The Abyssal Bazaar was a tantalizing, terrifying promise. A dark star on the horizon of his ambition. But he knew to chase it recklessly would be to lose himself.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Locked it away in the same mental vault where he kept the screaming ghosts of the souls he had consumed.

For now, his focus had to be on his people. His new faction was a fledgling nation. It needed resources. Strength. Experience.

And so, the great hunt began.

Their fortress, Asylum, which had been a symbol of their escape, now became an engine of conquest. Edward, using the arcane knowledge of the Lich and the tactical data from the Clockwork King, turned the colossal golem into the ultimate mobile dungeon-raiding platform.

They moved across the blighted, unpopulated hinterlands. A shadow that fell upon the forgotten, monster-infested corners of the world.

Their methodology was a brutal, terrifying, and spectacularly efficient display of their new power. Asylum would march to the doorstep of a targeted dungeon.

The Unchained, now a well-equipped, elite fighting force, would pour out. A tide of monstrous, chaotic fury. They would not clear the dungeon with the cautious pace of a traditional guild. They would purge it.

They moved with the speed and ferocity of a flash flood. A coordinated storm of steel, magic, and primal rage. Edward was always at the tip of the spear. A whirlwind of his twin blades. His Soul Gaze instantly identifying the highest threats. His commands sharp and unerring.

"Fenris! Iron Circle! That rock-golem's armor is weakest at the knee-joints! Shatter them!"

"Selene! Syndicate! A nest of Shadow Weavers on the ceiling! Silence them!"

"Conclave! The Veil Hounds are ethereal! Use your entropy-bolts to disrupt their phasing!"

They were a symphony of destruction. And he was their conductor. They would rip through a B-Rank dungeon in a matter of hours. A feat that would take a normal guild a full day.

They were not just clearing the dungeons. They were strip-mining them. Taking everything of value. Monster cores. Rare ingredients. And most importantly, souls.

And Edward was the sole, hungry beneficiary of that final, most precious resource.

With every dungeon they purged, a torrent of soul energy flooded into him. A dozen different flavors of monstrous instinct and alien memory. He was a dam, holding back a river of pure, chaotic power. With every new soul, the pressure on that dam increased.

His corruption percentage, the slow, creeping meter of his own damnation, began to tick steadily upwards. 36%. 37%. 38%.

And with each new percentage point, the whispers grew louder.

Before, they had been a background hum. A static of fragmented, half-formed thoughts. Now, they were becoming clearer. More distinct. No longer a chorus. A cacophony of individual voices. All screaming for attention in the crowded, bloody theater of his mind.

During the quiet moments, in the dead of night, the whispers were a torment. He would hear the arrogant, condescending voice of Lord Alaric. He would feel the cold, logical perfection of the Clockwork King. Trying to analyze and categorize his emotions into useless data. He would experience the maternal, serpentine rage of the Basilisk Queen. A constant, low-level thrum of territorial fury.

His mind was becoming a prison. And he was sharing his cell with all of his victims.

The only time he found a sliver of peace was in the heat of battle. When the fighting started, the chaos of the outside world would momentarily drown out the chaos within.

In those moments, he was not a man haunted by ghosts. He was a pure, instinct-driven predator. He moved and fought with a terrifying, intuitive grace.

But even this refuge was beginning to be corrupted. The whispers were starting to bleed through. He would be in the middle of a fight, and a sudden, disorienting flash of a victim's memory would hit him.

He would be dodging the clumsy swing of an Ogre, and for a split second, he would see his own charging form from the Ogre's perspective. A terrifying, shadowy blur of death. He would parry a skeletal warrior, and feel a phantom echo of the warrior's own undying loyalty to a long-forgotten king.

It was maddening. Disorienting. He was fighting not just his enemies, but the ghosts of his past enemies. He began to struggle to distinguish his own thoughts from the echoes of the dead. His own mind had become an unreliable, treacherous ally.

Sarah was the first to notice the true extent of the toll it was taking. She had become a quiet, steadying presence in the chaotic world of The Unchained. She helped in the infirmary. Her gentle hands and calm demeanor were a balm to the wounded. She organized their meager supplies. She was the heart of their mobile fortress. A constant reminder of the decency they were all fighting for.

She would find him late at night, staring out of the main viewport of Asylum. His expression was distant. His eyes unfocused. A quiet, desperate war raging behind them.

"You're not sleeping again," she would say. A soft, worried observation. She would bring him a cup of hot, herbal tea. A simple, human gesture in his monstrous, inhuman world.

"The quiet is too loud," he admitted to her once. A rare, vulnerable confession.

She began to help him. Not as a medic. As an anchor for his mind. She would sit with him in the quiet of his chamber. Not speaking. Simply being there. Her own calm, untainted soul a silent, steadying presence.

She taught him a simple, meditative breathing technique her mother had taught her. A way to focus his mind. To find the quiet center of the storm.

"Find your own voice, Edward," she would whisper. "Listen for it underneath all the others. It's still there. You just have to listen."

Her presence was the only thing that kept his sanity from fraying completely. She was the one, singular truth in a mind that was becoming a library of lies and echoes.

But even her calming influence could not stop the inevitable. His corruption was still climbing. 39%.

The breaking point came during a raid on a C-Rank shadow-den. The "Grotto of Perpetual Night." A straightforward purge. A routine operation. They were clearing the final chamber. Mopping up the last of the dungeon's inhabitants. Shadow-Panthers. Sleek, powerful felines made of solidified darkness.

Edward was in the thick of the fight. His twin blades were a whirlwind of precise, deadly strikes. He cornered the last, largest panther. An alpha-sized creature with eyes like burning embers. He dispatched it with his usual, cold efficiency. A single, perfect thrust to its spiritual core.

He placed his hand on its dissipating form to absorb the soul. A routine, almost thoughtless act.

But this soul was different. Not just a bundle of primal, feline instinct. It was saturated with a single, overwhelming, and utterly alien emotion.

Sheer, abject terror.

The memory that flooded into him was not of the fight. It was of the moments just before it. He was the panther. His powerful muscles coiled. His senses on high alert. But he was not hunting. He was fleeing. Running for his life.

A desperate, panicked flight through the dark tunnels of his own home. He was running from something else. Something ancient. Vast. Something that had just awakened in the deepest, darkest heart of the grotto.

Something so terrifying, so utterly wrong, that the panther had chosen to face a pack of armed invaders rather than remain in its presence.

The memory flash ended. Edward was back in his own body. The last of the panther's terrified soul settled into his own.

He stood up. A cold, prickling sensation ran down his spine. The battle was over. The chamber was silent. The last of the panthers were now just fading dust motes. His people, The Unchained, were cheering. The sound of another easy, profitable victory.

But Edward was not celebrating. He was listening. To the silence. And in that silence, he could hear a new sound. A slow, rhythmic, and impossibly heavy thud… thud… thud… Not a footstep. A heartbeat. A heartbeat that was shaking the very foundations of the dungeon.

He turned. His eyes were wide with a new, dawning horror. Towards the back of the chamber. Towards a section of the wall that was nothing but pure, undiluted, absolute darkness.

And in that darkness, a pair of enormous, red eyes, each one the size of a carriage wheel, slowly, languidly, began to open.

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