It is a dimension familiar, but a world not quite right, these high rises of arcane stone and swirlings magics about the still air that had once carried the cries of the dead through the haunting wails of wraiths that had now fallen silent. Dead, as quite a few many things were in such a place of darkness; but as if drowned by the depths of the sea, the air feels thick - almost unbreathable in the atmosphere’s leadened humidity - and the sounds that filter through, the very same one might suspect belong to deep-dwelling denizens, seem to swim - trudge, even - through deceivingly gentle wisps of frigidity to reach his ears. In a way, it reeks of blood, copper-tinged and thick, tension built in every fiber of its otherworldly being; and all at once, without significant insight to the reasons why or the methods of how, Henry knows this place - this dimension of darkness where no light finds space to tread - is not his.

Like a cancer - a curse - something had metastasized, taken over and morphed what had otherwise been cold and dark into something that felt alive. The way it stretched across the horizon, disjointed in form, became an inhale of inhuman lungs and the pressure exerted by the cavernous expanse up into stygian skies, its exhale. The dull thrum of magical ley line, felt in the expanse of his fingertips as once controllable, now fleeting, had wrought a heartbeat, and life, in a way, was etched in the very stone body of this place decorated in torn fabrics, painted and sullied in red.

And the eyes to see - those too had been forged in the remains of man, contorted, twisted into effigies of the very stone that seemed to rise up around him like the impenetrable rib cage of this primordial beast. How recherché they had been now as they wretched themselves away from cracks in the towering slabs - the cultists, lost Darkholders that had been brought here, left, and otherwise forgotten if they weren’t dead, encapsulated in silvery stone and misshapen forms, their sockets glowing embers of treasonous flame; but it had been him to put them there; him to keep them trapped; him to conjure such beastly horrors from the depths of darkness to ensure his survival; and it was him that they were to cut out.

Disformed in structure and disjointed in movement, it seemed there was no chance to evade those glowing eyes - a light to see all in the darkness no matter how Henry had tried to conceal himself - as they shuttered through fragmented and unaligned, disorganized frames, blinking in and out of the thick air that all at once seemed ready to clench Henry’s throat; but this wasn’t fear as much as it was uncertainty, the gulp that he had swallowed down his throat and back into his chest where it could find room to dissipate. There had been a shift - a cataclysmic one at that - that he had recognized in his own metamorphosis and, as such, it stood to reason that this place, this one forged by the hands of an elder god - the demon inscribed in his own skin, melted into his flesh, and blended into his blood - would have too; and there was no telling just where the influence of the Reality Gem stopped.

For all uncertainty, however, he knew he was no friend here - not to these people as they had once been and not to the creatures they were now, various forms crawling out of the woodwork with some less recognizable than others. Their veins, had they any to see, were of dark stone, shimmery in the light provided by their imposing effigies, and their armaments had been readily bound in the inhuman crawl of otherworldly earth on their bodies, forming the very same harpoon-like armament that had come crashing down at him in that lingering moment of distraction - the very same that had found itself a quick end in the solid punch through his body and into the solidity of magically reinforced slab.

The thought to run came quickly, but where did one run to when the very universe - at least one - had become a living weapon, a being of its own with a mind of its own and a vengeance that hung in an air swathed in misdoings? There had been nowhere to go - nowhere where he couldn’t be found - because even in the darkness, there had been something - someone - watching what had become a wild hunt: One man against a ghostly hunting party or rebutted followers who would stop nothing short of catching their prey.

He knew, after all, what it had been like, the eyes that watched from above in a shade of darkness that matched the opacity of the sky. He knew from experience just what these people could do - what they had done - and though his life as he had known it was forgetting, his name and all that he had owned with it, it had imbued him with a keen curiosity to the world - to the worlds as they had expanded - around him. This place - this San Francisco - had been new; these people - these shifters - had been different; and this world - this universe beyond the rat plagued-Dunwall and bloodfly-ridden Karnaca - was ripe with new opportunity. There was more to learn than there had ever been in the Isles, taken away from the streets and locked away by magics unknown to become the transcendental entity - this Outsider - he had become known as by their people, and he had all intention on self-satiation of curiosity.

All he needed was an anchor.

Like a whaler tailing its prey, it had been a slow and lumbering final strike that had all but pinned Henry to one of those otherworldly slabs that towered high, digging deep into his arm to hold him in place, however not stilled as he attempted to right his mind enough to shift - to become intangible or invisible or anything other than the solid form he continued to find himself wearing. It was almost impossible to register the swirl of wind that had kicked up or the footsteps that, constant despite their varying impact on the ground, paced in front of him, a back and forth pathway carved between him and the behemoth of enchanted rock.

“This is an interesting place you’ve found yourself in though even I have no telling of who you are beyond someone of keen curiosity,” he said, hands folded behind his back in a nonchalance not readily matched by the captive party.

“I hope you don’t mind that I have renovated this place to my liking,” he continued, “but this was always to be a lost world, cold, ruined and drowning as the ebb and flow of time and influence changes its course much like rivers over many lifetimes. Eventually, even empires fall and new opportunities rise from the wake of destruction. You, for example, have curiously partaken in some of these moments and some accounts might suggest you are a monster to put down, but I’ve no intention of fulfilling some cultist prophecy - again.”

All at once, the stone harpoon ripped back, out, jerking Henry forward where he hit the ground, the back of his forearm pressed firm against the ground while his shoulders hunched over it, both holding him up and concealing the damages.

“I’ve no intention on giving them what they want, this great cult dedicated to loathing you,” the voice continued, not fading as his body did now and then in the continual pacing, observing as if coming to some decision on what to do about him. “But what I do give you and how you use what I will ultimately falls upon your shoulders, as it has to the others before you. I just hope it is as interesting as I expect it to be.”

As if stitched together by the very threads of the air, what had been a gaping wound took to mending, hatching itself together in sinews of flesh and bone until the uncomfortable sensation turned to one even more imposing in the stench of burning flesh, forging archaic lines across the newly mended skin and scarring tissue until a rune - a name in a language unknown - had remained. Stark black against his skin, it remained unlike the words of the Darkhold that had long disappeared, lingering but never seen, and settled like a tattoo - a brand - never quite asked for.

“We all love a good show.”