Chapter 7: Chapter 7: The Hollow Realm of the Eye That Weeps Blood
The howling silence echoed endlessly.
Ruin Xian stepped through the sundered remains of the Dread Cross Gate, black tendrils of corrupted space trailing behind him like the tattered veil of a mourned god. Around him, the fractured crust of reality trembled—an unfamiliar plane stretched out before him, cloaked in shadows that wept.
The Hollow Realm.
A realm without wind. Without time. Without a sky.
Here, the laws of existence were bound to an ancient, unblinking eye—an orb suspended high above in a skyless firmament, drenched in crimson ichor. The Eye That Weeps Blood. It pulsated slowly like a dying star, bleeding sentient red light that carved hallucinations into anything it touched.
Ruin Xian's boots touched down on a brittle, bone-dry surface—black obsidian marked by spiraling runes of grief and madness. His shadow twisted of its own accord, mimicking not his form, but some grotesque mimicry of his former self.
"So this is the first layer of Her realm," Ruin whispered. "The Weeping Hollow."
His voice echoed too long. As if the realm were swallowing his words in slow agony.
◇
He wasn't alone.
A ripple surged across the obsidian plain. Then another.
Something was crawling beneath the surface.
The blood-tears of the Eye fell in droplets that never reached the ground—they hovered, reversed, then returned upward in spasms. In one such upward spasm, a being erupted from beneath the ground.
A centipede of shriveled flesh and golden crowns.
It hissed through a thousand praying mouths: "The Mindless Prophet welcomes the Slaughtered Seed... the Madness-Blooming One..."
Ruin's eyes narrowed.
He reached deep into his Madness Domain, and for the first time since stepping into this universe, he invoked its new form:
Madness Domain: Devourer's Womb.
The air folded inwards. A pulsing womb-shaped halo surged behind him, like an ancient parasite-goddess screaming in orgasmic rage. From within it, faceless fetus-like shades writhed.
The Prophet shrieked.
"Unholy! Heresy against the Eye!"
Ruin stepped forward, hand outstretched.
The Prophet split open like a book of flesh. Tentacles reached to bind him—but Ruin uttered a single name:
"Eshan'mael."
The word itself was a curse. A name he had learned in the Void—the dead name of a forgotten god who had once tried to eat madness.
The moment it passed his lips, the Womb expanded.
A tendril shot from its depth and devoured the centipede-thing in a blink, absorbing it into its blood-writhing mass. The tendrils twitched. Digested.
A memory not his own entered Ruin's skull. The Prophet's memory. Flashes of Her—
The Weeping Eye wasn't alone. There were Seven Eyes.
Each Eye governed a Layer of the Hollow Realm.
Each Eye had a Guardian.
And one Eye had been blinded… by someone like him.
◇
"So they fear me already... good," he muttered.
But his moment of triumph ended.
She arrived.
A woman walked from behind the bleeding horizon, cloaked in white bandages soaked through with laughter and menstrual blood.
Her face was covered, except for her mouth—lips cut in a jagged smile. Her scent was pure sin. Lust and decay, like the womb of a goddess that birthed serpents.
"Ruin Xian... the False Child of God... the Heretic Seed... You dare enter the Eye's sanctuary with an erected Domain?"
Her voice cracked dimensions.
Ruin tilted his head. "Another corrupted Guardian?"
She bowed mockingly. "I am the Midwife of the Broken Ovum. I am Her Blinded Nurse. I feed the Eye the screams of unborn gods."
And with a flick of her nail, the entire plane shifted.
A battlefield birthed itself from her womb.
Crying fetuses rained from the crimson heavens, bursting into ash. The Eye screamed in pulses. Ruin felt his own body begin to blur at the edges—his sanity being slowly rewritten.
He held firm.
He activated Reverse Insanity.
Instead of losing his mind—he absorbed the insanity.
His pupils dilated into the shape of spiraling galaxies. His blood turned into ink.
His bones wrote new hymns.
The Nurse laughed. "He feeds on insanity? Then I will bleed you with pain itself."
She split open from her belly. Out poured three infants:
One with a mirror for a face.
One with chains for veins.
One with his mother's smile.
Ruin whispered to them. Not words—but concepts.
They stopped.
And turned against their creator.
He had made them dream.
She screamed in betrayal.
He moved like a storm. Swordless, handless, yet slashing at concepts themselves. He undid the memory of her birth. He reversed the scream of her creation.
The battlefield bled backward.
And Ruin Xian stood alone.
The Eye That Weeps Blood had blinked once.
And in that blink…
He had learned Her True Name.
And now, the Second Eye was within reach.
He looked up. Madness coiled around him. Evolution surged.
He smiled.