The chamber erupts.

  Skeps pour from the tunnels—scuttling, shrieking, lunging in a tide of claws and teeth. The stench of their musk slams into Del’s nose, thick with decay and blood and something older, fouler. The moment holds no ceremony. No time to think.

  He checks his sword.

  The blade is slick with blood and gore but the weight is comforting in his hand. The edge is already dulled from earlier fights, but it’ll do. It has to.

  ‘Hope to fuck it’s enough.’

  Elara’s at his side, already nocking an arrow. Her face is set, unreadable, though he catches the faint tremble in her hands. Not fear—focus. She draws the bowstring tight, eyes narrowing.

  “Never a dull moment, eh?” he mutters, voice tight as he adjusts his stance.

  Elara’s lips twitch into something like a smile. “You’ve a gift for understatement, Del.”

  He huffs, flicking sweat from his brow. “Better than being remembered for my pretty face.”

  The humour is automatic. Hollow. But it helps. A rhythm against the chaos.

  Then the skeps are on them.

  The first wave hits fast—thin-bodied things with twitching limbs and twin heads snapping hungrily. Del steps into their charge, blade rising. The nearest skep rears up with a snarl—he ducks under its swipe and drives his sword into the thorax, feeling the crunch of chitin and wet collapse of organs.

  Black ichor sprays his forearm. Too warm. Too thick.

  A scream—Elara’s arrow takes one mid-leap, pinning it to the tunnel wall with a meaty thud. Del spins, slicing through another skep’s leg as it charges, forcing it down before he hacks the head clean off.

  Misty crashes into the melee like a living weapon.

  She’s not the sleek ginger cat they’ve travelled with. She’s muscle and claw and rippling menace—hellcat form fully unleashed. Her roar shakes the chamber, deeper than it should be, primal. One skep barely has time to react before she’s on it—teeth burying into its spine, claws shredding its flanks.

  She tears three apart in seconds.

  ‘Remind me not to piss her off,’ Del thinks, half-wincing as her jaws snap shut on a skep’s neck with a sound like a snapped tree limb.

  Another arrow whistles past, and he hears the telltale thunk of it hitting flesh. Elara’s precision doesn’t falter.

  ‘Good girl,’ he thinks. ‘Glad you’re better with that bow than me.’

  More skeps flood into the chamber—smaller ones at the flanks, but now larger shapes push forward. Thicker hides. Broader shoulders.

  Guards.

  Del’s pulse spikes. He shifts his weight and grips the sword tighter. “We’ve got big ones!”

  “I see them!” Elara calls, loosing another arrow. It pierces a skep’s shoulder but doesn’t slow it. She switches to another shaft, this one tipped with a barbed head.

  The ground trembles slightly beneath his boots.

  A skep guard barrels toward him, claws scraping against stone. Del sidesteps—but his footing slips on a patch of blood-slick bone. His knee jars hard as he lands in a crouch, sword coming up just in time to deflect a wild snap from one of the guard’s heads.

  He grits his teeth, shoving upward with all his strength. His blade slices along its jaw, catching bone but not stopping it. The second head snaps at his shoulder—he twists, feels teeth graze leather.

  Too close.

  Misty slams into the guard from the side, claws raking deep. She pins it beneath her weight, snarling, golden eyes alight. Her jaws clamp down and rip. One head goes limp. Then the other.

  The body shudders. Stops.

  She doesn’t pause—she launches at the next target without hesitation.

  Del pushes upright, panting. His sword’s heavy now, his limbs slower than they should be. He looks down—his thigh’s been gashed. Not deep, but it’ll slow him.

  ‘Brilliant. First five minutes and already bleeding.’

  “Del!” Elara’s voice snaps him back. He turns just as a smaller skep scrambles toward him from behind.

  An arrow takes it in the throat. It skids, twitches, and dies.

  He gives her a nod—no breath to waste on words. She’s already drawing again.

  Another wave hits. One of the guards flanks wide and charges Elara. She drops her bow, draws her dagger, and holds her ground. Roots burst from the floor at her feet, lashing up to entangle the creature’s limbs—but they twist too slowly. The skep barrels through, knocking her sideways into the wall.

