---
> "The Abyss does not invite. It absorbs."
— Inscription found carved inside a dead totem's eye socket
---
🌑 The Pact Weakens
It did not take long.
The Pact of the Cracked Pillar—hailed as a moment of survival and advancement—lasted only three growth cycles of the Dream-Flesh Trees before the first violation.
A small warband, The Fangless, once part of the Ash-Eaters, refused the memory tribute. They rejected the Bone-Shadows' right to extract death-thoughts from their fallen.
They did not protest.
They simply ate their dead themselves, so nothing could be taken.
And the Totem Scar responded.
---
🕳️ The Whispered Flame
From the crater came a column of inverted fire, a flame that froze flesh while heating thought.
The Fangless—forty in number—were silenced not by death, but by unmaking. Their flesh disassembled, but their memories remained intact, floating in vapor, absorbed by the crater's breath.
This became known as the Whispered Flame, a new totem phenomenon. It now flares each time the Pact is broken.
Worse, it left behind something unnatural:
A Thought-Husk.
---
🧠 The Thought-Husk
The Thought-Husk resembled no living being. It floated, featureless, pulsating gently with residual ego.
It spoke every language.
And none.
Its presence caused ritual fires to flicker, weapon-totems to rust, and lesser demons to forget their own names.
The Bone-Shadows called it a "Memory Without Skin."
But the hybrid faction known as the Forgotten Pact saw something more.
They saw potential.
They believed this was the first sign of the Second Pillar's mental emergence—that the Abyss was no longer mutating just flesh and energy, but cognition itself.
---
⚔️ The Strain of Unity
Elsewhere, the alliance strained.
The Hornblack accused the Ash-Eaters of manipulating the dream-trade, distorting shared totem blueprints to induce madness.
The Ash-Eaters claimed the Hornblack were hoarding larvae-ritual sites, denying evolution to younger warriors.
Amid rising paranoia, the Bone-Shadows proposed a trial of assimilation.
A sacred and profane rite:
Two opposing warriors enter the Hollow Shrine, built atop the Totem Scar.
One leaves.
Not as victor. But as both.
---
🕷️ The Hollow Shrine
Forged of calcified priest-skulls and dream-root sinew, the Hollow Shrine was half structure, half parasite.
It devoured time.
Every second inside was a minute in flesh, a day in thought.
The first trial saw two champions enter:
Vurga Tinejaw (Ash-Eater, known for devouring enemy minds while still dreaming),
Kelthun Kark (Hornblack, bearer of three spinal tongues).
What emerged was neither.
It crawled out, half-birthed, screaming names from both tribes while cutting words into its own flesh with its teeth.
They called it:
"Shriek-of-Two."
---
☠️ Shriek-of-Two
Tier: 2 (unstable)
Function: Voice-Fused Juggernaut
Ability: Can chant battle-rage directly into nearby warriors, causing their bodies to mutate mid-combat in sync with its own shriek.
Its existence proved assimilation was possible.
Terrifying.
But possible.
Some saw salvation in its form.
Others saw proof that the Abyss was consuming identity.
---
🔮 Rise of the Purity Cults
In response to the horrors of hybridization, Purity Cults emerged.
Their message was simple:
> "We must remain as we were, or be eaten from within."
They rejected all totem merging, hybrid rituals, and Bone-Shadow memory harvests.
They burned dream-trees.
They sealed fissures with fused corpses.
They began to form their own anti-evolution totems, built not to empower, but to resist change.
The largest of these groups, the One-Skin Wrath, began to hunt hybrids.
First in secret.
Then, openly.
---
⚔️ The Hunt Begins
The first Pact-Born hybrid to fall was Krann of the Spine Choir.
Cornered at the Scab Ridges, his body was overloaded with counter-runes and anti-memory fire.
He sang himself to death.
His final notes echoed backward through time, making bones ache and infants cry.
The Bone-Shadows responded by encoding his death scream into new ritual weapons—songswords.
---
🌋 Meanwhile, Beneath the Totem Scar…
Beneath the surface, the Totem Scar began to develop nodes.
Sacs of dark bio-energy grew on the underside of the crater, each pulsing with a rhythm similar to hybrid hearts.
One ruptured prematurely.
From it emerged a malformed future.
A being not born of tribe, pact, or ritual.
But of pure abyssal intention.
It had no name.
It consumed heat.
It walked only when unseen.
It left behind a trail of dreamless corpses, minds hollowed like fruit.
And every shaman heard the same whisper that night:
> "Assimilate… or be unmade."
---