Three years passed beneath the endless stone.
Kael no longer counted the silver cycles.
At some point, the habit had disappeared without him realizing it.
Perhaps it was because counting no longer mattered.
The underground world never changed.
Endless tunnels stretched into darkness.
Rivers carved through black stone.
Pale crystals illuminated caverns where life and death repeated in an endless rhythm.
There were no seasons.
No sunrise.
No stars.
Only survival.
The frightened newborn who had once stumbled across sharp rocks searching for food no longer existed.
His movements had become silent.
Every step landed exactly where it needed to.
Every breath remained controlled.
Every muscle moved with practiced precision.
He hunted because he had to.
He killed because he had to.
Nothing more.
His body had grown into adulthood.
Dense gray muscles covered his lean frame without sacrificing speed.
White bone claws extended far beyond his wrists, polished smooth from years of tearing through stone and flesh alike.
Countless scars crossed his body.
Some had faded into pale lines while others remained fresh reminders that even the strongest hunter could become prey with a single mistake.
Kael no longer feared fighting.
He feared carelessness.
That alone was enough to get him killed.
…
A six-legged cave beast lowered its head toward an underground stream.
Its broad shoulders rose and fell as it drank, completely unaware of the shadow clinging to the ceiling above.
Kael waited.
Patience had become his greatest weapon.
Years ago he would have attacked as soon as an opening appeared.
Now he understood something far more important.
Every creature made the same mistake.
Eventually.
The beast suddenly lifted one foreleg.
Only a few inches.
Enough.
Kael dropped.
His claws crossed in a single smooth motion.
Bone shattered.
The beast collapsed before it even understood it had been attacked.
Its struggles lasted only moments.
Silence returned.
Kael remained motionless beside the body.
He waited.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Five.
No other predator appeared.
Only then did he begin eating.
Not greedily.
Not desperately.
Slowly.
Efficiently.
Nothing was wasted.
When he finished, he cleaned the blood from his claws in the stream before quietly lowering his head.
“I remember.” The words had become softer over the years.
Sometimes they barely escaped his lips.
Sometimes he wondered whether he had actually spoken them.
Still…
He never skipped the ritual.
Every life deserved to be remembered.
Even if only by the one who ended it.
…
The scientist inside Kael never truly died.
He had no paper.
No ink.
No books.
So he wrote upon his own memory instead.
Every tunnel became a page.
Every hunt became an observation.
He memorized which underground plants remained edible after long exposure to moisture.
He learned which mushrooms attracted insects and which released invisible poison when damaged.
He discovered that underground rivers always carried warmer water before distant cave collapses, though he never understood why.
Some predators hunted by scent.
Others by vibration.
One species could somehow detect changes in air pressure before an ambush.
Every discovery increased his chances of survival.
Every discovery reminded him of the person he had once been.
At least…
He thought it did.
Because every time he tried remembering Earth…
The memories grew weaker.
One evening he closed his eyes, trying to picture the city where he had lived.
He remembered tall buildings.
Cars.
Rain against apartment windows.
He remembered sitting at a desk surrounded by books.
He remembered wanting to become a researcher.
But…
What color had his room been?
He couldn’t remember.
He tried harder.
Nothing.
The memory had become nothing more than an empty outline.
His chest tightened.
Another piece was gone.
…
Days later, Kael climbed onto a towering stone pillar overlooking one of the largest caverns he had ever discovered.
Thousands of glowing crystals illuminated the vast chamber below.
Several enormous creatures grazed peacefully across fields of pale moss.
Farther away, smaller predators hid among broken rocks, patiently waiting for an opportunity.
Everything looked peaceful.
Yet something felt…
Wrong.
The silence.
Normally dozens of different sounds filled every cavern.
Running water.
Scratching claws.
The distant cries of hunters.
Today…
Almost nothing.
Even the grazers moved nervously, constantly lifting their heads as though listening for something Kael couldn’t hear.
He frowned.
For years he had trusted his instincts more than his thoughts.
