Chapter 48 - Descent Through the Maw

Damian's fire hit the corridor like a flash-bomb. Flame roared across the living walls, and for the first time the tendrils reacted— the dark-brown, ringed feeders recoiled, dragging their teeth back into the folds of flesh. But the jellyfish-like siphons hovering above didn't fear the heat at all. They pulsed harder, translucent bells tightening as they pulled at every shred of energy they could reach. Damian forced his way through anyway, ripping them off the bodies of his squad. Caleb was nearest to him—kneeling, half-conscious, covered only in shallow feeder marks. Ethan lay beside him, blood-smeared and slack-jawed, one shoulder torn open where a feeder had burrowed. Marcus was on one knee, trembling, his back shredded in long, wet trenches. And Neol— Neol hung across Marcus's back, limp as cloth, skin nearly transparent where the siphons had drained him, his arms covered in gnawed rings of missing flesh. His face held a faint, blissful smile. A psychic afterglow. A corpse's expression on a living body. Damian didn't have time to think. The corridor shuddered. Not from his fire— from the creature itself. The entire passage clenched in a full-body convulsion, muscles seizing as if trying to spit them out or swallow them deeper. Walls folded inward. The floor rippled like a throat preparing to retch. Then the ground dropped.