Johan continued throughout the Penumbra, his footsteps the only echoing thing in the emptiness, amplifying the sound of his heart beating through his chest.
“… What’s going on…? I don’t feel too good,” he mumbled, pausing to catch his breath.
His hand gripped his chest, and each inhalation felt like a chore. The air was thick with what seemed like decay clinging to the fog around him, his nerves fraying with every passing moment.
Shadows moved with an unsettling rhythm, disjointed forms lurking just out of sight. The village seemed to be a contorted reflection of reality, and the air pulsed as if the very fabric of existence was about to unfold.
Despite the upsetting fear coiling within his gut and the way his body felt, Johan continued. Every step he took felt like a burden while the darkness swirled around him like a living entity, suffocating him in the fog; questions began to plague the edges of Johan’s mind.
The Penumbra, what was this place? Not to mention, he still needed to learn how he arrived here.
“Alright, let’s keep it together, Johan,” he muttered, taking a big exhale to calm his nerves, but as he relaxed, something else drew his attention from the corner of his eye.
Farmers, a group of them toiled in the field. Again, their movements were mechanical and predictable, like all the others Johan had encountered. As he approached them, caution overtook curiosity, and he instantly realized something was wrong.
Though they had long broken the ground, their shovels struck nothing but air. They persisted with an eerie passion, although they made no effort to reach down and shovel the dirt. Their eyes were vacant and glazed, trapped in an endless cycle.
Johan took another step closer but was shocked when the farmers turned toward him with hollow eyes before slowly returning to their meaningless labor.
Moving discreetly by the group, Johan glimpsed a structure looming through the fog. As he approached, he noticed large hay bales outside—it was a barn.
“Hello? Is anyone in here?” Johan asked as he stepped inside. “Anyone with a brain? Who can speak for themselves?”
Johan began to look around, but suddenly, his instincts screamed that this place wasn’t safe and that he wasn’t alone. The farmers had followed him, but their numbers swelled as they flooded the barn.
Cornered against the wall of the deteriorated building, Johan muttered, “Seriously? It’s just not my day, huh?”
The farmers slowly moved as Johan failed at negotiating with them. He clenched his fists, ready to defend himself. “Hey, didn’t anyone tell you guys twenty verses one isn’t cool?”
The farmers did not attack. Instead, they stalked Johan, staring blankly at him as they edged in bit by bit.
“What’s your deal?! Do you guys have something to say or not?!” Johan yelled, his frustration boiling over like a hot kettle. “Let’s see what you got!” he said, challenging the farmers.
Twenty verses one was right, but Johan wasn’t an idiot. He knew brute force wasn’t the answer, at least for now. The numbers game had him beat.
He scanned the barn for a way out. A way to escape, but a thought began gnawing at him—Why were they acting this way? Was there someone or something inside the Penumbra controlling the farmers?
Then, the true horrors of the Penumbra began to reveal itself. The once-human farmers twisted and warped, their bodies distorting into monstrous abominations. Their faces transformed into hideous masks resembling a leviathan with too many eyes and too many teeth to count.
“…Damn, there’s no way out?” His back against the wall, sweat trickled down Johan’s forehead as panic reached for his throat. “…Just another challenge to overcome…”
A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Guess you guys didn’t get the memo—like I said before, it’s bad manners to gang up on someone.”
Quick thinking, Johan shattered the window next to him, ignoring the glass slicing into his hands as he jumped through.
Bolting across the field, he didn’t know where to run. All he knew was that he needed to escape the monsters that pursued him. His heart was running a mile a minute, but sadly for Johan, the monsters weren’t far behind.
No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t shake them. Back inside the village streets, Johan looked around, surrounded by the monster-like farmers closing in with terrifying speed.
“Great, just my luck… Outnumbered and running into a wall. Talk about a classic rookie mistake,” he muttered, realizing too late that he had run into a dead-end.
Johan trembled as he looked down at his hand, shaking viciously. “…This is a first… I’m scared…”
The horde blocked his path, but Johan wasn’t one to give up so easily. He clenched his fist, and with a chuckle, adrenaline and exhaustion began to surge through him.