His instincts now whispered only one thing.
Leave.
Immediately.
He obeyed.
Hours later, while traveling through a familiar tunnel, the reason revealed itself.
The tunnel had collapsed.
Not from age.
Not from battle.
The stone itself had split apart.
Deep crimson lines stretched across the walls like glowing veins.
Kael cautiously approached.
The air around the cracks felt strangely warm.
He extended one claw toward the nearest fissure.
Before touching it, he stopped.
A pebble resting beside the crack suddenly crumbled.
Not from pressure.
Not from impact.
It simply…
Fell apart.
Gray dust scattered across the ground.
Kael slowly backed away.
Whatever this crimson phenomenon was…
It wasn’t natural.
During the following weeks, he discovered more.
Another collapsed tunnel.
Another crimson crack.
Then another.
Places that had remained unchanged for years now looked different every time he passed through them.
The underground world was changing.
Not evolving.
Breaking.
…
His hunting grounds slowly emptied.
The familiar cave beasts disappeared.
Entire colonies of insects vanished overnight.
Even the massive predators that once ruled neighboring territories could no longer be found.
At first Kael believed they had migrated.
Then he found the bodies.
No wounds.
No signs of battle.
Only gray remains scattered across the stone floor as though life itself had abandoned them.
He knelt beside one enormous predator he had narrowly escaped many years ago.
Its eyes remained open.
Its claws untouched.
Its flesh…
Gone.
Only brittle gray ash remained inside stretched skin.
Kael stared silently.
Death was natural.
This…
Wasn’t.
A quiet realization settled inside him.
The underground world wasn’t merely becoming dangerous.
It was dying.
He slowly looked into the endless darkness stretching beyond the tunnel ahead.
For the first time since awakening as a Boneclaw…
A question entered his mind.
If this world dies…
Where do I go?
He took one cautious step forward.
Then another.
Somewhere deep within the endless labyrinth…
Something answered with a roar so ancient and so distant that the very stone beneath his feet shivered.
Three more years slipped away.
Time no longer carried meaning beneath the endless stone.
Kael marked its passing only through the growth of his own body and the disappearance of everything familiar.
The underground rivers that had once flowed with quiet certainty had begun to dry.
Entire chambers collapsed without warning.
Crimson fissures spread farther every cycle, crawling through the ancient rock like veins beneath skin.
Wherever they appeared, life slowly withered.
Moss turned gray.
Crystal formations lost their soft silver glow.
Even the air felt thinner, carrying the bitter scent of dust and decay.
The underground world was reaching its end.
Kael accepted that truth long before he understood it.
He no longer searched for explanations.
There were none.
He simply continued surviving.
…
One hunt blended into another.
A horned crawler ambushed him near a narrow canyon.
Kael sidestepped at the last instant, allowing the creature’s momentum to carry it into the stone wall.
Before it recovered, his claws pierced the soft joint beneath its neck.
Another day, a venomous tunnel serpent erupted from beneath loose gravel.
He didn’t retreat.
Years of experience allowed him to predict the angle of its strike before it moved.
His body twisted almost instinctively, avoiding its fangs by the width of a finger before driving both claws deep into its skull.
Victory no longer excited him.
It had become routine.
Every battle was simply another problem waiting to be solved.
Every hunt another equation.
Observe.
Predict.
Execute.
Survive.
Nothing more.
The scientist from Earth still lived inside him.
Not through laboratories or books.
But through the habit of understanding everything before acting.
That habit had saved his life more times than he could count.
…
His memories continued disappearing.
At first, it had frightened him.
Now…
It terrified him.
One evening he sat alone beside an underground stream.
The silver light reflected across the calm water, revealing the face of an adult Boneclaw.
Sharp features.
Silver eyes.
Bone claws polished from years of combat.
Not a trace remained of the frightened creature that had awakened years ago.
He stared at his reflection.
“My name…” His voice caught.
“My name…” Silence.
His breathing quickened.
For one horrifying moment…
He couldn’t remember.
