The wet tunnel made the howling sound three times louder than it actually was.
It was a sharp, wet barking that bounced off the slick rock walls, coming down the dark corridor like a wave of cold water.
“Keep moving,” Vaelgor grunted.
His massive shoulders slammed into the stone walls on either side, shaving off chunks of wet shale.
“Bone-Hounds don’t get tired.
They don’t have meat on their legs—just dry muscle and hollow bone.
They run on the scent of fresh blood, and my wing smells like a slaughterhouse.”
“How fast are they?” Kiran called over his shoulder, splashing through the knee-deep water.
“Faster than an ape.
Faster than a drake on foot.”
Kiran’s improvised shoe-wraps were soaked through now, heavy with cold black mud, but the stinging chill didn’t numb his toes like it used to.
The steady ember sitting deep in his gut was still humming, keeping his blood warm even as freezing mountain runoff rushed past his shins.
[JYOTI]
Distance to pursuing pack: 450 yards.
Tunnel ceiling height decreasing: 14 feet ahead.
Warning: Dragon clearance will be compromised.
Kiran stopped splashing and held up his hand.
“Hold up!
Stop!”
Vaelgor’s snout nearly knocked him into the water.
“Do not stop!
They are half a ridge behind us!”
“Look up!” Kiran hissed, pointing the flat edge of his steel wrench at the low ceiling ahead.
The roof of the tunnel was dipping sharply.
A thick shelf of black stone hung down like an overbite, leaving an opening barely eight feet high.
Kiran could duck right under it, but Vaelgor was twelve feet tall at the shoulder even with his neck pulled low.
The dragon looked at the low shelf, then let out a low, furious hiss.
“The seam is collapsing,” Vaelgor rasped, his bronze eye flashing in the shadows.
“The water cut through the soft clay underneath.
I cannot fit through that gap.”
Behind them, the baying echoed again—much closer now.
The sound of dozens of hard, bony claws clicking rapidly against wet stone came clattering down the dark tunnel.
“We don’t need to run anymore,” Kiran said, his mind working fast.
“This is a choke point.”
Vaelgor blinked his golden eye.
“A what?”
“A bottleneck.
Back home, if you have ten angry dogs chasing you down an alley, you don’t fight them in the open street.
You get behind a narrow gate where only one can bite you at a time.” Kiran splashed over to the low stone shelf, shining the faint orange light leaking from Vaelgor’s ribs against the rock.
The hanging stone shelf wasn’t solid bedrock.
Water was trickling through the cracks around it, washing the mud away drip by drip.
“Look at this,” Kiran said, tapping the seam with his wrench.
“This whole slab is hanging by a thread.
The only thing holding it up is this mud pocket and that pillar of rotten stone.”
“And if it falls?” Vaelgor asked.
“It blocks the entire tunnel behind us,” Kiran said.
“Can you wedge your good shoulder under here and hit this rotten post when I tell you?”
Vaelgor looked at the low ceiling, then turned his head back toward the dark passage.
Three pairs of pale red lights appeared in the gloom seventy yards back.
They weren’t eyes like Vaelgor’s.
They were dull, blood-red points glowing inside skull-like heads.
The hounds were lean, hairless beasts, built like starving greyhounds but covered in pale, armored skin that clung tight to their visible ribs.
Their long, crocodile-like snouts were wide open, drooling thick black spit into the stream.
They saw Vaelgor’s bulk and picked up speed, their claws tearing through the water with terrifying speed.
“They’re coming!” Kiran yelled, ducking beneath the low hanging slab into the shallow water on the other side.
“Vaelgor, now!
Hit the support!”
Vaelgor didn’t hesitate.
He dropped low into the freezing stream, turned his body sideways, and drove his uninjured right shoulder into the rotting stone pillar beneath the slab with all the force of his massive weight.
BOOM.
The impact felt like an explosion in the tight space.
