Eldritch Ascension

When Ethan Moore’s left hand began to rot, the thick fog outside his window was swallowing the entire city of Linhai. At first, he thought it was just a hallucination from staying up too late writing his thesis. His left pinky had turned an unnatural bluish-gray, and beneath the skin something seemed to be writhing like countless maggots. Then, with a sharp click, the fingernail fell off, exposing stark white bone. He jerked his hand back violently. Half a can of cola crashed to the floor, foam mixed with streaks of blood splashing everywhere. “What the hell is this?!” He rushed to the sink and scrubbed frantically, but the cold water only made the pain clearer. The decay spread from his fingertips to his palm; flesh peeled away like melting wax, exposing veins and fascia. Worse still, those veins were twisting and swelling, like red earthworms coming alive. His phone suddenly vibrated. The class group chat exploded with messages: 【There are tons of ambulances downstairs in the boys’ dorm!】 【I heard someone went crazy and bit his roommate’s throat off!】 【The fog outside is insane—don’t go out!】 Ethan Moore looked out the window. Gray-white fog churned tightly against the glass, and faint screams rose and fell in the distance. Trembling, he pulled out his medical kit—then heard a soft pfft. A slit opened in the center of his left palm. A cloudy yellow eyeball squeezed its way out. “Ugh—” Ethan Moore dropped to his knees, acid rising in his throat. The eyeball rolled about, its pupil contracting into a vertical slit, locking onto the bronze compass he had picked up three days earlier. The compass lay on the desk now, its rust flaking away in an eerie manner to reveal dense relief carvings—an octopus-headed giant curled on the seabed, countless distorted humanoid figures crawling out from the sockets of its eyes. “Eat it…” A hoarse whisper suddenly exploded in his mind. Ethan Moore shuddered violently. The voice sounded like thousands of beetles crawling beneath his skull. “Eat the offering… or… die…” The eyeball snapped toward the door. Thump. Thump. Thump. “Xiao Chen, are you home?” Auntie Wang’s voice came from outside, strangely sticky and sweet. “Auntie cooked some seafood porridge—have it while it’s hot.” Cold sweat instantly soaked Ethan Moore’s back. Auntie Wang was a seventy-year-old woman who lived alone; climbing to the second floor usually left her panting. Yet the footsteps outside now were heavy, like those of a beast. A stench of rot seeped through the crack in the door. He stared at the black viscous slime spreading across the floor as the eyeball on his tentacle twitched violently. That was not the smell of porridge. It was the smell of blood. “N-no, thank you, Auntie Wang!” He grabbed the compass and stuffed it into his backpack, staggering toward the balcony. “I—I already made plans to eat hotpot with classmates!” “What’s better than Auntie’s porridge?” The doorknob slowly turned. The old iron hinges screeched harshly. “This was… specially prepared for you…” As the final word fell, Ethan Moore saw the face outside the door. Auntie Wang’s neck had stretched to an impossible length, like a pale python craning up from the stairwell. Her eye sockets were stuffed with writhing sea-anemone-like tentacles. Her mouth split all the way to her ears, revealing rows of shark-like triangular teeth. In her right hand, she held an iron pot dripping with thick dark-red liquid. Floating inside was a head with eyes still wide open—it belonged to the graduate student who lived next door. “Come. Drink the porridge.” As the monster lunged forward with a grotesque grin, Ethan Moore’s left hand shot out on its own. Splurt! Five finger bones burst outward into ghastly white tentacles. Their tips split into chrysanthemum-shaped maws that clamped down on Auntie Wang’s neck. Black blood splattered across the wall, corroding it into honeycomb-like holes. Yet Ethan Moore felt a warm current surge up his arm into his heart. Fragmented images flashed through his mind: a dock late at night, Auntie Wang kneeling on rocks, offering live fish to a shadow in the fog; octopus tentacles sprouting from her back… 【Devoured “Deep One (Low-Level Contaminant)”. Contamination +10. Current Contamination: 12/100】 A cold mechanical voice rang in his ears. Ethan Moore stared blankly at the headless corpse on the floor. The tentacles retracted into a normal-looking hand, though thin black lines now writhed beneath the skin as if alive. His phone suddenly blared an emergency alert: 【Linhai City Emergency Notice: Extreme Dense Fog—Red Alert. All residents are to remain indoors. Do not approach suspected infected individuals!】 He rushed to the balcony and looked down. Shadows squirmed within the fog. Across the way, glass shattered in the girls’ dormitory. A figure leapt from a fourth-floor window, only to be snatched midair by a gigantic tentacle and dragged into the fog. “Help… help!” A shrill cry came from below. Ethan Moore saw a girl in pajamas stumble into the dorm building, her right leg twisted at an unnatural angle. Three humanoid monsters chased her—fish scales covered their bodies, gill slits split their necks, and webbed membranes connected their fingers. The tentacles moved on their own again, flinging a clothes-drying pole from the balcony. The metal rod pierced straight through the lead monster’s eye socket. The other two immediately turned toward Ethan Moore, their bulging eyes glowing blood-red. “Can you f*****g stop causing trouble?!” he yelled at his uncontrollable left hand as he grabbed his backpack and slid down the drainpipe from the second floor. The girl collapsed beside a trash bin, trembling. As Ethan Moore reached to help her up, he caught sight of something wriggling beneath the skin at the back of her neck. “Watch out!” The tentacle was faster than his thoughts. It stabbed into the girl’s neck and yanked out a parasitic sea anemone tangled with blood vessels. The girl screamed and passed out. Ethan Moore’s temples throbbed as the mechanical voice sounded again: 【Devoured “Deep One Larva”. Contamination +3. Skill unlocked: Mental Resistance (Basic)】 More footsteps echoed within the fog. At the convenience store twenty meters away, seven “people” staggered toward them. Gills split open along their necks; some had fingers fused into paddles. The obese man at the front had a face that had turned entirely into a suction cup, bubbling sounds gurgling from his throat. Ethan Moore’s left hand began to burn. He could clearly sense the position of every monster, like blood-red coordinates lighting up in the darkness. The tentacles trembled with excitement, and that voice returned in his mind: “Keep eating… you will become… the perfect vessel…” “f**k your vessel!” He hoisted the girl onto his back and sprinted toward the parking lot, tentacles whipping up a bicycle to hurl at the pursuers. A black off-road vehicle suddenly burst out of the fog. A shotgun barrel extended from the window. Bang! The suction-cup monster’s upper body exploded into foam. Two figures jumped out of the car. A buzz-cut man in a tactical vest fired in rapid succession, blasting monsters’ knees with perfect accuracy. A second man in a suit with gold-rimmed glasses strolled up to Ethan Moore, a ghostly blue flame flickering at his fingertips. “Ethan Moore. Twenty-one years old. Third-year chemistry major at Linhai University.” The fire illuminated his amused smile. “Picked up the bronze compass seven days ago. Left-hand mutation rate thirty-seven percent. Consumed two contaminated entities…” Amid the roar of the shotgun, the suited man leaned close to Ethan Moore’s ear. “Congratulations. Your physical exam results are perfect—welcome to the Deep Blue Eye.”