Darkness was no longer the mere absence of light. It had become a thick, oppressive substance. The passage plunged downward on a steep slope, a descent into the frozen heart of the forgotten kingdom. Underfoot, the texture changed from rough scree to something smooth, dense, and impossibly hard despite eons of wear—like obsidian formed from the frozen tears of abandoned gods, bitingly cold. Each step, its faint scuffing sound amplified in the absolute silence, echoed back to her like a drumbeat betraying her position.
The air was stagnant, smelling of millennia of dust and decay, but laced through it was that cloying, sweet stench of overripe fruit rotting. It was no longer just background; it was a venomous serpent, coiling around her breath, its fangs testing, trying to pierce her lungs and leave its mark. She could feel it prickling against her skin, a biological revulsion.
She completely suppressed the weak, instinctive glow from the mark on her hand. Here, light was not protection; it was a target. Deprived of sight, her other senses stretched to a razor's edge. Her ears strained, listening beneath the suffocating silence. No wind, no dripping water. But underneath the thick, drowning quiet, there was a… scraping. Not singular, but plural, from different directions. Sometimes from a middling distance behind her—slow, viscous, like something multi-limbed and damp being dragged over a hard surface. Other times, from deep within the grid-like, long-defunct ventilation shafts above—lighter, quicker, carrying an unsettling sense of inquiry. They had not dispersed with their prey's concealment. They were patiently combing through the dark, inch by inch, with senses beyond sight.
She stopped at a bend where the slope bottomed out, her back against the ice-cold stone, slowly regulating her breath, forcing the sound of her heartbeat back deep into her chest. She could no longer rely on the mark's so-called 'guidance.' That felt too much like bait on a hook, reeking of ill omen. Here, she could only trust her own honed senses and her dawning, almost intuitive understanding of this dead land.
Her observation became her only compass in the dark:
The Whisper of Dust: She knelt, her fingertips ghosting over the ground. Most areas were covered in a uniform, thick, velvety layer of dust—proof of congealed ages. Yet, along certain specific paths, the dust showed subtle, almost imperceptible streamlined patterns, as if guided by a faint, persistent current of air. This wasn't the trail of the Shadows—they seemed to leave no physical trace. This was more like a faint, dying 'breath' from some core deep within the vast facility, a last pulse that tugged at the finest particles, sketching for her the hidden flow of residual energy.
The Warning of Runes: On the walls, most of the once-potent runes were utterly dead, mere meaningless scratches in the rock. But at certain structural nodes—doorway jambs, passage junctions, the bases of ancient devices—as she approached, the mark on her hand would send a fine, sharp, undeniable prick, like the touch of a cold needle. It was no longer a warm guide but carried a sense of resistance and warning. She noted keenly that near these runes that pained her mark, the walls often bore deeper scars: gasps torn by immense force, pits like acid burns, areas fused into unnatural crystal. These were old wounds, records of conflicts and destruction here that surpassed imagination.
The Logic of Structure: She began forcing herself to read the rubble through the eyes of its builders. This wasn't random collapse, but the corpse of a once-precise, vast facility. Broad, high-ceilinged passages connected to vast, circular or ovoid chambers with glassy, dry basins—"Containment Conduits". Narrow, cramped areas were dense with corroded, twisted pipes of varying thickness—the "regulation networks" or "nerve clusters". Rooms with heavy metal blast doors, complex locks, and observation windows set into the frames were likely "Quarantine Zones" or "Specimen Vaults". The scraping of the Shadows was clearest, most dense, echoing in the open Containment Conduits, as if they were favored hunting grounds. In the pipe-dense areas, the sounds became muffled, hampered, as if the residual metal structures themselves interfered with their perception or movement.
Forced Choices and Dangerous Leverage:
The way forward was severed by a massive fracture. The original passage had collapsed completely here, opening into a chasm over ten meters wide, a plunge into devouring blackness. On the far side was the ledge of the continuing path, just a darker silhouette in the absolute dark. The only connections spanning the abyss were several huge energy conduits, thicker than a man's waist. They might once have blazed with power; now, only their corroded metal husks remained, like the skeletal ribs of some prehistoric beast forming a perilous bridge to the unknown.
