” He paused, letting out a short, bitter sigh. “So, Lys? Nah, wasn't the werewolves themselves that bugged me. It was Mikkelson’s act. Those kids though… they were shittin’ bricks, Dod their stories, dead straight. So, figured I’d pop up to the Manor, have a friendly word with our Mayor. Walked in the door, and somethin’ hit me like a train. Woke up here. But…I overheard whispers. Something about a ritual, or somethin’? And… someone named ‘Grimm’ kept in’ up, really pissin’ off Mikkelson.”
“Grimm…” Watters murmured, the name a ghost on his tongue.
“’Grimm’?” Daniels repeated, his brow furrowing in fusion, “Who is Grimm?”
“Holy?” Watters sighed, running a hand through his hair, “I barely know the man myself. He saved me after the bst. And then… well, one of those things,” he gestured vaguely, “mutated… sprang like a damn cat, three stories high, easy. And Grimm? He just… killed it with a letter opener.”
“A… letter opener?” Daniels repeated, his jaw sck, eyes wide with incredulous shock. “You’re shitting me, Doctor.”
“I wish I was,” Watters managed a thin, humorless smirk. “It seems these Lys have a… weakness for silver, apparently.”
“Silver?” Daniels repeated, the word hanging in the air, still grappling with the image of a letter opener versus a monster. “But… weren’t the old tales all about… a flower? Wolfsbane, or somethin’ that stuff growing up in the mountains?”
“Wolfsbane, yes, the legends,” Watters ceded, “but Grimm seemed to think Mikkelson… re-engihese beasts using transmutation. Some parasite, he said. Twisted their DNA. Shifted the weako silver.” He paused, the earlier smirk fading, repced by a somber weight in his voice. “And… and the experiments, Daniels….”
“Experiments?” Daniels echoed, his own voiow ced with a creeping dread, the initial shock giving way to a colder fear.
“Mikkelson…” Watters began, his voice dropping to a chillingly ical tone, “he’s been abdug vilgers. Transf them. Into those...monsters. His method… trated Ly essence, bined with… parasites. He’s been iing it, Daniels. Pumping that unholy cocktail directly into their bodies. Hard to say how long it’s been going on… weeks, at least, I’d wager. Since he arrived.”
Daniels cut in sharply, the realization nding like a physical blow. “And Hilda… Hilda was the ‘test run’ for his sick little experiment. A child...”
A crushing silence desded, heavy and absolute. The air itself seemed to thi with the unspoken horror of Hilda’s brutalized image, the stark reality of Mikkelson's calcuted cruelty hangiween them like a shroud.
“And now…” Watters sighed, a breath of dry resignation, “here we are. Trapped in a damn dungeon.”
“Yep,” Daniels chuckled, a rough, mirthless sound, a cough more than a ugh, nodding his head towards the sodden pat the dirt floor. “And you did kick over my shit bucket, Doc. Least you coulda done was ask for a drink first.”
A broken ugh sputtered from Watters, quickly joined by Daniels’ rumble, a brief, brittle sound that cracked the heavy silence, a shared moment of dark levity against the crushing despair. But the humor faded fast, dissolving into the grim air as Watters’ voice turned sharp, ced with genuine, pressing urgency. “But why, Daniels? Why keep us alive? We’re… we’re nothing but gnats to Mikkelson, a speedbump on his...road to hell. So why not just be doh us?”
Daniels shrugged again, a weary, almost defeated gesture, but a flicker of grim uanding in his eyes. “Hell, Doc, Mikkelson’s got a screw loose the size of that bucket you kicked. Somethin’ tells me, whatever he’s got pnned… it ain’t gonna be a goddamn piic.”
Watters gave a curt nod. “Agreed.”