  She cries out as her shoulder hits stone, the dagger skittering from her grip.

  Del runs. He lunges and drives his blade into the beast’s exposed flank. It howls, thrashing—its body too heavy to move easily in the narrow space. He yanks the sword free, blood spraying. The guard lashes out with a claw and catches his arm.

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  He falls back, gripping his forearm. Blood seeps through the leather.

  Elara stumbles upright, hair in her face, lips drawn back in a snarl. Vines surge again—this time faster, tighter—wrapping the skep’s neck and yanking it back with bone-snapping force.

  It crashes to the floor, limbs twitching.

  “You all right?” Del asks, voice rough.

  Elara spits blood. “Peachy.”

  They press together, backs nearly touching as another knot of skeps closes in.

  ‘We can’t hold this,’ Del thinks. ‘Not like this. They just keep coming.’

  Naomi’s projection flickers into place for a breath—a burst of ghostly blue light in the smoke-choked air.

  “You’ve got more incoming from the north tunnel—at least eight. You need to move—now!”

  “We can’t!” Del snaps, slicing down another lunging skep. “There’s no fucking way through!”

  The chamber quakes—dust falling from above. One of the side walls is cracking. Heat brushes his cheek. A low, building groan vibrates underfoot.

  “Misty!” Elara shouts. “The wall—left side—get clear!”

  Misty, mid-kill, snarls and launches away just as a gout of flame bursts through the cracked stone. Something on the far side’s ignited—a gas pocket, maybe—but it doesn’t matter. Fire floods part of the chamber, licking through bone piles and corpses.

  Smoke thickens instantly. The air goes hot.

  “Elara!” Del grabs her arm, dragging her from the growing blaze. Her sleeve is scorched. She coughs, choking on the fumes, but keeps her footing.

  Misty circles back, singed, limping, but alive.

  ‘We need a funnel,’ Del thinks. ‘A bottleneck. We can’t fight this many on open ground.’

  He turns toward one of the side passages. Narrow. Choked with roots.

  “Elara—can you force it closed? Slow them down?”

  She nods, barely. Blood trickles from a cut on her temple. She raises her hands and speaks the spell through grit teeth. The roots twist, knot, thicken—forming a wall that blocks the passage tight.

  The immediate pressure lessens. For a breath. Two.

  Del turns. “We need to heal—now. That bigger potion—”

  “No,” Elara snaps. “We save it. Here—” She pulls a minor vial from her belt and thrusts it into his hand. “Yours first.”

  He swallows it in one go. It burns down. Wounds ease—but not fully.

  She does the same, her fingers trembling.

  They lock eyes. No words.

  Just a nod.

  And then Misty growls—a low, vibrating warning from deep in her throat.

  More are coming.

  And they’re not done yet.

  Misty growls again—low, and utterly humourless.

  Del doesn’t need the translation. The message’s in the way her fur bristles, the way her eyes fixate on the dark ahead.

  More.

  The ground shudders with the weight of oncoming bodies. A chorus of skittering claws echoes through the chamber’s many throats. Somewhere behind the smoke, something howls. Not a skep. Bigger.

  He wipes the blade clean on his already-filthy sleeve and steels himself. The minor potion has dulled the pain in his leg and arm, but not enough. His grip still trembles. His thigh still throbs. The price of momentum.

  ‘They’re trying to bleed us out.’

  Not with one strike. Not with a killing blow. Just enough—wave after wave—to drain them. To grind them down into the floor.

  He knows this kind of tactic. He’s used this kind of tactic.

  A dark memory tries to surface—mud, screams, firelight, someone shouting his name—but he drowns it.

  No room for the past. Not here.

  A cluster of skeps charges into view. These are leaner, faster. Their bodies gleam wetly in the firelight, hunched low, jaws snapping.

  Del steps forward—pain flickering through his leg—and swings wide. His sword cleaves one skep across the ribs, but he’s too slow on the recovery. Another slams into his side, teeth snapping near his face.