At that moment, the scraping behind her sharpened, closing in! No longer a leisurely search, but a targeted acceleration! At least two—or more—from the slope she'd just descended. They had sensed her. Perhaps through her residual body heat, the air disturbed by her breath, or simply by scenting the indelible 'life' emanating from the mark, so alien to this dead silence.
No time to weigh options. No second path. She moved quickly to the nearest conduit. Her fingers met rough metal oxide and a cold that seeped into the bone. She shook it hard; the points where it met the rock face groaned with a grating metal shriek, shedding rust flakes, but the main structure seemed sound enough.
No more waiting. She took a deep breath, trusted her weight to her arms, and began climbing hand over foot along the death-bridge spanning the void. As she hung over the abyss, its chill climbed her spine. With every movement, the rusted metal groaned. With every shift of hand and foot, risk of slipping away.
Just as she reached the midpoint, trapped between here and there, the Shadows poured from the passage mouth behind her like living, viscous pitch. They had no fixed form, their edges constantly shifting, yet they unerringly 'sensed' living flesh and energy sources. They had found her, suspended on the conduit.
No roar. No warning. Just the scraping sound sharpening, intensifying, like countless bone needles screeching against metal! The Shadows flowed along the conduit's surface, a tide of darkness rushing toward her, faster than any she'd seen on the ground!
The instinct to survive overwhelmed everything. She climbed forward desperately, arm muscles burning, fingertips white with strain. The rusted metal groaned under her weight, a sound of imminent, catastrophic failure.
The vanguard of the Shadows, that icy, corrosive presence, was almost upon her boots—
At the last possible moment, she lunged forward, her body clearing the conduit and crashing onto the far platform. The impact sent her tumbling several times before she could stop herself.
She immediately looked back.
The Shadows were trying to engulf, to flood across the conduit. But as they washed over a section near the middle, the rusted metal surface suddenly lit up with runic lines, so faded they were almost the color of rust! The runes flared with a blinding, pure white light—not warm, but carrying an absolute force of purification and rejection.
HISSSSS—!!!
A violent sound of energy dissolution, like water hitting boiling oil, exploded in the chasm! The portion of Shadows covering the runed area twisted, contracted violently as if thrown into infernal fire, and instantly vaporized, emitting a silent shriek that struck directly at the soul. The entire conduit shuddered from the sudden energy discharge. Rock at its anchor points cracked, huge chunks of corroded metal broke free and fell into the abyss below, no echo returning.
She lay on the platform's edge, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, threatening to break free. The taste of blood filled her throat—from exertion, or the dregs of fear.
She understood. These conduits weren't just paths; they were part of the ancient energy network itself, the facility's arteries. Even dead, their material and internal runes held a last, faint residue of purifying power. The Shadows instinctively loathed and avoided it, but driven by hunting instinct, they would recklessly touch this taboo, triggering this mutually destructive backlash.
The mark hadn't guided her here. The dying structure's own residual defenses, coupled with the Shadows' relentless pursuit, had together pushed her onto this one path of survival. She wasn't chosen. She had merely, and only, stepped into a gap within this cycle of destruction.
The Wager and the Echo
Weary and vigilant, she moved away from the chasm's edge, deeper into the area beyond the platform. It resembled a small control node. The room was circular, its wall housing a huge, crystal display webbed with cracks. Below it, several nodes were sunk into a stone control console. Most were shattered or dark. All but one, central to the others, its surface marked with an indentation. The shape of the recess—a closed eye encircled by miniature stars—was a perfect match for the mark on her hand.
The interior of the indentation was grey, lifeless, like a dead eye.
She stared at the recess. The mark on her hand, as if sensing something, began to generate a persistent, low-frequency heat—not a prick, but a… resonant pull.
Then.
Thud…
A heavy impact sound came from the direction she'd come from, across the chasm. Then a second. A third. Something was trying to cross the abyss? Or… striking the rock supports of the conduits?
