The silence of Level 3 was deceptive.
Rheell pressed against the shadows of a crevice, Lumis pulsing softly against his back like a second heart. A week had passed since the anomaly, since that Noctis and its nightmare message. But the abyss waited for no one. Least of all humans.
Below, deep in Level 3's guts, something creaked.
A Ghul-Teke, nearly indistinguishable from the stone, dragged its claws across the ground, blind to danger. Rheell didn't breathe—he didn't need to—but his muscles coiled like abyssal steel.
Lumis dimmed its glow, dissolving into liquid shadow.
Hunt.
The Ghul-Teke lifted its head, nostrils flaring. Too late.
Rheell dropped onto it like a rockslide, his claws—honed by months of killing—sinking into the soft joint between the creature's plates. The Ghul-Teke howled, twisting, but Rheell already knew how to break it. One pull upward, and the shell split with a wet crack.
Lumis slithered forward, with its tentacles searching for exposed flesh. Not to eat. To mark. Golden fluid burst from its body, sealing Rheell's wounds before the creature's acid could burn him.
Victory.
But something smelled wrong.
Not the blood. Not the abyss.
Them.
The Humans Advance
Level 3 was no longer the same.
Where darkness and beast-echoes once ruled, machines now roared.
From his perch among the stalactites, Rheell had watched their invasion unfold:
Level 1: A tangle of iron bridges and blue torches. Humans in leather and metal hauled crates, barking orders in a language he couldn't decipher.
Level 2: Laboratories. Glass cages held Kharis larvae, their golden flickers fading as tubes siphoned their essence. Potions, Rheell understood. The humans drank them and healed.
Between Levels 2 and 3: The camp. Green recruits in ill-fitting armor flinched at the wind's whistle. Some returned legless. Others, eyeless.
But the worst festered at Level 5.
A fortress.
Towers of bone and metal anchored into the rock, lit by those unnatural blue lights that purred like tamed beasts. From there, the strong ones descended—warriors whose armor didn't creak, whose blades cut the air as if the abyss bowed to them.
Rheell had seen them kill an Alpha Karnash in minutes.
Too fast. Too organized.
Lumis pulsed with unease.
Level 2 was no longer safe.
The Skavrith—gray, screeching things—had multiplied like rot in a wound. Rheell spotted them coiled in crevices, white eyes glinting with cowardly hunger. Their tactics were simple:
Ambushes: They swarmed careless humans in packs, biting ankles, stealing daggers, dragging the wounded into the dark.
Cruelty: They never killed fast. They played—peeling fingers like fruit, whispering in a tongue like nails on stone.
One night, Rheell found their hoard: a mound of rusted armor… and a child.
Not a warrior. A boy. Skinned alive. Eyes still open, blinking slow agony.
Lumis moved first.
Rheell followed.
This wasn't hunger.
It was instinct.
The boy's fear, his pain, his memories—they tasted unfamiliar. Like knowledge.
The first bite brought images: A woman singing. A hand stroking hair. Home.
The second, words: "Mama… it hurts…"
The third, the brain, warm and spongy, burst on his tongue like forbidden fruit.
Lumis slithered into the skull, devouring marrow, scraping soul-fragments from bone.
When they finished—something clicked.
Rheell stared into stagnant water.
The reflection wasn't a beast anymore.
Skin: Stone-gray, split by golden veins that throbbed in sync with Lumis.
Body: A boy of eight—almost. Too fluid, too edged. His "hair" was a nest of bioluminescent tendrils, fungal and alive.
Mind: Full images now. Hide. Learn. Survive.
Beside him, Lumis was a tender nightmare:
Size: A three-year-old girl, if girls had elongated arms and tails that dripped gold.
Eyes: Amber like fire, pupil-less, hungry.
Gifts: She knitted flesh with a touch… and remembered.
The boy's fragments lived inside them both.
They claimed a hollow where the walls wept black resin, masking their heat.
Fire: Rheell mimicked the humans—shattered blue mushrooms, struck stones until sparks birthed flame. The light was wrong, their light, cold and bruise-colored.
Food: A Skavrith sizzled over the blaze. The smell twisted between rot and feast. Lumis' lips parted with a wet, bubbling noise.
That night, the boy's ghost whispered:
"Mama."
Rheell didn't understand. But Lumis—curled against him—pulsed warmth, as if she did.
Stronger now, mutated, they prowled Level 4's tunnels.
Then—the impossible.
The cave walls ruptured into a cavern so vast its ceiling pretended to be sky. A dome of fractured stone, gaping like a god's broken ribcage.
Their instincts hissed: Deeper.
And then—the impossible.
The cavern walls split open into a dome so vast it mocked the sky. Mist hung in stagnant clouds, and within it, shadows moved. Not beasts—warped things. Oxen with too many joints. Birds whose wings split into grasping fingers.
Rheell and Lumis crept forward, shielded by towering mushrooms and roots like petrified veins.
Then—humans.
"Archers! Formation!"
A captain's voice cut through the mist. A dozen soldiers snapped into ranks, bows drawn. Their target: a Velkrash, its tattered wings beating with a sound like knives sharpening.
It dove.
A soldier screamed as talons sheared through his spine before his shield could rise.
"Aim for the wing joints!" the captain roared. Arrows hissed. One struck true—the Velkrash spiraled, crashing down like a felled star. It crushed two men on impact.
No mercy. The humans swarmed it, blades peeling hide from muscle, harvesting before worse predators came. Then they vanished, leaving only bloodstains and the echo of orders.
Rheell watched.
Lumis learned.
This wasn't instinct. This was strategy.
Later, amidst a plain of fungal monoliths, the earth trembled.