“Let’s get this over with!” Johan growled and, without a doubt, launched himself into battle, fist flying with wild precision like a cornered beast fighting for its life.
The monsters were relentless, swarming him like hyenas in the night. For every one Johan knocked down, two more surged forward to take its place. Although he had held his own for the time being, the numbers game began to outpace his fist.
In the blink of an eye, the now less-than-human farmers raised their hands, and their nails grew. Razor-sharp claws now replaced the nails as they rushed Johan, raking across his body and face, shredding through his flesh.
Each slash he received sliced through his clothing and body, ripping his skin and sapping his strength.
Lying in a pool of blood, Johan felt his consciousness slipping away like sand through his fingers. His vision began to dim, swallowed by the encroaching darkness. Each breath was a struggle as he coughed up crimson, memories, and regrets flashing before his eyes in a chaotic montage.
Is that it? All this way, to die here? Alone. Johan thought bitterly as he slowly reached for his chest, his hand instantly covered in red from his wounds. His eyes began to close, and the darkness threatened to consume him. Numbness washed over his body, dulling the pain that had once felt so sharp.
His limbs felt weightless, disconnected from his mind with a strange sense of detachment. It was as if he were slipping into a dream, the throbbing aches of his wounds fading into an unsettling calm.
“Maybe that pipsqueak of an imp was right…” Johan thought aloud, a final spark of realization igniting in his fading consciousness. “…I wasn’t dead… Until now…”
Just as his final seconds of life seemed to ebb away, his eyes closed, and a jolt surged through his body. His eyes flew open, and he found himself back inside the barn.
He patted himself down, surprised to see that he was uninjured. All of his wounds had healed, and his clothing was intact. Johan collapsed in a heap, gasping for air, but another sight surprised him.
The imp from before hovered above him, her eyes piercing into his.
“…Hold on… What happened? I was…” Johan stammered, continuing to pat his chest and face.
After regaining his composure, he recounted his harrowing ordeal to the imp who listened intently. His words tumbled out in a rush as he described the monsters that pursued and attacked him.
But as he spoke, he couldn’t stop the doubt from creeping into his mind—was this all just in his head?
“I did warn you, didn’t I? Even the most courageous of you mortals would cower before the horrors of the Penumbra,” the imp stated. “This is where the lines between reality and deception blur, and the entity here wants you dead.”
Johan gasped; his breathing was still irregular. He did everything to regain his composure. “…Is talking in riddles all you can do? If that’s the case, then piss off.”
The imp hovered closer, staring at him blankly. “Your silly antics won’t help you now.”
Johan had enough and raised his hand, swatting at the imp who easily dodged. “Enough of your babbling. You think I’m just going let some entity kill me without a fight?”
Quickly, Johan felt a brutal hit to his forehead. The imp had flown right into him, slightly knocking him back. Gently caressing his forehead, Johan hissed. “Now, what the hell was that for?”
“You need to listen to others before sprouting out words. This entity thrives inside of the Penumbra. It is not a plaything. It will send its subordinates after you and exploit every weakness out of you. Courage alone won’t be enough.”
The imp’s words made Johan falter; he knew there was significance to them, but who was he for this so-called entity to even want to take his life? It sounded all absurd to him.
“…Well, you know, it’d be a lot easier if I had a way to defend myself in here,” Johan began to speak, but at the barn’s entrance, something caught his eye.
Johan and the imp glanced over, only to realize the farmers had reappeared, blocking the entrance.
“Hmm, they’re back,” the imp stated as their bodies twitched as if glitching on a screen.
“…No, s***, Sherlock… So, what do we do?” Johan asked as he watched their bodies merge into a swirling vortex of pitch-black nothingness.
“We? They don’t want me. They want you. ‘I’ll find a way out of here on my own.’ Weren’t you the one who said that?”
The imp began to chuckle, her laughter filling the barn as a cold shiver ran down Johan’s spine. Out of the vortex of blackness, a single creature stepped out. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
It was a creature that resembled a twisted fusion of human bodies melded into an elevated form. Its body was an incoherent mass of limbs, torsos, and half-formed faces, with several arms sprouting from its sides and twisting around each other in various directions.
