The bioluminescent powder still floated over Lumis's wound.
Rheell ran—not like a beast, but like a father—with his trembling burden clutched to his chest. Her blood wasn't red, nor gold: it was liquefied light, a shimmering nectar that trickled through her fingers and evaporated upon hitting the ground. Level 5, that inverted paradise, watched them with the indifference of an ancient god. The trees whispered. The red spores that had saved them now clung to their skin like burning ash.
Dazekrul didn't follow them.
Not out of fear.
For sport.
"Mutants always come back ," he reportedly told his apprentices, cleaning their bone blades. "Hate is a better bait than fear."
But Rheell wasn't thinking about revenge yet.
I thought about the sound Lumis had made when she was cut.
Not an animal squeal.
A human moan.
At level 4, the burrow smelled of dried scabs from past battles.
Rheell sealed the entrance with stones, but the darkness was already within them. Lumis lay on a bed of black moss, breathing raggedly. Her veins pulsed with an irregular rhythm, as if something beneath her skin were rewriting it.
Rheell, for the first time, didn't understand.
Before, everything was simple: hunt, eat, survive .
Now...
Now there were words in his head.
"Dazekrul".
"Strength".
"Pain".
And a new one:
"Because?"
The Abyss did not respond.
He just let the echo of his own questions poison him.
On level 5 Dazekrul drank from a carved skull while his apprentices laughed.
The Fortress outpost was an iron underbelly: armor hanging like flayed skins, maps stained with blood, knives stuck into tables as offerings to no one.
" The larvae are soft ," he said, running a finger along the edge of his weapon. "But that one... that one was scared. Like a little girl."
Korran, the youngest, gulped.
— "What if it wasn't a common larva? What if it was...?"
" Don't be silly ," Dazekrul cut him off. "Primal Voices don't ascend to Level 5. And if they did..."
He smiled.
— "We would skin them alive to see what songs they sing."
Outside, the floating lights of Level 5 flickered, as if the garden itself had heard.
And decided.
On level 3 the air smelled of gangrene and brandy.
The hunters at the camp weren't like Dazekrul: they were human remains, men and women with withered eyes and patched armor. Some drank. Others wept. Most just waited to die.
In one corner, Goran looked at his obsidian axe.
Kaleth was dead.
And he knew what had killed him.
" They weren't beasts ," he muttered to himself. "They were something the Abyss spat out to laugh at us."
Nobody listened to him.
The Abyss never listens to those who are already lost.
On level 2 the air vibrated with screams that were not human.
Glass cages lined the walls, each containing a Kharis larva. Alchemical tubes extracted its golden fluid, drop by drop, while bronze machines distilled it into potions.
Lucy walked past them, feeling the weight of her useless sword.
One of the larvae, half dead, looked at her.
Not with hate.
With pity.
" Shut up," Lucy whispered, clenching her fists. "I'm not like them."
But the larva only blinked, as if it had already seen its future.
And he laughed.
At level 1, everything was sold.
Karnash bones as amulets.
Ghul-Teke blood as an aphrodisiac.
And, in a hidden position, maps of Level 7.
" It's not for beginners ," the vendor, a man with no eyes, growled. "But if you want to die quickly, who am I to stop you?"
"That person" looked at the map.
Something in those crooked lines called to her.
As if I had already been there.
In his dreams.
In his nightmares.
In the upper city the Council met in a black marble hall.
— "The Xhar-Voth was only the beginning ," Councilor Agatha said. "The Abyss is awakening."
— "Nonsense ," General Raimond replied. "The Abyss doesn't think. It doesn't plan. It just exists."
Agatha smiled, showing sharp teeth.
— "What if he's alive? What if he always was? What if we're just... ants on his back?"
No one responded.
On the walls, tapestries depicted warriors slaying monsters.
But now, the figures seemed to be laughing.
From above, the Abyss was just a crack.
A scar on the world.
But...
What if the world was built around her?
What if the Abyss isn't a place?
But a being?
A god?
A dream?
Nobody knew.
The air smelled of burnt alcohol and stale fear.
Rheell moved through the shadows of the Extraction Labs , where brass and bone machines ground luminescent Kharis grub fluids into healing potions. The walls were lined with crystal vats , each holding a stuffed creature: a Ghul-Teke with its wings spread like a diagram, a disembodied Karnash displaying its crystal muscular system, even a human brain floating in amber liquid, copper wires embedded in its bark.
But Rheell wasn't here for the machines.
I was here for the meat .
The first worker didn't see him coming.
He was a young man, wearing quartz glasses and gold-stained gloves. He was humming to himself as he adjusted a suction pump on a tank where a Kharis larva was dying, its lifeblood being drained drop by drop.
Rheell grabbed him by the back of the neck.
— "What do you do to them?"
They weren't words. They were guttural sounds, but the man understood. His eyes widened.
— "W-We just extract! It's for healing! P-please—!"
Rheell didn't wait for him to finish.
He tore out her throat with his teeth.
Warm blood flooded his mouth, thick as iron soup, and with it came images :
— A laughing woman holding a baby. (His wife? His son?)
— The smell of freshly baked bread. (His home?)
— The sound of a bell in the Upper Town.
Rheell swallowed, and the taste of memories drove him mad.
The screams started too late.
A technician saw him tear into a guard's chest with his claws, ripping out his still-beating heart and devouring it like a ripe fruit. The veins hung from his lips like candy threads.
— "HE'S A DEMON!"
