Chapter 1 Unexpected Coming
A dull ache throbbed behind Sombravida's eyes.
Cold wind scraped across his skin, carrying a damp, metallic stench that made his instincts recoil. He drew a shallow breath and slowly opened his eyes—only for dizziness to crash over him like a wave.
The sky above was a sickly yellow, cloudless and oppressive. A dense, chaotic fog drifted endlessly across the horizon, swallowing distance and direction alike. There was no sun, no moon—only a dead light that seemed to exist without a source.
"…Where am I?"
Sombravida pushed himself upright, his movements sluggish, unfamiliar. As his vision stabilized, fragments of memory surfaced.
A hospital room.
White sheets.
The rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor slowing… slowing… then stopping.
"I should be dead," he muttered. "Did I… lose?"
The landscape around him answered in silence: an endless desert of pale sand and cracked earth, littered with skeletal trees and eroded stone. The air was heavy, humid, and faintly fishy—like stagnant blood left too long in the open.
A place that rejected life.
"A desert… yellow sky… this atmosphere…"
Before the thought could finish forming—
ROOOAAARR—
The sound tore through the air like a blade.
Sombravida's entire body went rigid.
He turned sharply and saw it.
A colossal creature thundered across the sand not far from him—easily the size of a mammoth, moving on all fours, its tail longer than its own massive body. Its head was covered by a gray-white mask, grotesquely smooth, impossible to tell whether it resembled a bull or a feline.
Where its eyes should be were hollow black pits, speckled with faint, star-like lights.
But the most horrifying feature lay in its torso.
A massive hole ran straight through its body.
A Hollow hole.
The creature paid Sombravida no attention. It roared once more, hooves gouging the sand as it vanished into the fog, its Reiatsu leaving behind a lingering pressure that made Sombravida's chest feel tight.
"…That looked familiar," Sombravida whispered, forcing himself to breathe.
"Like… a Hollow."
The word struck him with sudden clarity.
Hollow.
Mask.
Desert.
Hueco Mundo.
"This isn't the afterlife," he said slowly. "This is… the world of the dead."
His gaze dropped to his own chest.
At the center of his sternum was a dark, empty void—perfectly round, swallowing light.
"…So I really crossed over."
Or worse.
"I became a Hollow."
There was no pain. No bleeding. Only an eerie sense of incompleteness, as if something essential had been torn away and replaced with nothing.
Sombravida clenched his jaw.
"At least I'm still conscious. Still moving."
He forced himself to stand and examine his body.
Beside him stood a withered, bone-white tree. Using it as reference, he estimated his height—roughly human-sized. Around 1.7 meters.
That alone made him exhale in relief.
His form was humanoid.
White, hardened skin covered his torso like natural armor, thicker at the shoulders and chest. Around his waist, the same material flared outward, forming a skirt-like plate reminiscent of battle armor—unfinished, but clearly evolving.
His left arm retained a mostly human shape, though reinforced with layered bone along the forearm and joints. His right arm, however, had fully transformed.
Five fingers had sharpened into elongated bone blades, gleaming faintly, the forearm wrapped in dense Hollow armor.
At the center of his chest, the Hollow hole pulsed faintly.
"…So this is my body."
He flexed his fingers experimentally. The movement felt natural—too natural.
His gaze shifted upward.
"Wait… where's my mask?"
In Hueco Mundo, a Hollow's mask was more than decoration. It was the physical manifestation of their heart—the anchor of their spiritual power. Destroy it, and the Hollow collapses.
Sombravida raised a hand to his face.
Instead of a full mask, his fingers brushed against a rigid structure integrated into his skull.
A helmet.
White bone covered the upper half of his face and the back of his head, leaving his jaw exposed. A thick, inverted triangular plate protected his forehead, and short horn-like protrusions rose from the crown.
Strands of pale blond hair spilled freely from the back.
Despite the bone covering, his vision was completely unobstructed.
"…So it fused instead of forming separately," he murmured. "That's rare."
Lower-level Hollows often had crude, oversized masks. More evolved ones—especially those approaching Menos-class—developed partial or integrated forms.
That realization made his stomach sink.
"This body… isn't normal."
He needed to know what he was capable of.
Sombravida clenched his left fist and punched the dead tree beside him.
The trunk snapped cleanly in half.
Without hesitation, he slashed downward with his right claw.
The broken tree separated into five smooth, precise sections before collapsing into the sand.
"…Not bad."
A hollow chuckle escaped him, but it died quickly.
Power meant nothing here without context.
Before he could think further—
An overwhelming pressure crashed down from above.
Sombravida's knees buckled instantly, sand exploding outward as he was forced nearly to the ground.
"—Guh!"
Reiatsu.
Raw, crushing spiritual pressure.
Sombravida gritted his teeth and looked up.
In the distance—nearly a kilometer away—a massive shark-shaped Hollow surged through the desert, its body partially submerged in sand as if it were water. Its roar tore the air apart, sound waves obliterating dead trees and rock formations alike.
The shockwave flung Sombravida backward, his body skidding across the sand.
By the time he staggered back to his feet, the presence was gone.
The desert returned to silence.
"…That thing," Sombravida whispered, cold sweat dripping down his spine.
Get out of here.
Whether that Hollow was an Adjuchas or simply a monstrously powerful lesser Hollow didn't matter. Its Reiatsu alone marked it as the ruler of this territory.
Staying meant death.
Sombravida turned and ran—hard—putting as much distance between himself and that presence as possible.
His Hollow body barely tired. Still, after what felt like hours, he finally collapsed beside a jagged rock formation, gasping more from fear than exhaustion.
"I thought I was strong," he muttered bitterly.
"One roar… and I couldn't even stand."
Reality had sunk its teeth into him.
Hueco Mundo wasn't a place for confidence.
It was a place where only growth—or consumption—existed.
According to what he remembered, Hueco Mundo was divided into territories. The deeper regions belonged to Menos-class Hollows—Gillians, Adjuchas, and worse.
The outer zones were hunting grounds.
That was where he needed to be.
No Great Forest of Menos.
No dominant rulers.
Only weak Hollows struggling to survive.
After days of cautious travel, Sombravida finally crested a low dune.
Beyond it lay a forest.
Not green—but black and white, skeletal trees clawing toward the sky, their branches twisted and lifeless.
A dead forest.
But to Sombravida, it was hope.
Because at its edges lived prey.
And prey meant evolution.