The scraping resumed, too, no longer scattered, but concentrated just outside the control node's only entrance—a heavy metal doorway jammed half-open by rubble. The sound was dense as rainfall, carrying an unmistakable, growing agitation and hunger.
They had followed. More of them. They had found another way, or they were building a path, regardless of cost.
She looked at the recess that perfectly matched her mark. This wasn't guidance. This was a wager, plain and simple. Placing her hand upon it might activate some sealed defense system, drive back or even destroy the threat outside. Or it might simply provide a brighter beacon for the ruins, drawing something worse. Or, most dire, it could drain the fragile, newly-formed connection between her and the mark, leaving her utterly bereft of her only unconventional tool.
The icy sense of crisis warred with the warm pull from the mark within her. Outside, the formless destruction pressed closer. Before her, an unfathomable 'hope' that might lead to deeper despair.
Slowly, she raised her left hand, the marked one.
The air seemed to freeze solid.
The air congealed into solid ice, each breath a stab of shattered glass. Inside the control node, time stretched into an agonizing crawl. The warmth from the mark on her left hand and the sickeningly dense scraping outside formed a lethal duet. The noise was no longer a search; it was a confirmation, the sound of a predator testing the bars of its cage, thrumming with a feverish impatience to break through.
The recess remained grey, silent, a well that swallowed hope.
Placing her hand upon it was the only variable in sight. Would it activate a sanctuary, or sound her own death knell?
There was no more time for deliberation. The rubble piled against the metal doorway began to shiver and shift; the door hinges groaned as if under immense, battering pressure from the other side.
Time to bet.
She stopped hesitating. Her left hand slammed into the recess, a perfect match for her mark.
Huummm—
No cataclysmic roar, only a deep, foundational resonance, as if from the planet's very core. A visible, pale golden ripple spread from her hand, washing over the entire node, brushing the walls, the crystal display, then vanishing as quickly as it came.
Then, from under her feet, above her head, within the walls all around—a series of faint, rapid clicks, like colossal gears rusted for millennia being forcibly pried back into motion. The faded runic lines on the walls lit up in sequence with a soft, white light. Not the explosive, purifying flare from the conduit, but a steady, sustained, defensive luminescence, painting the node's interior in cold, eerie tones.
The scraping and battering outside ceased abruptly.
Replaced by a furious, more frenzied, silent shriek that struck directly at her mind, dizzying her. The Shadows hadn't left. She could feel them outside, surrounding this tiny island of light like a tide, seemingly held at bay by an invisible barrier.
Success. For now.
Before she could catch her breath, the huge, cracked crystal display directly ahead flickered to life! Unstable light formed fragmented, jumping images, accompanied by distorted, broken shards of sound—like the brainwave recording of a dying mind:
Image One: A brilliant, golden stream of energy, flowing like a tame river into the vast basin in the distance. Countless blurred figures in uniforms bustled around it, instruments humming rhythmically. (Sound: *"...Sequence stable. Energy purity 99.7%... Life-Weave progress..."*)
Image Two: The energy stream turned violent, its color shifting from gold to a dark, angry crimson. The substance in the basin boiled and swelled violently. Alarms blared, red warning lights flashed madly. (Sound: "Warning! External interference... Sequence Reversal! Suppression systems failing!")
Image Three: (The view zoomed into the basin.) Within the crimson energy, something was coalescing—not physical, but a purer... darkness. It was born from the energy itself, spreading through it like ink dropped into clear water, polluting everything. (Sound: Piercing screams, mixed with an inhuman, greedy sucking noise.)
Image Four: (A final, frozen frame.) This very node, but newer. A figure staggered to the console, and with a final effort, slammed a faintly glowing object into the recess. White light erupted, consuming the room before the image died completely. (Sound: A relieved sigh, and a final, blurred phrase: "...Seal... the core... Wait...")
The flood of information wasn't a gentle guide but a violent forced download. She grunted, bracing herself against the console. Her head throbbed, but the crucial facts were clear:
The fall of Fugē Àoníng stemmed from the experiment's catastrophic failure. The "Sequence Reversal" not only shattered the facility but bred the shadow creatures outside—parasites feeding on rogue energy and the echoes of life. The last user had activated this sector's final lockdown protocol, and the mark on her hand was the key. Perhaps the only key to regaining control, or to purging it all.
