The tunnel sloped downward like the throat of some buried titan, its walls slick with black condensation that pulsed faintly as though alive.
Ash clung to their boots, muffling every step, but even the silence felt drowned beneath the faint, throbbing hum that leaked from deeper inside.
Minutes passed before the narrow passage finally opened—and the group stopped as one.
"...Well," Jessy whispered, her voice a lazy drawl despite the way her eyes widened. "That's… definitely not the 'small gathering' the chicken advertised."
The cavern ahead stretched wider than a stadium, its sheer immensity impossible to take in at once.
A ghostly gray mist hung over the clearing, veiling a nightmare landscape of motion and sound.
Thousands of corrupted beasts churned across the blackened ground, their twisted bodies packed so tightly it looked like the surface itself was alive and writhing.
And in the center—a vast crater, glowing faintly violet.
