Volume 1: Rebirth Arc
Chapter 18: The Scent of Hunger
Hours melted into an indeterminate blur beneath the earth.
There was no day, no night, and no sun to mark the passage of time.
The only metric of survival was the steady, burning ache in their muscles and the dry, parching agony in their throats.
They had not encountered another Void-spawned beast since the narrow victory in the cavern, but the tension in the air remained thick enough to choke on.
The walls around them were changing.
The smooth, damp stone was gradually giving way to a bizarre, organic architecture—hardened layers of dark chitinous material fused directly into the bedrock, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat that seemed to synchronize with their footsteps.
Shu stopped abruptly, holding a hand back to halt Kai’Sa.
The air had grown significantly warmer, carrying a sickeningly sweet, metallic odor that turned Shu’s stomach—the unmistakable reek of digestive fluids and rotting organic debris.
They had stumbled into a feeding ground or a nesting vestibule.
“Stay behind me,” Shu whispered, his fingers tightening around the jagged granite shard.
His small frame was rigid, every nerve ending firing with hyper-awareness.
From the darkness just around a sharp bend in the corridor, a low, wet tearing sound echoed through the space—the sound of massive jaws ripping through tough tissue, accompanied by greedy, smacking gulps.
Shu inched forward, peeking cautiously around the rocky protrusion of the tunnel wall.
A few meters ahead, in a wide subterranean alcove, a creature twice the size of the one they had fought earlier was crouched over a heap of dark, shredded remnants.
It was tearing into the carcass of some blind, subterranean blind-mole beast native to the depths of Shurima.
The creature’s sensory membranes flared as a sudden shift in the air current brought their scent directly toward it.
The chewing stopped instantly.
The beast’s head snapped toward the corner where Shu and Kai’Sa were hiding.
A terrifying, rattling hiss echoed off the chitinous walls, shaking loose particles of dust from the ceiling.
“Run,” Shu breathed out, his eyes locked on the charging nightmare.