After several minutes of a lung-burning sprint through tunnels that smelled of ancient dust and stagnant rot, the passage abruptly widened. The cohort spilled out into a gargantuan cavern, but their relief was short-lived.
A few meters ahead, the floor of the catacombs simply ceased to exist.
The earth had collapsed into a vast, seemingly bottomless chasm that carved through the darkness like a jagged wound. It was no less than forty meters across, stretching into the infinite gloom to both the left and right. It felt less like a geological feature and more like a metaphysical border—a final severance between the world of the living and the silent, hungry world of the dead.
Stretched across this void was a single, rickety rope bridge.
It looked like a derelict of a forgotten epoch. The hemp was black with age and moisture, looking more like braided hair than rope. The wooden slats were slippery with a viscous, bioluminescent slime, rotten through and through. It swayed in a wind that shouldn't have existed this deep underground—a cold, rhythmic draft that felt like the breathing of the earth itself.
Kane's mind raced, his eyes tracking the structural instability. 'I can cross this easily. But the others? One wrong step on that rotten timber and they're gone.'
Sunny turned to Effie, his face pale beneath the grime. He looked at the swaying bridge and then back at the dark tunnel they had just exited, clearly hoping for a hidden door or a teleportation circle.
"So, what now?" Sunny's voice was a harsh rasp.
The huntress looked at him as if he had asked why water was wet. "What else, Sunless? We cross the bridge! Unless you'd rather stay and wait for our shadow-stalker or the bone-horde."
Kane suddenly stiffened. His [Realmheart] vision flared. Behind them, the darkness was no longer empty. A cacophony of clicking, scraping bone was rapidly approaching. The Mind Threads were reweaving, hundreds of them, a frantic web of necrotic intent.
"The skeletons are back!" Kane bellowed, his voice echoing off the cavern walls. "Cross! Now! I will hold the bottleneck. Missy, go with them!"
The cohort didn't argue. In the face of such overwhelming numbers, hesitation was a death sentence. They scrambled onto the bridge, the ancient ropes groaning and snapping under their weight. Missy hovered at the edge for a heartbeat, her stitched mouth twitching, before she vanished into the mist to shadow the others.
Sunny was the last in line. As he stepped onto the first precarious plank, Kane grabbed his shoulder, his black chitinous glove digging into Sunny's light armor.
"Once you reach the other side, destroy the anchors," Kane commanded, his eyes fixed on the tunnel entrance. "Don't wait for me. I'll stall them until the bridge is gone."
Sunny looked at him with profound doubt, his dark eyes searching Kane's visor. "Are you sure? There's nowhere to go but down if you miss the jump."
Kane didn't hesitate. He summoned the [Sleeper Killer], the weapon manifesting as a heavy, single-edged blade designed for broad, sweeping cleaves. "Yeah. Just do it."
The first wave of skeletons erupted from the tunnel like a flood of bleached wood. They didn't just run; they scrambled over one another, a tidal wave of mindless, clicking fury.
Kane met them at the precipice.
He moved with the fluid, terrifying grace of his [Realmheart] transformation. To any observer, he was a whirlwind of black chitin and red silk, but in his mind, he was a surgeon. He ignored the physical bodies of the skeletons, focusing his strikes entirely on the pulsing Mind Threads. Each swing of the [Sleeper Killer]—which shifted from a massive Odachi to a swift Jian as the rhythm required—severed the invisible tethers.
Skeletons collapsed mid-lunge, their momentum carrying their inanimate bones into the abyss. Yet for every ten he felled, twenty more pressed forward. They jumped on him, their bony fingers scraping against his armor, their empty sockets inches from his visor. He was being buried in a mountain of calcium and ancient spite.
Across the chasm, the last of the cohort reached the other side. Sunny didn't hesitate. He summoned a black blade and hacked at the thick, moldy rope anchors.
With a sound like a gunshot, the ropes snapped. The bridge plummeted into the darkness, its wooden slats clattering against the chasm walls before fading into silence.
Kane was left standing on a narrow ledge, surrounded by a sea of clicking monsters.
Behind him was a forty-meter void. In front of him was an army.
Suddenly, Kane leaped.
The cohort's eyes widened in collective shock as they watched the man in the black-and-red armor throw himself into the abyssal maw. Effie let out a choked sound, and Kai reached out as if he could catch a man forty meters away.
Only Cassie remained calm, her sightless eyes fixed on the space where Kane should have been falling.
Then, the miracle happened.
Kane didn't fall. He began to glide, his red cloak snapping behind him like the wings of a massive, predatory bird. It wasn't the swift, soaring flight of a bird of prey, but a slow, deliberate levitation. He drifted across the chasm, silhouetted against the dark void, looking like a phantom ascending from the underworld.
He landed on the far ledge with a heavy thud, his armor clicking as he stood and unsummoned his blade.
A profound, stunned silence gripped the group.
"What... what just happened?" Cassie asked softly, though she already knew.
"Kane... he flew," Sunny whispered, his voice full of a rare, genuine amazement. Even for a group of Sleepers used to the impossible.
Kane scoffed, the sound mechanical through his helm. "Okay, what is it? Why are you all staring as if I've grown a second head?"
