Tales of flame and void

The pit opened like a wound beneath the veil of the world.

A chasm carved not by nature or war, but by the will of something older than either. From its edges, a procession of the damned shuffled—men, women, beasts, and things without name. Their eyes empty. Their bodies limp.

The world above held no wind, no sun. Only silence and dusk.

At the edge of the pit, a figure stood robed in decayed black, his mouth torn open in reverence. In his hands, a scroll made of stitched flesh. He read—not in voice, but in rhythm, in invocation, each word slithering like worms through time:

> "Zha'thul'karn, veil of endless night,

From shadowed depths beyond mortal sight,

By bone and void, by time undone,

Awaken now, the ancient one.

> From realms where stars refuse to shine,

Through rifts where madness intertwines,

I call thee forth, from cryptic gloom,

Arise, O harbinger of doom."

Then—

The pit blinked.

A single eye opened within the chasm. It had no pupil. No sclera. Just void—conscious void—stretching on forever.

The Hingcha had awoken.

---

✦ Victim 1: The Father Who Returned

His name was Elim.

He'd only been back two weeks.

They'd offered him the transfer back to ANSEP Base after the border war. Lower pay, sure. But his daughter was six now. Her last message had said:

> "When you come back, I'll bake you those cloudberry cakes, Papa! Don't be late again!"

Elim had smiled. He'd even saved the audio. Played it once a day before shift.

Now he didn't know how long it had been since he heard it.

The corridor had changed.

The last thing he remembered was routine inspection. Then the floor tilted. The hallway blinked. Now the air was wet — like breathing in soup. The lights had melted, dripping like wax down the walls. Every surface throbbed faintly, like veins behind skin.

Then he heard the humming.

No—remembered the humming. Like it had been following him his whole life.

He stumbled into a room that looked like it had no ceiling. A void above — a deep well of nothing, like a throat waiting to swallow. The walls pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. Or maybe his heartbeat pulsed with the room.

Then—eyes. No. Not eyes. Suggestions of sight. Watching. Learning. Judging.

He tried to speak. His voice came out before his lips moved.

> "Help—me."

But the sound stayed in his skull, bouncing around like an echo trapped in bone.

And then the creature showed him… her.

His daughter. On a field. Running, laughing, arms outstretched.

"Papa!"

Elim's legs moved.

He reached for her—

But she turned around, and her face—

It wasn't a face.

It was his own. Staring. Mouth open in a perfect O.

The world peeled like paper, and he was falling. Not physically — falling into a loop. Memories that weren't his. Memories that had been rewritten. A hundred versions of his death.

> One where he never came home.

One where he strangled her.

One where she screamed "You left me in the walls."

He screamed.

But the scream had already happened. It echoed back, not from the room — but from inside his lungs, as if the Hingcha had borrowed it and returned it worn out.

Then he felt his arms move on their own.

He looked down and saw nothing but threads.

Frayed. Untethered.

He was unraveling — not just the body, but the memory of being Elim.

His name began to slip.

His daughter's face blurred.

He forgot what cakes smelled like.

> He became the memory of a man who might have loved someone.

And then — silence.

No final scream. No mark left behind.

He didn't die.

> He was undone.

---

✦ Victim 2: The Man Who Was Always Alone

His name didn't matter.

Not to him. Not to the world.

He'd lived alone in a one-room capsule at the edge of Base Sector B, halfway buried in rust and frost. His days were clockwork — wake, eat, sort broken parts, catalog them, sleep. No calls. No visitors. Not even a cat.

> "Peace and silence," he used to say. "Better than people."

He thought he liked the quiet.

Until now.

Because now — the silence was alive.

It slithered in through the cracks, breathing against his skin, coating his tongue like oil. In his room — no, it wasn't his room anymore — the walls had blurred. The ceiling pulsed like a heartbeat. The light came from no source, and yet it stared at him.

Then came the scratching.

Not on the door. Inside his head.

Tiny legs — crawling, tapping, clicking — scraping the base of his skull from the inside.

He grabbed his ears. Dug his nails in.

> "Shut up shut up shut up—"

But the sound didn't come from outside.

It was him. His thoughts had taken on shape. Scratched their way out.

He tried to scream, but what came out was a wordless hiss, like static through torn lungs.

And then… the mirrors began.

Every surface reflected something — not him, but versions of him.

One mirror showed him smiling as he drowned a child in a bathtub.

Another showed him weeping in a sea of empty beds.

Another… just stared. A thousand eyes where his face should be.

> Which one is the real me?

He reached forward, and the reflection reached back — just a second too late. Out of sync. Like a memory pretending to be a man.

Then his fingers bent the wrong way.

They melted into the glass. Not broken — absorbed.

He felt the rest of him follow. Slowly. Inch by inch. Being copied. Replicated.

Not eaten.

Replaced.

His limbs vanished, but he still felt them. The sensation of standing there, of being observed, persisted. The Hingcha didn't devour him. It left a perfect echo behind.

One that walks the base now.

Speaks with his voice.

Laughs when no one is near.

> And if someone visits that empty little room on the edge of Sector B…

They'll find him.

Still smiling in the mirror.

---

✦ Victim 3: The Officer Who Remembered Too Much

His name was Ferel Tann.

Mid-rank ANSEP officer. Not remarkable, not disposable. Just sharp enough to know when something was wrong. Just loyal enough to die for the mission.

He remembered standing at the entrance of the Hingcha nest.

Then everything began to fragment.

At first, it was the time.

He'd blink, and the hallway ahead would shift.

Blink again — the lights were flickering green instead of white.

Blink — he was back at the entrance.

Blink — inside a new room with no walls.

Each breath felt borrowed, like the air belonged to someone else.

He reached for his comm. A buzzing filled his ears — not interference, but whispers. Hundreds of voices. Saying his name. In his voice.

Then his limbs slowed.

Muscles stopped obeying. His joints bent, but not where they should. He looked down — and found his legs were misaligned, like someone had rearranged his body and forgotten how humans were meant to look.

He screamed.

Nothing came out.

Only a flicker of light escaped his mouth — a wriggling thread of memory, caught by the walls.

The Hingcha tasted it.

> "More," it pulsed into his thoughts. "More of you."

And so Ferel remembered.

He remembered his childhood. His sister's smile. His first uniform. The moment he lost his best friend in a botched teleport test.

And the Hingcha fed on it all.

> Not the body — the self.

Each memory was sucked out and stored. Displayed on the thrones for others to see.

When Atiya and Zelaine later entered the chamber, they saw him — body suspended, eyes pleading.

But by then, he was already gone.

What remained was a shell, operated like a puppet by the Hingcha. An imitation. A projection of who he used to be, frozen in a loop of his most painful memories.

He spoke only one thing:

> "Help… please…"

Not because he hoped to be saved.

But because that's what the memory required him to say.

And then he crumbled — like ash swept into a void that was never meant to be named.

---

> There were others.

Not just the three.

Countless others — officers, researchers, drifters, volunteers — whose names were never recorded, whose memories were peeled and fed into the Hingcha's unspeakable design.

Some were turned into mockeries of themselves.

Others… were never missed.

And high above that grotesque nursery of memory, Atiya and Zelaine stood in silence.

Neither spoke.

Zelaine's lips parted once, as if to curse — but no sound came.

Atiya stared at the distant wall where nothing moved, eyes blank. His threads floated half-limp, trembling as if unsure of their master's will.

They had come expecting a monster.

What they found was a god of forgetting.