Rheell leaped onto operating tables, knocking over glass vials that burst into showers of needles. A scientist tried to stab him with an Abyssal Bone scalpel; Rheell ripped his arm free and used it to crush his skull.
Human brains, he discovered, tasted like rotten mushrooms and salt .
But the eyes ...
The eyes were sweet.
Like grapes full of light.
The seventh victim's skull throbbed .
By the ninth corpse, its skin began to peel off , revealing soft, pink flesh underneath.
When the last worker died (an old man who pleaded in a language Rheell now understood ), he looked into a reinforced glass mirror.
He was no longer a beast.
He was a child .
Human skin, dark brown hair, obsidian black nails.
But her eyes...
His eyes were still those of a predator .
Yellows.
Without pupil.
Like those of Lumis.
He saw clothes hanging on a rack: a pair of small work overalls, stained with old blood. He put it on.
And then he found the cage .
It was an iron cubicle, hidden behind a leather curtain.
Inside, three small bodies.
Street children , their arms full of holes, their mouths sewn shut with silver thread.
One was still breathing.
His eyes widened at the sight of Rheell.
— "A-are you... an angel?"
Rheell did not respond.
He ran a finger down her cheek, collecting a tear.
And he brought it to his lips.
The taste was so bitter that it made him recoil.
But now I knew .
Humans didn't just experiment on monsters.
They experimented on their own species.
Lumis lay on her bed of moss, paler than ever.
Rheell dropped the bodies in front of her: two technicians, a guard, and the old man's still-beating heart.
— "Eat," he said, his voice no longer a growl but a clear command .
Lumis looked at the bodies, then at Rheell.
His eyes sparkled with recognition .
And then, like a hungry animal, he pounced on the meat.
The golden fluids from his mouth dissolved human skin, absorbing not only nutrients, but memories .
Rheell watched, waiting.
I knew what was coming.
The change.
As Rheell and Lumis digested their new knowledge, panic spread on the upper levels.
The sound rumbled like a giant heart hitting iron.
—BRRRRMMM! BRRRRMMM!—
They were the Horn Alarms , enormous bone trumpets from Karnash that blared through the tunnels when something went wrong. The apprentices dropped their weapons. The smiths turned off the smelting furnaces. Even the Skavrith, those humanoid rats that stole from the shadows, went into hiding.
Lucy was in the middle of a hunt for Gulmins (deformed beasts with gray skin and extremely long arms) when alarms shook the air. Her nicked sword, a Shadow Ferrite so worn it looked more like a sharpened stick, rattled in her hands.
— "What the hell...?"
A messenger ran past, his face disfigured:
— "They attacked the Extraction Lab! Something killed everyone! They say it didn't even leave a bone!"
Lucy felt a chill .
It wasn't fear.
It was recognition .
As if something in his blood knew this was just the beginning.
At the Camp Command Post , the veterans gathered around a table carved from Ghul-Teke carapace. On it, hide maps showed the critical points.
— "It wasn't a Nyx-Terath ," Captain Vorin growled, pointing to claw marks on a report. "The wounds are too... precise."
" A deserter?" suggested a woman with a glass eye. "Some hunter gone mad."
" Worse," an old man interrupted. It was Elkan , the researcher who had seen too much. "It was something that learned to kill like us."
Lucy, hidden in the crowd, heard everything.
And he knew, with visceral certainty, that the Abyss was playing a new game .
Rheell observed.
Lumis writhed, his body reforming like wax in the sun.
The changes were slow, agonizing:
— Her larval skin cracked , falling away in translucent shreds.
— Her hair grew , golden strands like liquid metal.
— Her tail, once gelatinous, was now a lithe, muscular extension that coiled around her leg like a protective serpent.
And then...
Speak.
- "Friend."
The word sounded clumsy, but clear.
Rheell didn't smile.
I didn't know how.
But something in his chest, where before there was only hunger, burning .
Lumis looked at his humanoid hands, then at Rheell. His amber eyes shone with a new intelligence.
— "We... humans now?"
Rheell shook his head.
— "Better."
Humans had books . Weapons . Secrets .
But above all...
They were afraid.
And fear, Rheell now understood, was information .
— "Go up ," Lumis said, pointing at the cave ceiling as if he could see through the stone. "Learn. Grow."
Rheell nodded.
They were not human.
But they could use them .
The Level 1 Market was desolate.
The alarms had sent everyone into hiding, leaving behind abandoned outposts, armor hanging like empty skins, and clothes .
Rheell chose simple clothes:
— A hardened leather vest (stained with the blood of its previous owner).
— Sturdy cloth pants (with pockets to hide knives).
— Boots (too big, but stuffed with rags).
The smaller Lumis found a short linen dress and a hooded cape.
The hood was important.
I would hide my tail .
And his eyes .
The Surface was a place where the abyss looked up
The Last Elevator was a cage of iron and beast bones, pulled by chains as thick as trees.
The guards didn't even look at them.
Why would they?
They were just two children covered in dust from the Abyss.
One with eyes that are too yellow.
Another with a tail moving under the cape.
But when the doors opened, and the sunlight touched them for the first time...
Something in them broke.
Lumis moaned, blinded.
Rheell took a deep breath, feeling the pain of clarity.
It was beautiful.
It was poison.
It was freedom .
And then, among the crowd of the Upper City, two creatures that were no longer monsters but no longer human either , began to walk.
And in the depths, where not even the Warriors of the Dawn dared to go...
The Abyss sighed.
As if he were proud .