Then, faint scrapes whispered through the darkness—the sound of chitin dragging against stone. From a low tunnel mouth, two beetle scouts crawled into the midden chamber.
Their carapaces glimmered faintly with a dull, resinous sheen, antennae cutting the air like twitching blades. They moved with mechanical precision, mandibles clacking in a soft, unnerving rhythm as they hauled fragments of bone and rot from the tunnels and cast them onto the midden heaps.
The refuse tumbled down in wet thuds, adding to the grotesque mound of decay, as though the scouts were tasked with feeding the chamber itself rather than searching for food.
The stench of rot thickened with every step they took, a sour tang that clawed at the back of the throat.
The party remains in position, each member finding their own cover within the chamber—shadows, stone, or bone piles—every one of them wound tight with waiting energy, their silence threaded with the same taut anticipation.
