The ruins trembled with a sound that should not exist—a laughter so hollow, so unnatural, that even the Hollowed recoiled. Selene Nocturna laughed.
Not because she was amused. Not because she had already won.
She laughed because the very notion of resistance—of defying her—was absurd.
Kruger's gun clicked empty. His breathing was sharp, ragged, but he did not falter. Through the mist of decay, he could see her.
Selene stood tall, her tattered cloak shifting like withered wings.
Her lips curled into a mocking smirk, exposing blackened gums and teeth that glistened with old blood. Her laughter continued, echoing through the remains of the monastery, curling around the columns like a choking vine.
"Is that it?" she purred, taking a step forward. "Is this the great hunter who has been gnawing at my kingdom like a rat?"
Kruger said nothing. He simply reached for another magazine, slamming it into place.
Selene grinned wider, her fingers twitching with anticipation. A whisper of necrotic energy pulsed through the air.
"You reek of desperation."
She lifted her arm. The ground beneath them shuddered as black veins burst through the cracks, twisting like tendrils. The corpses around them convulsed.
And then they laughed too.
A terrible, mimicked laughter, their dead throats rattling, their ruined faces twisting in a grotesque mockery of joy.
Kruger gritted his teeth as the Hollowed advanced, their voices overlapping in a nightmarish symphony.
Selene let out a delighted sigh.
"Ahh… that sound. The first stages of the Laughing Plague." She dragged a nail across her collarbone, ripping open her own flesh, exposing the sickly green glow of something pulsing beneath her skin. "Let me show you."
With an elegant flick of her wrist, she sent a wave of dark mist rushing toward him.
Kruger rolled aside, just as the laughter thickened. His vision blurred.
He felt it—a creeping, gnawing madness at the edges of his mind.
Selene watched his hands tremble. She saw the twitch in his jaw, the way his breath stuttered as the poison slithered through his veins.
Soon, his laughter would begin too.
"No antidote. No cure." Selene cooed, stepping closer. "Only release."
Kruger fought back the growing hysteria in his mind. He forced himself to move, to act.
With one swift motion, he pulled free a silver vial and shattered it against his own chest.
The explosion of blessed alchemical smoke lit up the darkness.
Selene hissed, recoiling, her blackened fingers curling into claws.
The moment of advantage was his.
Kruger didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, blade in hand.
Selene's laughter ceased.
And in that instant, the real battle began.