Below, in the tunnels where light was nothing but memory, the civilians huddled. Mothers pressed cloth to children's mouths to stifle their sobs. The walls dripped, damp with seeping water, reeking of mildew. The air was heavy with sweat and fear.
An old priest knelt in the center, lips moving in prayer, but the words broke before leaving his mouth. His gods had been silent since the first city burned.
Above, the ground shuddered. Screams bled down through stone.
"Is it the demons?" a boy whispered, clutching his father's sleeve.
The man did not answer. His eyes were wide, unblinking, staring upward where dust sifted from the ceiling.
Another crash. Closer. The ceiling cracked.
The boy began to cry.
One by one, shields fell. Swords slipped from blood-slick hands. The line shattered. The mutants poured through.
Veynar roared, cleaving through one, then another, his blade heavy with gore. But for every one he felled, three more rose. Their bodies did not die right. They twitched, reformed, lurched back into motion.
"Fall back!" he screamed. "Into the tunnels!"
His men did not need to be told twice. They fled, stumbling, dragging the wounded with them. The ground itself seemed to swallow them as they vanished into the dugouts below.
Maeven watched, silent.
One of the mutants dragged a corpse toward him, dropping it at his feet like a gift. Half a man, face still twisted in terror.
Maeven crouched. He studied the corpse with the calm of a scholar, fingers brushing its ruined jaw.
"Fragile," he murmured. "Always breaking."
He rose, eyes drifting toward the tunnels. The faint sound of weeping, muffled by stone. He smiled, small, almost kind.
His words sent the mutants quivering. They froze, half in hunger, half in obedience.
Maeven turned, his white hair catching firelight, his back to the slaughter.
"They will find no safety underground."
Beneath the earth, panic reigned.
The tunnels were carved hastily, supported by beams already cracking. Water seeped in, turning the floors to mud. The civilians pressed deeper, driven by fear, by the faint hope that deeper meant safer.
Captain Veynar staggered in, helm dented, blood dripping down his cheek. His men followed, broken, fewer than half that had marched out.
"What happened?" voices demanded.
"Where is the king's army?"
"Where is Evernight?"
Veynar slammed his sword into the ground, silencing them. His chest heaved, blood soaking his cloak. His eyes, wild, met theirs.
"They are gone," he said. His voice cracked on the word. "The walls are gone. The academy is gone. The cities are gone. If you live, it is because you are vermin hiding in holes."
The silence was worse than screams.
Maeven stood at the ruins of the wall, the wind pulling ash through his hair. Behind him, the mutants fed, their teeth cracking bone, their hands tearing flesh.
He did not look back.
His gaze was fixed on the horizon. On the faint glow that was not fire. Elven wards.
He lifted his hand, palm open, as though feeling the wind.
"They will not be ready."
His voice was quiet, but the mutants stilled, blood dripping from their jaws.
"Not the humans. Not the elves. Not the demons. None of them. They cling to walls, to swords, to gods."
He closed his hand slowly, fingers curling into a fist.
"I will take it all."
The ground split beneath him. Not cracked — split. Mana boiled from the earth, pale and wrong. His mutants screamed, not in pain, but in ecstasy, feeding on the surge.
Maeven's hair lifted in the rising storm. His empty eyes gleamed faintly.
"Let them burrow deeper," he whispered. "I will dig them out."
The tunnels stank of rot and wet iron.
Commander Darius pressed a palm to the stone wall, the grit grinding under his fingers, his chest rattling with every breath. Torchlight wavered in the damp air, painting his men's faces in sweat and shadow. He had led armies before, had marched into war when he was young, but never had he felt his spine bend beneath the weight of so many eyes turned to him, eyes of women, of boys barely grown, of old men clinging to broken spears.
He did not look at them long. If he met their gaze, he would see the question there, the same one that had gnawed at him since the walls fell: what now?
A low rumble rolled through the ground, shaking dust from the beams. Cries rose from deeper in the cavern. Mothers clutched children. A man dropped to his knees, muttering prayers that choked before they left his throat.
Darius turned, barking the order before panic could spread. "Shields forward! Form ranks! Torches at the ready!"
But his words tasted like ash. They were not soldiers anymore, just the fragments of an army, blades bent, armor cracked, spirits shattered.
The rumble grew louder. Not stone collapsing, no. This was breathing. Something vast exhaled through the cracks of the earth.
Then came the first shriek.
It was not human. Not demon. It was the sound of skin tearing as something forced its way where it did not belong. The ground split, beams buckled, and through the stone poured shapes that should not exist.
Their limbs scraped the tunnel walls, flesh flayed raw by stone, but still they came, jaws splitting, claws dragging sparks from the rock. Eyes glowed pale with a hunger that no flesh could fill.
The front ranks of men faltered. Darius shoved forward, shield braced, his voice rising above the wails. "Stand! Hold them! If you break, all die here!"
Steel met bone. Torches burned into malformed flesh, and the mutants screamed but did not stop. Claws tore through shields as if they were reed mats. Men screamed, vanished into the press of bodies, blood spraying hot against the stone.
Darius's sword arm went numb after the first three strikes. He slammed the rim of his shield into a mutant's teeth, felt them shatter, but the thing only howled and lunged again.
He knew then, this was not a battle. This was drowning.