Nero trembled.

Gungnir raised defensively, but the pressure in his mind and on his body intensified until he could barely think or move.

The presence emanating from the entity's open mouth was not merely a physical thing. It existed as a warp of both between perception and reality, wrapping around his thoughts and his form, pulling at them like fingers ripping open a fresh wound from the edges.

Nero made sure not to meet the creature's massive eye, staring instead at the floor.

That was when he noticed the silk threads.

The broken threads covered the floor, creating patterns he had not seen before.

Nero's eyes widened.

The arrangements of the threads seemed to create the characters of a strange runic language he could make no sense of.

They spiraled outward from the base of the throne in concentric circles before converging on his location, effectively trapping him within.

The grey silk pulsed faintly with each breath the being on the throne took.

Nero's body trembled again. His foot touched one of the strands.

The world inverted.

He was no longer in the throne room.

He stood now, in a corridor, enclosed by stark moss covered walls. They were smooth and unmarked, the floor of polished stone reflecting no light.

There were no doors, neither were there any windows. There was only the corridor stretching endlessly in both directions.

Footsteps echoed behind him.

Nero spun with his weapon ready, but saw nothing. The corridor was empty. The footsteps continued, growing closer and closer.

Nero felt the fear rising to the surface within him as his breathing became more frantic.

He tried to move but his legs would not respond.

He looked down and saw silk wrapped around his ankles in thin strands. They stretched back along the floor, disappearing into darkness.

The footsteps stopped directly behind him.

A gust of breath touched the back of his neck.

It was cold.

Nero wrenched himself forward with all his strength. The silk snapped and the corridor shattered like glass.

He was back in the throne room, on his hands and knees, gasping. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it tore under the strain, causing internal hemorrhage.

'What kind of attack was that?!' Nero thought to himself as he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The being he could now tell was the Taintbrute he was hunting had still not moved.

But the silk throughout the room had changed. It no longer hung passively. The strands moved now, undulating slowly, reaching toward him with blind intent.

Below, the sounds of ascending Hollows grew louder. They were climbing the walls, the stairwells, pouring upward through every available passage.

Nero forced himself to stand. His legs trembled. His grip on Gungnir felt distant, as though his hands belonged to someone else.

The Oracle's words echoed in his mind, clearer now than before.

The Vile Eye sees all lies and devours all truth.

The beast is blind. Its massive eye perceived nothing through sight. But it felt everything through the silk, through the vibrations and disturbances created by movement and breathing>

Beware the gaze that strips away pretense.

Looking into its eye was the damning. It did not seem sight. Its eyes were merely the corridor to its soul. To gave into it would be to travel through the corridor. To perceive it fully was to invite it into your consciousness, to give it purchase on your very essence, bringing doom to your soul.

Beware the arms that once served a greater master.

The Hollows were not independent. They were extensions of the Taintbrute's will, controlled through the silk connecting them all. Puppets dancing on strings of corruption

Beware the hunger that cannot be satiated by flesh.

It fed on despair. On the slow unraveling of sanity that came from perceiving too much, from understanding too deeply the nature of what you faced.

Nero understood now why the journal had said he must experience three revelations.

This was only the first.

The Taintbrute's jaw closed slowly, flesh knitting back together as though it had never torn. Its head tilted slightly, the massive eye rotating in its socket.

The first Hollow emerged from the hole in the floor.

Then another.

Then five more.

The Taintbrute raised one of its four arms and formed a hand sign. Nero felt the flow of Ein Sof in the air alter instantly.

The strings of silk trembled and immediately snapped towards him.

Then the Mourning Hollows moved.

Nero threw Gungnir with all his might. The spear tore through two of them before he called it back, but more had already taken their place.

He could not fight his way out of this one.

The silk on the walls began to peel away, strands falling like rain, drifting through the air in slow patterns.

One strand brushed his cheek.

The world tilted sideways.

Nero saw himself from outside his body. Saw his own face, twisted with exhaustion and pain, blood streaming from a dozen wounds.

He watched himself die.

The Hollows swarmed over his body, tearing it apart piece by piece while his screams echoed endlessly in the stone chamber. The Taintbrute sat motionless on its throne, watching with that enormous unseeing eye, jaw opening once more to consume what remained.

Nero blinked and was back in his body.

The vision had lasted less than a second. The Hollows were still approaching, not yet close enough to strike.

His hands were shaking and his breathing came in short gasps.

Nero looked at the creature and felt something crack inside his chest. A certainty he had carried without realizing it, a belief that he could perhaps survive anything he would face here.

That belief had promptly shattered.

He was going to die here.

The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it brought strange clarity.

The thoughts birthed in his mind were not ones to go out in blazing glory.

No, that was not it.

Instead, it was just serenity. A serenity held within a cage of barely constrained madness.

Nero's eyes turned golden as his body began to swell...

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