The chamber was no longer a room. It was a body in death throes.
Walls heaved and split, vomiting bone shards and torrents of ichor. Ribs cracked like thunder. Screams of hatchlings blended with the deeper, resonant howl of the monarch as it staggered through the collapsing nursery, dragging half-ford limbs across the shifting floor.
Mira pulled Elena into the tunnel mouth, ducking as vertebrae the size of spears crashed down. “Don’t stop—just run!”
They sprinted down the corridor, slick bone giving way under their boots. The tunnel wasn’t stable—every pulse of the wounded chamber made the ground ripple, flexing like cartilage. Behind them, the monarch forced its bulk into the passage, shoulders grinding against the walls. It didn’t fit, but the structure yielded like soft marrow, reshaping around its form.
“It’s chasing us through,” Elena gasped.
Mira didn’t answer. She couldn’t spare the breath.
The faint blue glow ahead brightened. It wasn’t steady—it flickered, bending like light seen through water. A way out, maybe. Or another trap.
A quake shuddered through the tunnel, throwing them off their feet. Ichor burst from cracks in the ceiling, raining down in streams that hissed against their skin. The fluid ate through Mira’s sleeve, blistering her arm. She scread, pressing forward, dragging Elena with her.
The monarch’s triple howl rolled through the passage. It was closer now, impossibly close, its claws scraping the floor like knives dragged across glass.
They stumbled into a wider hall. The glow was stronger here, emanating from a tear in the wall itself—a jagged wound in the bone that revealed sothing not of this place. The light was crystalline, cold, a stark contrast to the wet warmth of the nursery.
Elena froze, shielding her eyes. “It’s... it’s outside.”
Mira blinked through the glow. Shapes moved within it—distant structures, sharp angles and towers that didn’t belong underground. A city? Or a mirage?
They didn’t have ti to decide.
The monarch erupted into the chamber behind them, dragging its bulk through the opening, its stitched-together body ripping free of the tunnel’s resistance. Its three faces shrieked in unison, the sound splitting Mira’s ears. The hatchlings poured in behind it, a tide of gnashing mouths.
Mira’s hand found Elena’s. “We jump.”
Elena’s eyes widened. “Into that?”
“Better there than here!”
The monarch’s claw slamd down where they had stood, shattering the bone floor. Splinters flew like shrapnel, cutting Mira’s cheek. The ledge beneath them cracked, tilting toward the crystalline tear.
No more ti.
Together, they leapt.
The blue light engulfed them, cold as a blade pressed to the spine. The sound of the nursery’s collapse, the monarch’s rage, the shrieks of hatchlings—all muffled into silence as their bodies passed through.
For a heartbeat, they were weightless.
Then the ground returned—stone, not bone. Air that was cold, tallic, not fetid.
They lay gasping on smooth black rock beneath a vast, alien sky that pulsed with fractured constellations.
Elena whispered, voice trembling. “We’re not in the womb anymore.”
Mira turned, glancing back at the tear. The monarch’s triple-faced skull lood within, pressing against the shimring threshold.
And it was still trying to co through.
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