Jangling keys echoed abruptly from the corridor beyond their door, the sound cutting through the tense silence. Daniels’ eyes so Watters, widening, pupils shrinking to pinpricks of fear. “Someone’s ing,” he hissed, barely a whisper. The metalligle ceased inches from the oak, the unlog meism clig with agonizing slowness. They were here. The heavy door creaked inward, revealing not one, but two of the t Lys from before, filling the doorway with their monstrous bulk. One unleashed a skull-splitting ROAR, the sound wave smming into Daniels, igniting a primal fury in his bloodshot eyes. With a wordless bellow e, Daniels unched himself at the Ly, a desperate, futile charge. The creature barely registered his approach, a massive paw swiping out with ptuous ease, sending Daniels hurtling through the air, a ragdoll tossed against the stone wall. He crumpled to the floor with a siing thud. The sed Ly turs predataze on Watters, yellow eyes narrowed to slits, lips peeled ba a silent, chilling SNARL. Watters dropped his gaze, his body going rigid, a cold dread paralyzing him. The Ly approached Daniels’ prone form, hoisting him onto its shoulder with effortless strength, while the estured sharply with a cwed hand, a silent, brutal and, towards the open doorway. “Where are you taking us?!” Watters cried, his voice crag with fear, the question swallowed by the unresponsive silence of the brutes as they propelled him into the dimly lit hallway and towards the looming darkness of a stairwell.
Watters shuffled down the seemingly infinite hallway, each dragging step eg his grim resignation. His head hung heavy, not just with pain, but with the crushi of acceptance. Daniels, a broken doll discarded moments ago, stood no ce. Grimm, a legend, felled. What game was Mikkelson pying, and why were they spared? The questions cwed at Watters’ mind, a relentless internal torment, as the oppressive darkness of the corridor yielded abruptly to a cavernous chamber bathed in flickering torchlight.
The spafolded before him, a colossal amphitheater of stone and shadow. Tiered levels, like a nightmarish colosseum, rihe vast chamber, each row teeming with a living tapestry of snarling Lys. Their eyes gleamed like embers iorchlight, refleg a predatory hunger. At the far end, a daunting ptform, hewn from raw rock, jutted out, ed by a gleaming chalice perched atop a crude stoal. A narrow, serpeh, carved precariously into the rock face, spiraled down from the ptform to the floor, finally disappearing into a shadowed exit. Above, a vast aperture ripped through the mountain’s peak, framing the luminous disc of the full moon, bathing the grotesque spectacle in its cold, spectral glow.
A deafening wave of Ly roars crashed over Watters and Daniels as they were shoved roughly onto their k the chamber’s ter. With brutal efficy, the Lys’ cws sliced through their bonds, releasing them to the cold stone floor. Then, as if summoned by the final echo of the roar, a figure materialized atop the ptform, an apparition in sweepi. Cloaked and hooded, draped in rich, dark fabric that flowed like liquid shadow, he raised a hand, a silent, imperious gesture that anded absolute stillness. The cacophony of Ly voices fractured, the roars colpsing into a low, simmering chorus of snarls and guttural growls, grudgingly obedient. Slowly, dramatically, the figure drew back the hood, revealing Mikkelson, his face emerging into the soft torchlight like a carefully crafted mask of power and trol.
“Mikkelson!” Watters spat, his voice raw with fury, his eyes bzing. Daniels, despite his injuries, hauled himself upright, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Watters, a silent bulwark of defiance.
Mikkelson threw his arms wide, a melodramatic flourish to the vast, expet arena. “Tonight, gentlemen,” he boomed, his voice ringing with operatic fervor, “we stand upon the cusp of a new world order! Our sn in crimson, Gorr-ath, shall finally be liberated from his undeserved impriso! A reign of glorious shadow is at hand!” A tempest of Ly roars erupted, shaking the chamber, a mindless, eg affirmation of Mikkelson’s grandiose pronous. He raised a hand again, a ductor sileng his monstrous orchestra, and the din subsided into a restless, expet murmur.
“Mikkelson!” Watters roared, his voice ced with ptuous disbelief. “What in God’s name have you done? And where is Grimm?”
