Hollow Knight is a challenging Metroidvania about a bug who travels to the dead kingdom of Hallownest, which has been ravaged by a terrible infection, leaving very few inhabitants alive and sane.  This game is no stranger to dark things, and sometimes it veers off into outright horror.  This is especially apparent in two locations found at the bottom of the map, Deepnest (which Hatm0nster has just covered) and the Abyss of Ancient Basin.  For those who are okay with major spoilers for the plot of Hollow Knight, “these words are for you alone”.

There’s just something rather stifling about the Ancient Basin.  Being so far below Hallownest, even Cornifer comments on it, saying, “Can’t you just feel the weight of the kingdom above?”  Why, yes, I can, and it’s possibly suffocating!  Well, not far below Cornifer, you can find a sealed door and a cryptic sign talking about the ascension of the “pure vessel”.  Beyond this door is the “refuse and regret of its creation”, a place “we shall enter…no longer”.  Hmm, strange.  What could that possibly mean?

Well, you can’t enter the Abyss until after being marked with the King’s Brand.  Once through, you find a massive chamber that extends further below the kingdom than even Deepnest.  Aside from the unsettling knowledge that you’ve truly been swallowed by the earth, the true horror does not become apparent until you reach the bottom.

The ground looks…weird, doesn’t it? Spiky, as if littered with thousands of pointy rocks.  And then something dark rises from the ground.  It’s familiar.  You’ve seen one before.  Every time you die, in fact.  But this isn’t your shade.  This is…

This is…

And then you’re hit with a sickening revelation.  Those aren’t rocks.  Those are corpses.  Thousands upon thousands of broken bodies that can do no more than give up their shades now that life itself has left them.  Worse yet, they look like you.  They are like you, in fact.  Your siblings, all left here to die.  Their spirits, angry, bitter, swirl about you.  And who can blame them?  For they were all created with a single purpose in mind.  Not to be loved by caring parents and grow up to live a full life.  No, they were created to be empty.  And to contain the infection and sacrifice themselves for the sake of everyone else.

But these ones all failed and were discarded like so many old tissues.  Of course, they were doomed either way.  Success only meant they would be sealed away in the Temple of the Black Egg, like the Pure Vessel was.  Neither fate is one to envy.

Knowing that you’ve entered what is essentially a massive tomb deep beneath the earth is truly horrifying.  All these bodies, left here to be forgotten in utter darkness, alongside a huge lake of pure Void, the very substance that was supposed to make them empty in the first place.  Even it, too, lashes out at you with its tendrils.  No one wants you here.  You were one of the lucky few to escape, and it seems your siblings do not welcome you back with open arms.

It’s no wonder the Pale King and the White Lady wished to forget this place.  After all, they left thousands of their own children here to die in their quest to find a vessel pure and empty enough to contain the infection.  Surely they told themselves it was for a good cause, but in their efforts to save their kingdom, did they really protect more than they sacrificed?  Well, considering Hallownest’s sorry fate, clearly not.  Even in the real world, I sometimes have wondered what lies far below my own two feet…and then I quickly dismiss the whole notion with a shudder.  You know what, never mind, I’d rather never find out.