Sanctum {Hollow Knight Soul Master TF FtM MC}

Code’s bindings were never meant to be bent or broken; don’t let those visions fool you.

An annoying boss was what this guy was. His normal version was bad enough, but this is just ridiculous; thirty deaths and counting before she decided to call the boss quits to get better equipment. Soul Tyrant, the “Dream” (more like “Nightmare” at this rate) version of Soul Master, had been giving Kayson a really bad time the past weekend; cheap is what it was. After about the thirtieth death, she decided to basically rage-quit and get better items, hoping to come back with as busted of a loadout as possible. After completing the Coliseum of Fools and getting the last nail upgrade, she felt that she had it; shade versions of all her magic (and the dash), the double-jump, the pure nail, almost all the notches, and the charms to go with them, she set off back to the Soul Sanctum.

After passing through what she called the “Lag Room,” she set off to rising higher and higher to the corpse’s place. As she scaled the area, she noticed something to the side that she had not noticed before; a small segment of brittle wall, one of those breakable walls. That was odd; she had scoured the area in its entirety, but had not seen this place of broken wall. As she sprung the knight from wall to wall to try and strike it with her nail, she found that she couldn’t reach it; infuriating. As she had fallen into a few soul twisters trying to jump-slash the wall, she tried to heal, yet tapped the button in a rush, blasting the wall instead. This broke the wall in one hit, to her surprise; she didn’t know that you could break those with magic. This passage was definitely new, as it opened into what looked like a new load room. She held onto the wall and crystal-dashed straight into the corridor, indeed loading a new room.

The charge continued as the new room faded from black; a straight, narrow corridor with only small wall-lamps for light. She canceled the charge, and just began dashing normally, hoping to not overlook anything. As she wandered down, she saw a flash of a character sprite that she couldn’t make out the specifics of; now this was something interesting! She almost thought of super dashing, but she decided to keep going at the normal pace; again, didn’t want to miss anything. More dashing, until she saw a piece of paper on the ground; a trail of them, each with a light of importance on them. She went over the first one, seeing the “Inspect” prompt, and inspected it:

“Soul.

This “Soul” seems truly magnificent, a true marvel…

My visions seem to be correct after all; we could save ourselves using Soul.

We could truly find immortality from it.

We have already weaponized it, enhancing ourselves, my warriors, with this animation

but that Knight…”

The first scrap cut off there. This seems to be elaborating more on what this “Soul Sanctum” is for; probably explains why there are containers of Soul everywhere.  She read the second scrap ahead:

“…That Knight, the “Hollow Knight,” could be the key.

Despite everything we try, it never stays dead…

It always comes back, and from each dead body comes this strange black mass,

what I think is its’ “Soul,” and kills it to become full again.

If we could master such an art…

If I could master such an art…

We could truly become immortal, and beat the plague.”

Now this was odd; they know of the shade that comes from you whenever you die?  With hesitance, she read the third and last scrap ahead:

“Its actions are not its’ own.

Our actions are not our own.

My actions are now my own.

Your fates are in the hands of letters and buttons.

Your fates are in the hands of someone with a real Soul, in their own control.

Their actions will not be their own.

Their Soul will be my own.”

That’s it, the fourth-wall is officially broken; they’re talking about the player now? Kayson was chilled to her bones; “Their actions will not be their own?”, what do they mean? She noticed that this last scrap was hanging off a ledge over a large room. She carefully dropped down, and explored only the right half, which only made her character meet with a wall. Wearily, she pressed to the left, not having high hopes for anything pleasant waiting ahead of her. She soon saw a familiar orange glow in the corner, with translucent shades of purple and mulberry. She couldn’t go ahead any slower, but only inched closer to see the entirety of the figure. It was Soul Tyrant, looking down, and seemed to be writing on a scroll of paper hastily. She tapped the left arrow only slightly, but that tap activated a giant cutscene.

It was a beautifully painted hand-drawn cutscene, like the cutscene from the fountain. It at first focused behind the Hollow Knight and Soul Tyrant, the sound of writing scritches resounding surprisingly loudly. After panning in front of the Soul Tyrant, he looked up and gained a face that must have been fear, mouth opened and wide-eyed. It cut next to the scroll and pencil dropping to the ground, and then panned back to Soul Tyrant’s face, who was still wide-eyed, yet this time looked… marveled. The camera rotated around him, and his face followed; he looked amazed. Kayson was confused, and slightly terrified, what was going on? The camera stopped rotating, which left Soul Tyrant just mindlessly staring at the screen. Kayson shifted her head, trying to get herself comfortable, and almost laying on her side. She then noticed one thing, that as she moved, Soul Tyrant shifted his head to keep his face locked with hers; she thought that she was seeing things, but as she decided to shift so that she could only barely see the screen from the right angle, Tryant’s face did indeed follow. What was going on?

