Volume 1: Rebirth Arc
Chapter 22: The Fever Dream
The biological tunnel seemed to stretch into infinity, twisting and turning like the intestines of a colossal beast.
Shu forced his legs to move, one heavy step after another, but his vision was rapidly fracturing at the edges.
The wound on his right arm burned with a dull, throbbing heat, and a heavy, feverish sweat coated his skin.
The air inside the organic tube was thick with invisible spores that clung to his throat, making every breath feel like inhaling fine glass.
“Shu, you’re burning up,” Kai’Sa said, her voice sounding distant, as if it were echoing from the end of a long, dark pipe.
She pulled on his uninjured arm, trying to support his weight as his balance faltered completely.
“Don’t…
stop,” Shu mumbled, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
His physical body—that of a malnourished six-year-old child—was finally reaching its absolute biological threshold.
The combination of blood loss, lack of hydration, and the toxic atmosphere of the lower tunnels was shutting his systems down.
With a soft groan, Shu’s knees gave out.
He slid down the warm, pulsating wall of the corridor, collapsing heavily onto the elastic floor.
“Shu!
Shu, wake up!” Kai’Sa dropped to her knees beside him, panic lacing her tear-streaked voice.
She shook his shoulder frantically, but his eyes were rolling back, his consciousness slipping away into a dark, suffocating haze.
In the delirium of his fever, the boundaries between worlds began to bleed together.
He wasn’t in the Void.
He was back in his sweltering room in Earth, staring at the flashing red DEFEAT screen.
The smell of burning ozone from the electrical short mixed with the metallic reek of Void-blood.
A voice echoed from the static of his broken monitor—not a game announcer, but something ancient, hungry, and patient.
…feed…
adapt…
survive…
“No…” Shu muttered weakly in his sleep, his small hand twitching against the organic resin floor as he fought against the fading grip of his own consciousness.
Left alone in the freezing, pulsing dark of the subterranean labyrinth, Kai’Sa pulled his head onto her lap, wrapping her arms around him as she looked out into the terrifying, endless corridors of the abyss, utterly alone and surrounded by monsters.