The Hollow Earth no longer breathed.
Where once the blue-skinned Nephilim had stood as living pillars of restraint—giants who refused to conquer the realm of men—now only corpses remained. Their immense bodies lay torn open from within, ribcages split like shattered gates, armor peeled outward as if something had forced itself free. The stone beneath them was burned black, divine blood eaten away by an acid not born of magic nor flesh alone.
Even Calcore slowed his steps.
These were not warriors fallen in battle.
These were harvested gods.
The first scream came from above.
A shape dropped from the cavern ceiling—white, slick, jointed wrong—its limbs unfolding like knives made of bone. Calcore moved without thought. He caught it midair by the throat, felt the creature convulse, and slammed it headfirst into the stone. The impact split its skull, but it did not die. Its tail lashed, barbed tip slashing for his spine.
He tore the tail free with a twist of his hips and drove it through the creature's chest.
Acid blood erupted, hissing against his armor, eating into stone. Steam filled the cavern.
Then the others came.
Fifteen in total—crawling along walls, skittering over corpses, moving with the coordination of a single mind. Some leapt. Others waited. One coiled its body and launched itself like a spear.
Calcore met it with his sword.
The blade cleaved through chitin and bone, splitting the creature from crown to pelvis. Another lunged from behind—he let it strike, caught its jaw in his bare hands, and pulled. The sound was wet and final as the skull tore apart, brain matter splattering the cavern wall.
The pelt hunters tried to form ranks.
Calcore roared. "Scatter. Hunt."
One creature crawled beneath him, blades scraping stone. He stomped—once—crushing its torso flat, then dragged the writhing thing up by its legs and used it as a weapon, smashing it into another until both collapsed into twitching ruin.
Two attacked together—one from the front, one from above. He threw his sword.
It impaled the first through the chest and pinned it to a Nephilim corpse. The second landed on his back, claws digging in. Calcore rolled, crushed it beneath his weight, then drove his elbow down again and again until the creature stopped moving.
Its blood ate into his armor.
He did not slow.
The last three tried to flee—crawling into cracks, retreating toward the deeper tunnels. Calcore ran them down. He leapt onto a wall, kicked off, caught one mid-climb, and slammed it into the cavern floor hard enough to collapse the stone beneath it. Another lost its head to a single clean swing.
The final creature hissed—high-pitched, terrified—and tried to coil.
Calcore grabbed it by the face and bit down on its skull.
Bone cracked. The thing went limp.
Silence returned.
Steam rose from the corpses, acid blood carving scars into the earth. Calcore stood among them, chest rising slowly, uninjured. Untouched.
They found the survivor deeper in the ruins.
A Nephilim elder—half his torso gone, chest split from within. His blue skin had faded to ash. One massive hand reached out weakly as they approached.
"They… are not born," he rasped. "They use us."
With effort that shook his massive frame, he spoke of the face-jumpers—small, fast, parasitic horrors that latched onto the living, violated them, planted death inside their bodies. Of offspring that burst from chests fully formed, already killers.
"They were unleashed… by your enemy," the elder whispered. "The Dark Messiah feared your bloodline. So he made something that hunts gods."
His eyes found Calcore.
"You are too late for us… but not for the world above."
The elder died.
Calcore stood over him for a long moment. Then he turned to the pelt hunters, his voice low, precise, merciless.
"These are not foes you duel.
They are not enemies you honor."
He picked up his blade, slick with blackened blood.
"We burn their nests.
We crush their eggs.
We leave nothing alive that can crawl."
And deep beneath the bones of fallen gods, in a world that had already lost its giants, the war shifted.
This was no longer rebellion.
It was extermination.