Effie was the first to find her voice. "Uh... glad you're not a splatter at the bottom of a hole. But seriously? How the hell did you do that?"
"A Memory," Kane replied curtly, dismissing the cloak into his soul sea as the red fabric dissolved into sparks. "It enables flight, though it's slow and drains essence like a leech. It's far slower than a Nightingale, believe me."
Effie blinked, her boisterous energy returning as the adrenaline faded. "...Cool Memory. Where did you find a treasure like that?"
"In the Dark City ruins," Kane said, ending the conversation. "During the four months I was 'dead' to the world."
******
The cohort didn't press him further. They were battered, bleeding, and exhausted beyond measure. The frantic escape from the skeletons had drained their stamina, and the psychic weight of the Catacombs was beginning to fray their nerves.
Nephis moved toward the group, her hands beginning to glow with a soft, white light to mend their wounds, but Effie stopped her. The huntress looked at the Changing Star with a dark, knowing gaze.
"Not yet, Neph. There is one last hurdle before we reach the surface. We need you at the top of your game, essence and all."
Nephis lingered for a moment, her eyes scanning the injured, but she eventually sat back down against the damp wall. In the Labyrinth, the Pathfinder's word was absolute.
Kane sat a short distance away, unsummoning Missy. He felt a sudden presence beside him. Cassie had moved with her usual, eerie silence to sit nearby.
Kane studied her. Since his return from his isolation, something had shifted in her demeanor. She seemed more focused, her movements more deliberate, as if she were seeing a world he couldn't perceive.
"Kane," she whispered. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure. Go ahead."
"When you first returned from the Dark City, I couldn't see your runes," she said, her voice trembling slightly. " But now... I can see them. Do you have any idea why?"
Kane thought of the Primordial Demoness Statue he had just given to Linia.
"Well, that is one of my secrets, Cassie," Kane said, his tone softened but firm.
Cassie's expression dipped into sadness. "Why must everything be a secret with you? We are supposed to be a cohort."
"Secrets saved my life," Kane replied, his gaze drifting to the dark tunnel ahead. "Yeah,I would like to keep secrets."
"Does Linia know?" she asked.
Kane's lips curved into a faint, genuine smile beneath his visor. "Yeah. She does."
*****
After a brief rest, Sunny and Kane began to survey their new environment. The tunnel they were in now was fundamentally different from the bone-choked passages above. It was weathered and ancient, the walls smoothed and uneven as if eroded by millions of years of rushing water.
Worse, the ground was slick. Puddles of black, viscous water sat in the depressions of the floor.
The air no longer smelled of dust; it was thick with the sharp, metallic tang of sea salt and something much older—the smell of the deep ocean.
"Where are we, Effie?" Sunny asked, his voice echoing in the wet chamber.
Effie gestured upward. "A hundred meters below the surface. We're directly under the Great City Wall."
"Underground? This deep?" Kane asked, his concern mounting.
"Yeah. And you'd better pray the sun stays up," Effie said, her voice devoid of its usual humor. "Come nightfall, when the Dark Sea rises, this entire network floods. That chasm we just crossed is the only thing acting as a drainage system, preventing the upper catacombs from becoming a giant aquarium for Nightmare Creatures."
Kane closed his eyes. He could almost hear it—the roaring, thunderous torrent of black water erupting from a thousand tunnels, falling into the abyssal chasm like a waterfall of pure, liquid shadow. If they were still here when the tide turned, they wouldn't just drown; they would be crushed by the pressure.
"Time to move," Nephis commanded, standing up. Her pale face was a mask of cold composure. "Gather your strength. We don't have long."
*****
As they headed deeper, the tunnels began to angle sharply downward, descending further into the lightless belly of the island. The number of skeletons littering the floor was staggering—thousands of them, piled in drifts like snow.
Kane frowned. 'Whose skeletons are these? The inhabitants of the Dark City usually end up as slurry in a monster's gut. These are... preserved. Intact.'
His internal monologue was cut short as Effie signaled for a halt. She consulted briefly with Nephis, then turned to the group.
"Listen up. We are approaching the central chamber of the maze. The exit to the surface is right on the other side. But," she paused, her hand tightening on her spear, "getting to it won't be easy."
"There is a big, fat bastard of a Nightmare Creature that lives in that chamber. It's a Great Class horror. However, it's a deep sleeper. It takes time for it to fully wake up."
She looked at each of them, her gaze lingering on the younger members. "Do not stop to look at it. Do not panic. Do not lose your cool. It looks like a nightmare given flesh, but if you follow Nephis and don't stop running, we might make it through before it realizes we're there."
She grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dark. "Ready to meet the Lord of the Dead?"
Kane's blood ran cold. 'Lord of the Dead?'
He summoned Missy back to his side and reshaped the [Sleeper Killer] into a longsword, its edge shimmering with a lethal, dark light.
They entered the giant underground chamber.
Kane's eyes widened, the breath leaving his lungs. He finally understood where the skeletal wraiths came from. He understood why the ancient city was empty of its people.
They hadn't vanished.
They were all here.
The chamber was a cathedral of bone, and in the center sat a mountain of flesh that defied every law of nature.