The tunnel widened without warning.
Aiden stumbled forward, boots slipping on slime-slick stone, and nearly fell into the collapsed chamber beyond. He caught himself on a jagged pillar of broken brick, coughing hard enough that his ribs screamed in protest.
The sewer here had once been reinforced.
Once.
Now the ceiling had partially caved in, creating a low, uneven dome of cracked stone and rusted iron ribs. Murky water pooled across the floor, ankle-deep in some places, knee-deep in others. The smell was worse—rotting organic matter layered with something sharp and animal.
Aiden's good eye adjusted slowly.
Something moved.
Not fast.
Not loud.
Intentional.
A ripple passed through the water near the far wall. Then another. A shape detached itself from the shadows—low to the ground, hunched, its silhouette wrong in ways that made Aiden's skin crawl.
It limped.
One of its legs dragged uselessly behind it, the limb bent at an angle legs were not meant to bend. Dried black blood crusted its flank, clinging to coarse, matted fur. One horn—curved and ridged like twisted bone—had snapped halfway down, leaving a jagged stump.
A wounded monster.
Tunnel-born.
Low-tier.
And starving.
Aiden's heart pounded.
Not with courage.
With the simple, animal knowledge that prey recognized in a predator's gaze.
The creature sniffed the air. Its head jerked up, revealing a mouth lined with too many teeth, uneven and yellowed, layered like broken glass. One cloudy eye fixed on him. The other socket was an empty, puckered scar.
It hissed.
The sound scraped against Aiden's nerves.
He backed away slowly, hands raised, feet testing the water with care. His mind raced—not with plans, but with memories.
Run. Hide. Survive.
His knife—
Gone.
The realization hit hard. He patted his belt, his pockets, his boots. Nothing.
Bare hands.
Broken ribs.
One working eye.
The monster took a step forward.
Water sloshed.
Aiden swallowed.
"Alright," he muttered hoarsely. "We're both having a bad day."
The creature lunged.
It was faster than it looked.
Aiden threw himself sideways just as jaws snapped shut where his head had been. Teeth clashed with a wet, bone-chilling sound. The creature crashed into the pillar behind him, snarling as it rebounded.
Pain exploded through Aiden's side as he hit the ground. He rolled instinctively, barely avoiding a slashing claw that gouged stone where his chest had been.
He scrambled backward, palms burning, lungs screaming for air.
The monster turned, limping faster now, dragging its useless leg but compensating with raw fury. Saliva dripped from its mouth, hissing as it hit the foul water.
Aiden's gaze flicked around the chamber.
Broken masonry.
Rusty iron rods jutting from collapsed supports.
Debris.
Weapons, if you were desperate enough.
He grabbed a length of rusted rebar and yanked it free. The effort sent lightning through his ribs, but he bit down on the pain, teeth grinding.
The monster charged again.
Aiden screamed—not in fear, but in defiance—and swung.
The rebar struck the creature's skull with a dull clang, glancing off its horn stump. The impact numbed his hands, sending a jolt up his arms. The monster staggered, more surprised than hurt.
It retaliated.
Claws raked across Aiden's shoulder, tearing cloth and skin alike. Blood sprayed hot against the cold air. He cried out, stumbling, the rebar slipping from his grasp and splashing into the water.
The monster reared back for the kill.
Aiden's foot hit something solid.
A broken shard of stone, jagged and sharp.
He didn't think.
He dove forward.
The monster's jaws closed on empty air as Aiden slammed the stone upward with everything he had. The shard plunged into the soft tissue beneath its jaw, burying itself deep.
The creature shrieked.
A sound so raw and violent it rattled the chamber.
Aiden clung to the shard, hands slick with blood—his and the monster's—pushing, stabbing again and again with blind desperation. The monster thrashed, slamming him into the wall, claws raking uselessly as its strength bled out through the wound.
Finally, with a convulsive shudder, it collapsed.
Its weight crushed Aiden to the ground.
He lay there beneath it, chest heaving, vision tunneling, the creature's hot blood soaking into his clothes.
For a moment, he thought it was over.
Then pain detonated inside his chest.
Not a bruise.
Not a crack.
Something deeper.
Something wrong.
Aiden screamed.
His back arched violently, body seizing as if struck by lightning. His fingers clawed at his chest, nails tearing into skin as the pain intensified, spiraling inward instead of out.
It felt like his heart was being crushed.
No—split.
Cracked open from the inside.
His vision went black at the edges. The world shrank to the agony hammering behind his ribs, a relentless pounding that didn't match the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Because there were two.
One familiar.
One new.
Aiden gasped, eyes snapping open as something beat—slow, heavy, alien—just beneath his sternum.
Thump.
Not flesh.
Not blood.
Thump.
His chest bulged outward.
Aiden howled as skin stretched unnaturally, veins darkening, crawling across his torso like living ink. The flesh above his heart turned translucent, then blackened, as if scorched from within.
Cracks spread.
Not fractures.
Etchings.
Angular. Deliberate.
A shape emerged beneath his skin.
A card.
No—a heart shaped like a card.
Jet black.
Cracked like obsidian struck by lightning.
It pulsed.
With every beat, the cracks glowed faintly, swallowing light instead of reflecting it. The thing was embedded where his heart should be, fused to muscle and bone, veins threading into its edges like roots into stone.
Aiden stared in horror.
"What… what is this…?" he croaked.
The monster beneath him convulsed.
Its corpse twitched once.
Then something pulled.
Aiden screamed again as a sensation unlike anything he had ever known tore through him—not physical pain, but something deeper, more intimate. It was as if invisible hands had plunged into his mind and chest simultaneously, ripping something loose.
The monster's body began to dissolve.
Not rot.
Not decay.
It broke apart into drifting motes of gray-black light, spiraling upward in a slow, helpless vortex. The particles streamed toward Aiden's chest, sinking into the cracked black heart one after another.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
With each beat, the pull intensified.
Aiden thrashed, sobbing, choking on his own breath as images flooded his mind.
Hunger.
Cold tunnels.
The instinct to stalk, to ambush, to tear flesh and drink warmth.
Pain. Endless pain.
The monster's memories weren't clear thoughts—just fragments, urges, sensations forced violently into him. His stomach twisted. His mind reeled.
Stop—!
The last of the monster dissolved.
The chamber went still.
Silence pressed in, thick and heavy.
Aiden lay there, shaking uncontrollably, chest heaving, eyes unfocused. The black heart beneath his skin pulsed once more.
Then—
A voice.
Not sound.
Not words spoken aloud.
A whisper that slid directly into his thoughts like silk wrapped around a blade.
…Alive…
Aiden stiffened.
His breath hitched.
"W—who's there?" he whispered.
No answer.
Only a feeling.
Awareness.
Curiosity.
The cracked black heart beat again, stronger this time. The pain began to recede, replaced by a deep, gnawing sensation that had nothing to do with hunger of the stomach.
Aiden curled in on himself, clutching his chest, tears streaming freely now.
Foreign instincts lingered.
Not fading.
Settling.
Embedding themselves like splinters in his mind.
He felt… sharper.
More aware of the dark.
Of the water.
Of the faint vibrations in the stone beneath him.
It terrified him.
It exhilarated him.
It made him want to retch and laugh at the same time.
His body finally gave out.
Aiden collapsed fully, screaming as the last echoes of the monster's existence bled into him, rewriting something fundamental.
In the darkness of the sewer, beneath the city that had erased him—
Something inside him was eating.
And it was hungry.