A guttural cry tore from Kaelen’s throat. Pain, sharp and deep, seared his forearm. Chitin-Crawler jaws, honed by centuries of gnawing through bedrock, had ripped into his flesh.
He yanked his arm back, but not before the damage was done. A gaping wound wept dark fluid, bone stark white beneath shredded muscle. Only the resilience granted by years of consuming Deep-Glow Lurker meat and glands had saved the limb from being torn clean away.
Time was a luxury Kaelen did not possess. Infection in Deepfall’s depths was a swift, merciless killer, disability a slower doom. Yet, treatment waited. Survival was now.
He lunged, evading another snap of mandibles. Then, a pulse of will, a focused resonance with the surrounding rock, burst forth. A localized tremor, a concussive “Stone Whisper,” erupted from his palm.
Chitin-Crawler heads exploded, showering the cavern floor with glistening ichor. Stone Whisper carried immense force, against which individual Crawlers were fragile. Problem remained their numbers.
They swarmed from every fissure and crevice, a living tide of segmented legs and clicking mandibles. Kill one, two more filled its place. Their relentless assault eclipsed even the most tenacious surface beasts.
Kaelen moved like a shadow, his footfalls light, his body a blur. Evasion was finite. He was already drowning in a sea of chitinous bodies.
He checked his internal well of resonance. A mere flicker remained, a dying ember. Empty, he would be a stone statue awaiting erosion, not a Deep Stone Caller. This moment, this fight, was everything.
‘I need power. Faster. More efficient than Stone Whisper. How can I pull more from the Stone Heart?’
Imagination was the true wellspring of a Caller’s might. His mind raced, even as the world around him became a blur of fangs and claws. He needed an evolution of his ability.
Stone Whisper compressed the very dust and grit of the rock, projecting it with force. But his gift was command, not merely projection.
‘Why compress the air, the dust?’
His connection was to the deep, to the bedrock itself. Why not bypass the intermediary? Why not directly tear at the stone, make it an extension of his will?
Possibility, however slim, was enough. His life teetered. A whisper of a chance, a solitary spark in the vast, crushing darkness, was a path he had to take.
Kaelen emptied himself. He reached into the Stone Heart, drawing forth the last vestiges of his resonance. The very rock of the cavern floor shuddered. Jagged pieces, the size of a human arm, tore free, suspended in the air. Dozens of them, raw and lethal, coalesced.
He flung his arm forward. A wave of “Stone Shards” streaked through the air.
*Whizz. Thump. CRACK.*
Holes, brutal and precise, appeared in the bodies of the Chitin-Crawlers. Their inner fluids sprayed across the cavern walls. A sickening crunch filled the air. In moments, not a single Chitin-Crawler remained standing.
Bloodshot eyes scanned the devastation. His breath hitched. All of them, gone. Swept away by the furious barrage of living stone.
Kaelen gave a ragged, mirthless laugh. He crumpled to his knees, utterly spent. Draining his resonance left him hollow, a broken vessel. His fingers trembled, devoid of strength.
---
A soft rasping sound echoed. It was the whisper of something larger, something ancient, moving through disturbed stone. Kaelen looked up. Despair, cold and sharp, pierced him.
Through the newly quieted dust, a Chitin-Crawler emerged. This one dwarfed the others, its carapace a dull, reddish sheen, hardened like ancient iron. Its presence vibrated with an oppressive weight. Identity clicked into place.
“The… Queen.”
Her brood annihilated, the Queen had finally revealed herself. Around her, more forms stirred, larger than the common Crawlers. These were Soldier Chitin-Crawlers, twice the size, their mandibles capable of crushing bone like tinder.
Few in number compared to the horde Kaelen had just faced, but their threat was manifold. The Queen, flanked by her terrifying retinue, advanced. Her mineral-hard eyes, devoid of true pupils, fixed on Kaelen, radiating a cold, burning fury.
Such rage, so profound, must have broken an ancient taboo to draw her from her deep slumber. While the Queen herself was likely a Tier-C threat, her sheer dominance and the power she commanded elevated her to the danger level of a Tier-B monster.
Queen let out a high-pitched, chitinous screech. Soldier Chitin-Crawlers lunged forward.
An immense Soldier Crawler clamped onto Kaelen’s waist. Excruciating pain lanced through him, stiffening his entire body. His mind, though, remained brutally clear.
Queen began to excavate the rock, digging into the cavern floor. Her soldiers followed, dragging Kaelen along. The Soldier Crawler that bit him burrowed deeper, pulling Kaelen into the collapsing tunnel of rock and dust. Pressure built, crushing him from all sides.
He had no idea how far they plunged. Then, a sudden release. Pressure vanished, revealing a vast, cavernous space. They had entered the Chitin-Crawler Warren, their stronghold.
