The man, who was most likely the Nexus constructor Kar, dropped to one knee, his enormous form still looming over them. A slight clink came from the armour despite his misty nature, an impossibly solid sound.

  “And to only have failed the Diplo El-Evister twice—that is very, very impressive, young one.” He paused as if to let the weight behind the words sink in. “Even Tizark failed five times before getting it right, and that was with a few years of guidance from myself.”

  Mirae scrutinised the man, who seemed to have quite an inflated ego. Though being a sect leader of a sect that could have wiped Middlec off the map of the planet in its heyday probably gave him some wiggle room for one that high.

  Mrs Strongmail let out a stunned gasp behind her, and Mirae looked to her; from the look on the woman’s face, it was as if Instructor Kamble had appeared and called Pippa the future of the slums.

  It was indeed high praise, though. Especially coming from someone who’d probably been in the Mana Ignition realm or higher. But something about it didn’t sit right. There was something he didn’t say, some disappointment within those words that he hadn’t voiced. A regret buried beneath the compliment. Perhaps his apprentice hadn’t been what he’d hoped for.

  The man spoke again, tone shifting. Heavier now. “I must say, it is a regret to have ended things the way I did. But not all paths can be walked easily.” He nodded toward Pippa. “And given that you seem to have been reading my journal, you will understand that, surely.”

  He rose to his feet with a groan that seemed odd for someone made of mist and light. The sound carried genuine weariness, as if his incorporeal form remembered the weight of flesh.

  “You are the only one who has passed my inheritance, it seems. So a reward is in order, though as I am sure you are aware, it is not one easily given.”

  Pippa didn’t wince at that. Most normal people would have. Mirae would’ve expected more than a few to even complain. But not Pippa; instead, that same smile—the one that said challenge accepted—set her friend’s face ablaze with joy.

  Kar nodded at this, his armour clinking as he shifted. “And for one such as yourself, it shall be quite a bountiful reward. You will take over the Nexus, but its secrets will not be revealed to you from the start. It shall be as a hollow point—a space which you can build upon and grow into your masteries.”

  His white eyes dimmed slightly, taking on something almost gentle.

  “Much like me, you seem to possess very low cultivation talent. But do not worry, girl, for our path differs from those talented few.”

  For the first time, the man’s sharp gaze moved to Mirae.

  Her breath caught. Those eyes—piercing, assessing, seeing—locked onto her with the same intensity he’d given Pippa. She felt stripped bare under that stare, as if he could read every inadequacy, every moment of self-doubt, every comparison to her brother that made her feel like she was falling short.

  “And to have a Jacaranda at your side.” His voice carried approval. “Perhaps your fate will be able to carry you far further than mine ever did.”

  He looked back at Pippa.

  “Carry it well, girl.”

  He raised his hand. Light gathered there, pulling from the beams still connecting floor to ceiling, condensing into a sphere that grew brighter with each passing second. The ball pulsed, each pulse sending ripples through the air. Symbols appeared within it—the same ones carved into the floor, into the pedestal, spinning and reorganising in patterns that hurt to follow.

  The sphere exploded outward.

  Beams shot in every direction. One slammed into Pippa’s forehead with such force that her head snapped back. She gasped, body going rigid. Another beam struck the floor. Another, the ceiling. Others danced around the hall, weaving between the hanging banners, connecting to points along the walls that burst into light.

  White light washed over everything.

  The hall. The pedestal. Mirae’s vision.

  Everything dissolved into brilliance so complete it erased thought itself.

  —- —- —- —-

  Spiro pressed his back against his overturned cot. The hay-filled sack, a so-called mattress, was prickling against his shirt and scratching at his back. But he had no time to process that as sweat trickled from his brow, and he tried to calm his rampaging heart.

  He hadn’t imagined he’d wake up to something like this.

  One moment, he was being led in with the others, thankfully saved by those three cultivators in the Core Formation realm. They’d left him and the others here in the healing hall, going off with Tyler and the other three to report on what had actually happened in the hive. The healing hall should have been safe. A place Spiro could finally relax and plan what he was going to do when he got back to the slums. Instead of having the hive’s constant oppressive air suffocating him.

