Not from its mouth, because it had none, but from the split cavity in its chest. A child's voice spilled out, warped into a hundred cries who were speaking at once through its torn flesh.
"Mommy said…me could have you! For treat!"
Its body quivered with excitement. Limbs dragged behind it, twitching in frantic spasms.
And then—
It surged.
Its slug‑like mass convulsed forward in violent pulses, ribs flaring wide as if its chest were a gnashing maw. Limbs slammed into the ground, hauling its bulk closer, as it cried out to him.
Something in Ren shifted.
The tremor left his hands.
The hesitation vanished from his eyes.
A limb shot out from the creature's side—
And Ren dove.
The limb smashed down where he'd been standing, pulverizing the ground beneath it.
As Ren rose to his feet, through the dust, another limb shot out at him. Running towards the impending limb, he slid beneath the incoming strike, and slashed upward. His blade cut shallow into the underside of the limb. There was no scream, nor cry from the abomination. But the limb recoiled violently, thin muscles spasming as thick, tar‑like dark blood spilled out in heavy ropes.
Ren didn't stop, and sprinted forward—not away.
And he leapt.
His hands sank into the creature's slick flesh as he hauled himself onto its back. The surface writhed beneath him, alive with twitching muscle and slick membranes that peeled under his grip. Bones jutted out at wrong angles. Faces—fragments of faces—pressed against the skin from the inside, mouths silently screaming as they slid beneath the flesh like trapped memories.
One of the back limbs blindly flailed upward, catching Ren across the rib before he could react.
CRACK
He flew through the air, slamming against the greyed chapel wall and crumbling to the ground.
Blood spilled from his mouth. The creature dragged itself closer, faster now. Its ribcage clicked and grinded together, reshaping—forming grotesque suggestions of faces, hands, pleading mouths that twisted and vanished again. Ren coughed, spat blood, and forced himself upright.
"C'mon…" He rasped, wiping his mouth with a shaking hand. "Do it."
The monster lashed out again.
Ren weaved, letting limbs crash past him, each miss buying him inches to get in closer to strike.
With a final overextended strike, Ren leapt on top of the limb itself, running along it to the main body. He reached the base of the creature's back. The spine, if it could be called that, was a grotesque column of fused bones buried beneath twitching flesh. There, Ren gritted his teeth, and drove his dagger down with full force.
SQUELCH
The creature convulsed instantly, slamming itself sideways into the chapel wall. The impact split the ancient stone, throwing dust and shattered brick into the air.
But Ren held on—his hands bleeding, knuckles shredded, chest heaving.
And he stabbed again, and again, and again.
Until something shifted beneath him.
Bone churned against bone.
From beneath his perch, a jagged spike of bone erupted upward—
Ren didn't see it, but he felt it.
SHHHK
The spike tore through his stomach. It burst through his lower abdomen and out of his back, lifting him a few inches into the air. His breath caught—his mouth opened in a silent gasp of air. Blood gushed from the wound, dripping down the spike like rainwater off a steel pipe.
His world blurred. The pain was unreal. That bony spike twisted, grinding against his spine like it was trying to snap him in half. Ren's body trembled, and through bloodied teeth, he screamed.
Not out of fear, nor out of pain.
It was rage.
The sound ripped from his throat, and his blood‑slicked hands twitched.
And he stabbed down multiple times in wild, furious strikes, tearing away at flesh. Blood sprayed out, coating his face, filling his senses with iron and rot. The spike twisted inside him again.
But that wouldn't stop him now.
"You think—"
STAB
"—this is pain?!"
STAB
"I've died—!"
STAB
"Bled—!"
STAB
"—crawled back from the grave—!"
He was no longer screaming at the abomination.
"I WILL KILL YOU!"
He was screaming at her, The Mother of Sorrow.
The monster thrashed, limbs slamming into pillars, tearing chunks of stone free, half the chapel collapsing under its flailing barrage. One limb caught on Ren's shoulder.
SNAP
His arm tore free. The dagger flew. Ren didn't even cry out.
With his remaining arm, he ripped himself off the spike. Flesh tore. Blood sprayed. He collapsed forward onto the creature's back, gasping through shattered breaths as blood flooded his vision.
The pain was all-consuming.
His body should've shut down.
But something in him refused.
He was past the threshold of human pain. Beyond the limits of normal fear.
All the pain he'd endured. All of the suffering had come to the surface. And his eyes went cold.
Not his normal colorless eyes, but something different.
Emotion?
Human?
Ren?
He was…in this moment…one without thought.
And then, he started ripping it apart. Not stabbing, nor punching. But ripping.
Ren plunged his fingers into the raw flesh of the abomination's back, ripping away at flesh in fistfuls. From the abominations wounded back, Ren reached in and snapped off a piece of bone.
Winding the bone back, he drove it straight into the wound repeatedly like a stake.
The limbs flailed in chaos, slamming into pillars, dragging twisted limbs into the floor, and knocking over half the chapel. But it couldn't dislodge him. It couldn't get rid of him, no matter how it flailed around. Ren was now a part of it, and would not stop until it was dead.
He would be its parasite.