The light was a wound.
It speared through shell and thought alike—searing, boundless, clawing at instincts never built for sky.
Zareth hissed and folded tight beside the corpse, limbs tucked close. Snow stung his joints, yet the light scored deeper, a white-hot pressure against his senses.
The human was a blur now: arms askew, legs half‑buried, a face stripped to ivory beneath ragged flesh. Not a threat. Not alive. Just a ruin.
Too bright. Too open.
Wrong.
He pivoted—retreat.
Claws rasped on frozen stone as he slipped back into the tunnel's throat, where the air grew dense again, tasted of old blood, decay, and damp stone.
Where the dark felt sane.
Silence settled like a second skin.
Zareth halted just inside, letting shadow knit around him until his vision cleared, his mind slowly sharpening to points of focus.
There it was.
The sword.
Abandoned where it fell, half‑swallowed by a smear of blood and ash. Lifeless metal—still, heavy, yet as his eyes fixed on it, something inside shifted. A stirring, subtle but insistent.
He crept closer—
not to eat,
not to strike,
but to see.
The metal sat on the stone and dirt: its spine gently curved, edges dulled yet unbroken. Not bone. Not grown from shell or flesh.
Made. Changed by heat and will. Bent into form, given purpose. It held the echo of something deliberate.
Zareth leaned in, antennae flicking. Thoughts narrowed to the blade's edges—the weight, the faded warmth, the place where blood had once clung and cooled.
Then it came:
>————<>————<
[Object Identified: Soldier's Fang]
Type: Melee Weapon
Material: Refined Ironsteel
Trait Information: Locked — Insufficient Analysis Level
>————<>————<
Zareth froze.
The words were not spoken. Not seen. But imprinted—pressed into his mind like scent, like pressure in water, like memory not his own.
He hissed and drew back, mandibles twitching with instinctive unease.
No pain.
No threat.
Only knowledge.
Zareth's attention slid to the next shape.
It lay toppled amid splinters of charred chitin and ash: straps, seams, rough hide pulled taut in awkward patterns. The human had dropped it mid‑struggle, its contents spilling like viscera from a torn gut.
He inched closer. A claw tapped the side—no response.
Antennae brushed across the surface: coarse, stretched skin, stitched together with sinew and thread.
A container. A shell with a mouth.
He studied it.
The system obliged.
>————<>————<
[Object Identified: Leather Field Pack]
Type: Storage (Adventurer Grade)
Material: Tanned Beast Hide, Woven Fiber Cord, Iron Buckle
Status: Minor Damage — Functional
Contents: 7 registered items (scan incomplete)
>————<>————<
Seven?
Fragments speckled the ground around it—a curved claw, a shard of black shell, a cracked crystal nestled close to the flap.
Zareth focused on the nearest piece, a pale claw etched with faint runes like scarring.
Pulse:
>————<>————<
[Object Identified: Hardened Tunneler Claw]
Type: Crafting Material
Grade: Common
Material: Bone Chitin (Low Purity)
Use: Weapon Reinforcement, Alchemical Grindstock
>————<>————<
Next—a jagged beetle horn, thick and black, its edge gleaming faintly with the crust of dried venom.
>————<>————<
[Object Identified: Scorched Abyssal Horn]
Type: Crafting Material
Grade: Uncommon
Material: Void‑Infused Carapace (Refined)
Trait Information: Partially Locked
>————<>————<
His mandibles clicked.
Simple pieces yielded easily—name, texture, use. But the stronger ones pulled back, shielded in part.
They resisted, not from malice, but complexity.
It wasn't the system that shifted.
It was him.
Something inside was waking—tuning to the secret shapes of the world.
His claw caught on something else. Thin. Curled. Hidden beneath the pack's leather flap.
Not chitin.
Not shell.
It flexed.
Zareth teased it free.
A single sheet—dry plant fiber, laced with brittle thread. Rows of dark, burned markings covered its surface like tiny scars.
No scent. No texture of meaning.
No language he understood.
Yet it held weight—not in mass, but in purpose.
He fixed on it.
Waited.
>————<>————<
[Object Identified: Official Commission Scroll]
Type: Contract (Unreadable)
Material: Treated Parchment, Wax Seal (Fractured)
Language Detected: Regional Dialect — Hollowridge Variant
Status: Untranslatable — Cognitive Threshold Not Met
Mark Identified: Hollowfall Adventurer's Guild — Outer Branch Emblem
>————<>————<
The wax seal, cracked and half‑crushed, still bore its shape: a hollow tower encircled with ivy, flanked by twin swords—a crest of pride. Of permission. Of challenge.
Zareth tilted his head.
No voice came. No meaning.
The system recoiled, not in fear—but limitation.
He clicked softly. Set the scroll aside.
It would not feed him.
But it lingered in his thoughts, like something waiting to return.
He just didn't know what.
Yet.
A faint skitter echoed from the tunnel wall.
Vorrik.
