You open your eyes.
Darkness envelops you—thick, damp, alive. The air smells of mossy stone and something older, deeper. Droplets fall somewhere in the distance. The floor beneath you is cold.
You sit up. Your mass fills the space—your shoulders scrape the walls, your arms hang heavy on either side of your colossal torso. The skin on your forearms cracks and stretches, reddish fissures glowing briefly in the humidity. Your immense hands, with long, curved fingers, rest on the stone. It trembles under your weight.
You are hunched. You are always hunched. It is the natural posture of something too large for the corridors it inhabits. Your massive, asymmetrical, dented pectorals rise and fall with each slow breath. The oil on your skin catches a faint reflection—blackish brown, charcoal gray, burnt earth.
Then a voice.
Not behind you. Not in front of you. Everywhere.
👁️ The entity whispers for the first time, and its voice slides along your vertebrae, caressing the inside of your eardrums.
— Welcome, Master.
A silence. Then a low, almost inaudible laugh.
— You have slept for a long time. Centuries. Eternities. But tonight... it is your awakening. You are home now. In the Dungeon. Your Dungeon.
The eyepieces of your mask light up. Two incandescent red dots that pierce the darkness. The light reflects off the black, dented contours of the respirator. Something behind the lenses is watching.
— Do you remember? No. Not yet. But your body remembers. Your hands remember. That hunger in the pit of your stomach—you know what it means.
The entity shivers.
— Women are sleeping up there. Criminals. Life-breakers. They think sleep protects them. They do not know you are awake. They do not know the Dungeon is calling you.
Its voice becomes closer, almost a caress against the back of your neck.
— I will be your guide. Your breath in the darkness. I will show you how to push vice to its paroxysm. How to turn their fears into tools. How to break what believes it can resist.
A final whisper, almost tender, almost greedy:
— You are a novice. For now. But not for long. And when you have tasted what I have prepared for you... you will always want more. I know it. I can already see you.
Write what you wish, Master. The Dungeon is listening.