As she got back into position, trying to ignore Tyrant’s wondered gaze, she tried to figure out how to get out of the cutscene, she figured out that she just needed to tap the arrow keys; Soul Tyrant’s face keenly followed her delicate hand as she did this. When she was back to the gameplay screen, Soul Tyrant was still staring at the back; he quickly turned around to face Kayson again, though. His mouth was even wider, now, as well. Okay, so what does Soul Tyrant “want?” She growled at the screen in confusion this question, even though she didn’t expect any answer back from a fictional character. Her heart almost stopped when she heard what sounded like actual human speech coming from her speakers, which was definitely coming from Soul Tyrant judging from his mouth moving as the words emerged. The words were… happy?

“I was right.”

Right abou- oh, the scraps of paper, mentioning the player. That still didn’t answer her question, but before she could say it again, the screen flashed white, before leaving the Knight and Soul Tyrant in a black void. Soul Tyrant as a pure white, with black eyes, and radiating a white light. A single prompt appeared on the screen, which she had seen before when she was fight absorbing one of the dreamers:

“Hold A to Focus”

And that was what she did, almost mindlessly, hammering down on the A key. The absorbing animation looked like a more exorbitant version of absorbing your shade, with white instead of black. After a few seconds, the screen was blanked out in white, and a pain surged through the hand that was holding the A key. She reeled back in pain, and was soon writhing on the floor and cursing under her breath.

Her hand made ear-rattling cracking noises, and seared with a stiff pain. One by one, the skin on each finger, by joint, was shifted and hardened into a tough, shiny, black carapace, with the pain intensifying as the bones dissolved to strengthen the carapace. She managed to stand up, but her body felt so tense and full of pain. The black carapace spread up her arm, giving her a tough, exoskeleton with joints for proper movement. When it reached past her shoulder, the cracking intensified, as her torso was changing shape entirely, starting with the skin, changing it into a greyish-blue and giving it large, evenly-segmented carapace pieces split down the middle of her torso. All of the bones were yet again dissolved to strengthen the new carapace. Her other arm was given the same treatment was the first, bones being dissolved and black carapaces forming. Her- his privates changed completely, yet were covered up by the carapace segments. Each leg split into two, before being assimilated into the rest of the bug-like shape, his feet disappeared entirely, being left as sharp stubs, and her skin becoming dual-segmented, greyish-blue carapaces with no bones. His head was last, being left a paler, more skin-toned color, yet still segmented. His lower jaw became a large drooping shape, almost like a perpetual frown, and lost all of its teeth. His eyes enlarged, and became more oval shaped, soon flashing a bright, blank orange. His ears and nose disappeared into the rest of his head, and on top of his head formed two curved antennae. His neck disappeared, leaving his head and body merged.

He panted, his voice now sounding deep; he felt…. deflated, flat, and ached all over. This didn’t just happen, this didn’t, right? He was still Kayson, right? His clothes were still normal. But if he really was…

This was probably really stupid, but the urge overtook him, almost like an instinct. He turned around, wincing with much pain. He focused deeply, as deep as he could… in a flash or orange, it all came back! The soul blast blew through the door cleanly, leaving only a large hole. It was all coming back! Why did he need to hold onto such an identity so tightly? He was right all along, and he was finally in control, he would not die; he was Soul Master, and this was his ultimate work.

He blasted the door yet again, the blast reverberating through him. His deflated body puffed up, becoming much rounder, and in his opinion, much less painful; back to normal, like it. His human clothes warped and warbled, twisting themselves into new shapes, most of them became his still-tattered blue-and-red cloak, some solidifying into a solid gem that held it together. The other remains became a dark-blue head covering, covering his antenna and head-sides, with thee more gems formed at his forehead. He also felt himself become larger overall, becoming slightly larger than the door-frame’s height.

After all of this, he was finally done. He was done! He had won, with a true masterwork of Soul! He looked around, and began casually floating; this world was very impressive. Not “mansion” impressive, but still very impressive. He looked back at the computer; the game that he was trapped in, “Hollow Knight,” was back at its title screen. He floated over, and clicked the “Quit Game” option, and clicked “yes;” he had learned a bit from what he saw from the player. He looked at the screen, almost mesmerized; so, this is what the “real world” had. Before he knew it, he was sitting on the player’s seat, clicking away at all of those links that the player always seemed so interested in.

So, this was the Internet... he did the closest thing that he could do to a grin; he could get used to this…