Chapter Eleven: The Hunger Below
(Word count: ~850)
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The dark swallowed everything.
No outlines. No shapes. No voices. Just pressure—pressing in from all sides, like the walls of the vault had lungs and were holding a breath.
Kael couldn't even see his own hands.
"Rin?" he whispered, barely able to hear himself. "Juno?"
Nothing.
Just the sound of something moving.
Not footsteps. Not breathing.
Dragging.
Kael's breath caught. The mark on his hand was burning now, flaring violet in the pitch black. He held it up instinctively—and the light from the rune barely pushed back the dark. It clung to the edges of the glow like tar, writhing and resisting.
A voice broke through the silence.
Not human.
Not kind.
> "You do not belong here."
Kael turned sharply, pulse thundering. "Who said that?!"
The shadows shifted, revealing the barest shape.
Tall. Lean. Crooked like a marionette cut loose from its strings. Its body didn't walk—it flowed. Bones jutted at the wrong angles. And where its face should've been, there was only a mouth.
A wide, stretching grin full of teeth far too long to be human.
> "This was a prison," it hissed, "until you opened the door."
Kael took a step back—right into something warm and solid.
"Kael," Juno's voice said in a low whisper, grabbing his arm. "Don't look into its face."
Rin appeared from the other side, her hand glowing with a crimson rune Kael hadn't seen before. It was etched in jagged spirals up her arm. She held a blade made of pure light, pulsing in time with her breath.
"It's not tethered," she said, eyes locked on the shadow. "It was sealed here. Bound. Forgotten."
Mace stumbled in next, flashlight flickering back to life as if whatever cut the power had turned its focus away. His face was pale, but he held out a rusted chain that shimmered with blue light.
Kael stared. "Where did you get that?"
"I think it found me," Mace muttered. "Back in the hall. It was coiled on the floor like a snake. Wrapped around my wrist and wouldn't let go."
The shadow-creature hissed again, recoiling slightly at the light from Rin's blade and Mace's chain.
> "You are marked, yes... but not prepared," it rasped. "The tethers do not protect you here. They bind you to me."
Kael gritted his teeth. "We're not yours."
> "You will be."
The floor cracked.
And something began to rise.
The ground below the sixth throne split open like a maw. Violet light surged upward—veins bursting through the stone like an infection. And from the crack, a tendril shot up, slamming the base of the throne.
The creature howled.
Rin lunged forward, slashing at the tendril with her light-blade. It hissed and recoiled, spraying sparks of violet ash.
"We need to sever the tether!" she shouted. "That's what it's after!"
Juno joined her, hands glowing with blue and gold glyphs. He muttered a string of words in a tongue Kael didn't recognize, and one of the pillars exploded in light—blinding and sudden.
The vault shook.
Kael could barely stand as the floor shifted beneath him, stone tiles snapping and twisting like puzzle pieces rearranging themselves.
Then he saw it.
The tether's core.
Still hovering. Still pulsing.
But now, the threads around it were tangled—wrapped tightly around the violet one like it was strangling them. The others—silver, red, blue, amber, black—were dimming.
Kael lunged.
He didn't think. He just moved. And as his fingers touched the core, something snapped.
His mind wasn't his anymore.
---
Vision.
He stood in a cathedral of stars.
Each star had a tether. A soul. A voice.
Millions. Screaming. Crying. Praying.
In the center, the cloaked figure stood on one knee, chains wrapped around its throat. And behind it—the creature. Grinning. Feeding.
It hadn't just been imprisoned.
It had won.
The cloaked figure raised its head. This time, he saw its face.
It was Kael.
Or… not Kael.
Another version. Older. Hardened. Broken.
> "Don't let it steal the tethers. If it binds them all... it becomes the sixth."
---
Reality snapped back.
Kael gasped and collapsed, sweat pouring from him. Rin caught him, barely.
"We have to cut the violet thread," he gasped. "Before it binds them all."
"But how?" Mace shouted. "It's fused into the core!"
Juno looked down at his hands—then at Kael's mark.
"…No. It's not."
He stepped forward and pressed his palm to Kael's.
Light exploded from their marks. The room filled with a howl—not from the creature, but from below.
The thread pulsed once. Twice.
Then—
Shattered.
The tether's core burst into brilliant white.
The shadow-creature screamed—more in rage than pain—and retreated, hurling itself into the crack below as the vault began to collapse.
Kael, Rin, Juno, and Mace ran for the stairs, barely dodging chunks of falling ceiling and crumbling pillars.
They didn't stop until the vault was gone behind them, sealed once more beneath layers of forgotten stone and ancient lies.
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They stood outside East Wall. The sky above them was quiet. Unchanged.
But each of them knew—
Something had awakened.
And it wasn't going back to sleep.