Just let me sleep!

Chapter 18

Chapter 18 : Time is running out
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The tunnel curved like a blade being drawn, every step I took echoed too loudly, each sound bouncing back against stone that felt too hollow, like I was walking through the ribs of something dead. Far from anything holy.

The farther I went, the less the air resembled anything breathable since dust clogged my throat and rot stung my nose. And beneath it, a sweeter tang, almost like fruit left to fester in the sun. A warning in scent, soft and rotting.

I should have turned back. Each and every cell in my body told me so, but I wasn't afraid to face whatever waited for me.

Willard's flame hovered dutifully at my side, his magic hovering just close enough to remind me of that arrogant arse. Even his spells carried attitude. But if it vanished, I'd know he was dead.

Unfortunately, it was still there.

The tunnel eventually spat me into a cavern so large I couldn't see the ceiling. Moisture dripped from somewhere above. I stepped forward. My boots cracked over bone fragments brittle as glass, some so old they dissolved into dust just by stepping near.

And then it hit.

I felt it before I saw it. Magic, spiked and sudden, like ice driven through veins. The runes hidden in the floor blazed to life, and the ground trembled.

A trap.

A hiss echoed from ahead, multiplied, like a chorus of teeth sharpening in unison. Then there was a movement.

I hadn't seen them since my last life, when they were still whispered about as myths to terrify apprentices.

But they were real.

Pale, starved horrors with no eyes and too many mouths. Spines splitting through skin like shattered blades. Their limbs bent wrong, backwards. Their claws hissed against the stone as they crept closer.

Hollowmaws.

Things stitched from hunger and nightmares. And they were coming for me.

I staggered back, adrenaline kicking in this small body.

There were five of them.

Six.

No, there were eight.

I turned to run. Not out of fear, though I'd be lying if I said it wasn't crawling up my spine, I needed space, time, something, anything.

The cavern's walls were slick with moisture. Then I stopped running because I'd found what I didn't want to find.

More of them. Dozens.

It wasn't random. It wasn't natural. Someone or something had herded them here.

A containment trap. The runes in the tunnel weren't designed to keep us out.

They were designed to keep them in.

A sick realisation settled over me, the passage split wasn't as a test of courage. It was a test of survival.

And I ....

[I wasn't supposed to make it out.]

I took a step back as Hollowmaws crept closer. But my foot caught on something buried in the debris. It wasn't just some rock or bone. I tilted my head, and the blue flame hovered closer.

It was a hilt.

Simple yet elegant, wrapped in white leather, half-swallowed by the earth as though it had been buried alive.