Chapter 3:

I started to trust it the day we were attacked by another entity, The Pale One. We didn't think it could spawn in our base but it did. We had no way of protecting ourselves against it other than with flashbangs and our metallic doors.

To keep it from killing us all in one shot, Melandru told us all to stay as far as possible from each other. We decided to stay in different rooms, with all the doors locked.

I stayed in my workshop. I was flipping through the cameras. I barely had the time to see it twist in ways that shouldn't be possible that it had already crawled out of sight.

Then a shadow fell on it. It was darker than the darkness of the corridor, like an obscure mist settling yet it was fast like the night drowning the world after the sunset during winter.

A twisted scream of pain was heard from afar. There was no sound on the cameras, in case the entities could hear the audio. Then, The Pale One got out of this sudden darkness, it was twitching. Its bones were broken.

It was drowned in darkness again. Its screeching rose in intensity. I almost felt pity for it. I was sweating, wondering if that thing would come after us. It was dangerously close to Clemmie's office and I didn't think a simple flash bang would help against this.

Then, everything was quiet, all movement stopped. The soft familiar buzz of the base filled my dimmed workshop. For a moment, it felt like a peaceful morning where I was only checking on the cameras with no entities in sight.

Then, two green eyes appeared from the dark and looked at me through the camera lens.

I was looking at the abyss, and it stared right back at me.

And that's when it struck me. The Pale One was directly going towards Clemmie. The Void stopped it before it could even get in front of his office's door.

When I checked on everyone, I went to see Clemmie in his office. He told me he was relieved The Void had stopped The Pale One. He reported that there were only a few chewed broken bones where the entity was eaten.

A cold feeling ran through my spine. If The Void could eat an entity whole it could do that with Clemmie as well. That's when Clemmie asked me if I still thought we had to close his door forever.

I looked at the corridor. Its eyes were here. There was something in it that I had not seen before, a hopeful light. Its pupils seemed rounder than before, like it wanted me to be proud.

Maybe, The Void was a good thing to have. It stopped The Pale One dead in its tracks, literally.

I sighed and told Clemmie it could stay. I had not seen a smile this bright from him in ages. His tired eyes told me how grateful he was. He thanked me profusely. I didn't know how to react.

I looked at The Void, it hadn't moved an inch.