The Hole breathed.
Always, day and night, its hunger whispered through the stone. The Bottom Ring had long since grown used to the faint sighing, as if some enormous beast slumbered far below. Yet sometimes, when the air thickened and the ground seemed to shudder, people whispered that the Hole was not sleeping at all—it was stirring.
Jalen felt it that night. The spores clung more tightly to his skin, restless, twitching with a rhythm that wasn't his own.
Darrin cornered him after work, grease still staining his butcher's apron. His grin was crooked, his eyes fever-bright.
"Tonight," he whispered, "we reach higher. Not merchants. Not drunks. A collector."
Jalen stiffened. "You're mad."
"You've seen them," Darrin pressed, voice low and eager. "The priests' collectors, come to gather tribute. They carry pouches heavy with Glows. Sometimes even Shards. One score, Jalen, and we're free of this pit."
Jalen's stomach twisted. "You steal from them, you're marked forever. They won't whip you. They'll bleed you over the Hole and feed what's left to the dark."
"That's why I have you." Darrin leaned close, his breath sour with liquor. "One cough. One stumble. Just long enough for me to cut the purse. No one sees you. No one knows."
The spores twitched in Jalen's chest, feeding on his anger. He swallowed them back. "I said no."
"Then I tell the priests." Darrin's voice hardened. "I saw the guard choke. I saw the merchant double over. You think the holy men won't see the spores clinging to your breath?"
For a heartbeat Jalen nearly let them go—nearly let the spores unravel into the boy's lungs and silence him forever. But Darrin's eyes held both fear and calculation. He knew he walked a knife's edge, but he also knew Jalen could not strike in public.
"You'll choke on your greed," Jalen growled.
"Not before I choke on coin," Darrin snapped. "Tonight."
The collector came after sundown. His robe was plain, his head shaven, his neck hung with the priests' sigil. The pouch at his belt sagged with Glows that clinked faintly with each step.
Darrin's lips peeled into a grin. "Now."
The spores stirred without command. They leapt to Jalen's fury, his disgust, swirling from his lungs to the air. The collector staggered, coughing violently.
Darrin darted in, knife quick, cutting the pouch free.
And Jalen realized, with dawning horror, that the spores were not stopping.
The man collapsed, gagging, his eyes wide with terror. His fingers clawed the stones, his chest heaved, but no air reached him. Jalen gasped, trying to rein them back, but the spores only thickened, feasting on his panic.
The collector convulsed once, twice—then fell still.
Shouts rang out. Guards turned. A woman screamed. Darrin ripped the pouch free and fled into the crowd, leaving Jalen frozen, the weight of his failure pressing down.
And then the ground shook.
It began as a tremor, subtle, like the rumble of a cart. But then it deepened, growing louder, closer, until stones cracked and dust poured from the walls.
The Hole was stirring.
A fissure split open not twenty paces away, and from it burst a creature like nothing born on the surface. It was pale, slick with abyssal slime, its limbs too many, its mouth a ring of teeth that gnashed hungrily. Behind it came another, then another, each one dragging the stench of the deep with them.
A monster breakout.
The Bottom Ring had lived through them before. Once or twice a year, when the hunger below grew too sharp, the creatures of the abyss clawed their way upward. Sometimes one slipped through, killed a handful before it was put down. Other times, dozens erupted, leaving whole alleys painted red.
The overseers called it the Hole's due.
To the workers, it was terror.
The crowd scattered, screams rising. Guards raised their whips uselessly, shouting orders drowned by the monsters' shrieks. The creatures lunged, tearing into the nearest unlucky souls, blood spraying across stone.
Jalen staggered back, the spores swirling wildly in the chaos. For a heartbeat, he thought they might give him away—glowing motes swarming so thick they would be seen. But the monsters drew all eyes.
The collector, forgotten, writhed once and went still. His pouch spilled, Glows scattering across the stones. A child dove for one and was ripped apart a moment later by snapping jaws.
Jalen's chest heaved. The spores pressed against his lips, eager to lash out. He clenched his teeth, forcing them inward, his whole body shaking. Not here. Not now.
The crowd erupted into chaos. Guards snapped their whips, barking orders drowned by the monsters' shrieks. Whips and clubs struck, but bounced uselessly off pale hide. One guard's throat was torn out before he could scream. Another vanished beneath flailing limbs.
The people fled. Families clutched children, drunks stumbled blindly, thieves dropped their spoils and ran.
Jalen stood frozen, his spores whirling wildly, glowing motes on the edge of sight. For a moment he thought all eyes would turn to him, would see what he had done.
But the abyss itself had stolen the stage.
And then a roar thundered from the stairwell above.
They came in formation.
Not the ragged guards of the Bottom Ring, with their whips and rusted spears. These men and women wore layered mail dark as coal, trimmed with cloth the color of deep ash. Their helmets bore no crests, only narrow slits for eyes. They moved as one, not with panic but with grim precision.
The Ash Guard.
The very name carried weight in Orrhollow. They were not wardens, not overseers. They were the kingdom's teeth against the abyss—trained in the mid-rings, stationed near the Hole, called only when true monsters rose.
And their weapons were no ordinary steel.
Each carried a spear tipped not with metal or crystal, but with Abyssal Bone—pale fragments carved from the carcasses of slain horrors. Harder than iron, poisonous to the creatures of the deep once exposed to air, the bone glowed faintly with a sickly sheen. Workers whispered that even touching one with bare hands could rot flesh, but in battle they cut through abyssal hide like fire through cloth.
The Ash Guard advanced, spear tips leveled. Their captain's voice boomed over the chaos.
"Form the line! Drive them back into the pit!"
The creatures shrieked, sensing old death in the bone. They lunged, and the first rank of Ash Guard met them head-on. Spear points punched deep, bone hissing where it touched abyssal flesh. The air filled with a stench so vile it burned the throat.
Jalen stumbled back, the spores clawing inside him, responding to the roar of his heart. He fought them down, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
No one was looking at him now. No one saw what he had done to the collector.
The Hole had swallowed the evidence whole.