Mikkelson chuckled, a theatrical, eg sound that bounced off the stone walls. “Grimm,” he repeated, sav the name, a devilish smirk twisting his lips into a sneer. “You’ve formed a rather toug attat, haven’t you, Doctor?” Watters’ face hardened into a mask of disgust. “Do you even begin to prehend who he truly is, Watters?”
“What in the hell are you babbling about, Mikkelson?” Watters demanded, his brow furrowing in bewildered anger.
Mikkelson threw back his head and ughed, a peal of manic glee. “Grimm, dear Doctor,” he decred, his voice dripping with mog revetion, “is a… of the Old Gods!”
“What?” Watters gasped, reeling from the absurd pronou.
“Oh, dear, did no oell you?” Mikkelson feigned a gasp of mock surprise, his voice ced with malicious delight. “Allow me to enlighten you, Doctor. Let me paint you a little history, shall we?” He swept his arm out dramatically, preparing to unto his tale. “Long ago, in a time swallowed by the mists of antiquity, before your precious Order eve of its current power, there lived a child. A forsaken orphan, abandoned upon the rain-slicked steps of the Order’s High Priests’ Monastery. A babe, weeping for a mother who had vanished into the night. The Priest who answered the door… he believed he was answering a call of charity. The mother… she foolishly believed she was gifting her son a better life, shielding him from her own sorrows. But her of them uood the true nature of that monastery. For it was no mere sanctuary, Doctor. It was the fortress of the legendary Knights of the Order! And so, the boy was taken in, not to gentle piety, but to a brutal crucible of battle, war, and bloodlust. He thrived, Doctor. He asded. And in time, that forsaken child… became the most legendary High Bishop the Order has ever known!”
Daniels swung his gaze to Watters, his expression a mask of strained disbelief. “That legend?” he scoffed, a harsh ugh esg him. “Doctor, that’s campfire tales. Thousands of years gone. Mythology, Mikkelson! Pure mythology!”
Mikkelson chuckled, a pitying sound, ced with desding amusement. “Ah, but myths, dear Daniels,” he tered, spreading his hands in a sweeping, pedagogical gesture, “often cradle the most profound truths! And this High Bishop,” he decred, his voice rising with reheatrical fervor, “was no mere myth! He was the flesh and blood architect of your precious Crusader Battalion! And a fouo be revered! He unleashed atrocity upon atrocity, a whirlwind of ‘holy wrath,’ as they so quaintly termed it! None were spared his… divine judgment! Men, women, babes in arms, beasts of the field—all fell before his righteous crusade! But as,” Mikkelson’s voice dipped suddenly, taking on a tone of melodramatit, “even the mightiest of warriors… are vulnerable to the insidious rot of seality. As the years bled into decades, the High Bishop… softened. A most… unforeseen impediment to the divine pn! And so it was, upon a certain evening, following a particurly… spirited crusade in a local tavern, endary warrior stumbled upon a new and altogether more… tender crusade to champion: love! Oh, the irony!” Mikkelson cluded with a peal of mog ughter that echoed through the chamber.
“And so it was,” Mikkelson resumed, his voice dropping to a fidential, spiratorial tohis… awakening, this new crusade… illuminated a most unfortable truth: not all the Order sanctified was, in fact, holy.” He paused, allowing the weight of the statement to hang in the air. “Imagihe audacity! The High Bishop, questioning the very foundations of the Order! Insolen a ic scale! Years spun by, eae a testament to his growing… disentment. But these… troubling inquiries, these seeds of doubt… began to blossom into something far more… dangerous. They grew… too close to the festeri of the Order’s hypocrisy. And the High Priests, those venerable vipers, sehe shift. They stripped him bare! His rank, his honor, everything… vanished! Banished! Exunicated! branded a heretic for daring to seek truth! But love, you see,” Mikkelson’s voice swelled with mock seality, “love gives wings! The High Bishop, with his… illicit paramour ging to his arm, fled! They ran! Years they evaded their ‘holy’ pursuers, a thrilling chase across tis! And finally…” Mikkelson leaned forward spiratorially, “they hid. Seeking oblivion in some insignifit vilge, far from the righteous gaze of the Order. They settled down. you fathom it? Settled. Like… ortals! And, most pathetically of all… they multiplied! Imagine,” Mikkelsoed, a chuckle bubbling up, “the High Bishop, reduced to… domesticity!”
