Into the Deeper Wound
Light still plays tricks on you here. Except, I’ve learned its rhythm. The ceiling crystals dim to deep blues when the labyrinth sleeps and blazes gold when it wakes. I move with those shifts, mapping the pulses of magic that sing through stone and rot. Eventually, one pulse pulls me further down.
I find a tunnel veiled behind roots and sleeping gas-fungus. At first glance, it looks like a collapsed shaft. The deeper I dig however, claws scratching past old bones and crystal-flecked dirt, the clearer the slope becomes. A new floor. A new wound. I debate venturing forward. I mean, I have a pretty good set up in this section. I feel the pulse again, stronger this time. It wants me to move down. Common sense tells me something I don’t want to know about is down there. I don’t seem to heed that sense, as I finally break through to the other side and climb down.
It isn’t much different, at first. Same damp rot. Same haunted quiet. Something in the air here feels heavier. Not just the magic, but the pressure of something watching, waiting. The creatures are larger. Hungrier. More aware. I don’t care. I have control over my body again. My serpent-wyvern form moves with clean grace, muscle and instinct in perfect sync. I understand how to fight, how to shift, how to stalk. My magic feels less like a threat now and more like a partner I can coax into shape.
Searching further in, I find a cave tucked behind a tangle of thornroots and fungi. Big enough to rest. Hidden enough not to die. My new home. I carve runes into the stone with ice and dark spirit magic. I lay more runes along the tunnel mouth with lightning magic. Bury lightning-charged crystals beneath moss. A trap, a bed, a nest. I can’t afford to sleep long, but a nap sure sounds nice before a hunt.
The fight comes roughly three hours later. Time has been really hard to keep track of here. I crouch low beneath the jagged arch of a twisted root, breath shallow, senses flaring. Crystals dim overhead, a lavender dusk. My skin tingles. It is close.
Click. Click-clack. The rasping hiss echoes from above, then— THUMP. The spider drops, a mountain of twitching legs and venom-dripping fangs. I roll, lightning flaring along my arms. Acid hisses where silk strikes moss.
“Phantom Counsel,” I whisper.
> “Species: Venomsilk Widow. Weak to: Lightning. Fire.”
Lightning lances from my fingers, searing across its thorax. It screeches, but doesn’t fall. I dive behind a stone as it spits webbing, then call up ice and shatter its web-canopy. The spider screams again. I use Shadowveil Step, slicing through shadow, dagger in hand, into the base of its skull. It convulses, then drops.
> “Wyrd Skill Gained: Souliron Thread.”
Pearlescent threads spin from my fingertips; metallic, spectral, deadly. I smile. “This can be useful.”
I drag its body to the mushroom glade and watch the bioluminescence bathe it in soft greens and purples. I’m not hungry. Not yet. The kill has filled something else, something darker and deeper. I test my new ability. Souliron threads slide between my fingers like memory. I made a net. A snare. A whip. Each strand shimmers like star-metal, bound not just to my will, but to my soul. I can feel it resonate deep in my bones. It will grow as I do. I hang the spider’s fangs above the cave entrance. A warning. A trophy. Then I curl into my stone nest and whisper to no one:
“I’m not prey anymore.”
The words echo in my mind, louder than the hiss of fungus spores or the hum of crystals. I’m not prey. Not anymore. Not like back then.
I remember the rain the night I first killed for the family. Not for survival. For control. My hand trembled the first time I held the blade. Not because I feared blood, but because I feared becoming what I needed to be. I remember my uncle’s voice—cold, flat, amused.
“Don’t hesitate, little Viper. The first breath they draw in fear is your permission. The second? That’s your mistake.”
He’d watched me slit that man’s throat in an alley slick with oil and neon light. I never knew his name. Just a rival pawn caught too close to our territory. Back then, I told myself I wasn’t like them. That I had to do it. That I had no choice.
Down here… it’s different. This isn’t for someone else’s agenda. This is me. My hands. My magic. My will. The silk of Souliron runs between my fingers like the strings I once used to pull in deals and secrets. Yet here, I weave them to live. I fight to keep my name from fading. The glow from the glade flickers as I finally drift into a shallow, haunted sleep.
