The tunnel closed behind them.
Not all at once.
Slowly.
Like a throat swallowing.
Kael heard the grinding of the teeth-lined entrance as the stone folded inward, sealing the street—and the remaining hunters—outside. The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed the opening was the Devourer's many faces smiling down into the tunnel after them.
Then the light vanished.
For a moment there was nothing but breathing.
Mara's.
Aurelion's.
His own.
And something deeper.
A vast, slow pulse.
Kael lifted his hand, and black fire flickered across his palm, casting dim shadowlight across the tunnel.
The walls moved.
Not much.
Just enough to prove they were alive.
The passage was wide and circular, but the surface was wrong—too smooth in some places, too ridged in others. Pale bone-like structures curved through the walls like ribs. Thick cords of dark veins pulsed beneath a thin membrane that looked disturbingly similar to skin.
Mara stared at it in quiet horror.
"…we're inside it."
Kael touched the wall with the tip of Nightrend.
The blade hissed.
The surface flinched.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"We are."
Behind them came the scratching.
The gray creatures.
They were following.
Mara checked her rifle. "We don't have time to admire the architecture."
Aurelion stepped past them both, his pale eyes scanning the living corridor.
"This is not its body," he said.
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Feels like it."
"No," Aurelion replied.
"This is its digestive system."
Mara looked ready to throw up.
They moved deeper.
The tunnel sloped downward in a long spiral, the ground soft under their boots like packed muscle instead of stone. Kael's shadow-flame illuminated shifting shapes embedded within the walls.
At first he thought they were bones.
Then one of them blinked.
A human eye stared out from the membrane.
The eyelid twitched weakly before closing again.
Mara stopped walking.
"…those are people."
They looked closer.
Faces pushed against the inside of the wall like trapped bodies beneath ice. Hundreds of them stretched along the tunnel—some skeletal, some fresh, some barely recognizable anymore.
Most were dead.
Some weren't.
A woman's lips moved soundlessly inside the flesh.
Another man's hand twitched beneath the membrane before going still.
Kael's jaw tightened.
"They're being digested."
Aurelion nodded.
"Slowly."
Mara whispered something Kael didn't catch.
They kept moving.
The deeper they went, the stronger the pulse became.
The tunnel eventually widened into a massive chamber that looked almost like a cathedral grown from bone. Curved rib-like pillars arched overhead, meeting in a jagged dome high above them. Thick strands of red tissue hung between the pillars like grotesque banners.
And at the center of the chamber…
A pit.
A wide circular opening filled with slowly rotating dark liquid.
Blood.
Thousands of gallons of it.
The surface moved in thick spirals like a massive whirlpool turning slowly downward into blackness.
Kael stepped closer.
The blood moved toward the center.
Toward something deeper.
Aurelion spoke softly.
"The heart."
Mara crouched near the edge and shone a flashlight downward.
The beam vanished after only a few meters.
"It's too deep," she said.
Kael stared into the pit.
His Star-Blood was screaming.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
He could feel something down there.
Something ancient.
Something watching him.
The Ascendant System flickered across his vision again.
Core entity detected.
Shard-Seraph fragment confirmed.
Assimilation potential: HIGH.
Kael blinked.
"…what?"
Aurelion noticed the change immediately.
"What does the System say?"
Kael didn't answer right away.
Instead he leaned over the pit and studied the blood whirlpool.
It was feeding something.
Something massive.
Then the whisper came.
Not from the Devourer above.
From below.
A voice like old starlight buried under centuries of hunger.
"Child…"
Kael's breath caught.
The voice felt… different.
Not like the Devourer's mocking curiosity.
This voice sounded exhausted.
Ancient.
Broken.
"Another bearer of the Eclipse…"
Kael stepped back instinctively.
Mara looked at him. "You hearing that too?"
"No."
"Then why do you look like that?"
Kael ignored her.
The voice continued inside his skull.
"The Devourer is only the shell."
"I am what remains beneath it."
The blood whirlpool accelerated.
The chamber trembled.
Aurelion suddenly went very still.
"…Kael," he said slowly.
"What?"
"I feel it now."
Kael nodded.
"Yeah."
Because whatever was at the bottom of that pit had finally awakened.
The blood parted.
Something began rising from the center of the whirlpool.
Not quickly.
Slowly.
The surface broke first.
A shape emerged.
White.
Massive.
A skeletal wing.
Then another.
The blood cascaded off them as the enormous form pulled itself upward through the whirlpool. The chamber trembled violently as a colossal body climbed out of the pit—bone-white armor plates fused with blackened flesh, wings shattered and chained with thick strands of living tissue.
But the worst part was the head.
Or what remained of it.
The skull was split open like a broken crown.
Fragments of something radiant still glowed faintly inside.
Eyes like dying stars opened.
The chamber fell silent.
The ancient being looked directly at Kael.
And spoke aloud this time.
Its voice echoed through the cathedral of bone.
"Eclipse… bearer."
Kael felt the Star-Blood burn inside him.
"What are you?"
The creature studied him with ancient sorrow.
"I was… a Seraph."
The Devourer above roared through the tunnels.
The entire chamber shook violently.
The Seraph's wings twitched weakly against the chains binding it.
"I became… food."
Mara whispered behind Kael.
"…we are so unbelievably screwed."
The Seraph's gaze remained fixed on Kael.
But there was something else in its expression now.
Hope.
"Unless," it said slowly,
"you become… something worse."