Chương 42: The Depth That Answers Back

For a few seconds, Zayn did not move. Not because he was calm. Because he was taking inventory. Left shoulder: sharp pain, but still mobile. Ribs: probably nothing broken, or at least little enough that dying immediately remained an impolite option. Right leg: impact, no fracture. Main dagger: still there. Second blade: lost during the fall. Lamp: broken. Elias: absent. Lena: absent. Mira: absent. Jonah: unfortunately absent too, which meant even pointless commentary had decided to abandon him.

Around him, the lower gallery breathed in the dark. Not metaphorically. Air moved through the cracks, stopped, then moved again. The beams above creaked like ribs. Fine dust sometimes fell from the ceiling, enough to remind him that Rhel-Fosse still had plenty of ideas about how to bury him. Zayn looked up. Above, behind the network of beams and black filaments, the voices had become distant.

"Zayn!" Lena. Then something lower. Elias, maybe. Selka was giving orders. Voss was swearing somewhere. Jonah was probably saying something stupid, but there was too much stone in the way for him to improve the situation with his usual talent for expressive uselessness. Zayn coughed.

"I'm alive." His voice barely rose. The tunnel swallowed it. He tried again.

"Alive!" This time, a muffled answer came back. Not clear. Not enough. The structure between them was not just blocking the passage. It was eating the sound too. The black filaments above vibrated slightly, stretched between the beams like the strings of some filthy instrument. The weaver had planned the fall. Not just the collapse. The isolation. Fine. Zayn pushed himself up with a grimace and set a hand against the wall. Cold. Damp. Uneven. Ahead of him, several values trembled in the gallery.

6 8 11 5 Small beasts. And farther away, motionless: 47 The weaver. It had not fled. It was waiting. Zayn looked down at his torn sleeve. Blood was running from his forearm to his fingers. Not enough to weaken him quickly. Enough to attract what lived down here. Naturally. Because falling alone into an infested gallery, wounded, almost without light, facing a corpse-weaving demon manipulator, was not enough. He also had to provide the seasoning. He inhaled slowly. Then smiled without humor.

"Of course." The first beast attacked from the ceiling. It dropped almost soundlessly, paws spread, split maw open. Zayn saw it because of the value before he saw the body. He shifted half a step, let it slam into the ground beside him, then crushed it against the stone with his heel before it could twist around. His dagger came down. [Soul strength absorbed: +0] Nothing. He stared at the little corpse.

"Thanks for your nonexistent contribution." The system, unsurprisingly, did not feel insulted. Two other presences withdrew into the cracks. Not stupid. Or not hungry enough yet. Zayn picked up the beast's body by one hind leg. Light. Too dry. A stretched rat-thing with black plates over its skull and fingers that looked almost human. He threw it farther down the gallery. The corpse skidded over the stone, leaving a dark streak. The hidden values moved at once. 6 came closer.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. So did 8. There. The living liked the dead when they did not know something more patient was watching. Zayn backed into the shadow of a collapsed beam. The 6 came out first. Small, quick, muzzle split to the eyes. It was sniffing the corpse, but its attention stayed tense. It knew there was something else. The 8 hung farther back, clinging to the wall. Zayn waited. The 6 finally bit into the corpse. He sprang. Not at it. At the 8.

The denser one. The more interesting one. The creature tried to flee up the wall, but he caught it by the tail, yanked it violently to the ground, and pinned it against the stone. It writhed with surprising energy, clawing at his wrist, hissing, trying to bite. He could have finished it in one motion. He did not. He held it down under his hand, feeling the thin bones move under the skin, its little heart hammering too fast against the stone.

The beast squealed, trying to twist free, to survive, to understand why death was taking so long. Part of Zayn observed the scene with almost scientific coldness. Another part, lower and more honest, enjoyed the control. Not the gain. Not yet. The moment when a living thing understands it no longer has the initiative. He tightened his grip. The beast screamed. In the cracks, the other presences froze. Good. So they were listening.

Zayn brought the creature's maw close to his own face, near enough to smell its carrion breath.

"You see," he murmured, "at least you've got the excuse of being a little piece of shit." Then he killed it. [Soul strength absorbed: +0] Nothing again. He stayed still for a second, dagger buried in the body. All that filth for zero. It was almost offensive. A proper system would at least have had a loyalty program. Commit ten horrors, get one point free. But no. Even damnation managed its rewards with the stinginess of an Aurelis accountant. A wet sound echoed farther ahead. The 47 moved. Slowly. Not toward him.

Toward the left. A side tunnel. Zayn straightened. He understood the offer at once. The weaver was not coming to kill him. It was inviting him to follow. And of course the way back up was still blocked. Very subtle. A pit demon who had apparently invented the underground version of come this way, harmless traveler. All that was missing was a sign with an arrow and a note: no traps promised by management. Zayn picked up a piece of rusted metal near a broken rail, weighed it, then slid it into his belt.

A poor weapon. Useful if everything else failed. He moved forward. Not directly toward the 47. He took the opposite wall, stopping at every branch, watching the values before the shadows. The deeper he went, the less Rhel-Fosse remained a human mine. The wooden braces vanished under black layers. The rails sank into galleries that had never been cut by tools. The stone became smoother in places, as if polished by bodies that had passed without light for a very long time.