Two days pass. I hone Souliron techniques. Practice silent movement with Vanisher’s Grace. Learn to direct thread through narrow holes and coil them like blades. I hunt only what I need. Sketch the floor’s layout on cave walls in glowing moss paste. I should have known peace doesn’t last. The footsteps shake the roots. I press to the wall, body still. Magic Sense flares. A Minotaur. Too large for this corridor. A juggernaut of hide and horn. I only have seconds.
“HEY!” I shout.
It turns and charges. I half-shift mid-motion. Shed Skin burst golden across me. Scales cover my body and my hands change to talons. Strength surges through me faster than before. My wyvern claws caught its axe. The impact shatters the floor beneath us. Pain lances up my arms, but I hold.
“Dark Spirit Magic!” Phantom wails pour from my shadow, wrapping its mind in shrieking chains. It howls. I twist, roll under its belly, and rake a claw across its gut.
“Lightning Cage!” Crackling walls surge around us. Its blow lands, my shoulder breaks.
> “Regeneration triggered.”
I scream through the pain, then laugh. “Try harder.” I summon ice. Spears form, I launch them. Only three hit. One finds the heart. The Minotaur drops.
> “Wyrd Skill Gained: Ironwild.” A primal surge floods me. My limbs buzz. My heart roars. I feel unstoppable.
The rush didn’t fade right away. Even after I limp back to my cave, even after my bones knit and my heartbeat slows, I can feel Ironwild humming beneath my skin. Like drinking a storm. I stare at my claws in the dark.
A face flashes in my memory. Roman—our enforcer—eyes like smoke and brass knuckles that cracked skulls like walnuts. He once told me, “You don’t get stronger to win, girl. You get stronger to outlive what breaks you.” He meant the streets. The betrayal. The endless lies we were born into. But down here, it’s literal. There’s no metaphor when the thing trying to eat you has four eyes and armored skin. I used to fight to make them see me. Now I fight to stay myself. My name, my will, my story—it’s all I have. Ironwild isn’t just a skill. It’s a reminder. I survived again.
“What am I becoming?” I whisper.
The Counsel didn’t answer. Maybe it didn’t know. Tonight, I don’t dream. I just listen to the drip of water off crystal, the breath of sleeping moss, the silence of something waiting. In the morning, I test Ironwild again, by lifting a fallen stone slab twice my size. I smile at my success when it rises with no problem.
The next several hours I search for the path that will take me lower. I finally find it on the farthest side of the floor area I’m in. This passage is larger than the previous one, which instantly makes me more cautious. I move with purpose but strategically, to avoid spooking nearby monsters. The further down I go however, a smell I can’t quite place at first, is getting stronger.
> “Sulfur. A smell normally found near a Wyvern nest or from Sulfur Crystals. Proceed with caution.” Phantom Counsel’s voice rings loudly in my head against the silence surrounding me. The sulfur in the tunnel burns my throat. Dust curls in clouds around every step. Magic Sense flashes. I stop cold.
> “Species: Terraskin Wyvern. Weak to: Internal overcharge.”
No warning. Stone bursts upward, jagged earth spikes. I vanish midair. Vanisher’s Grace. Invisible, I land. It roars. Wrong. Translucent. I circle. Shadowveil Step. I appear behind it. Souliron threads, aim for the eyes. Clink. No effect.
> “Reflective Hide – Redirects magic. Internal detonation recommended.”
It lunges, breath like scorched sulfur and rot. I dive under its wing, ice blossoming at my heels. Its tail swings, cracking stone. My ribs ache from the echo alone. I summon a second spear of lightning—aim for its belly. It glances off, redirecting into the wall with a deafening BOOM. Debris rains. I roll, breath ragged. Too strong. Too fast.
I form a bomb, ice and dark energy, layered like a pulse of living death. Shift to human form. Run. Then leap right into its mouth and slide down its throat. The stench of bile and magic claws at me, burning my eyes and nose. Flesh squeezes in around me, muscles twitching. I can feel the pulse of its heartbeat from the inside. I plant the bomb and launch myself back up with lightning, the arc nearly seizing my nerves. BOOM. Its neck bursts open. It falls, twitching. I land in a heap of wet stone and gore, gasping. Alive. Barely.