As she processed this, the node's defensive light began to flicker unstably! The sound of grinding gears from within the walls grew rough, screeching.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Heavier impacts slammed against the metal door. The entire frame shuddered; the jamming rubble shed more fragments. The ancient, worn system couldn't withstand this assault for long. The white barrier visibly thinned.
No time to stay.
She jerked her hand from the recess. Instantly, the crystal display went dark. The node's defensive light flickered several more times, holding on, but significantly weakened.
The Shadows outside seemed to sense this weakening. Their assault grew even more frantic.
Her eyes swept the room. When the defensive lights had first flared, she'd spotted it: a small, overlooked isolation hatch on the far side, previously shrouded in shadow, with a manual wheel valve. A possible exit.
She rushed to the hatch, gripping the freezing-cold wheel. She threw her whole weight into turning it. The seized mechanism shrieked in protest, refusing to budge. Behind her, the impacts grew louder, the main door bulging inward.
"Urgh—Ha!" She braced her legs, channeling all her strength, all her will, into her arms.
Screech… SCREECH… CRACK!
A sharp sound, and the wheel finally gave, turning a full rotation before moving more freely. She spun it rapidly until she heard the internal lock disengage.
She hauled the heavy hatch open. Beyond lay a narrow, downward-sloping maintenance conduit, barely wide enough to crawl through, smelling strongly of machine oil and rust.
At that exact moment—
KABOOM!!!
The main metal door, along with part of its frame, was blasted inward! Rubble flew. Thick, clotted darkness flooded in like a burst dam. The defensive white light guttered and died the instant the Shadows touched it.
An icy, deathly chill enveloped her entire back.
She didn't look back. She plunged into the maintenance conduit, yanking the hatch shut behind her and spinning the wheel lock.
Almost the second it sealed—
THUMP!!!
A heavy impact struck the hatch from the other side. The narrow conduit shook, dust raining down. But this smaller isolation hatch seemed sturdier than the main door, holding for now.
The pounding continued, relentless, but the door held.
Leaning against the cold, damp metal wall in utter blackness, she gasped for air, sweat-drenched hair plastered to her forehead. The mark on her hand glowed with a steady warmth—in this absolute dark, her only proof that her connection to this world wasn't yet severed.
She was alive. For now.
But she knew she'd only escaped a smaller cage into a tighter, more unknown depth. Shadows prowled outside the hatch. Ahead lay an abyss of darkness.
And the violently implanted memory fragments, and that word—"Wait"—were now branded deep into her consciousness.
Wait for what?
She didn't know. But she understood that in this forsaken kingdom, the first step to survival was to venture deeper into the darkness, to seek an answer that might not even exist.
She drew a shaky breath of the foul air, steadied her trembling arms, and began carefully feeling her way down the sloping maintenance conduit. Each step carried her across the threshold of the unknown.
The air congealed into solid ice, each breath a stab of shattered glass. Inside the control node, time stretched into an agonizing crawl. The warmth from the mark on her left hand and the sickeningly dense scraping outside formed a lethal duet. The noise was no longer a search; it was a confirmation, the sound of a predator testing the bars of its cage, thrumming with a feverish impatience to break through.
The recess remained grey, silent, a well that swallowed hope.
Placing her hand upon it was the only variable in sight. Would it activate a sanctuary, or sound her own death knell?
There was no more time for deliberation. The rubble piled against the metal doorway began to shiver and shift; the door hinges groaned as if under immense, battering pressure from the other side.
Time to bet.
She stopped hesitating. Her left hand slammed into the recess, a perfect match for her mark.
Huummm—
No cataclysmic roar, only a deep, foundational resonance, as if from the planet's very core. A visible, pale golden ripple spread from her hand, washing over the entire node, brushing the walls, the crystal display, then vanishing as quickly as it came.
