CHAPTER 16: THE BREEDING PITS

The descent was a tight, claustrophobic squeeze through a throat of wet, slick rock.

It smelled of damp earth, rot, and something else... a faint, metallic scent like old pennies and ozone.

Every sound was magnified.

The scrape of their boots on stone.

The drip of water from unseen stalactites.

The frantic, panicked thumping of Michael’s own heart.

Finally, the narrow fissure opened up into a cavern so vast, the darkness seemed to have weight and texture.

It wasn’t a tunnel.

It was a world.

The only light came from strange, bioluminescent fungi that clung to the cavern walls in eerie, pulsing clusters.

They cast a sickly, blue-green glow over a landscape of twisted rock formations and deep, silent pools of black water.

"Whoa," Michael breathed, the sound loud in the profound silence. "The art direction down here is... a choice."

"Keep your voice down," Jinx hissed, her whisper sharp as a razor. "And watch your step."

She moved with a quiet, practiced grace, her feet finding purchase on the slick, mossy ground as if she had been born to it.

Michael tried to follow her lead, but he felt clumsy and loud, a bull in a china shop made of silence.

He pulled up his status screen, the blue text a comforting, familiar presence in this alien world.

[VE: 20/125]

He was still running on fumes.

He needed to be careful.

He needed to be efficient.

A low growl echoed from the shadows to their left.

GRRRRROWL.

It was a sound that was both animal and machine, a fusion of guttural threat and the hum of a badly-grounded electrical wire.

Jinx froze, her hand dropping to the custom rifle slung over her back.

From the darkness, a pack of them emerged.

They were the size of large wolves, but their bodies were nightmarish amalgamations of rusted, fused rebar and thick bundles of sparking electrical cables that served as muscle and sinew.

Their heads were just jagged masses of metal with two glowing, hot-white filaments for eyes.

[LV. 8 CABLE HOUND IDENTIFIED]

Four of them.

They didn’t have noses, but they turned their heads as if sniffing the air, their filament-eyes burning brighter.

"They’ve got our scent," Jinx breathed, her voice barely audible. "Or my rifle’s energy signature."

"Okay," Michael whispered back. "So what’s the strat for the angry spaghetti monsters?"

"They’re fast," Jinx said, her mind all business. "And that electrical bite will fry your nervous system. But they’re machines, mostly. Which means they have a weakness."

She pulled a small, flat disk from her belt and tossed it on the ground between them and the hounds.

"I disable them," she said, her plan simple and direct. "You take them apart while they’re rebooting."

"Got it," Michael nodded. "Stun and DPS. Classic combo."

The lead hound let out a crackling howl and charged.

The others followed, their metal feet clanging on the stone floor.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

"Now!" Jinx yelled.

She clicked a detonator.

The disk on the ground let out a high-pitched whine and erupted in a silent, expanding pulse of blue energy.

BWOOMP!

The EMP wave washed over the Cable Hounds.

They seized up instantly, their bodies convulsing, the light in their eyes flickering erratically.

One of them collapsed entirely, its metal limbs twitching.

The other three were stunned, shaking their heads as if trying to clear a system error.

Michael was already moving.

He didn’t charge in for the kill. He remembered what Jinx had said.

He was the powerhouse. But power wasn’t just about killing.

He focused, pulling on the void within him. He didn’t want a slash. He didn’t want to devour.

He wanted to control.

A thin, purple-black tendril of pure void, no thicker than a whip, shot from his outstretched hand.

It wasn’t a weapon.

It was a tool.

[NEW SKILL INTUITED: VOID TETHER]

The tether wrapped around the leg of the nearest hound just as it was recovering from the EMP blast.

He pulled.

The hound, caught off-balance, yelped and crashed to the ground in a tangle of sparking limbs.

Jinx didn’t waste the opportunity.

The crack of her rifle was deafening in the cavern.

BANG!

The high-caliber round, designed for punching through armor, tore through the hound’s central power core. It spasmed once and went still, the white light in its eyes dying out.

Their synergy was perfect. Unspoken.

She disabled. He controlled. She executed.

In less than thirty seconds, all four hounds were silent, metallic heaps on the cavern floor.

Jinx lowered her rifle, a look of surprise on her face.

"A Void Tether," she said, her voice a mix of awe and suspicion. "That’s a new one. I thought your whole deal was just... pointy, shadowy death."

"I’m branching out," Michael said, the tether dissolving from his hand. "Trying to be a multi-class character."

The fight had been brutally efficient, but it had cost him.

[VE: 5/125]

He was empty. Utterly drained.

A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he stumbled, catching himself on a rock wall.

The wall was covered in a soft, velvety moss that pulsed with a faint, internal light.

As his hand touched it, a cloud of shimmering, iridescent spores puffed into the air.

He flinched back, but it was too late.

He inhaled.

The world dissolved.

The blue-green cavern, the dead hounds, Jinx’s worried face—it all smeared into a kaleidoscope of soft, warm colors.

He saw patterns in the moss. Swirling, intricate designs.

The patterns shifted, coalescing into a face.

A beautiful, kind face, framed by dark hair, her features a painful, perfect blur of light and memory.

It was his mother.

She was smiling at him.

Not the sad, tragic echo from the Archive.

Not the fierce, desperate warrior from the Ever-Gate.

Just... his mom. Smiling. The way he vaguely remembered from a life before ghosts and Gates.

"Mom," he whispered, reaching out to the vision, the word a raw, aching wound in his chest.

The image shimmered, and her smile seemed to widen.

And then it was gone.

He was back in the cold, damp cavern, staring at a patch of moss, his hand outstretched.

Jinx was shaking his shoulder, her face a mask of alarm.

"Kid? Michael! Snap out of it! Hallucinogenic spores. Don’t breathe ’em in!"

He blinked, the last vestiges of the vision fading, leaving a hollow ache in their wake.

"I’m okay," he lied, his voice thick. "Just... tired."

She looked at him, her eyes sharp, seeing more than he wanted her to. She saw the grief on his face.

"C’mon," she said, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it. "There’s a defensible alcove up ahead. We need to rest."

She led him to a small, dry cave set high in the cavern wall. It was a perfect vantage point, with only one way in.

He sank to the ground, his back against the cold stone, every muscle in his body screaming with exhaustion.

He was empty. Powerless.

Vulnerable.

He stared at the corpse of the nearest Cable Hound, its metal frame gleaming in the dim, fungal light.

And then he felt it.

A whisper.

A cold, gnawing hunger stirring in the pit of his soul.

It was the forbidden skill.

The quick fix.

The dark path.

The icon for [Soul Devour] on his HUD began to pulse with a faint, insistent, dark purple light.

It was calling to him.

Just one. Just a taste. You need the energy. You need to be strong to protect her legacy. You need to survive.

He closed his eyes, his fists clenching, fighting a war no one else could see.

He was so focused on the battle within that he didn’t notice Jinx watching him from the mouth of the alcove.

She wasn’t looking at him with concern anymore.

Her hand was resting on the grip of the pistol holstered at her side.

Her face was pale.

She saw the exhaustion on his face vanish, replaced by a chilling, predatory stillness.

She saw the way his eyes were fixed on the dead monster, not like a Hunter assessing a kill, but like a wolf staring at its prey.