Panic gripped his heart.
Then the answer surfaced.
Kael.
“My name is Kael.” He repeated it.
Again.
Again.
“My name is Kael.” “I was born on Earth.” “I wanted to understand life.” He spoke the words until they no longer felt distant.
Only then did the panic slowly fade.
He closed his eyes.
His mother’s face…
Gone.
His father’s voice…
Gone.
The names of his friends…
Gone.
He remembered loving them.
He remembered being loved.
But their faces had vanished like ink washed away by rain.
Tears rolled silently down his gray cheeks.
He didn’t know whether Boneclaws were capable of crying.
He only knew that he was.
…
Weeks later, Kael reached one of the highest caverns in the underground world.
From there he could see farther than ever before.
His breath caught.
Darkness.
Not because the crystals had dimmed.
Because they had died.
Entire cave systems lay in absolute blackness.
Silver rivers had become dry scars across the stone.
Countless tunnels had collapsed into enormous chasms.
The underground world looked like a corpse slowly turning to dust.
A low rumble echoed through the cavern.
Another followed.
The ground trembled continuously now.
Small rocks rolled past his feet.
The ceiling above groaned.
Without warning, an entire section of the cavern collapsed hundreds of meters away.
The impact shook the mountain itself.
A cloud of gray dust swallowed everything.
Kael didn’t run.
He simply watched.
For years he had fought to survive.
Now…
He understood there was nothing left to survive for.
This world had already lost.
…
Over the following days, Kael encountered more creatures than he had seen in the previous year combined.
Not because life had returned.
Because everything was fleeing.
Massive predators ignored smaller prey.
Herbivores sprinted alongside creatures that once hunted them.
No one fought.
No one defended territory.
Every instinct screamed only one command.
Escape.
Escape from what?
Kael didn’t know.
Then he heard it.
A roar.
It came from somewhere impossibly deep beneath the earth.
The sound carried no anger.
No hunger.
Only overwhelming power.
It rolled through every tunnel, every river, every chamber.
Even the stone itself seemed to fear it.
Every creature immediately changed direction.
Running.
Not away from each other.
Away from that roar.
Kael remained still.
For the first time in years…
Curiosity defeated survival.
He turned.
Not away from the sound.
Toward it.
Step by step, he walked deeper into the dying world.
The tunnels grew hotter.
The crimson cracks covered nearly every wall now.
The air itself shimmered strangely.
Hours later…
He reached the edge of an enormous abyss.
The cavern beyond dwarfed everything he had ever seen.
Far below…
The earth had split open.
An endless crimson light poured upward from the depths.
Kael couldn’t see the bottom.
He couldn’t even estimate its size.
Then…
Something moved.
At first he thought the ground itself was shifting.
Then he realized his mistake.
It wasn’t the ground.
It was a claw.
A single claw larger than an entire mountain.
Its crimson surface disappeared into the endless darkness below.
Only the tip had become visible.
The creature attached to it…
Could not be measured.
Kael stood frozen.
His mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.
The scientist inside him searched desperately for logic.
There wasn’t any.
This wasn’t a predator.
This wasn’t an animal.
This was something beyond his understanding.
The enormous claw slowly pulled itself upward.
The movement alone shattered nearby cliffs.
Entire mountains of stone collapsed into the abyss.
The world screamed.
Kael finally understood.
This…
This was the thing killing the underground world.
Not through malice.
Simply by existing.
The Boneclaw took one slow breath.
His instincts demanded that he flee.
His heart told him it was pointless.
No one could outrun something like this.
He lowered his stance.
Extended his claws.
And faced the abyss.
Not because he believed he could win.
But because, somewhere beneath years of survival and fading memories, one truth still remained.
He was Kael.
And Kael had never run from the unknown.
The colossal claw rose another few meters.
A wave of pressure exploded outward.
The cavern began collapsing around him.
Stone rained from the ceiling.
The abyss widened.
Kael tightened his claws…
As the dying world prepared to witness its final battle.
End of Chapter 4