Noctis didn't stay in that chamber for long; he extracted the three cores, which, like the voids, had an affinity for shadows.
Upon leaving the chamber, he continued deeper.
He felt stomach cramps again. The jerky had helped, but it wasn't enough. His body was burning through energy faster than he could replenish it. Still, it wasn't an urgent matter.
So Noctis refrained from eating another strip of that awful jerky. He needed real food. Water. Rest.
But first, he needed to find what he was looking for.
The Return Point.
The next section of the prison was different. Smaller cells. Perhaps isolation cells. Each door had a small window reinforced with iron bars.
Noctis looked through a window.
Inside, a single Chained Man sat against the wall. His head was covered with a coarse burlap sack. A wooden yoke encircled his shoulders, spreading his arms outward in a permanent "T" shape. Chains connected the yoke to iron balls on either side.
He moved on to the next cell.
It held two chained prisoners. Both wore metal collars around their necks, connected by a short chain. They stood facing each other, unable to move more than a few centimeters apart. Their hands were tied behind their backs.
Cell after cell. Each one, a different form of torture immortalized.
In one, a prisoner was suspended by chains from the ceiling, his toes barely touching the floor.
Another had a creature pinned to its knees, with a heavy stone block resting on its shoulders.
A third had someone pressed against the spikes of the Iron Maiden, not piercing them completely, but pressing hard enough to cause eternal agony without killing them.
This was not a prison.
This was a gallery of suffering.
And every prisoner was still there, still enduring their punishment, decades or millennia after their death.
Noctis's hands were trembling.
...But what happened next made his blood run cold.
A Remnant.
He had once been human. His body was elongated, stretched out as if he were on a rack. His arms hung down to his knees, his fingers ending in claws. Heavy chains were bolted directly into his flesh: they pierced his shoulders, his ribs, his thighs. And at the end of each chain was an iron ball.
He wore a burlap sack over his head, stained with old blood. The sack was so tight that it distorted the skull beneath it.
Noctis took two steps back, his expression dark and his hands trembling violently. All his curiosity about finding more answers vanished instantly.
If he kept exploring, what kinds of horrors would he encounter?
…He had no intention of finding out.
"I have to get out of here fast."
Without another word, he kept moving forward.
He found a narrow opening in the wall. It wasn't a door, but rather a crack that had widened over time. It was barely large enough for a person to squeeze through.
Noctis squeezed through the crack.
The passage beyond was even narrower than the opening. For several meters, Noctis had to turn sideways and drag his feet, with the stone walls pressing against his chest and back at the same time.
Then a staircase leading down appeared.
The steps were steep and uneven, worn down by centuries of use. The green light was dimmer there, almost nonexistent. Noctis had to feel his way down, step by step, carefully.
As he walked down the stairs, he saw yellowed sheets of paper, written in Latin… but the handwriting was different, more refined.
Prisoners make excellent test subjects. They are already condemned. Their deaths serve a higher purpose.
The first attempts at extraction have failed. The soul seems to be more closely bound to the flesh than previously thought.
Noctis's eyes widened at this revelation; these were the notes of the person responsible for turning the prisoners into Hollows.
He moved a little further, picked up another sheet, and read it.
Success! Prisoner 2466 survived the extraction for seventeen seconds before his body died. During those seconds, I detected the essence of his soul separated from his physical form.
Unfortunately, the essence dissipated immediately after it died. It needed further refinement.
Grabbing the other notes, Noctis sighed, somewhat disappointed. The writing was illegible; he couldn't make out more than a single letter…
He tossed the papers onto the floor and kept going; he had a feeling that something terrible was about to be revealed.
He walked down the hallway, lit by a sickly green light, until he reached a huge door at the end. A piece of paper lay in front of it.
Noctis crouched down and read the entry.
The prison authorities have discovered my work. They plan to execute me tomorrow.
I won't give them that satisfaction.
Tonight, I will carry out the extraction myself.
Tonight, I will transcend.
Noctis looked up; it seemed he had finally reached the end… well, that's what he thought, but his soul had been extracted… what? Had it been transferred somewhere else?
He stood up, his legs trembling.
It was time to see what lay behind that door.
He invoked the Master Key, and the door opened. Now, nothing was standing between Noctis and what lay beyond, except his own hesitation.
He pushed the door open.
The chamber stretching out beyond was enormous. About fifty meters wide, with a vaulted ceiling that faded into the shadows. The green light there was brighter, pulsing from the torches embedded in the walls.
And in the center of the chamber stood a throne.
On that throne sat something that had once been human.
No.
It wasn't sitting.
It was overflowing.
The Remnant was enormous: even when seated, it easily stood three meters tall and was at least as wide. Its body was a grotesque mass of rotten, swollen flesh, covered in lesions and sores. Multiple folds of skin cascaded down its neck. Its arms were so thick with fat that they barely seemed functional.
But they were still functional.
One hand held a partially devoured corpse, something that might have been a Hollow. The other hand gestured lazily upon noticing Noctis's arrival.
The creature's face was almost entirely consumed by fat and decay, leaving only a pair of small eyes that gleamed with cruel intelligence. It wore the tattered remnants of a guard's uniform, stretched obscenely across its body.
Noctis's grip tightened around his broken sword.
This was the Guardian. Or rather, what he had become after extracting his own soul and fusing it with his body.
A monstrosity that had devoured everything around it (prisoners, guards, even other Hollows) and grew more grotesque with every meal.
The Guardian smiled. Or at least he tried to. The expression was lost in the creases of his face.
He let go of the corpse—or what was left of it—and leaned forward slightly. The throne creaked under the shifting weight.
Behind the throne, Noctis saw him.
A crystalline structure. Unlike the ones that emitted light. This one pulsed with blue energy and was covered in runic script.
A Return Point.
The way out of this nightmare.
But between him and that point of no return lay several hundred kilograms of ancient human flesh, corrupted by the Abyss, that wanted to devour him.
The Guardian began to rise from his throne.
The ground shook.
Noctis assumed a fighting stance and raised his broken sword.
And the Guardian laughed: a wet, bubbling sound that echoed throughout the chamber.