The glow from the spilled ichor faded too quickly.
Kael crouched low, trying to listen past the pounding in his ears.
The thrum came again, low, steady, almost a pulse. This time, it was closer.
The cavern's shadows seemed to grow teeth. The bone arches overhead flexed ever so slightly, as though breathing. Kael's fingers curled into the cracked lamp handle, the last shard of glass still clinging to its frame.
Another sound.
A drip. Slow, deliberate. Not water but thicker, heavier. It fell onto the bone floor a few paces ahead, leaving a dark smear in the dim light.
Something moved.
From between two warped arches, a shape unfolded at first just a silhouette against the deeper dark. Then the lamp's sickly light caught the curve of something smooth and white.
A mask.
No, not a mask a face, bone-white and expressionless, stretching too far, like someone had drawn it longer than it should be. Beneath it, the body was lean, wrapped in strands of what looked like tendon or sinew that pulsed faintly, each movement slow and deliberate.
The creature's head tilted.
Kael's breath caught. He felt… seen. Not in the way predators see prey, but in the way a surgeon looks at a patient on a table, with cold calculation, deciding where to cut first.
"Stay back," Kael warned, though his voice was little more than a whisper.
The thing didn't move. But its face, if it could be called that shifted slightly, and Kael realized it wasn't bone at all. It was grown flesh, hardened like a carapace, with thin cracks running from brow to chin. Inside those cracks, something faintly glowed.
It took a step forward.
Kael's body reacted before his mind — shifting into a stance, knees bent, weight ready to move. He didn't know this stance, but it felt as natural as breathing.
The creature took another step.
The air grew colder. The glow in its face-cracks brightened, casting flickering shadows. In that light, Kael caught a glimpse of its hands — long, jointed wrong, with blades of hardened bone protruding from the forearms like grown weapons.
When it moved again, it didn't walk.
It blurred.
One heartbeat it was several paces away, the next its face was inches from Kael's. The cold radiating from it burned his skin.
Kael swung the lamp. The creature didn't dodge — instead, one of its blade-arms snapped up, catching the swing mid-motion. Bone met glass with a sharp crack. Shards fell between them.
It didn't attack. It just stood there, holding the ruined lamp, its strange gaze fixed on Kael.
The pulse Kael had heard before was now in his chest matching his heartbeat perfectly.
The thing leaned closer, its cracked face nearly touching his own. Behind the bone-like shell, faint golden light swirled, a color Kael felt deep in his marrow.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it stepped back.
No sound, no warning, just gone into the dark, the air rushing in to fill the space it had occupied.
Kael's lungs finally remembered to work. He staggered back, eyes darting to the place where it had vanished.
Somewhere far above, faint and muffled, came the echo of a horn. Not from the Depths, but from the city above. A signal.
The scraping skitter from before returned the smaller creatures again. They were coming back.
And the one with the cracked face… it was watching.