He found the first human trace after about fifty steps. A waterskin. Crushed. Empty. He picked it up, shook it, hoping to hear at least a few drops. Nothing. Of course. Even dead objects refused to be useful for free. Farther on, he found a patrol satchel wedged under a rail. The leather was torn, but not entirely emptied. He pulled it free, forced the buckle, and found: two sticks of marking chalk a roll of dirty bandage three fixing spikes a piece of bread hard as stone Zayn stared at the bread.

Then he tried to break it. The bread resisted. He almost laughed. Even the local food had apparently received military training. He bit off a piece. His jaw protested. It tasted like dust, salt, and compacted despair. Wonderful. He put the rest away. Not much. But something. The bandage served to tighten around his forearm. Not cleanly. Enough to slow the bleeding. He then used the chalk to mark the wall with a discreet line. Not because he truly believed he would climb back easily.

Because an unmarked path is a grave with ambition. He went on. The 47 stayed ahead. Always out of reach. At one fork, a voice rose from the right.

"Zayn…" He stopped. Lena. Perfect. Same intonation. Same worried breath. Same way of saying his name as if there were still a person somewhere inside worth reaching. The voice came again.

"This way… quickly…" No value. Nothing in the right tunnel. Zayn remained still. Lena's voice pleaded.

"Please…" The weaver was skilled. Not perfect. But skilled. A little too much softness. Not enough anger. The real Lena, at this moment, would have been worried, yes. But furious too. He had given her too many reasons not to simply plead. Zayn looked at the empty tunnel.

"Bad version." The voice cut off. Then came back, different. Elias.

"Zayn, hold on. I'm coming." This time, he almost wanted to answer. Not out of hope. Out of irritation.

"Of course you are," he muttered.

"Even the hallucinations give you the good role." The wall to the right vibrated. A beast lunged behind him. Too fast. He avoided the first bite by inches, but the claws tore across his side. Pain came at once. Hot. The beast climbed onto his back, reaching for his neck. Zayn threw himself against the wall. The impact stole his breath. The beast loosened for one second, enough for him to seize it by a leg and hurl it to the floor. It came back at once, maw open. He drove the metal shard into its mouth.

Not enough to kill it. Enough to jam the jaws. Then he threw his full weight onto it and buried the dagger in its throat. Once. Twice. Three times. The beast went still. [Soul strength absorbed: +1] Current soul strength: 29 The gain entered like a swallow of filthy water after a long march. Not pleasant. Necessary. Zayn stayed on one knee, breathing hard, his side burning. Twenty-nine. Still nothing beside Selka. Nothing beside Elias. A grain of dust beside Maelor. But more than before. Always more than before.

He looked at the dead beast. Then at the tunnel where the false voices had come from. The weaver had wanted to lure him, then take him from behind. Fine. A decent trap, this time. Zayn pushed himself up with difficulty. He picked up the body of the 11-beast and dragged it behind him. The smell was disgusting. The weight awkward. But a fresh carcass had several advantages: it drew smaller predators, partly masked the scent of his own blood, and might trigger certain markings before he stepped on them. A tool.

Even dead, the thing could still be useful. He walked like that longer than he wanted to, dragging the corpse by one leg, marking the wall with chalk now and then, stopping whenever a value moved too fast. Eventually, he reached a low chamber. Not natural. Not entirely mining either. An old workers' mess hall, perhaps. Long tables overturned, benches broken, a collapsed fireplace. At the back, a passage descended even farther. Black markings covered the ceiling, but these were older, dry, less active.

Zayn blocked the entrance with two benches, wedged the carcass against a pillar on the far side, then finally sat behind an overturned table. Not shelter. Delay. That was already luxury. He listened. Nothing above. No real voices from the group. No clear vibration. Only the mine, the little claws, and deeper down, the presence of the 47. Still there. Waiting. Patient. Rhel-Fosse did not want to kill him quickly. The weaver did not either. They wanted to work on him. Take away the group. The light. The time.

The possibility of being watched. Zayn rested his head against the wall. For a few seconds, he thought about Lena. About her face when she had asked: Would you have done it? Then about Elias. About his 107. About the hand he had stretched out during the fall. Zayn had almost taken it. Almost. The idea bothered him. Not because he had nearly died. Because part of him would have preferred never needing to reach for it. He took the piece of black bread from the satchel, tore off a tiny bite, and chewed slowly. Bad.

Hard. But human. A remnant of the surface. He put it away carefully. Hunger was not yet the problem. Not really. It would become one. Water first. The wound, maybe. The beasts, certainly. And the weaver, always. Zayn closed his eyes for one second. In the dark behind his eyelids, the values still floated. 47 ahead. Small numbers around it. And him, 29. Not enough. Never enough. When he opened his eyes again, a small beast had approached the carcass he had left as bait.

It nibbled at the dead flesh cautiously, unaware of the gaze fixed on it. Zayn did not move. Not yet. He let it eat. Then a second value appeared behind it. Then a third. There. Patience sometimes paid better than rage. He tightened his grip on the dagger. In that low room, without light, without witnesses, without Lena to look away, without Elias to arrive in time, Zayn felt something simplify inside him. Not become madder. Become clearer. Here, no one would ask him why.

No one would see if he waited one second too long. No one would count the unnecessary motions. No one would remind him that a living thing might have been something other than a value. The three little beasts ate. Zayn waited until they were close enough together. Then he rose. And for the first time since his fall, he did not think about rejoining the others. He thought only about what he could take before the bottom of Rhel-Fosse sealed itself again. Yes, we keep that invisible to the reader.

We continue the arc as a descent into survival, solitude, and mental degradation, without announcing the Depravity in advance.