The ledge beneath Rhea's boots was slick with slime, barely wide enough for her toes to grip. Kael's hand was a vice around her arm, steadying her against the cavern's violent shudder.
Behind them, the Devil's Maw slammed shut.
The sound was wrong—too deep, too final. It wasn't like rock cracking; it was like flesh closing around bone.
The ledge tilted, stones crumbling into the black water below.
"We move," Kael growled, his voice low but urgent. "Now."
Rhea didn't argue. She could still feel the thing's suction in her bones, the memory of its teeth grazing her leg. Her calf throbbed with the shallow wound, the blood already seeping through her soaked trousers. The scent would carry far in water.
Kael led the way, pressing his back against the slick wall and edging sideways along the ledge. Above them, the cavern ceiling heaved like the slow inhale of a lung.
The passage narrowed until they were forced to turn sideways, the rock scraping their shoulders. A trickle of cold water ran down from the darkness above, carrying with it the faint copper tang of blood,not theirs.
They weren't the first prey to be trapped here.
A sharp vibration shivered through the stone under Rhea's palm. She froze. "Kael…?"
"Keep moving."
The vibration came again, stronger like something massive was crawling along the wall parallel to them. She risked a glance over her shoulder.
Shapes shifted in the water below, pale and sleek. Not the Maw itself,these were smaller, faster. Their eyes glowed faint blue in the gloom, and their skin rippled with a membrane that made them almost vanish into the dark.
Kael noticed them too. "Scavengers."
Rhea didn't need to ask what they scavenged.
One darted upward, striking at the ledge. Its head split open into a flower of needle teeth, snapping just short of her boot. Rhea's wolf snarled inside her, and without thinking, she drove her heel down. Bone cracked beneath her strike, and the creature fell back with a high, keening wail.
It was enough to draw the others.
The water erupted. Four, five,no, six of them leapt in arcs toward the ledge, their jaws open, the smell of wet decay flooding Rhea's senses.
Kael's sword was in his hand in a blink. The first creature that came close lost its head, the pale mass tumbling into the water. Another met his blade and split clean down the middle.
Rhea had no steel,but she had claws. The next attacker was hers. She caught it mid-leap, her nails punching through the soft plate of its underbelly, tearing until she felt the heat of its viscera spill across her hand. She flung it into the wall and kept moving.
The ledge ended in a jagged archway of stone barely tall enough to crouch through. Kael shoved her toward it. "Inside!"
She scrambled in, scraping her knees on sharp rock. The passage beyond was narrow, forcing them single file. The air here was damp and close, with no hint of wind,no sign of a way out.
Behind them, the scavengers shrieked, but none followed into the passage.
Rhea glanced back, heart still thundering. "Why aren't they—"
The ground dropped beneath them.
Kael grabbed her before she fell, but the floor was gone, replaced by a sheer descent into pitch black. A deep, steady thump echoed from below, in time with the cavern's shifting walls.
"That," Kael said grimly, "is its heart."
The passage walls flexed inward, the stone slickening as if coated in mucus. It wasn't just the Maw's mouth they'd escaped,it was the body itself.
And now, it was trying to pull them deeper.