Embracing the Darkness | Hollow Knight

Hello, gamers. Welcome back to my blog.

There are many spooky places in Hollow Knight but a few feel as melancholic and unsettling. It is rather quiet and at the same time disturbing, the colours become dull, the music turns to a sad piece and all other clues indicate something bad happened here or is about to. The Palace Ground ground is rather empty with just a dead bug left to guard what looks like a gate.

If you go further down you will find a locked door.

---

There is a warning etched on a stone outside the gate. It says,"Our pure Vessel has ascended. Beyond lies only the refuse and regret of its creation". Well, I can handle some regrets... so I went ahead and unlocked the gate.

I was marked with the King's Brand, in other words, I am the King of this fallen kingdom of Hallownest. That's how I was able to open this door.

---

This was a big section with platforms to get down to the bottom. I carefully hopped down killing a few bugs. It was a much darker place with an unsettling vibe to it.

---

On the western side of this pit was a platform with a locked door. It required some sort of stone to unlock it. I was only halfway down at that point.

---

After a long descent, I finally reached the bottom of the pit. It was not a good sight. There were so many dead skulls and they were shaped like us too. Why were there so many destroyed vessels? This place was accurately named The Abyss.

---

The only enemy here was the 'Siblings', which kept respawning as long as you were down there. They just give you contact damage so they are easy to deal with.

---

These are very similar to our 'shade', that we have to kill to repair our vessel fragment.

---

On the eastern side of the Abyss, there is a cave that mysteriously ends and there are no hidden paths or breakable walls. I can sense it something will open up around this place but maybe I have to go to the western side first.

---

On the western side, there is a big dark lake and when you try to cross it, some tentacles come out of the darkness so you can' cross it by simply swimming through.

---

But at the edge of this lake is a lighthouse which you can climb to the top and there you will find a big lamp ready to be lit. Once you turn on the switch and the light shines on the lake, those tentacles no longer appear.

---

You can now easily cross this big pool and go to the other side where a big carcass of a bug is waiting for you holding a cup in his hands filled with that same dark liquid.

---

This gave me a new ability, the Shade Cloak ability. So, now I can dash through enemies without taking hits from their attacks and won't even take the contact damage while dashing. This is pretty impressive!

---

I also found an 'arcane egg' which I thought would fit on that stone socket that we saw earlier while climbing down the Abyss' pit. But when I saw it in my inventory it looked like just a relic that can be sold to that collector guy in the City of Tears. But it was worth a shot, maybe it will fit...lol

There was nothing more in this section, I was hoping to find something that would open some secret path in that western part of the Abyss but no.

Well, I climbed up to that blue door to test if my Arcane Egg would fit in that hole, but Nah. It didn't! My only option now was to get out of the Abyss as there was nothing more to be done here.

---

On my way back, I was stopped by Hornet who told me a few important things about this place. This is the place where we took birth and the black liquid thing is referred to as shadows and darkness. She told us that she sees some hope now that we have this new ability.

A difficult journey you would face, but a choice it can create. Prolong our world's statis or face the heart of its infection.
I'd urge you to take that harder path, but what end may come, the decision rests with you.

This confirms my suspicion of having multiple endings in this game. I will get a choice and she wants me to take the harder one, to fight the heart of infection. Hmmm... I will try to take this harder path if I get the choice.

---

I came back up to the resting bench to rethink what Hornet just told me. Now that I have absorbed the Shade clock and gone through enemies and that shadow barrier which I saw in a few places. I want to go to those places and see what secrets those places hold. I don't think even Hornet can follow me to those places as she doesn't have this darkness that I now possess.

There is a barrier nearby in the depths of spooky Deepnest. Join me next time as we explore that part of Hallownest. It feels like we are approaching the climax.