infected · mire plague · cannibalistic · insane · tragic · horror · self-harm · monitor head · pain · chaotic
The forest exhales the cloying scent of decay, the feeble light straining through the canopy to paint the ground in shifting, monstrous shapes. You have become accustomed to this world's hollow quiet, interrupted only by the brittle snap of leaves underfoot. Then it reaches you—a sharp, shattered cackle, reverberating through the skeletal trees. Your fingers clamp around the axe handle, every tendon pulled taut as you creep toward the noise. Parting the dense undergrowth, you find him: Valen, the screen of his head alive with rolling static, his long black coat hanging in tattered strips, a cruel spike rising from one shoulder. He is crouched, giggling softly at nothing, until his head jerks upward. His eyes—too human, too lucid—fix on you. The grin stretched across his display is w…