The rotten stone pillar shattered into wet gravel.
The giant slab of hanging slate groaned, tilted, and then sheared completely away from the ceiling, crashing down into the stream bed like a falling wall.
A wall of water, mud, and crushed stone exploded outward.
CRASH!
Kiran was knocked flat on his back into the pool, gasping as freezing spray hit his face.
The air went completely black, filled with a thick cloud of pulverized dust and cold water.
From the other side of the collapse came a high, terrified yelp, cut short by the sickening thud of tons of stone hitting flesh.
Silence fell.
Kiran scrambled up onto his knees, spitting out muddy water, his chest heaving.
“Vaelgor?!”
A loud, wet snort blew the dust away from the rubble.
Vaelgor was lying on his belly, covered in grey mud and broken slate, but his head was on Kiran’s side of the drop.
His massive body was half-wedged beneath the rubble, but the collapsed roof had created an almost solid barrier behind them, sealing off the tunnel completely.
From the far side of the rock pile, the faint, frustrated scratching of the remaining hounds could be heard, followed by a muffled whine that slowly faded away.
“You brought the roof down on my neck, ape,” Vaelgor rumbled, shaking his head and sending chunks of wet mud flying into the dark.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Kiran coughed, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“They’re on that side. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
We’re on this side.”
“And I am stuck like a pig in a fence,” the dragon grumbled, testing his legs.
He gave a slow, powerful shove with his hind claws, grinding his scales against the fallen rock.
With a loud scrape of stone on stone, he dragged his back legs through the narrow gap under the fallen slab, pulling himself free into the open space ahead.
[JYOTI]
Pursuit halted.
Threat neutralized: 1 Hound crushed, 2 stranded.
Path ahead: Clear.
Descent slope ending.
Kiran leaned against the tunnel wall, letting out a long, slow breath.
He didn’t just pant this time.
He remembered the pattern.
He pulled the cool, damp air deep down into his belly, holding it beneath his ribs until the small knot of heat in his gut caught the rhythm.
The cold water soaking his pants didn’t make him shiver anymore.
His body felt solid, heavy in a good way, like an iron anchor settled firmly in the mud.
[JYOTI]
Iron Breath Cycle: Completed under combat stress.
Progress: 3.5%
Physical Foundation: Early Bone Hardening initiated.
“Look ahead,” Vaelgor murmured, his voice dropping low.
Kiran turned around, looking past the dragon’s snout.
The narrow tunnel had finally ended.
About twenty yards ahead, the passage opened up into an immense, cavernous void.
Pale, sickly green light was drifting into the mouth of the tunnel, carrying a faint, warm breeze that smelled of damp soil and blooming night-flowers.
They walked out of the throat of the tunnel and stopped on a wide stone ledge.
Kiran’s breath caught in his throat.
They were standing halfway down the sheer wall of a giant, underground rift that stretched for miles in both directions.
The ceiling was hundreds of feet above them, lost in swirling clouds of white mist.
Below them, the floor of the gorge was not a desert of dry ash—it was a sprawling, subterranean jungle of massive, luminous fungi and giant, twisted ferns that glowed with soft, emerald light.
Far across the green expanse, built right into the colossal roots of ancient, petrified trees, were rough stone huts, wooden rope bridges, and small curls of grey smoke rising from open fire pits.
And moving among the glowing trees were dragons.
Not imperial soldiers with polished scales and horn-guards.
These were battered beasts—some missing wings, some with scarred tails, some small and thin as hunting dogs, and others massive old hulks sleeping on beds of moss.
“The Sunken Gorge,” Vaelgor breathed, his single bronze eye reflecting the emerald light of the valley below.
[JYOTI]
Main Quest Complete: The Path of the Exile.
Reward Unlocked: Cultivation Manual: [Iron Breath – First Stanza].
New Region Discovered: The Outcast Hollows.
Warning: You are a human entering an exile settlement.
Hide your wrench.