Coils tightened.
They slithered backward.
The pressure was… familiar.
He hated it.
Arin looked at the others.
For the first time, Kael's eye couldn't hold.
Nyss forced himself back, pressing flat against the wall.
Virex hid in one corner. Gorath took another.
Arin's body trembled with a fear he didn't recognize.
His thoughts scattered.
The crimson-blooded eye vanished.
Arin's eyes widened.
He could hear it.
He could feel the beast digging closer.
Too fast.
Too close.
His mind screamed at him to run.
His body didn't respond.
For a heartbeat, everything slowed.
Then it snapped.
Arin slithered toward the wall.
Stone shattered.
A tunnel formed in an instant.
"Everyone—here!" he shouted.
They didn't move.
Arin understood.
Words wouldn't reach them.
He turned back.
Coiled around Kael.
Dragged him toward the tunnel, pulling him through.
Seeing that, the others followed.
One by one.
Nyss.
Virex.
Last was Gorath.
Then—
It tore through.
Gorath was slow.
They needed time.
Arin's body froze.
Not from pain.
Not from injury.
As if fear itself had been carved into his species.
What emerged from the darkness was something that should never have existed inside a cave.
The world seemed to buckle beneath its crimson pupils.
A long, slender neck lifted its head—
poised,
elevated,
as though a king sat upon a throne.
Black veins crawled outward from its eyes, branching like fractures in stone.
And its feathers—
Each curved into a shape disturbingly close to a blood-slicked smile.
Its shape resembled a peacock—
but its body belonged to something far closer to a devil.
Its beak was dyed red, fresh with blood.
Time did not stop.
It never did.
In the next instant, Arin dodged.
A feather screamed past him and pierced the ground—
embedding itself as if the stone were flesh.
Arin stared at it.
The world hadn't caught up inside his mind yet.
Then—
Pain exploded through him.
A second feather slammed into the middle of his body.
Blood splattered.
A scream echoed—so loud it carried beyond the cave.
He tried to move.
He had to.
But the feather pinned him to the ground.
Then—
Another shriek.
A third feather pierced down, striking the stone beside the first.
Tears streamed from his eyes.
His breath grew shallow, frantic—each gasp weaker than the last.
He looked down at his body.
The feathers curved.
Smiling.
Mocking his suffering.
He looked up.
The creature was watching.
Amused.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a hunt.
Arin looked back at himself.
Powerless.
Tears flooded his vision.
"Why?"
His voice broke.
"What was the point of me living again?"
Another feather descended.
Just before it struck—
an image flashed through his fading mind.
Four small serpents.
Waiting.
His pupils dulled.
Empty.
Deep within—
a white void.
A prisoner.
Hopeless.
Golden pins—countless—pierced through his body.
He could not move.
Could not scream.
Could not beg.
Then—
another pin trembled.
Not the first.
It shook.
Slowly…
it tore free.
And as it fell—
endlessly—
into the white abyss—
His eyes tore open.
The devilish beast loomed before him.
Gorath was trapped beneath one of its claws.
Even then—
he didn't give up.
Gorath twisted, teeth sinking into the creature's leg, jaws shaking as he bit down with everything he had left.
Under the other claw—
Nyss.
Crushed.
Helpless.
Arin didn't understand.
He didn't think.
He only saw.
A scream tore from his throat as he slithered forward with sheer force.
Feathers ripped into his scales.
They tore skin.
Split flesh.
But Arin didn't care.
Or maybe—
he couldn't feel anymore.
He forced himself through.
One feather snapped.
Then another.
Blood soaked the ground as the pressure weakened, the beast's grip faltering—just enough.
Arin's body burned, torn open at the center, agony screaming through every coil—
but he kept moving.