The Drone's mandibles snapped shut, but they found only air.
At the exact moment Lucian turned the key, the iron hatch didn't swing open—it gave way. The entire mechanism was a pressure-release lock. With a groan of tortured metal, the circular plate dropped from its housing, plunging Lucian into absolute darkness.
He fell.
The Drone, caught mid-lunge, shrieked in frustration as its prey vanished. Its momentum carried it forward, its claws scraping uselessly against the stone edge of the hole where the hatch had been.
Lucian's fall was short and jarring. He landed hard on a steep, slick surface that sent him sliding further down into the subterranean blackness. The chute was made of a smooth, polished material that felt unnervingly organic, like worn bone. He tumbled uncontrollably, his shackled limbs flailing, before being spat out onto a soft, yielding floor.
The air here was thick, humid, and cloyingly sweet with the scent of rot and something alien, like honey and decay. For a moment, he lay still, every muscle in his body screaming in protest. The fall had been brutal, but he was alive.
He pushed himself up, his senses on high alert. The floor was strangely damp and spongy, covered in a thick, moss-like substance that pulsed with a faint, internal luminescence. This dim, sickly green glow provided the only light, revealing that he was in a vast, cavernous chamber.
The walls weren't stone. They were a grotesque, organic lattice of hardened resin and chitin, resembling the inside of a colossal insect's nest. Tunnels branched off in every direction, leading deeper into the suffocating darkness. In the center of the chamber, a large, pulsating sac hung from the ceiling, dripping a viscous fluid onto the floor below.
Lucian's blood ran cold. The key hadn't led to an escape route. It had led him directly into the heart of the hive. The lair of the Hive-Scythe.
And it was waiting for him.
From the largest of the tunnels, a figure emerged, its size blotting out the faint green light. It moved with a dreadful, rhythmic clicking, a sound that was horribly familiar yet amplified a hundred times over.
It was the creature from the carving.
Its lower body was a horrifying, centipede-like monstrosity of segmented black chitin, dozens of spindly legs carrying its bulk forward with unnerving speed. Its torso was vaguely humanoid, but armored in the same glossy black shell. It had no discernible head, only a smooth, featureless plate of chitin where a face should be. Its most terrifying features were its four arms, each one a long, elegant scythe of sharpened bone, dripping with a dark, corrosive venom that sizzled where it touched the ground.
The Hive-Scythe.
It stopped about twenty feet from him, its towering form casting a long, terrifying shadow. It didn't attack immediately. It simply stood there, a silent, monolithic god of slaughter in its own profane temple. Lucian could feel its attention on him, a palpable pressure that was far more terrifying than any shriek or roar. It was the cold, calculating gaze of a master predator assessing its prey.
Lucian's mind, which had been a whirlwind of action and reaction, became deathly still. Every instinct he had honed in the Outskirts, every piece of knowledge from his past life, screamed at him. This was it. The final test. The central conflict of the Nightmare.
The Drones were just a filter. The tower was a cage. The key was a final, one-way ticket to this confrontation. The Spell hadn't given him a path to escape; it had given him a path to the enemy he was meant to destroy.
He slowly got to his feet, the vulture talon clutched in his hand. It felt pitifully small, a child's toy against this abomination. His shackles felt heavier than ever, a symbol of his own weakness.
He was bruised, exhausted, and cornered. The Hive-Scythe stood between him and any hope of survival. It was an Awakened-rank creature, a monster far beyond the Drones he had struggled to defeat. By all logic, this was an impossible fight. A slaughter.
But as he stared at the featureless face of the monster, a cold, familiar fury began to burn in his chest. It was the same fury he'd felt when he watched his parents die. The fury of the helpless against the monstrous.
He would not be helpless. Not again.
The Hive-Scythe raised one of its scythe-like arms, the movement slow and deliberate. It was a challenge. A declaration.
Lucian's grip on the talon tightened until his knuckles were white. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach, but the fury was hotter. He had survived this long. He had killed its minions. He had invaded its lair.
He would not die here.
The standoff stretched for a tense, silent moment. Then, with a sound like a thousand clicking needles, the Hive-Scythe charged.