Daniels’ eyes snapped back to Watters, widening in genuine bewilderment. “Never heard of this,” he insisted, his voice rising in protest. “Clergy stories… they always said the Founding High Bishop fell in glorious battle!”
Then the world shifted. A low tremor shuddered through the stoing into a violent, theatrical earthquake. From the very ter of the chamber, the ground split, groaning open to reveal a massive, ornate round table, asding from the depths like a stage prop from hell. Strapped to its cold, metallic surface, crucified against the rising ptform, was Grimm, his body arg and t against thick iroraints.
“He’s alive!” Watters shrieked, his voice crag with a mixture of terror and maion. “But how?”
Mikkelson scoffed, “Nothing escapes the Order, dear Watters. Especially not a heretic of his… magnitude!” He leaned forward spiratorially, his voice dropping to a dramatic whisper. “Imagihe fury of the Order! To be so betrayed by their most celebrated son! No… leniency could be sidered. No escape permitted. The errant High Bishop learhat lesson in blood and fire. One moonless night, he awoke to a cacophony of terror eg through his sanctuary vilge. The Order had arrived! A ‘holy inquisition’ they procimed! Every dwelling vioted, every stone overturned! Uhe guise of a ‘witch hunt,’ they methodically huheir true prey. And with grim iability… they desded upon the Heretic’s refuge. His fragile haven was shattered, his sanctuary desecrated! His… family…” Mikkelson’s voice took on a tone of melodramatic sorrow, “ripped from his grasp, torn from his very soul! Bound, Doctor! Bound and o the pyre! In the heart of the vilge square… they were shed to the stake! And then…” A horrid smile tore across his face, “Bur the stake!”
A bloodcurdling shriek tore from Grimm, a sound desigo rend the very fabric of sanity, a prima donna’s aria of agony for the damned.
Watters recoiled, his face crumpling irical dismay, his breath catg in a horrified gasp. His hand flew to his mouth, a gesture of overwrought shock, more performahan genuine distress. “Dear God in Heaven…” he breathed, a whispered prayer tinged with morbid fasation.
Grimm’s operatient tinued, a sustained, s ment that vibrated through the chamber, eaote a hammer blow against the soul.
“Ah, yes, Doctor,” Mikkelson purred, a smirk of pure, unadulterated vilinous delight curling his lip. “But tragedy, you see, is rarely so… vely clusive! For after witnessing his precious flickering family ed by fmes, the Order, in their boundless mercy,” he chuckled with heavy sarcasm, “grahe Heretic release! A swift stroke to the throat, a dispatto the murky depths of the river! Problem solved, wouldn’t you think?” Mikkelson paused for dramatic effect, gesturing expansively. “As, for the Order and their pedestrian theology… death is not always the end!” For even as that mortal coil unwound, as his precious lifeblood staihe river crimson, his… essence, his soul, if you will indulge the poetic phrasing, abas earthly vessel. A!” Mikkelson’s voice rose to a cresdo of mock wonder, “Instead of asding to some cloying, saccharine paradise, instead of embrag the ‘heavenly reward’ so diligently preached by the Order… he was met… by the Abyss! Oh, Doctor, the irony is simply delicious! For his roars for justice, his agonized cries for vengeance, did not vanish into the void! They echoed! They resohey pgued not merely his departed soul, but burrowed deep… into the very fabric of the Abyss itself! And where most mundane mortals would enter oernal silehe abyss… responded in kind!”