The Warren’s walls were not raw stone, but hardened earth and mineral, fused by the Queen’s secretions into an unyielding shell. It was a labyrinthine nightmare, a thousand turns and false paths designed to trap and consume.
Queen and her soldiers dragged Kaelen deeper, through twisting passages. Finally, they arrived at a chamber teeming with life: countless larvae and eggs, pulsating masses, the Queen’s nursery. Bones of untold prey lay scattered across the floor, picked clean and dry.
Queen positioned herself in the center of the nursery, emitting soft, eerie clicks. From every crevice, from beneath layers of hardened earth, Chitin-Crawler larvae emerged. They were smaller, their shells translucent, their movements disturbingly eager.
Hundreds of them. They coated the walls, crawled across the floor, all turning towards Kaelen. Soldier Chitin-Crawler finally released its grip. Kaelen collapsed, helpless.
A paralyzing venom, spread by the Soldier’s bite, rendered him immobile. Not a finger twitched. Larvae swarmed over him, antennae twitching, eager for their feast. They tore at his worn leathers, then sank their tiny, sharp teeth into his flesh.
He couldn’t even scream. Eyes wide, he watched as they burrowed. He was being eaten alive. Panic, cold and raw, consumed him. A silent roar, trapped in his throat, tore through his core.
A light, faint at first, then burning with fierce resolve, emanated from the small, etched symbol on his wrist. A second line, a deep amber, solidified. Deep-Tier Initiate. He had advanced.
Unknowing, in the crucible of death, Kaelen had awakened a deeper connection to the Stone Heart. The paralysis fled. His resonance, once empty, surged back, full and potent.
He screamed then, a guttural roar of defiance. Stone Shards, a tempest of rock and anger, erupted. The nursery filled with a horrifying symphony of tearing stone and bursting chitin.
Queen’s wail of fury echoed, lost in the maelstrom. Kaelen ignored her. His focus was on the encroaching tide. Larvae, like bags of fluid, burst apart. Soldier Chitin-Crawlers charged.
Stone Shards slammed into them, pulverizing their hardened carapaces. Soldier Crawlers fell, their legs shattered, their heads exploding. The gulf between his previous power and this new, awakened strength was immense. A single rank, a single step, had amplified his abilities tenfold.
Only the Queen remained. Kaelen turned his fury on her, launching Stone Shards. They struck her carapace, but merely deflected, scoring shallow grooves. Her shell, a titan’s armor, combined with an invisible aura barrier, rendered his attacks useless.
Enraged by the annihilation of her brood, Queen emitted a high-frequency shriek. Sound waves reverberated off the cavern walls, amplifying, tearing through the air.
Kaelen collapsed, clutching his head, blood streaming from his ears. Eardrums shredded, brain concussed, his vision blurred. Queen possessed a weapon of the deep, a true boss skill, her sonic cry a vibration designed to shatter living things.
Blood-matted eyes, unfocused, saw the Queen approaching, her form overlapping. She moved her antennae, a grotesque gesture of triumph.
‘Yeah. You won. Fuck you.’
Kaelen, with immense effort, lifted a single middle finger. Queen lunged, jaws agape, ready to finish him. He closed his eyes, awaiting the tearing bite.
Then, a sudden, powerful gust. A blur of movement. Queen’s head, still open-jawed, sailed through the air, her body remaining upright for a moment before collapsing into a fountain of bodily fluids.
Kaelen was drenched in the viscous spray. A familiar voice, rough as granite, cut through the ringing in his ears.
“Come to your senses, you idiot! How long will you lie there dazed?”
Borin. He had rescued him, as always, severing the Queen’s head with impossible speed. Borin glanced at the carnage – larvae, soldiers, the headless Queen – then back at Kaelen.
“Still, not entirely useless.”
Kaelen, battered and broken, had proven his worth. He’d seemed powerless against the Queen, but any other Caller would have been obliterated long before. Queen Chitin-Crawler was a high-tier monster, a challenge for even the most experienced Deep Stone Caller.
Crucially, Kaelen had refused to break. He had found strength in the face of oblivion. Crisis revealed truth. Some shattered, some persevered. Kaelen was the latter.
Wails, raw and furious, echoed through the Warren. More Chitin-Crawlers, alerted by their Queen’s demise, were converging.
Borin let out a low, rough laugh, his eyes gleaming with a mad light.
“Get up! You’re not dead yet. Your enemies still crawl. Will you just lie down and die?”
“Fight, boy. Even if you fall, you fall fighting.”
Kaelen gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t be a fool in front of Borin, not again. ‘You stubborn old bastard,’ he thought, a flicker of dark humor in his pain.
He pushed himself up. The Warren filled with charging Chitin-Crawlers. Kaelen screamed, unleashing a torrent of Stone Shards.
There were no bystanders in that brutal chamber. Only the monsters of the deep, a man on the precipice of death, and a madman, his blade a blur, utterly devoid of reason, fighting alongside him.