The hideous shape gradually took form. The pale substance turned transparent, revealing the massive skeleton inside, while the amniotic membrane around it shrank and wrapped tightly over the bones, slowly blackening and hardening into black sinew.
Hooks slid out, fangs bared themselves, and a Void heart flared to life inside the hollow shell. Purple malice flickered in its empty eye sockets, turning it into a deadly hunter.
The black-flamed tentacle lowered the monster and withdrew back into the abyss. The hunter let out a hungry roar, and several more tentacles rose from the abyss behind it, snatching up the goats in the rubble that still had breath left in them and beginning the same transformation.
At the same time, countless eyes surfaced within the abyss. One Voidling after another was descending into this world.
The creature looked like the skeleton of a tiger wrapped in nothing but skin and membrane, but its spine was short, with only a ribcage and no abdomen. There was nothing inside that hollow frame except a single heart, while its limbs bulged with grotesquely powerful muscles.
On its shoulders sat the head of a demonic goat straight out of legend, its upper and lower jaws packed with needle-like teeth as dense as a comb, every one of them sharp enough to punch through bone. Purple light glowed venomously through its translucent hide as it advanced toward Kai'Sa step by step, forelimbs bent low.
"Is that really the same goat from before?"
Kai'Sa's teeth chattered. The towering monster before her, twice her height at the shoulder, filled her with instinctive fear.
But Kai'Sa was not the kind of girl who froze just because she was afraid.
As she backed away, she raised a hand and summoned her arm-blades.
The angled tips lined up with the hunter's chest. Inside it, that faintly pulsing heart beat on, waves of sinister light spilling through the gaps in its ribs.
A bolt of purple plasma tore through the darkness. It ripped open the black sinew, only for the wound to stitch itself back together within a lattice of light, harder than before.
"So that's why the Ascended who fall to the Void all end up using blood magic?"
Seeing this, Zihark realized at once that they absolutely could not fight these hunters anywhere a swarm of Voidlings was nearby. The creature could draw in the flesh and blood of weaker beings around it. Not only would it refuse to die, it would only grow stronger the longer the fight dragged on.
As if to prove his guess right, the monster noticed the goat at its feet.
Its thick claws swept a boulder aside with ease. It lowered its head and swallowed the goat in one bite. Flesh, blood, and bone were all corroded by Void energy into a bizarre slurry, then fused into the hunter's body, swelling its frame.
The grotesque spectacle in front of her shook Kai'Sa to the core. A Void monster born from a goat had just eaten another goat. That was something she could never have imagined.
The tentacles rising from the abyss transformed the other living goats into more hulking hunters, while swarms of Voidlings crawled ashore and spread through the rubble in packs, tearing apart the dead goats.
Everywhere they passed, a foul stench spread through the air. Sharp teeth ripped open joints, chitinous shells drank in the splashing blood, and even the bones were left for nothing.
Kai'Sa was beginning to understand what the Void truly was.
What she saw here reminded her of the Krimel swarm bringing down a Skarash. She had cried her eyes out over the death of that gentle giant, but she had never hated the hunters for it.
Animals on the surface killed because they were hungry. That was not evil.
But Void creatures slaughtered for one reason alone: because you were alive.
The Void was the sworn enemy of all living things.
The armored mask slid down over Kai'Sa's face, hiding her expression.
She hurried to Zihark's side and said, "Sorry. Looks like our goat feast is gone..."
She was clearly heartbroken over it. The mask would swallow her tears before they could fall, though by now she rarely cried anyway.
What surprised her was that Zihark actually understood her mangled speech, or maybe he had simply guessed what she meant.
"Forget the goat feast. We need to run for our lives!"
Zihark looked at the hunters bounding over the rubble toward them. Every step they took covered more ground than his short little legs could manage in ten. In his panic, he smacked the side of Kai'Sa's helmet.
Kai'Sa bent her knees and hoisted Zihark onto her back. Plates along her legs snapped open, her restraints came loose, and terrifying speed exploded from her body as she fled with everything she had.
She charged up the slope. The air in front of her compressed into a purple hemispherical barrier as she burst into the tunnel, leaving a long afterimage trailing behind her.
Within a few breaths, the hunters had been left far behind. Zihark's own awareness web could no longer sense them.
After several minutes of running, Kai'Sa gradually slowed. A prolonged sprint made her body overheat, as if she had been thrown into a blazing furnace.
The voidskin was not all-powerful. Most of the heat could be absorbed through sweat by her second skin, but the small amount that remained, if not vented in time, could still cook her organs from the inside.
"Goats eat grass, don't they? So why did they turn into such vicious hunters?" Kai'Sa could not suppress the confusion in her heart and asked the question while still running.
"I already taught you this. When a creature gets flooded with Void energy far beyond what its body can withstand, it loses consciousness instantly, and its flesh gets remade and controlled by the Void. Forget habits. It won't even keep its sex."
Zihark patted her shoulder, making sure she listened to what came next. "But that's not the important part right now. The important part is that I've figured out the connection between the live sacrifices and the abyss."
"What connection?" Kai'Sa sounded surprised. Part of her mind was still stuck on how delicious the goat meat would have been if they had cooked it. Details like this were hard for a young girl like her to piece together on her own, even if she noticed them.
The environment a person grew up in had a huge influence on them. The way Kai'Sa had been raised had never done much to train her logical thinking.
"Those goats didn't just happen to fall near the abyss by chance. The cultists deliberately chose a sacrificial site directly above it."
Once Zihark pointed it out, Kai'Sa began to remember things too. The more she followed that line of thought, the more plausible it seemed.
"I think you're right... The first abyss we saw also had a sealed sinkhole in the ceiling above it... Ah! I get it now. Those people were making offerings to the Void. They were using live bait to lure out the monsters on the other side of the abyss."
Manufacturing monsters by human hands and bringing about disasters and the end of days... the sheer evil of this cult was far beyond anything Kai'Sa had imagined. She had once believed those cult members were genuinely trading sacrifice for peace.
Only lunatics who had betrayed their own kind could do something this insane.
Zihark lifted his head, his gaze seeming to pierce through layer after layer of earth, as though he could already see the fragile world on the surface.
People danced beneath the new moon and tied livestock to wooden stakes... They had no idea what they were really facing. Their intention was to ward off monsters, but everything they were doing was only ringing the dinner bell.
"You're right, Kai'Sa."
"The cult is feeding the Void with this method. Once the number of Void creatures underground reaches a certain point, they'll start spreading upward and get closer and closer to the surface."
"And in the end, the noise of human life above will draw them out of the earth. They'll erupt from below and devour the scattered villages in the desert, maybe even whole towns."
"History will repeat itself."
[End of chapter]