Character from Cradle by Will Wight
The original Dreadgod — an ancient horror imprisoned beneath Sacred Valley in the Labyrinth, the source of all hunger madra on Cradle and the reason the suppression field exists.
Subject One was created as an experiment by the original Labyrinth builders — an attempt to fuse hunger madra into a living vessel. The experiment succeeded too well. It became the source of all hunger madra on Cradle, the progenitor of the four Dreadgods, and the reason Sacred Valley's suppression field exists: to keep it contained. It doesn't speak. It doesn't negotiate. It hungers. The Dreadgods are extensions of its power that escaped containment, each embodying a different aspect of consumption. Every cycle of Dreadgod activity is ultimately Subject One reaching toward the surface through its children. It is not evil in any moral sense — it's a force of nature that happens to be shaped like a nightmare.
A massive, grotesque creature of fused flesh and consuming madra, chained in the deepest level of the Labyrinth. It defies clean description — parts of it are human-shaped, parts are bestial, and all of it radiates hunger aura so intense that weaker sacred artists' madra is pulled from their bodies in its presence. The chains that hold it are ancient constructs of suppression and binding that have been deteriorating for millennia.
Also known as: Subject One, the First Dreadgod, the thing in the Labyrinth