Jason didn’t stop running.

His lungs burned. His legs ached. The borrowed boots pinched his toes with every stride, but he didn’t slow down. Behind him, he could hear Mae’s hooves clicking against the stone, Ylva’s claws scraping, Thalion’s ragged breathing.

They had escaped the cavern of eggs. The sealed tunnel was behind them.

But they were lost now.

Thalion had blown a hole in the wall—Jason had screamed at him to do it, and the elf had obeyed without hesitation. But in the chaos, in the panic, Thalion had missed the original tunnel by a few centimeters. The blast had opened a completely different path, one that veered sharply to the left, away from the way they had come. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

And they kept running. Running. Running.

"Where are we going?" Mae gasped.

"I don’t know!" Jason admitted. "Anywhere but there!"

Ylva’s ears swiveled forward, then back. Her nose twitched.

"Stop," she said.

Jason kept running.

"Jason, stop!"

He glanced over his shoulder. Ylva had slowed to a jog, her nostrils flaring, her eyes wide. There was something in her expression that he hadn’t seen before.

Fear.

He skidded to a halt. Mae nearly crashed into him. Thalion stopped a few paces back, his pale face slick with sweat.

"What is it?" Jason asked.

Ylva’s tail was rigid. Her ears were flat. She inhaled deeply, then gagged.

"Decay," she muttered. "Like... corpses. Rotting corpses."

Jason sniffed the air. At first, nothing. Then—faintly—a sweet, sickly smell that made his stomach turn.

"We need to keep moving," Mae said, her voice urgent. "Stopping now won’t make a difference. It’ll only make things worse." She glanced back the way they had come, her brown eyes wide. "Something is following us. I can feel it."

Ylva looked at Jason. Thalion looked at Ylva.

Jason looked at the dark passage ahead.

They continued running.

The smell grew worse with every step.

Jason’s eyes watered. His throat burned. He had to breathe through his mouth just to keep from gagging. Ylva looked like she was about to be sick. Even Mae, who had been stoic until now, had her hand pressed over her nose.

There was a chance Thalion could defeat whatever was attacking them. His magic was devastating—Jason had seen it firsthand. A flick of his wrist and heads exploded. A wave of his hand and walls crumbled.

But Jason had realized earlier that Thalion’s body had limits. The spells he cast took their toll. And since Thalion was not mentally stable, using his magic was a risk for all of them. One wrong thought. One flash of panic. One moment of lost control.

And they could end up like the orc in the alley.

So they ran even though Jason already made him use it once.

Combat was a different situation altogether.

They burst into a new chamber.

The smell was worse here. So much worse. Even Jason—whose sense of smell was nothing compared to Ylva’s—could taste it on his tongue. Rotting meat. Copper. Something chemical and foul.

He doubled over and vomited.

The sound echoed off the walls. Mae patted his back, her own face pale. Ylva stood frozen at the entrance, her eyes fixed on something ahead.

Thalion stepped past Jason.

"By the gods," the elf whispered.

Jason wiped his mouth and looked up.

Corpses.

Dozens of them. Stacked against the walls like cordwood. Some were humanoid or rather looked that way, maybe, or something close. Others were creatures Jason didn’t recognize: twisted limbs, multiple eyes, fur and scales and feathers all jumbled together.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The bodies were in different states of grotesque disfigurement. Torsos ripped open. Rib cages splayed apart like the wings of birds. Skulls cracked, brains exposed, eyes missing.

And inside them...

Eggs.

Insects. Larvae. Pale, squirming things that pulsed and wriggled within the cavities of the dead. Some of the bodies were still moving—twitching, spasming, as the creatures inside them hatched and fed.

Jason’s stomach lurched again, but nothing came up.

"What the fuck," he breathed. "What the actual fuck."

Ylva’s claws extended. Her whole body was shaking.

"This isn’t a spider," she said. "Spiders don’t do this."

Mae shook her head. "No. They don’t."

Thalion’s pale eyes scanned the chamber. "There’s no other exit."

Jason looked.

The room was a dead end. Four walls. One entrance. And the entrance was the way they had come.

The way something was following them through.

They realized it at the same moment.

There was nowhere else to run.

Jason gripped his short sword. His hands were steady now—not because he wasn’t afraid, but because fear had calcified into something harder. Something colder.

"We have to fight," he said.

Ylva stepped up beside him. "We have to survive."

Mae drew her sword—not the decorative one between her breasts, but a short blade from her belt. "I’ll heal who I can."

Thalion raised his palm. Dark mana swirled around his fingers.

"No magic," Jason said.

Thalion’s eyes flicked to him. "Jason—"

"No magic," Jason repeated. "Not until we know what we’re facing. I can’t risk you losing control."

The elf’s jaw tightened. But he lowered his hand.

"That leaves us with claws," Ylva said. "And one sword."

Jason nodded. "Better than nothing."

From the tunnel behind them, a sound echoed.

Skittering, lots of it.

-

Mira stopped.

Her amber eyes narrowed. Her tail went still. Every instinct she had honed over years of dungeon crawling screamed at her to halt.

Something was off.

She couldn’t explain it. There was no smell—the cave’s stench had overwhelmed her senses just like everyone else’s. There was no sound—just the distant rumble of collapsing stone and the faint echo of explosions she had heard moments ago. There was no visual cue—just the same dark tunnels, the same damp walls, the same oppressive silence.

But she felt it.

In her bones. In her blood. In the space between her heartbeats.

Mira made the smartest decision she could make in that moment.

She turned back without hesitation.

Her boots splashed through puddles of unknown origin. Her daggers glinted in the dim moss-light. She ran toward the initial passage—the one where they had split up, the one where she had left Jason and the others.

The floor had shaken. Explosions had echoed through the tunnels. Something had woken up. Something that had been sleeping for a long, long time.

And that meant they were all in danger.

Mira didn’t know if she would reach them in time. She didn’t know if Kaelen and Helga were still alive. She didn’t know if the little meat and his strange crew had already been devoured.

But she knew one thing with absolute certainty.

This might be the single event that wiped out her guild.