The scream of the split-open captive reverberated through the chamber, a sound so raw it scraped the marrow of Mira’s bones. The newborn hatchling clawed its way free, slick and shuddering, imdiately snapping its teeth at the air like it had been born starving.
All around, the captives stirred violently. Their bindings writhed, tightening, as if the bone-web sensed its children were ready to erge. The troughs shook, liquid sloshing as more bulges surfaced beneath pale skin.
“No...” Elena’s voice broke. “They’re all—”
“Hosts,” Mira spat, dragging her toward the tunnel. “This isn’t a nursery—it’s a womb.”
But the womb was waking.
The walls throbbed, veins glowing brighter, casting the entire amphitheater in a hellish orange hue. Tubes retracted from so captives, their bodies sagging lifeless as hatchlings burst through their chests, bellies, and throats. The air filled with snapping jaws and shrill cries, a chorus of newborns hungry for their first feed.
The swarm of earlier hatchlings screeched back in greeting, converging on the troughs, tearing at both captives and newborns alike in a frenzy of cannibalistic feeding. Bones cracked, flesh ripped, marrow slurped like broth.
Elena gagged, stumbling against Mira. “They’re eating each other—”
“It doesn’t matter!” Mira snapped. “We need to move before they decide we’re next!”
But the way back was already blocked. Hatchlings poured down the walls, so so engorged they split open mid-crawl, birthing even smaller, sharper creatures that continued the descent. The exit behind them vanished in a writhing tide of limbs and teeth.
The only way was forward—into the chamber itself.
Mira yanked Elena along the curved wall, weaving between troughs as the chaos spread. Captives scread as their bodies burst, hatchlings shrieked as they tore into kin, and the entire room shook like the belly of so great beast digesting itself.
They darted behind a cracked pillar of fused femurs, gasping. Elena’s eyes shimred with tears, her jaw trembling. “We can’t fight this. We can’t even outrun it.”
Mira glanced at the far end of the chamber—an arched tunnel half-hidden behind a wall of seething bodies. Beyond it, faint blue light pulsed, alien but promising. “We don’t have to fight. Just reach that tunnel.”
As if mocking her, the floor buckled. Bone troughs split apart, spilling captives and liquid in torrents. A tidal wave of gore rushed across the chamber, knocking Mira and Elena off their feet, sweeping them toward the center pit—a hollow chasm filled with gnashing newborns.
Mira clawed at a rib protruding from the floor, catching it at the last second. She grabbed Elena’s wrist, teeth gritted as the current of sli dragged at her legs. Hatchlings writhed below, their claws snapping inches from her boots.
With a guttural yell, she hauled Elena onto the rib, both of them drenched, shaking.
From the pit rose sothing larger. Far larger.
A skeletal form, half-ford, dripping with amniotic ooze. Its torso was stitched together from dozens of ribcages, its skull too big for its body, splitting into three faces. The newborn swarm shrieked in unison at its arrival, as if recognizing their parent.
The “nursery” had not just birthed children.
It had birthed a monarch.
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