Determined to grow — no matter the cost — Elias slips beyond the perimeter and descends into a hive sector marked "inoperable." A collapsed maintenance route leads him into the buried bones of the city, where forgotten things crawl and whisper. He is no longer looking for safety. He's hunting pain.
-----
The hive was a tower of corpses.
Elias passed beneath its skin like a ghost, his flak coat pulled tight, a scavenged rebreather mask hiding his face. The filters were shot — patched with gauze and sealed with melted wax — but it worked well enough to cut the stink of what used to be people.
The access door he found behind the chem-trader's stall wasn't locked. Just buried in soot and neglect.
Behind it: a tunnel descending into Sub-Level 37. No patrols. No auspex sweeps. No working vox relays. Just dark.
And him.
He walked for thirty minutes before the first sign appeared.
A smear of blood on the wall — not old. Still drying.
Beside it, a ragged fingerprint dragging downward like someone had been pulled away screaming.
He paused.
Listened.
No movement.
Just the sound of leaking pipes and faint... murmuring.
Not words.
Just rhythm.
At the next junction, he saw the shrine.
Or what had once been one.
It was a statue of the Emperor, arms outstretched, sword broken, wings melted. Someone had hung meat from its fingers — limbs, maybe, or the carcasses of animals. He couldn't tell.
The air here was wrong.
Warm and cold at once.
Elias moved forward slowly, checking corners, one hand on the grip of his stub revolver.
His chakra twitched in his gut. Not enough to use. But enough to know something nearby wasn't human.
He found them past the next gate.
Three of them. No, four.
Mutants.
Hive scavengers twisted by radiation and exposure. Their limbs were gnarled, bone pushing through skin like blades. One had a second head on its back, whispering to itself in a wet, nasal language.
They were gathered around a fallen Aquila, ripping it apart for scrap. One of them gnawed on what looked like a skull. Another used a makeshift scalpel to carve script into a flattened metal plate.
Cult runes. Sloppy, but real.
Elias watched them from the dark.
He could turn back.
He could mark the location. Report it. Let Vael burn the whole level.
But that wasn't why he was here.
He whispered to himself:
"This is what you want, isn't it?"
His heart pounded.
The System didn't answer.
So he stepped into the light.
They saw him immediately.
Didn't charge.
Didn't roar.
They just looked.
The whispering head on the mutant's back began to mutter faster, louder.
The tallest one — a brute with one normal arm and one insectoid claw — took a step forward.
Elias spoke:
"You're going to try and kill me."
The brute tilted its head.
Elias smiled, tired.
"Let's see if that's enough."
The first one charged.
Elias moved sideways, drawing his revolver and firing — once, twice.
The rounds struck true. One in the neck, one in the thigh.
The creature didn't fall.
It screamed, shrill and furious, and leapt the last few meters, slamming into Elias with enough force to throw them both into a wall.
Pain lanced through Elias's ribs. He rolled, kicked, pulled his knife free — slashed at the arm, carving a chunk of muscle off.
The mutant shrieked.
Blood hit Elias's face.
He didn't stop.
Another one came from the side, swinging a rusted club wrapped in rebar.
Elias dodged — barely — but it clipped his shoulder and sent him spinning.
He hit the floor hard.
He reached for his chakra.
Nothing.
Still burned out.
Still dry.
He scrambled behind a half-melted bulkhead, breathing hard.
They were coming fast now.
He was bleeding.
Too many.
Too strong.
He smiled to himself.
"There it is."
The edge.
The place where the world dims, where death stands on your shoulder and breathes down your spine.
That was what the System wanted.
He didn't run.
He stood.
And let them come.
[END OF PART 3]