Volume 1: Rebirth Arc
Chapter 14: The First Taste of the Abyss
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the ragged, shallow breathing of the two children huddled against the cold stone wall.
Above them, the distant scar of the surface had vanished completely, swallowed by shifting rubble and thick clouds of alkaline dust.
The subterranean cavern was lit entirely by the pulsating, sickly violet veins that crawled across the jagged bedrock like organic cabling.
Shu kept his grip on the sharp granite shard, his small arm aching from the tension.
His eyes scanned the darkness, tracing the yawning mouths of several tunnels that branched off into the deep underbelly of the earth.
Click-clack.
The sound came from the tunnel directly to their left.
It wasn’t loud, but it was painfully close—the unmistakable scrape of a hard, multi-jointed exoskeleton sliding against wet rock.
“Shu…” Kai’Sa whimpered, her voice barely a breath.
She pressed herself closer against his side, her small fingers trembling as she clutched the fabric of his torn shirt.
“Something…
something is coming.”
“Don’t move,” Shu whispered back, his tone unnervingly cold and steady.
“Don’t make a sound.”
From the shadows of the tunnel, a shape detached itself from the gloom.
It was roughly the size of a large hound, possessing a sleek, armored carapace the color of bruised obsidian.
Its head was faceless, dominated instead by a pulsating cluster of raw, fleshy membranes and a gaping maw lined with rows of translucent, needle-sharp teeth.
A Void-spawned predator, scouting the fresh wreckage of the collapse.
The creature’s sensory receptors twitched, sweeping back and forth.
It hadn’t seen them yet, but it could smell them—the warm, rich scent of living blood and fear radiating in the cold cavern air.
Shu’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, but his mind remained eerily detached.
He calculated the distance.
Six meters.
The creature’s reaction time.
The weight of his own small, malnourished body.
If he tried to run, it would catch them in seconds.
The beast hissed softly, a wet, rattling sound that carried the stench of decaying flesh, and took a slow, deliberate step out of the tunnel.
Its glowing, violet eyes locked directly onto them.