The first thing Rusty noticed was the smell.
It was thick and choking—metal and rot, wet stone, and something sharp like burning copper. Every breath scraped her throat. Her eyes stung, but she couldn't blink. Couldn't turn her head. Couldn't move at all.
She lay in a shallow pool of sludge that clung to her skin like oil. It was warm—too warm. Every heartbeat seemed slower than the last, her chest straining just to rise and fall. The rusting had her in its grip.
Something shifted in her blurred field of vision.
Torren was slumped against a mound of pulped bodies, his head bowed, hair plastered to his face. His chest no longer rose. His skin—once bronze with tunnel dust—was now a mottled red-brown, flaking like old iron.
He was gone.
A sound broke through the constant, wet squelching of the Worm's innards. Small. Trembling.
"Rusty…"
Her eyes locked on Olmo. He was half-submerged a few feet away, his little hands clawing at the slick ground, the rust mist already painting his arms in brittle scales. His face was streaked with tears, though whether from fear or the acid sting in the air, Rusty couldn't tell.
He was crying for her.
Rusty's fingers twitched—just barely. The smallest victory. She focused on that motion, forcing it again. Her joints screamed, her muscles felt locked in chains, but she pushed. The sludge parted around her as she dragged one arm forward. Then the other.
Her skin split at the elbow. She didn't stop.
Red-brown dust floated from the tear, exposing a strange, glinting texture beneath—like corroded steel, alive under her flesh.
She crawled. Every inch closer to Olmo left more of her human skin behind, flaking in the Worm's digestive fumes. Around her, bodies lay in various stages of decay—some little more than heaps of rust-colored powder, others frozen mid-scream, their eyes dulled to iron.
"Please…" Her voice cracked, each syllable scraping her throat raw. "Please don't die, Olmo."
She was almost there. Two feet away. One. But her arms locked again, frozen by the rust's slow crawl through her nerves. Her body shook with the effort to keep moving.
That's when the mound of corpses stirred.
From it rose one of the rusted dead—its movements unnatural, twitching. Skin and muscle gone, its form was an eerie sculpture of corroded sinew. Without a sound, it reached for Olmo.
Rusty's heart stopped.
The thing lifted him with surprising gentleness, the brittle shell of its hands cradling him as if remembering what it meant to protect. It turned, knelt beside Rusty, and laid the boy in her arms.
"Please…" she whispered again, though she didn't know if she was begging the creature or Olmo himself.
The rusted being lingered for a moment, its faceless head tilted toward them—then its body crumbled to dust, scattering into the sludge as if it had never been there.
Rusty held Olmo close. His skin was rough and grainy under her fingers, and his breaths were faint—so faint. She could feel the rust taking him too.
Her tears burned as they slid down her cheeks, mixing with the rust.
And all around them, the Worm's walls pulsed with slow, steady hunger.Olmo's breathing was shallow, his little body limp in her arms. Rusty pulled him tighter against her chest, not caring that her skin cracked with the movement, spilling flakes of herself into the sludge. She just needed to hold him. Needed him to still be warm.
Then… something shifted.
Where their skin touched, the brittle, grinding pain in her muscles softened. The tightness in her chest eased. It wasn't much, but enough that she could take a fuller breath. Olmo's trembling slowed, his cries quieting to little hiccups.
Rusty froze, holding her breath—afraid to believe it. But the more she clung to him, the less that iron-cage feeling gripped her bones. Olmo's rusted patches dulled, the edges softening back toward skin.
She didn't understand it. Didn't have to.
Olmo stirred, eyes fluttering open. "Rusty?"
"Yeah, I'm here." Her voice broke. She squeezed him tighter, feeling his small arms lift and wrap around her neck. He was still heavy with exhaustion, but he was holding on.
For a moment, that was all that mattered.
Then the Worm moved.
The walls rippled under their feet, a deep, rolling shift that made the air quake in their lungs. Sludge sloshed, pulling away beneath them as if the whole floor were tilting.
Rusty staggered. Her boots slid over the slick membrane, and Olmo's weight nearly pulled her from her footing. Behind them, the ground sloped toward a dark, gaping fold in the flesh—the place where everything was swallowed deeper.
"No, no, no—" Rusty's voice sharpened as she dug her heels in.
Olmo's small hands clutched her shirt. "Rusty!"
"I've got you!" She yanked him closer, her knees bending, trying to find friction in the Worm's shifting floor.
Her left foot slid. Her stomach dropped—
—and then something caught her.
A rusted arm, jutting from the wall of bodies beside her, curled around her ankle. Its touch was cold, but it held fast, grounding her like a hook in stone.
Rusty stared, wide-eyed, as the Worm's shuddering slowed. The air steadied. The floor smoothed back under her boots. The corpse's grip loosened, crumbling to rust dust the moment she stepped clear.
They were standing again. Alive.
Olmo was still shaking, his eyes darting from the rust dust to the slick walls that loomed around them. He looked so small—smaller than she'd ever seen him—as if the weight of everything had crushed the boy she knew into something more fragile.
Rusty didn't feel fragile anymore. She didn't feel… sick. The rust's grip on her bones was gone. Her muscles obeyed without the grinding pain.
"You feel it?" she asked quietly.
Olmo blinked at her. "Feel what?"
"The… virus. The rust. Is it still—" She gestured to his arm.
He looked down at himself for the first time since waking. The jagged crust along his skin had receded, leaving only faint stains. His eyes widened. "It's… lighter. I didn't even… notice until now."
Rusty swallowed. Her throat ached, but it wasn't from the air anymore.
They stood there in silence for a long moment. The shape of their father's absence was so huge it filled the Worm's belly. Rusty saw it in Olmo's eyes—raw, wet grief that had no shape yet, no words.
She set her jaw. "We'll mourn him," she said finally. "But not here. Not while we're still breathing."
Olmo nodded, small and slow. His voice was almost a whisper. "Okay."
Rusty glanced around, her hands still on his shoulders. She didn't know how they were going to get out. Didn't know why they were still alive. But she knew this—
They weren't done yet.