The horn's echo hadn't faded when the first skittering shapes poured into the cavern.
Kael counted four… then six… then stopped counting.
They came from every angle, moving like spilled oil limbs bending the wrong way, too many joints, each one tipped with hooked claws. Their eyes if they had any were just pits of black that drank the light.
The one with the cracked face was gone, but Kael could feel it still. Somewhere in the dark, watching.
The smaller creatures didn't hesitate. The first lunged, mouth opening sideways to reveal rows of needle teeth.
Kael moved before thinking, sidestepping, twisting the ruined lamp frame in his hands like a club. The metal caught the creature across its jaw, sending it tumbling into the bone wall with a wet crunch.
Two more came from the left.
Kael dropped low, sweeping the lamp in an arc that caught one in the legs. It screeched the sound stabbing into his ears like hot wire and another slammed into his back.
The impact drove him to the ground. Claws raked across his shoulder, catching flesh.
Pain flashed but along with it, something else.
The stance. The reflex. The memory of movement. His body twisted under the weight, hand finding the creature's jaw, shoving it up while the other hand swung the lamp frame down into its exposed throat.
The frame bent, but the thing went limp.
Blood, dark, thick, almost tar-like splashed across his hands.
No time to think.
Another came straight at his face. Kael ducked under it, rolling into a crouch. His hand brushed something sharp on the floor a broken bone shard, long as his forearm.
It fit his grip perfectly.
The next creature leapt, and Kael's arm moved like it remembered the motion driving the shard upward, through soft tissue, out the top of its skull. The body went slack midair, collapsing beside him.
Three more circled now, moving slower, learning from the others' failure.
Kael's breath was ragged, his heart hammering but it wasn't just fear. There was a strange, fierce clarity in him now, like every sound and shadow was speaking to him, telling him where to be next.
One darted in from behind Kael pivoted without looking, the bone shard slicing a clean arc that split its neck. He felt the resistance of tendon, then the release.
The last two hesitated. Then, without warning, they skittered back into the dark.
Kael stayed crouched, the shard still in hand, eyes scanning the cavern. His breaths slowed, his muscles taut.
That's when he felt it again — the pulse. Not from his chest this time, but from deeper in the cavern.
Slow. Measured. Watching.
A faint glimmer of gold appeared in the darkness ahead. The cracked face.
It hadn't moved during the fight. Hadn't helped.
It had only watched.
And Kael had the gnawing, certain feeling… that it hadn't been watching the monsters.
It had been watching him.