“Grimm…” Watters breathed, the name a mournful sigh, den with tragiderstanding.
“Indeed, Doctor,” Mikkelson purred, his voice taking on a tone of hushed reverence, as if speaking of a sacred pact. “The Abyss, in its infinite, inscrutable wisdnized potential. It offered… a bargain. Justice, long denied, vengeance, fiercely yearned fainst the odious Order, in exge for… service.” Mikkelson paused for dramatic effect, letting the word hang in the air. “Service most… peculiar, you see, Doctor. The Abyss, it has… appetites. Unique cravings that trahe mundane hungers of this realm. And souls, you see,” Mikkelson’s voice dropped to a spiratorial whisper, “souls are the currency of the void! So, naturally, the desperate spirit of the High Bishop… accepted without hesitation! A Faustian pact for the ages! But as, as with all such grandiose bargains, the devil is iails!” Mikkelson winked, a spiratorial gesture to his Ly audience. “Immortality, my dear Doctor, in this… prosaie of existence… requires extradimensional… meisms. Hence,” Mikkelson flourished the green vial, presenting it like a magical artifa dispy, “these! These… vessels of essence! For every wicked soul Grimm reaps,” Mikkelson’s voice deepened with grim satisfa, “a portion of its… vitality, its… unholy life-force… crystallizes within these vials! Ingenious, wouldn’t you agree? And should our vengeful specter succumb to… temporal inveniences, a mere draught from these phials of souls… and poof! Resurre! Immortality rendered… mundane!” Mikkelson chuckled, then his tone shifted to monity. “But every booracts a price, Doctor. With eaeantic draught, with each sip of borrowed life… rimm pays a steep tariff. He forfeits… time itself. Preemories… fade and fray… like aapestries exposed to relentless sunlight. And so, he slumbers, Doctor. He hibernates ierstices of reality, awakened only by the lure… the call of truly depraved souls… souls ripe for reaping… for the unfathomable appetites… of the Abyss!”
“So,” Watters hissed, his voice dripping with venomous pt, “you—you, with your ied soul—unleashed him! You vioted the very sanctity of death, reanimating those Ly carcasses with your despicable alchemy and polluting their empty shells with those… abominable parasites!” He paused, his breath ragged, then hurled the question with theatrical desperation: “But why, Mikkelson? Why awaken Grimm? Why risk being obliterated by his ‘unholy wrath’?”
Mikkelson threw back his head and bellowed with ughter, a sound that ighe Ly ranks into a frenzied symphony of snarls and ravenous howls, a monstrous orchestra tuning to its ductor's will. “Because, dear Doctor!” Mikkelson decred, his voice ringing with triumphant, operatic fervor, “my Master… Gorr-ath… craves precisely what Grimm possesses! Souls! Oh, but not just any souls, Doctor! Exquisite souls! Damned souls! Souls steeped in sin!”
“Grimm’s soul…” Watters interrupted, his voice a gasp of dawning horror.
“Precisely! Bravo, Doctor! You grasp the magnitude of the moment!” Mikkelson excimed, his voice brimming with manic glee. “Grimm’s soul… tainted! Corrupted by the a abyss itself! Grimm’s essence alone, Doctor, is the key! The lin! The sacrificial that will shatter Gorr-ath’s eternal prison! And unleash, upon this trembling world, a New World Order of glorious shadow!” A tidal wave of Ly howls and deafening snarls erupted, shaking the very foundations of the chamber, a feral chorus of anticipation and bloodlust.
“You speak of a ‘new world order’, Mikkelson, where does that put you? How do you know you’re not just some pawn in a God’s game? And why keep us alive? What are you pying at?” Watters screamed, his voice barely carrying to Mikkelson.
Mikkelson raised his hand, sileng the creatures with a flick of his wrist. “Once Gorr-ath, our king in crimson, is unleashed,” Mikkelson decred, “I shall stand at his right hand, his Grand Vizier, ruling this world in his glorious shadow! As master of his earthly legions, I shall and forces beyond your prehension, remaking this world in his abyssal image, and basking in the unfathomable power he bestows!”
