Ren opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the ruins of Blackspire. No streets, no buildings, no sky. Only darkness—thick, wet, and cold, like a swamp that breathed with a pulse of its own. The air was pungent, tasting of decay, stagnant water, and something older, something patient.
His body sank into thick, clinging mud. Black moss crept over his clothes, slick and cold against his skin, like the touch of something dead. The skeletal trees towered overhead, their brittle limbs forming a jagged canopy that blocked out all light, their twisted roots writhing beneath the mud as if they could sense him. Silence pressed down with a weight so heavy it threatened to crush his senses.
No wind moved through the gnarled branches. No insects chirped. No life stirred. Only the oppressive stillness, a static emptiness that seemed to exist outside time itself.
Then he felt it.
A whisper. Not with ears—but directly into his mind, sharp as a blade driving through bone.
[You are alone…]
[No one will come for you…]
[Just… End it here…]
Ren closed his eyes, feeling a throbbing pain at the back of his skull. The interference was subtle but precise, like static injected into a system he had once studied in theory. Yet his mind remained clear. He filtered the noise, seeking its origin, treating it as an anomaly to be analyzed.
It was not human. Not even sentient in any conventional sense. This was the structure of the rift itself speaking—or imposing its logic into him. Unnatural information invaded his consciousness without permission. Not memory—but knowledge. And with it, a name appeared unbidden: The Siphon Mire.
A swamp that devours sanity.
It does not kill the body—but dissolves the soul.
Its victims become hollow shells, driven by the faintest impulses. Ren calculated the implications: an energy-transfer system targeting consciousness, a corruption of thought itself.
He rose to his feet, resisting the instinct to shrink from the whispers. Each step sank into the mud with a wet pluk, the sound echoing unnaturally in the silent void. The swamp was patient, but hungry, like a predator aware of his presence.
After several minutes, he saw her.
A small figure curled under the twisted root of a tree, trembling violently. Hair matted, eyes wide and glossy with tears, skin pale and stretched as if paper soaked in water. She clutched herself like a child trying to hold her own pieces together.
Ren approached slowly. The girl screamed.
"Don't! Don't come closer! The voice… it's back! It tells me to—!"
Her hands clawed at her head, nails digging into her scalp, drawing thin lines of blood. Her sobs echoed across the Mire, swallowed immediately by the oppressive darkness.
Ren stopped a few meters away. He ignored the moans that spilled from her mind, analyzing the interference.
"I hear it too," he said calmly.
The girl's mud-streaked face turned to him, eyes red and watering.
"Y-you… still sane? The voice… it hasn't… made you… do something to yourself? It's unbearable."
Ren shook his head, flat and measured.
"It's just interference from this rift—a frequency attack on unstable minds. I'm Ren."
She attempted to steady her shaking, gulping in ragged breaths.
"I… I'm Mira," she stammered. "I was dragged in when the Rift appeared near the campus. My friends… they started hitting their heads… one by one… They didn't stop until their skulls fractured."
Ren did not flinch. Her information was data, pure observation, devoid of judgment.
"That's what happens when the mind succumbs," he said flatly. "The whispers don't kill—they guide. They make the victim choose the simplest exit."
Mira swallowed hard, trembling.
"We have to get out… if we die here… we'll become Tormented Husks."
"Husk," Ren repeated slowly, weighing the term. "A shell without a soul."
He studied the darkness, cold and analytical. "I understand."
Mira froze.
"Y-you… a Diver?"
"Not yet."
Her eyes widened, disbelief clinging to them.
"N-not yet? But… you survive? How can you be so… calm?"
Ren did not answer. Calm was a necessity, a calculation.
The whispers returned. Louder, closer, sharper—a malicious chorus probing the thin barrier of their consciousness.
[Kill him…]
[He is a liar…]
[He will leave you…]
Mira covered her ears, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Stop… stop it…!"
Ren did not flinch. His black eyes scanned the Mire. The trees leaned subtly, forming arches like monstrous, predatory creatures newly awakened. Shadows stretched unnaturally, crawling along the mud as if alive.
"This place… is alive," Mira whimpered. "As if it… hates us."
"Not the place," Ren corrected softly, voice even. "The inhabitants. The Mire is their domain."
He gripped his dull dagger—a token of defense against incomprehensible threats—yet held it with measured calm.
"And if it is an entity," he said, narrowing his eyes, "it can be neutralized. It is a solvable problem."
Mira's gaze held disbelief.
"Y-you're insane…?"
"No. Just realistic." His voice remained flat, almost clinical. "If it wants Husks, I will not grant them time."
The mud beneath them shivered. A subtle, almost conscious ripple spread outward, the pulse of something newly awakened. A long, drawn breath echoed through the Mire, invisible and vast.
Mira pressed against him, trembling violently.
"R-Ren… something's moving beneath…"
"I know."
Ren did not retreat. His steps sank into the mud, deliberate, unhurried. The earth split slightly, forming a circular gap like a gaping mouth, as if the Mire itself exhaled in anticipation.
Then came the horror.
A hand emerged. Skinless, bruised, fingers unnaturally long, clawing upward from the muck. The form of a body followed, face pale, eyes vacant, jaw slack. Mira screamed, recognition and terror colliding.
"It… it's my friend! Darrin!"
Ren's eyes did not waver.
"He is no longer your friend. He is an infected construct."
The Husk stepped forward, stiffly, each motion jagged and unnatural. Its empty gaze reflected only the swamp, the dark, and the hunger for consciousness.
Mira stepped back, weeping.
"Darrin… forgive me…"
Ren's hand tightened around his dagger.
"Do not approach. Maintain optimal distance."
The Husk froze. Its head snapped toward him, movements jagged like shattered bones. Its mouth opened wide—too wide, unnatural, a silent scream of the void.
From within came the whisper: sharper, clearer.
[Your body…]
[You… EMPTY VESSEL…]
Ren's pupils narrowed.
Four more shadows emerged, skeletal and broken, rising from the mire's depths. The ground quaked beneath them, a pulse resonating in time with the unseen heart of the Mire.
The whispers fused, forming one sentence, scraping across the edges of Ren's mind:
[YOU… HAVE RETURNED…]
Mira paled, clutching him.
"Ren… what… what do they mean?"
"Quiet," he said sharply. His dagger held, stance wide, pupils like black slits.
He had anticipated this.
"I knew they would come… but not this quickly."
The mud sank slightly, as though breathing, a slow, deliberate inhale of the Mire itself. Ren adjusted his footing, analyzing every subtle vibration.
"Prepare yourself, Mira."
The Husks advanced, hollow wails fracturing the silence, the swamp itself alive with their collective menace.
Ren smiled faintly—cold, precise, fearless. The Siphon Mire now fully recognized his presence.
It no longer whispered. It observed, calculated, and tested the edges of his mind. Somewhere within, a voice—older than the swamp itself—hollow, jagged, and patient, probed at his consciousness:
"Ren Vallis… you belong to this place… and it will not let you leave."
The swamp pulsed beneath their feet, aware, patient, waiting. Deep within, Ren felt the first tremor of fear—not for himself, but for the shadow of what he might become.