The broodkin flowed down from the ridge above, limbs splayed in perfect cadence. His smaller frame clicked against stone as he descended, antennae twitching with practiced precision.
He paused a few paces away, head dipped low, posture neutral—waiting.
Zareth faced him—
and for the first time, truly focused.
Not just with eyes, but with thought.
With that same instinct that had revealed the sword. The claw. The scroll.
What are you?
>————<>————<
[Entity Identified: Vorrik]
Species: Abyssal Broodspawn — Skirmisher Class
Generation: Firstborn
Cognitive Link: Active (Shared Neural Thread)
Loyalty Status: Unshakable
Combat Rating: Low–Mid Tier (Tactical Speed Unit)
Abilities:
– Wall Cling (Enhanced)
– Bio‑electrical Pulse (Short‑Range)
– Carapace Flexion (Stealth Variant)*
>————<>————<
Zareth hesitated.
The rhythm was familiar.
Not sound—but understanding. A sensation, raw and sure. He had felt this before—when Vorrik first joined as broodkin.
Then, it was background noise. Instinctive data.
But now—
He had summoned it.
Torn it free from the dark like a claw ripping silk.
No passive link.
A gift. A tool. One that belonged to him.
He tested it—turned toward a scorched crawler, blackened and curled in death. Reached for it. Focused—
Nothing. No data.
No name.
Not kin.
Not his.
But also—not an enemy.
Just dead.
He clicked low in thought and returned his focus to Vorrik.
The system opened to him again. Waiting.
Zareth's eyes returned to the sword.
It hadn't moved.
Still caked in blood. Still buried in grit. Cold light flickered across its edge from glowing fungus deeper in the tunnel.
He stepped forward. Lowered his head.
His mandibles parted—then clamped slowly around the hilt.
The grip was too narrow. Too soft. Not shaped for fangs or claws.
But it held.
It stayed there—awkward and tight—nestled between jagged curves of his mouthparts.
It dragged behind him as he turned—scraping over stone, catching on rock.
He didn't care.
He liked it.
Not for eating.
Not for killing.
For having.
He clicked once—sharp, short.
Vorrik turned his head.
Zareth pulsed.
Not words. Not orders. But intent—pressed through the neural thread like a breath into flame.
Vorrik stiffened, then moved—skittering toward the charred remains deeper in the tunnel. Cracked thoraxes. Blackened limbs.
Enough food for the others in the basin.
Zareth continued forward—mandibles locked around the human weapon.
Its weight dragged across the ground like a steel tail.
He carried it with him into the dark.
Zareth's limbs clacked in a steady rhythm as he wound through the tunnel. Each step precise. Deliberate.
Behind him, the sword rasped—steel grinding against stone in hollow protest. The blood on its edge had dried to rust-red ash.
He passed the mouth of the tunnel he had first descended through—now scarred with claw-gouges, charred remnants of the Guardian's death still flecking the stone.
Then the basin opened.
No—
The Chasm of Thar'zul.
And it was changing.
Slabs of stone had been pulled into a rough barricade at the entrance wall. Uneven. Crooked. But intentional.
At the center, Threxil pounded a wedge of rock into a crevice with his massive forelimbs.
Each blow echoed like war drums through the cavern.
Nearby, the Guardian's corpse was no longer whole.
Its once-massive form had been torn apart—bone plate by bone plate, organ by organ. Vents. Chitin. Sinew. All dismantled. Sorted. Used.
Its death had not birthed silence.
It had fed the nest.
Zareth watched.
Then lifted his gaze.
High on the cavern wall, Nyssal perched—still as stone. Antennae sweeping slow arcs, listening to vibrations in the air and rock.
She twitched once as Zareth passed beneath her—but gave no sound.
Across the chamber, Vorrik emerged once more, dragging two scorched crawlers behind him. Their blackened shells curled and cracked from fire.
He paused.
Saw Zareth.
Tilted his head.
A pulse from Zareth—calm. Cold. Direct.
Vorrik resumed.
Zareth stepped into the heart of the basin.
He dropped the sword beside a jagged stone outcrop. The blade clattered dully as it hit the ground.
He crouched above it.
It didn't belong.
But it was his.
The others resumed their tasks without command.
A rhythm had begun here—primitive, yes. But real.
Zareth watched them move.
And for the first time…
he did not feel like a monster lurking in a forgotten cave.
He felt like something becoming.
>————<>————<
[DOMAIN STATUS: UPDATED]
Chasm of Thar'zul — Territory Control: 1.3 / 5
Fortification: In Progress
Brood Efficiency: Moderate
Brood Morale: Stable
Inventory:
• 1 × Weapon (Soldier's Fang)
• Reclaimed Guardian Material: 12% Utilized
>————<>————<
Zareth settled into the dust beside the weapon.
The cold stone beneath him pulsed faintly. The echoes of the battle still lingered—thin and distant now, like fading breath.
But the basin was no longer hollow.
No longer empty.
It was his.