  Misty barrels in from the right, intercepting it mid-air. She drives it to the ground and tears it apart. Black blood sprays, steaming where it hits the floor.

  He gasps, staggered. “Thanks.”

  She doesn’t reply.

  Another pair come from the left. Elara meets them—dagger flashing in one hand, her other outstretched. Vines surge again, but slower this time. Stuttering.

  She’s flagging.

  The first skep tangles in the roots, but the second gets through. It leaps.

  Elara stabs, once, twice—steel meeting flesh—but it keeps coming. Del limps forward and hurls his dagger. The blade punches into the creature’s side, knocking it off balance. Elara finishes it with a final thrust to the throat, her teeth bared in a snarl.

  They stand for a second, panting. The floor beneath them is slick with gore, the stink of blood and burning roots overwhelming.

  The heat’s worse now. The fire’s still eating its way along the southern wall—low, steady, licking through bone piles and old fungus. Smoke coils through the air, thick and bitter.

  Elara coughs violently, doubling over. Del grabs her by the collar and pulls her away from the worst of it, closer to the centre of the chamber.

  He glances at her—face pale, lips cracked, one eye starting to swell. “You with me?”

  She nods once. “Barely.”

  The honesty’s appreciated.

  Misty prowls ahead of them, every movement tight with restraint. Her fur is singed. One ear’s torn. Her side is matted with blood.

  But her eyes burn. That golden fury still blazes.

  More shapes emerge from the smoke. Three skeps. Then five. Then more.

  And behind them—something new.

  A shape lumbers forward on thick legs, its body plated in what looks like fused bone and hide. Its twin heads are blind—sockets sealed with scar tissue—but its nostrils flare wide, tasting the air.

  It bellows.

  Del flinches. “What the fuck is that?”

  The creature lumbers through the smoke—massive, eyeless, plated in scarred bone and stretched hide, breath coming in steam-thick bursts. Its twin heads move in eerie unison, nostrils flaring wide.

  ‘Identify’

  Blighthound – Beast, aberrant

  Level – 12

  Blood-tracker

  Strengths: High physical resistance, powerful bite, relentless pursuit of wounded prey

  Weaknesses: Blind, vulnerable along upper spine

  Skill: Blood Scent

  Lore: Blighthounds are engineered mutations bred within aggressive skep colonies. Blind but highly responsive to blood, they track prey through scent and vibration. Resistant to mental interference. Typically released to weaken or scatter threats before a swarm converges.

  Del scowls. “Blood-tracker. Of course it is.”

  Elara shakes her head. “That’s going to be trouble.”

  “Totally, and we’re its fucking target.”

  The blighthound bellows—a low, guttural roar—and charges.

  Misty launches without hesitation. Her muscles ripple as she slams into its flank mid-charge, claws scoring deep—but the beast barely staggers. One of its heads whips around and sinks its jaws into her side.

  She screams.

  A real, raw sound. No sarcasm. No attitude.

  Just pain.

  She wrenches free, trailing blood, and tumbles hard across the stone. The blighthound doesn’t pursue. It turns its twin heads toward Del.

  And charges.

  Del pivots, limping toward the cracked base of a broken pillar. He ducks aside at the last moment, letting the beast crash into it with bone-rattling force. Dust showers from above.

  He drives his blade into the exposed ridge along its spine. Again. Again. On the third strike, something gives.

  The blighthound collapses, twitching.

  Del stumbles back, chest heaving.

  Misty limps to his side, blood painting her fur.

  “Elara—” he calls, fumbling for a potion.

  But Misty bares her teeth. ‘No. Save it. I fight.’

  He stares at her, stunned.

  Then nods.

  She dives back into the fray.

  The skeps are swarming now. Too many to count. They pour from the walls like water, and for every one they cut down, three more take its place.

  Del’s arms are lead. His sword drags. His vision swims.

  Elara’s bowstring snaps mid-draw.

  She doesn’t swear. She just shoulders the bow and draws her dagger again, knuckles white.

  They can’t hold.

  They know it.

  And still—they don’t stop.