I staggered back, knees buckling under the pressure of sheer survival. My body was a ragged mess — torn flesh, snapped ribs, lacerated limbs. Every breath was glass dragged across my lungs. My right hand still clutched the bone-spike I'd driven through the crawler's skull. It twitched beneath me, like it didn't know it was dead.
[HP: 7/130]
[Mutation Points: 2]
Low. Too low. I shouldn't be standing. But the dungeon doesn't let you die easy.
The girl crept out from behind a wall of fused bone and sinew. Her face was expressionless, but her gaze tracked every detail. I still didn't know her name — just that she wasn't afraid of the blood, the monsters, or me.
"You're bleeding again," she said, her voice flat.
I followed her gaze down to the gash across my ribs. Blood poured in a slow, thick stream. My regeneration lagged behind — maybe from fatigue, or starvation.
I turned back to the crawler's corpse.
"Turn around," I muttered.
"I've seen worse," she said, but stepped back anyway.
I crouched over the thing and tore into its throat with my teeth. Hot, iron-thick blood rushed into my mouth. Disgust still curled in my gut — but hunger and survival snapped its spine.
[Devour Successful.]
[Vitality +1]
[HP: 27/130]
It wasn't much, but the fog in my head lifted. I ripped off another piece of tissue and swallowed it raw.
"You eat them." Not a question.
"Yeah." I wiped the blood off my chin with the back of my wrist. "It keeps me human."
She tilted her head. "Are you sure?"
No. But the voice in my head—the one that wanted me to keep eating, to keep changing—was quieter for now.
We moved on. The corridor forked — left was sloped and glowing faintly green, the right a descent into blackness.
"Up," I decided. If there was light, maybe there was safety. Or something close.
She followed without hesitation.
The climb felt like a lifetime. My legs screamed with every step. My fingers brushed the walls for balance — they pulsed faintly beneath the surface, like veins feeding some unseen heart.
The chamber we found was vast and spherical, its ceiling lost to the dark. Silent. Still.
Too still.
My foot hit the ground, and it gave a little. Not like mud. Like flesh.
Then I saw it — dozens of eyes opening across the floor. Tiny, glistening, red-ringed. Watching me.
[New Threat Detected: FLESH BIRTHER]
The entire room — floor, walls, maybe even the air — was one thing.
It pulsed.
And then the maw opened.
"MOVE!" I screamed, grabbing her by the wrist and hurling both of us backward as the floor folded open like a blooming flower, lined with spinning rows of teeth.
A mouth — no, hundreds of them — churned where we had just stood.
The dungeon wanted us gone.
We ran, boots slapping against wet surfaces that shivered under our weight. A tendril lashed up from the floor, jagged and boned. I met it with the spike, slicing it mid-air. It recoiled with a shriek.
Another. Bigger. It whipped toward the girl.
I lunged, tackled her out of the way. The whip cracked past our heads and shattered a stalactite behind us.
"Left!" she shouted, pointing.
A narrow crevice.
We dove into it, shoulders scraping against wet, breathing stone. The maw behind us slammed shut, shaking the tunnel.
[STAMINA CRITICAL][HP: 19/130]
I collapsed, chest heaving. My blood mixed with the mucus on the ground. I could feel it — the mutation inside me — stirring, hungry for more.
"We're not safe here," she murmured.
"No," I rasped. "We're not. But we're alive."
She turned her head toward me in the dim light. "You're different. Not just... mutated. You remember. You fight it."
I stared at her, eyes narrowed. "You've seen others?"
She nodded once. "People who gave in. Some too fast. Some... slowly. You'll start hearing voices. Dreams that feel like memories. They'll beg you to become."
I swallowed. "I already do."
She didn't speak, but the silence said enough.
I leaned against the wall, letting the cold slime cool my fevered skin. The crawling in my veins was getting worse — like insects trying to hatch from inside me. I still had two mutation points, but I was terrified of what spending them would do.
I wasn't ready to lose myself. Not yet.
[Mutation Point Unspent – Pressure Building]
The HUD glitched for a second. That was new.
A tremor rolled beneath us. Soft. Rhythmic.
Something big was moving below.
"We need to keep going," I said, standing. My knees screamed. My lungs burned. I didn't care.
"Why?" she asked, almost sadly. "What are you even hoping to find down here?"
I looked down the corridor, into the breathing dark.
"Myself," I said. "The thing I used to be — or the thing I'm becoming. Either way, I want to face it."
She stared for a moment longer, then nodded.
That was enough.
[New Objective Updated: Reach the Heart]
[Distance: Unknown]
[Current Threat Level: ESCALATING]
And somewhere in the endless dark, I knew the dungeon was watching back.