Then, from under her feet, above her head, within the walls all around—a series of faint, rapid clicks, like colossal gears rusted for millennia being forcibly pried back into motion. The faded runic lines on the walls lit up in sequence with a soft, white light. Not the explosive, purifying flare from the conduit, but a steady, sustained, defensive luminescence, painting the node's interior in cold, eerie tones.
The scraping and battering outside ceased abruptly.
Replaced by a furious, more frenzied, silent shriek that struck directly at her mind, dizzying her. The Shadows hadn't left. She could feel them outside, surrounding this tiny island of light like a tide, seemingly held at bay by an invisible barrier.
Success. For now.
Before she could catch her breath, the huge, cracked crystal display directly ahead flickered to life! Unstable light formed fragmented, jumping images, accompanied by distorted, broken shards of sound—like the brainwave recording of a dying mind:
Image One: A brilliant, golden stream of energy, flowing like a tame river into the vast basin in the distance. Countless blurred figures in uniforms bustled around it, instruments humming rhythmically. (Sound: *"...Sequence stable. Energy purity 99.7%... Life-Weave progress..."*)
Image Two: The energy stream turned violent, its color shifting from gold to a dark, angry crimson. The substance in the basin boiled and swelled violently. Alarms blared, red warning lights flashed madly. (Sound: "Warning! External interference... Sequence Reversal! Suppression systems failing!")
Image Three: (The view zoomed into the basin.) Within the crimson energy, something was coalescing—not physical, but a purer... darkness. It was born from the energy itself, spreading through it like ink dropped into clear water, polluting everything. (Sound: Piercing screams, mixed with an inhuman, greedy sucking noise.)
Image Four: (A final, frozen frame.) This very node, but newer. A figure staggered to the console, and with a final effort, slammed a faintly glowing object into the recess. White light erupted, consuming the room before the image died completely. (Sound: A relieved sigh, and a final, blurred phrase: "...Seal... the core... Wait...")
The flood of information wasn't a gentle guide but a violent forced download. She grunted, bracing herself against the console. Her head throbbed, but the crucial facts were clear:
The fall of Fugē Àoníng stemmed from the experiment's catastrophic failure. The "Sequence Reversal" not only shattered the facility but bred the shadow creatures outside—parasites feeding on rogue energy and the echoes of life. The last user had activated this sector's final lockdown protocol, and the mark on her hand was the key. Perhaps the only key to regaining control, or to purging it all.
As she processed this, the node's defensive light began to flicker unstably! The sound of grinding gears from within the walls grew rough, screeching.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Heavier impacts slammed against the metal door. The entire frame shuddered; the jamming rubble shed more fragments. The ancient, worn system couldn't withstand this assault for long. The white barrier visibly thinned.
No time to stay.
She jerked her hand from the recess. Instantly, the crystal display went dark. The node's defensive light flickered several more times, holding on, but significantly weakened.
The Shadows outside seemed to sense this weakening. Their assault grew even more frantic.
Her eyes swept the room. When the defensive lights had first flared, she'd spotted it: a small, overlooked isolation hatch on the far side, previously shrouded in shadow, with a manual wheel valve. A possible exit.
She rushed to the hatch, gripping the freezing-cold wheel. She threw her whole weight into turning it. The seized mechanism shrieked in protest, refusing to budge. Behind her, the impacts grew louder, the main door bulging inward.
"Urgh—Ha!" She braced her legs, channeling all her strength, all her will, into her arms.
Screech… SCREECH… CRACK!
A sharp sound, and the wheel finally gave, turning a full rotation before moving more freely. She spun it rapidly until she heard the internal lock disengage.
She hauled the heavy hatch open. Beyond lay a narrow, downward-sloping maintenance conduit, barely wide enough to crawl through, smelling strongly of machine oil and rust.
At that exact moment—
KABOOM!!!
The main metal door, along with part of its frame, was blasted inward! Rubble flew. Thick, clotted darkness flooded in like a burst dam. The defensive white light guttered and died the instant the Shadows touched it.
An icy, deathly chill enveloped her entire back.
She didn't look back. She plunged into the maintenance conduit, yanking the hatch shut behind her and spinning the wheel lock.
Almost the second it sealed—
THUMP!!!