Its skin was pale and translucent, showing traces of veins beneath it. Some of its faces had half-lidded, hollow eyes that stared blankly, and its mouths were slightly open in silent screams.
Instead of one singular head, multiple faces were embedded in various parts of its body, giving the impression of constant, unending suffering.
“The Nameless Many is what they call this one,” the imp explained as the twisted creature swung its limbs, and the barn began to crumble around them. “So, what do you say? Want to take me up on that offer now?”
The Nameless Many seemed out of control or, more so, enraged after locking on Johan. It began to make its way towards him. Its run was more of a lurching, dragging movement. Its many arms violently jerked as if trying to claw or pull away from its body.
When it moved, the sounds of dragging and crunching echoed through the barn alongside the debris falling from the rooftop, and occasional muffled groans escaped from its many mouths, unintelligible and eerie, like distorted echoes of people long lost to the Penumbra.
“…I guess I have no choice…” Johan muttered as he considered his options as he faced danger head-on. “Fine! I’ll do it! I’ll go through with the vow!”
“Good, because in the grand scheme of it all, it’s not like you had a choice, anyway,” the imp said with a smile before a sudden ray of light pierced through the crumbling barn, flooding it with a warm, radiant glow.
The imp vanished into the light that halted the Nameless Many in its tracks. But soon, from the shimmering ray emerged a woman whose appearance was nothing less than mesmerizing.
Her rich brown skin glowed softly under the ethereal light. Almond-shaped eyes that glistened like pools of liquid onyx. Flowing coils of dark ebony hair that cascaded around her shoulders, each strand seemed to dance with a life of its own.
She was fashioned with a swirling opaque mist that clung tightly to her body like a second skin—revealing just enough to tease the mind while leaving much to the imagination.
With each step, the tendrils of the dark fog coiled and twisted around her, lending an air of mystique to her already enigmatic presence.
It was as if she were the living embodiment of darkness itself, in contrast to the heavenly glow of the light emanating from her.
“Now, hello… Who do we have here?” Johan uttered; his tone was sleazy.
But he had no care to hide it. Beautiful women had always been his weakness.
“So, after all this time, now you decide to ask me my name?” the woman chuckled, her beauty drawing Johan’s attention from his impending danger. “I’m Sanity, your guide.”
“…Sanity…?” Johan repeated, still hypnotized by her looks, but disbelief flooded his mind.
The once devilish-looking, annoying piece of imp had transformed into a stunning woman. How could this be?
“Johan, we don’t have much time. Let’s seal our vow,” Sanity said, pulling him closer with an irresistible touch, her hand gently caressing his cheek.
“Hey, hold on…” Johan gently grabbed her hand. “I never told you my name.”
“Of course, you didn’t, but I’ve known it all along,” Sanity replied with a smile, but Johan didn’t hear a word. He couldn’t help himself, his eyes shamelessly roaming over her.
“Eyes up here, okay?” she told him. “Now, stay still… With this sanctioned vow, we’ll be together forever. Until death do us part…”
With a graceful motion, Sanity leaned in, her lip pressing against his. The kiss was intoxicating, sending a surge of energy coursing through Johan’s veins.
When he opened his eyes, the barn was no longer there. Instead, he was floating alongside Sanity in a realm where light and dark intertwined in a cosmic dance.
Light and dark, the two opposing forces clashed until the flames of the celestial light consumed the darkness around them.
The shadows of the Penumbra shrank in fear, fleeing from the light as Johan and Sanity stood before the remnants of the Nameless Many, dissolving into thin air.
“Now, that was a nice kiss. Don’t you think? Much better than all the others I’ve locked lips with,” Sanity teased, pulling him in. “Listen closely. The Penumbra has many more challenges in store for you.”
Sanity’s words made no sense throughout Johan’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to understand them. “But, Sanity… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t get it at all.
“I know, I know, Johan, but rest assured.” Sanity leaned in, close enough to whisper into his ear. “Everything you’ll need to aid you in your journey is in my system.”
On cue, a HUD system notification appeared in front of Johan, its spectral glow illuminating the words:
[System Notification]
[Congratulations! You have received the Sanity System!]