Drelgor.
A blind colossus with a skull for a face, its sensory tentacles whipping like exposed nerves. It knew they were there.
Lumis shuddered; Rheell was already moving.
The beast struck first—a tentacle snared Rheell's leg and slammed him into the ground. Bone cracked. Lumis retaliated, spraying acid that melted through sinew.
The Drelgor roared, swaying—then collapsed, its heart punctured by Rheell's claws.
Victory.
Panting, they mimicked the humans' rituals:
Flaying the hide with bone-sharp claws.
Carving tendons for cord.
Dragging their spoils back to the lair.
Their craftsmanship was crude, but effective. The stitched hides draped their forms, masking their unnatural shapes.
Camouflage.
Above, in the torchlight of the upper camp, Lina traced her finger across a map—then froze.
Two small figures moved through the mist.
"Children... at this level?" Her voice frayed at the edges.
The Major, a withered man with eyes like cracked glass, leaned in. "Where?"
"Pradus sector."
The figures flickered in the distance: one tall, one small, both wrapped in ragged pelts that dripped black.
The Major's throat clicked. "No child survives here. Report it."
"Children, Lina? Not this again," Kaleth snarled, recalling her obsession with the Kharis larvae.
Goran hefted his obsidian axe, grinning. "The abyss vomits up worse every day. Why not ghost-kids?"
After hissed arguments, Kaleth relented. He led the team himself—five veterans armed with steel and spite.
They trekked through forests of glowing fungi, past ribcages large enough to house men. Then—
There.
Two figures, crouched over a carcass. Their cloaks reeked of old blood.
Kaleth raised his sword. "Stop! Turn around!"
Rheell tensed. Too late.
Lumis remembered.
The laboratories. The scalpels. The golden fluid siphoned from her siblings' spines.
Her bioluminescence flared—a scream in light.
The smaller figure's cloak twitched. Something liquid and gleaming slid free: a tail, barbed and pulsating.
Kaleth's face drained of color. "Not children. Not human."
Lumis attacked first.
Under the hood, her pupil-less eyes burned—not with fear, but with the inherited rage of a thousand dissected Kharis.
Kaleth froze mid-step. "Gods, it's a spawn of—"
She struck.
Acid erupted from her mouth, splattering across his face. Flesh sizzled. His scream was cut short as Rheell's claws parted his throat like wet parchment.
Kaleth collapsed, twitching.
Two seconds. That's all it took.
By the time Goran drew his axe, the creatures—no longer pretending—had already vanished into the abyss's gullet.
Goran's roar shook the cavern walls. "KALETH!"
But death in the abyss didn't negotiate. It took.
He gathered his friend's remains—what the acid hadn't eaten—hands shaking not from grief, but from something colder.
Back at camp, the news spread like a hemorrhage.
Orders were etched in blood:
"Unknown entities. Childlike mimics. Terminate on sight."
Lina clutched her maps, staring into the dark. They weren't beasts. Not anymore.
The abyss had birthed something new.
Meanwhile in the upper city
The investigation chamber reeked of ink and iron.
Gaslight flickered over maps stained with expedition routes—and fresh red circles where men had vanished.
High Marshal Raimond rose, his armor still crusted with abyssal filth. The butt of his staff cracked against the table.
"Silence."
The room obeyed.
Elkan unfurled the scroll with fingers like dried roots. His eyes—clouded from decades underground—skimmed the text.
"Official report: Level 4, Pradus sector. Captain Kaleth confirmed deceased. Eliminated by... two unknown entities."
A ripple of unease.
"Entities?" sneered General Ross, a veteran of the Level 6 campaigns. "Weren't they just wild children in disguise?"
"With respect, General," interjected a young researcher, her voice firm despite the tension,
"witnesses report anomalous behavior: corrosive secretions, claws, and movement impossible for normal humans."
Ross scoffed.
"So what? Minor mutations? The Abyss does that every year. I wouldn't even get out of my chair for a couple of rat-faced kids."
Marcus closed his eyes in frustration.
"Let's not forget," Elkan added gravely, "there were previous reports of unusual activity in that sector... a mutated Xhar-Voth, environmental distortion traces... and now these appearances."
A brief silence fell.
From the shadows, a voice colder than steel spoke:
"And the Noctis?"
It was Counselor Agatha, in charge of High-Level Threats.
"Have you forgotten what those two kids fought during the last operation?"
The mere mention of the Noctis sent shivers through even the most seasoned officers.
"We don't have direct confirmation," Marcus replied, though he sounded more hopeful than certain.
Agatha narrowed her eyes.
"Maybe. But the Abyss doesn't hand out new anomalies without a cost."
She leaned forward, her bony fingers tapping a map where the Pradus sector glowed faintly red.
"My suggestion: proceed with local elimination operations. Hunt down the entities. Initial threat category: low priority."
"Low?" protested the young researcher.
"The real anomaly is the Noctis," Agatha cut in without looking at her. "Not two abyssal brats."
Marcus nodded slowly.
"Send scouts. Authorize a moderate bounty for proof of elimination.
And..."
He paused.
"Increase surveillance in the deeper levels. If there's a pattern... we'll know soon."
The scribes nodded, sealing orders with black wax.
The meeting ended as it had begun: in whispers, broken promises, and eyes unwilling to meet the truth.
Because even if they refused to admit it...
something was changing.
Something neither their glories nor their spears could stop.
Meanwhile, deep in the abyss, Rheell and Lumis gnawed at the raw flesh of a beast.
Lumis's hood shifted with the rhythm of her glowing pulses—now red, like Kaleth's blood.
The abyss had changed them.
But not as much as they would change the abyss.