A heavy impact struck the hatch from the other side. The narrow conduit shook, dust raining down. But this smaller isolation hatch seemed sturdier than the main door, holding for now.
The pounding continued, relentless, but the door held.
Leaning against the cold, damp metal wall in utter blackness, she gasped for air, sweat-drenched hair plastered to her forehead. The mark on her hand glowed with a steady warmth—in this absolute dark, her only proof that her connection to this world wasn't yet severed.
She was alive. For now.
But she knew she'd only escaped a smaller cage into a tighter, more unknown depth. Shadows prowled outside the hatch. Ahead lay an abyss of darkness.
And the violently implanted memory fragments, and that word—"Wait"—were now branded deep into her consciousness.
Wait for what?
She didn't know. But she understood that in this forsaken kingdom, the first step to survival was to venture deeper into the darkness, to seek an answer that might not even exist.
She drew a shaky breath of the foul air, steadied her trembling arms, and began carefully feeling her way down the sloping maintenance conduit. Each step carried her across the threshold of the unknown.
The maintenance conduit descended at a sharper angle than she'd anticipated. There were no steps, only a smooth, ribbed metal surface slick with a greasy film—oil, or perhaps some kind of biological secretion. Every step demanded extreme caution; a single misstep could send her sliding into the abyss below. The passage was claustrophobically narrow, her shoulders brushing against cold, rough walls studded with pipes. The air was thick and foul, a nauseating mix of metal rust and the pungent stench of ancient machine oil. Each breath felt like swallowing iron filings.
Absolute darkness devoured everything. The mark on her hand no longer actively glowed, but its persistent warmth was a lone star in the void, a reminder of her own existence. She was reduced to touch and sound, navigating the pipe maze like a blind woman. Her fingertips traced the cold walls, feeling the deep grooves of wear and the occasional, long-cold weld seam.
The pounding from above hadn't stopped, but muffled by layers of metal and the winding conduit, it was now a distant, buried thunder. It brought no comfort—only the pressure of a countdown. They hadn't given up. They were just finding another way, or waiting for her strength to fail.
In the suffocating silence and dark, another sound gradually clarified.
It started as a faint, intermittent gnawing. Like countless tiny, hard mandibles chewing on the metal from within. It came from all around—sometimes from the pipes overhead, sometimes from the depths below, sometimes feeling just on the other side of the wall. More unsettling than the scraping, it carried a slow, inexorable corrosion, as if the vast facility was being hollowed out from the inside.
She stopped, holding her breath, trying to pinpoint the source. But the sound was ghostly, elusive. Pressing her ear to the cold pipe wall, the gnawing sharpened, a grating, teeth-on-edge sensation. Something was moving inside the pipes.
An icy dread gripped her. These Shadows, or something that lived with them, weren't just in the open spaces. They had infiltrated the facility's finest capillaries.
She had to get out of this conduit, faster.
Relying on memory of the slope and turns—unreliable in this blindness—she quickened her descent, hand on the wall, steps as quiet as possible. The foul air began to carry a faint current, bringing a hint of something different from rust and decay—a dry, staticky dustiness, and the barest trace of ozone, like the after-scent of a massive energy device long dormant.
This scent gave her a direction.
After a near-ninety-degree turn, the darkness ahead seemed to lessen. Not from light, but from a faint, dark crimson glow emanating from a larger opening at the conduit's end. It didn't illuminate the path, but it outlined an exit.
The crimson light offered no warmth, only the ominous gloss of cooling magma.
Here, the gnawing seemed to recede, replaced by a deep, constant thrum. Not the sound of machinery, but the vibration of energy suppressed to its extreme, transmitted through the metal structure, making her palm tingle where it touched the wall.
She edged cautiously to the opening. It was a broken pipe end, opening into a larger space below. The crimson glow rose from the depths. She lay at the edge and looked down.
The view opened up, but the sight sank her heart.
Below was a colossal cylindrical shaft, bottomless, its top lost in darkness high above. Her maintenance conduit was just one of countless similar outlets peppering the shaft wall. Suspended in the shaft's center was a massive core of twisted metal and crystalline formations. The dark red glow pulsed from within it. Unstable, sometimes a dying ember, sometimes flaring with a brief, harsh crimson that painted the entire shaft in a hellish light.
