The darkness consumed Izumi. The stolen power, his shield and his tormentor, sputtered and died as exhaustion claimed him. He fell, not into sleep, but into a fragmented version of himself of fear and anguish. Images flashed through his mind, flickering like film Elena, alive and smiling, then twisted into the monstrous visage that haunted him. He saw himself, weak and pathetic, cowering before the horrors of the labyrinth, while a dark, sneering version of himself stood over him, mocking.
"Look at you, Izumi," the shadow-self hissed, Elena's sweet voice layered beneath its own cruel tones. "Still clinging to that weakness, that pathetic love for your sister. She's gone, boy. And you? You're nothing but food. A plaything for what you stole."
The monsters of the labyrinth, previously kept at bay by his now fading power, now swarmed him in this mental prison. They tore at him, limb from limb, over and over, each death a fresh agony. He screamed until his throat was raw, but no sound escaped the confines of this prison of nightmares. He saw Elena's face again, her blue eyes wide with terror, her last breath a choked whisper of his name.
"You caused this you know," the shadow crooned, its voice a distasteful lullaby. "You were too weak. Too slow. This power… it wants more. It wants you."
Each repeated death took away at him, not at his physical form, but at his very soul. The grief, the guilt, the love for his sister all of it began to bundle into something bitter and cold. The protective barrier of his compassion eroded under the relentless assault. When the shadow-self offered a hand, not to save him, but to pull him deeper into the abyss, Izumi found himself reaching back.
The exhaustion wasn't just physical anymore; it was spiritual. He was tired of hope, tired of fighting for something that always seemed just out of reach. The memory of Elena's warmth, once a radiating light, now felt like a huge weight, dragging him down.
When Izumi finally awoke, consciousness returning in fractured waves, the labyrinth was still dark, but its terrors no longer held the same power over him. His body ached, but the overwhelming pain in his shoulder felt distant, muted. The necrotic power, now quiescent, throbbed steadily within his chest, a deep, resonant hum that no longer terrified him. Instead, it felt… familiar. A part of him.
He pushed himself up, his movements stiff but purposeful. The monsters that had previously sent shivers down his spine were now just obstacles. He could feel their presence, a low thrum against his heightened senses, but the terror had been replaced by a cold, calculated aggression. The whispers in the dark still taunted, "Feed us…", but now, Izumi simply smiled, a thin, humourless curve of his lips.
"Soon," he murmured, his voice deeper, rougher than before. The sweet, pleading tone from the labyrinth floor was gone, the voice of the newly found Izumi muttered. "Soon, you will all feed."
The images of his sister, once a source of unbearable pain, were still there, but warped. Her face, still beautiful, was now etched with a quiet resentment. A resentment that mirrored his own. The love he felt was no longer pure, but made with a desire for revenge, a hunger to make others feel the powerlessness he had endured.
He moved through the darkness, no longer stumbling, but striding with a newfound, dangerous confidence. The air tasted of decay, but to Izumi, it now carried the scent of opportunity. The power within him pushed him, urging him forward, a hunger that promised not just survival, but dominance.
His sister's name still echoed in the back of his mind, but it was a distant sound, almost a whisper of a forgotten language. The boy who had cried over a lost sibling was gone. In his place was something colder, something forged in the furnace of endless death and the bitter taste of power. The labyrinth, with all its horrors, had not broken him. It had reshaped him, twisted him into a weapon.
And somewhere, far above, the Elena-thing still called his name. But this time, when Izumi heard it, there was no fear, only a chilling sense of anticipation. He clutched his broken arm, not out of pain, but a grim reminder of what he had lost, and what he had become. The parasites within him, the necrotic hunger, now felt like allies. He was no longer running from the dark…..
Death lost its meaning after the third time. Or maybe the fifth. Izumi had stopped counting.
Each reanimation came faster than the last, the burning agony of flesh being ripped, the shock of air slamming into dead lungs, the pounding power of that necrotic pulse in his chest, louder, deeper, every time. The first deaths tore screams from him; soon, even the screaming felt like an echo. Pain faded, not because it lessened, but because something inside him learned to translate it. The burning became clear. The tearing became understanding.
He began to experiment.
When the monsters ripped through him, he reached for the hunger. It answered eagerly, a living thing, whispering patterns into his broken mind. The parasites inside him crawled closer to the surface, each death teaching him how to command them to shift their black tendrils through his veins like extensions himself. He could make them harden his skin, form claws from rot, even mimic breath itself.
The labyrinth became a teacher.
At first, he still remembered Elena's face when he closed his eyes. But as death piled up, her face grew… unfinished. The glow of her eyes, the curve of her jaw, even her voice began to distort, until all he could recall was the feeling of her watching silent, unblinking, an echo caught between mourning and accusation.
He laughed then.
The sound was wrong. Too sharp. Too alive. The laughter didn't stop, even when the monsters ripped into him again. He laughed as bones cracked, as skin peeled away and regrew, as the necrotic pulse became a rhythm he moved to.
Pain was gone. Nothing but information now.
He learned that if he let the power consume a dying creature, he could taste its last thought—a flash of terror, resentment, brief prayer—and those impressions stayed. They filled him up until his own emotions were drowned beneath theirs. Thousands of broken and dead lives, screaming through him, clawing for control, and yet he alone stood above them, manic in the dark.
He stopped thinking of escape.
The labyrinth no longer seemed like a prison; it was a womb. Every death another lesson, every resurrection another shedding of weakness. He could feel the place responding to him, its walls breathing with his corrupted heart. The darkness whispered his name not with menace now.
And when he looked into a pool of black water, the reflection that stared back didn't even try to mimic humanity anymore. It grinned, all teeth and hunger.