The cave wyvern’s corpse steams behind me, half-buried in rubble. I don’t look back. I stumble into the cave, collapse by the fire-pit of flickering heat crystals, and dry-heave until my chest aches. My body is numb and covered in bile. I’m breathing so heavily, for a while, it’s the only thing I hear.
“I went inside it,” I croak to no one.
My hands are shaking. I stare at them. Strong hands, but fragile looking. Killer’s hands, though I don’t want them to be. I am still here though. Still breathing. Still alive. I guess I have to be grateful for that. Slowly, I scoot backwards until my back hits the cave wall. Legs outstretched. Hands resting limply in my lap, while a memory long forgotten begins to surface.
The mossy green above my head flickers. Somewhere in the darkness of my mind, another ceiling replaces it—smoke-stained plaster, a flickering fluorescent light, the distant thud of bass echoing through the floorboards of our safehouse nightclub. The ache in my body fades beneath the weight of memory. I’m seventeen again, bloodied knuckles resting on a velvet armrest, a tumbler of cheap whiskey I wasn’t old enough to drink perched loosely between my fingers. Across from me, Katerina—the family’s black widow and my occasional mentor—leans forward, cigarette dangling between her lips, one heel pressed against the armrest of her seat.
“You’ve got two options now, Vasha,” she said, her voice a throaty murmur that always sounded amused and exhausted. “Either you bury it so deep it doesn’t crawl out of your dreams, or you learn to wear it like armor.”
She was talking about the kill. My second, that time. Cleaner than the first, but messier emotionally. He was someone I knew. A courier who smiled too much, who talked about his kid brother like he was already planning a better future. He’d been stealing from our shipments. Just a little. But a little turned into a lot when eyes were on you. And when the boss gave the order, it fell to me. I remember the way his voice cracked as he said my name. He begged. But he never lied. Not once. That made it worse.
Katerina exhaled a long ribbon of smoke. “Some people, they take pleasure in it. Others break. You?” She tapped ash onto the floor. “You’re not either. You absorb it. That’s why I watch you.”
“Watch me for what?” I’d asked.
“To see if it swallows you or if you use it to burn the world down.”
Back in the present, the warmth of the fire crystals is a distant thing. My hands are still trembling slightly. I draw them into my lap, fingers curling in and out. I remember wondering then if I’d ever sleep again without hearing his voice. Now, I wonder if I’ll ever sleep without feeling the wyvern’s throat around me. Without hearing that wet, internal crunch when the bomb exploded. Without feeling how my own heartbeat vanished in the moment between survival and annihilation. I close my eyes. Let the past and present bleed into each other like old ink.
There had been music playing when I left that room. A soft jazz record, distorted through static. It followed me through the hallway and into the cold alley behind the club. I’d leaned against the wall there, alone, staring at the tips of my blood-stained boots. The silence hadn’t felt peaceful. It felt wrong. Like something should be screaming. It feels that way now too.
I’m still that girl in some ways. Trying to figure out which deaths matter. Which ones weigh more than others. Unlike then, no one is pulling my strings now. There is no uncle. No Katerina. No watching eyes. Only me.
I wipe bile from my mouth with the back of my wrist and force myself to breathe slower. One inhale. One exhale. Repeat. The cave grows quiet again. The pain in my chest eases just slightly. Maybe I am still absorbing it all. Down here in the dark, maybe that’s the point.
> “Wyrd Skill Gained: Souliron Armor – Invisible, soul-bound skin defense. Serpent Wyvern form only.”
I let it settle into me. Armor I can’t see, but can feel like a second hide, waiting for the chance to be called on. Everything I am gaining, it grows with me. Changes me. Makes me… more. Yet, is that more alive? Or just more monster? Do I even care now? I stare up at the ceiling of my cave, where I’ve etched a crude constellation with glowing moss and crushed crystal. More questions than answers running through my mind. Questions it seems only time will answer.
“One day,” I whisper, “I’ll see real stars again.” But for now, I’ll own this darkness.