The core's surface was covered in a seething, viscous darkness. The Shadows! They clung to it like a bone-deep infection, their forms twisting and swelling with each pulse of the core. The low thrum seemed to grow more pained and sharp. They weren't guarding it. They were feeding on it, draining the ancient facility's last dregs of power.
More horrifying were the shaft walls. They were honeycombed with dense clusters of holes. Thick energy conduits snaked from some, connecting to the central core, but most were severed and withered. Around these holes, the metal was coated in a thick, asphalt-like substance that seethed constantly—the source of that relentless, skin-crawling gnawing. They were consuming not just the core, but the very foundations that supported it.
This was the still, slowly beating heart of Fugē Àoníng. The source of all the pollution and ruin. A power core being consumed from within and without, teetering on the edge of final collapse.
The pipe opening she was in was about four or five meters above the nearest accessible spot—a narrow maintenance platform ringing the shaft. Its railings were mostly rusted and broken. In the crimson light, she could see the platform's surface was also coated in the same black, seething substance, like a living moss.
Jumping down would be leaping into a trap-filled swamp.
As she scanned the area below for a possible route, an ear-splitting shriek, one that felt like it could tear the soul, erupted from the depths of the maintenance conduit she'd just left!
It drew closer rapidly, thrumming with the thrill of the hunt!
They'd caught up! Through the pipes!
No time to hesitate!
Her eyes locked onto a relatively clear patch on the platform below, a spot kept bare, seemingly by drips of some condensate from above. She gauged the distance and the landing.
The shrieking and scrabbling from behind was right at her heels. She could smell it now—the wave of charred, rotten stench.
She took a sharp breath and jumped!
Her body fell through the crimson-tinged air, wind whistling past. She hit the target area, tumbling forward to disperse the impact. Her feet met not the black substance, but something slippery—the condensate.
The instant she landed, several shadowy forms, like black lightning, shot from the pipe above! They didn't fall; they seemed to float, twisting in mid-air, their formless outlines shifting in the crimson glow, countless tiny, insectoid red points blinking within them. They spotted her immediately on the platform, emitting a new, piercing shriek full of greed, and dove like hawks!
She sprang up and sprinted along the narrow ring-platform. On the far side, a wider metal walkway—seemingly a main maintenance route—descended further down the shaft. It looked decrepit, but more passable than this ledge.
The Shadows gave chase. Where they passed, the seething black substance on the platform stirred, extending viscous tendrils to snare her ankles.
She drew her short blade, swinging backward without looking. The edge, faintly glowing with gold, sliced through the tendrils with a sizzling burn. They severed, dissolving into black smoke. But more Shadows were converging from all directions, seeming more active, more aggressive in this core-saturated environment.
The entrance to the metal walkway ahead was partially blocked by collapsed, twisted pipes, leaving only a narrow gap.
Just as she rushed toward it, ready to squeeze through—
BOOM!!!
A detonation, far deeper and closer than any before, came from the shaft's core!
The entire space shook violently. The crimson light erupted, staining everything blood-red. The Shadows clinging to the core screamed in agony, the weaker ones vaporizing outright!
The ones pursuing her faltered, their movements stuttering into momentary chaos, disrupted by the sudden energy surge.
Seizing the chance, she squeezed through the gap and onto the broader walkway. It spiraled downward along the shaft wall, destination unknown.
She glanced back. The core's light was slowly receding, returning to its unstable pulse. The Shadows, after their brief disarray, re-coalesced with furious intensity, throwing themselves against the blocked entrance, the impact echoing dully.
They were blocked. For now.
She didn't dare stop, moving quickly down the spiraling walkway. The mark on her hand, which had flared with intense heat during the core's outburst, still burned. She didn't know where this walkway led—deeper into the earth, or to another dead end.
But she knew she was getting closer to that runaway "heart," the source from which all this darkness spawned.
And with proximity, the unbreakable connection between the mark and this land was growing clearer, sharper... and more dangerous.