"I'm going to die here aren't I?" The man muttered with a hollow chuckle, he seemed to have made peace with his quickly approaching death.

He leaned on the cave wall and let out a sigh, letting his blood soaked hand fall to the ground.

"And it's all because of this bastard," he muttered, turning to the side where causing Nox to follow his gaze.

Laying there was the corpse of an Eclipsed which was strange, since he was almost certain that the man didn't have enough strength to drag this thing in here, especially in his current state, so how?

But he received no answer.

So he just turned back to the Eclipsed and properly observed it. The creature looked like some kind of deer....if a deer stood on two legs.

It almost reminded him of the Wendigo, which it looked eerily similar to, save for the mask.

"I didn't even kill you properly," the man said with a dry laugh. "You just… wouldn't stay dead."

He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold stone, legs stretched out uselessly in front of him.

Nox watched in silence.

The man reached out with trembling fingers and pressed them against his own chest, right over his heart.

"I ran," he continued, his voice was hoarse as he spoke to no one in particular. "Like a coward, I left them all behind. Thought if I could just survive… if I could just hide long enough…"

His gaze drifted back to the Eclipsed corpse.

"But there's nowhere to hide in this place, is there?"

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the man coughed violently, blood splattering against the cave floor.

When it passed, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the crimson stain, oddly calm.

"…I don't want to die like this."

His voice was heavy with desperation and he slowly drag himself towards the corpse.

"You know, I heard something once," he muttered as he continued crawling, "that if you managed to eat an Eclipsed with regeneration and survive, you'll also gain its regenerative abilities."

The man laughed weakly. "Ridiculous, right? But at this point… I'll take madness over dying."

With shaking hands, he pulled a crude blade from his side, its edge chipped and worn probably from all the Eclipsed he had to fight so far.

"So let's find out if that's really a myth or not."

Nox watched with a small frown on his face as the man plunged the dagger into the Eclipsed and slowly cut apart its skin.

He couldn't show disgust because he had been in a similar situation, but he had never tried eating that disgusting thing raw.

And the next thing that happened was within his expectations.

The man hesitated for a moment, until his light headedness reminded him that he was running on a timer.

Closing his eyes, he sent the meat into his mouth. He didn't have the privilege of cooking it, so he had to settle for eating it raw.

The first feeling that hit him was disgust, but he didn't spit out the meat, instead, he quickly swallowed it and fought the urge to throw up.

For a couple of seconds, nothing happened, until a sudden burst of pain hit him like freight train.

The man convulsed as the pain tore through him and he let out an almost animalistic sounding scream.

The shaking worsened as he lost all control over his limbs, and his veins were now visible due to how much pain he was undergoing.

With every second, he felt as if small explosions were going on inside his body, and they continued until they reached his core.

He could only tremble in pain as cracks webbed themselves on his core and a second later, it also exploded.

Nox watched as the man's chest stopped rising, his eyes rolling back until only the whites showed. The faint glow of the cave stones reflected off lifeless pupils.

He truly was dead, as was any human who had tried eating an Eclipsed corpse, any human that wasn't Nox.

But unlike the others, this man didn't stay dead.

Instead, his body was lifted off the ground, his fingers were clawing at the stone as black vapor leaked from his mouth and nostrils.

The blood pooling beneath him began to move, crawling back toward his wounds as if pulled by invisible strings.

Nox's eyes widened.

The gashes across the man's body started closing. The sight exactly what you'd call healing , it was more like knitting.

The man's flesh seemed to move unnaturally as his bone and sinew realigned themselves with sickening crunching sound.

The man's breathing steadied and slowly, his eyes opened.

"…So this is how it feels," he whispered.

He pushed himself up, testing his limbs. His movements were smoother now, more deliberate. The pain was completely gone, replaced by a new feeling of power.

He looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers, then laughed softly.

"Regeneration," he murmured. "No… more than that."

His gaze drifted back to the Eclipsed corpse, this time, there was no fear in his eyes, except maybe curiosity and a bit of caution.

He seemed to have understood something as he slowly approached it before crouching down and saying, "so that's how it feels?"

The wave of energy that healed him brought with it a pool of knowledge.

He picked the dagger up from the floor and pulled the Eclipsed by the horns, towards the center of the hollow chamber.

"I finally have a way out of her."

With his words, Nox watched as the time within the cave moved faster and the man was completely absorbed in whatever he was doing.

He first cut up the Eclipsed, discarded the flesh and used only the head part.

Nox watched him go on and on for a while before he suddenly stopped after what seemed like days.

Slowly, he lifted the results of his hard work high in the air and muttered, "this is my ticket out of here."

Nox looked at it and realized that it was really familiar... after all, it was the same mask from the Eclipsed.

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