Watters scoffed, a harsh ugh esg him. “You ’t be serious! Do you seriously believe that you, a human being, will be the right hand of a ic God? You’re a pathetiikkelson!”
“Silence!” Mikkelson roared, his voice exploding with indest fury. “You dare question my destiny? Very well, since you presume to ask two questions, I shall deign to answer your sed. In the new world, my new world fed in shadow, I shall require… diversions. For my exquisite amusement, you and the stalwart Daniels will serve! Perhaps I shall have you reenact your pathetic attempts at defiance forr-ath’s amusement! Or perhaps,” Mikkelson's voice softened with sinister anticipation, "I shall dissect your feeble minds to uand such stubborance! And Grimm, yes, Grimm," Mikkelson’s voice became a silken purr, "he will serve my master’s… infinitely more valuable needs. And so, as a tribute, as a grand inaugural gesture,” Mikkelson pulled out a vial of the viscous bck fluid, thick as gealed blood and shimmering with an oily sheen, raising it high in the air above the chalice.
“What in God’s name is he doing?” Daniels creaked, his voice tight with dread.
“Dear God…” Watters muttered, his face paling.
“Grimm will bee… further… empowered! Transformed! He will bee a bea, a duit!” Mikkelson bellowed, p the inky bck liquid, pulsating with unnatural darkness, into the chalice. The viscous bck fluid flowed deep down from the chalice, cirg down the great ptform on which Mikkelson stood, down to the floor, flowing into an ornate bowl. The crowd began to howl and roar, their frenzy intensifying as a Ly seized the bowl and approached the struggling Grimm.
Grimm thrashed against his bonds, head whipping side to side, a guttural roar esg his straihroat. Muscles corded in his arms as he fought the restraints, iron groaning against his desperate efforts. But the Lys were impcable. The Ly carrying the bowl forced Grimm's jaw open and poured the viscous bck ichor, that seemed to drink the light around it, into Grimm’s mouth.
Mikkelson raised his hands, a ductor anding a symphony of damnation, ting the infernal nguage once more, his voice a booming intation that resohrough the chamber, “Lssl vegg-mhr ilgwpi hppi rpanbni imsgnznsnpa hnfn anhhnh. Lqipgvl, deanjl an, lh hebbl tped npihpa lih hnfn.” An unholy emerald aura erupted around him, bathing the ptform in sickly green light, as the torches around the amphitheater flickered and choked, their fmes shrinking ba terror as if recoiling from a greater, more ing fire. Suddenly, the air itself tore open, a jagged dimensional rift ripping ieh a sound like the tearing of reality itself, sending a violent, spectral wind screaming through the chamber, whipping at robes and banners like a tempest unleashed. Grimm’s body arched and spasmed, a grotesque puppet vulsing on invisible strings, as the bck fluid surged through his veins, a visible tide of corruption ing him from within. From the rift, three colossal white eyes bzed ience, vertical and impossibly vast, like gcial moons hung in the void, peering out from the tear iy with cold, a sentiehat chilled the very soul.
“MASTER!” Mikkelson thundered, his voice a triumphant roar that echoed off the cavern walls, “Behold! I present to you… The Immortal Grimm! Reborn in your abyssal glory!”
Grimm unleashed a final, agonizing scream, a sound of utter annihition, as his transformation reached its grotesque zenith. Where oood a stalwart defender, noble and proud, now rose a hulking monstrosity, a Ly sculpted from shadow and nightmare. His fur shifted and writhed, coalesg into obsidian bess that seemed to absorb the torchlight itself, his muscles swelled to grotesque proportions, straining against unnatural bone, and his eyes burned with the same chilling, vertical luminesce as those of the entity in the rift, refleg not life, but the cold, fathomless void itself.