  Yet now that oppression was back, and in the worst way possible.

  A crunch came from the far side of the room, followed by the sounds of a large mass rising and digging into flesh. A low guttural cry followed, weak, before falling into a whimper.

  Those creatures had eaten another person, and they would reach him soon.

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  He didn’t even know how it had happened. One moment, he was blissfully lost in his thoughts of perhaps forming his own gang or mercenary group when he got back to the slums. Then screaming dragged him back to reality. Fighting had erupted, the clashing of steel and chitin, followed by flesh being ripped apart and splattered.

  He caught sight of a blood splotch as pale light slanted through a far window, catching the dust motes drifting in the carnage-thick air. The beam fell across the floor in a crooked line, illuminating a hand. Bloodied. Fingers still curled around a sword’s grip, knuckles locked in a death-hold that hadn’t saved their owner. The blade gleamed dully where the light touched it—good steel, sharp steel, and ultimately useless steel.

  Maybe if I—

  His legs tensed. It was three meters. Four at most. He could crawl, stay low, grab the weapon and at least die fighting instead of cowering behind a mattress like some—

  Something slithered over the hand.

  Black. Glistening. A tendril of pure darkness which coiled around the wrist with a wet squelch, tightening until the joints popped. The mass surged upward, enveloping the forearm in one fluid motion.

  Crack.

  Bones splintered. The sound was sharp, brittle—like dry kindling snapping underfoot. The sword clattered free, ringing against the stone as the black thing’s body convulsed, swallowing the appendage whole. Where there had been a hand, there was nothing. Not even a stain.

  The creature slid away, searching for more.

  Part of him desperately wanted to flee, to run, but that would just draw those creatures over. Whatever they were, these black worms, they were hunting, and he was surely next.

  Taking a breath, he peeked over his cot.

  Mana stones flickered from brackets along the walls, their glow sickly and pale—barely enough to see by, more than enough to wish he couldn’t. Cots lay scattered across the room like broken teeth, overturned and shattered, hay spilling from torn mattresses in clumps that had gone dark and wet with blood. The copper stink of it hung thick in his throat, coating his tongue.

  Bodies. Everywhere, bodies. Shapes that had been people lay draped over cots, crumpled against walls, twisted in poses that suggested their last moments had not been quick. The worms writhed over them in clusters—segmented, carapace-covered black forms as thick as his forearm, their eyeless heads burrowing into cavities that shouldn’t exist in human flesh. The schlick-schlick of their feeding was rhythmic. Almost peaceful. Like the pitter-patter of rain.

  His trailing gaze caught on a woman near the centre of the room. She lay on her back, arms splayed, one hand reaching toward the door she’d never reached. Her bottom half was simply... gone. A ragged mess of exposed spine and glistening viscera marked where her waist ended, the stone beneath her dark and spreading. A single tear track cut through the grime on her cheek. Still wet.

  She’d been alive when these things had found her. She’d died knowing what was eating her.

  He dropped back down, heart hammering against his ribs, like a trapped bird throwing itself against cage bars. His breath came in short, sharp pulls that didn’t bring enough air. Couldn’t bring enough air. The cot’s wooden frame dug into his shoulders. The hay prickled his neck. Small things. Stupid things. The world was ending, and his body was complaining about hay.

  He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t run. But he couldn’t stay here and just wait for them to come and eat him.

  No.

  They’d eat him. Leave nothing behind. His family, his love, everything he’d scraped together in twenty years of barely surviving — gone in the wet crunch of maws he couldn’t even see.

  Everything snapped into focus, and his legs moved before he could stop them. He rose. Took a step. Steady. Once. Twice. The door was right there, barely a few paces, he could—

  Clack.

  His foot fell onto a broken piece of wood.

  The sound split the air like a thunderclap.

  Adrenaline punched through him, ice-cold and screaming. He was sprinting before the cries of the worms echoed through the room—high, keening shrieks that sent spasms crawling up his spine. Forms shifted in his peripheral vision. Black shapes launching from their meals, surging toward him in a wave of glistening segments.

  He ran. He breathed. His legs pumped, and his lungs burned, and the door was right there—

  From beyond it, an explosion of fire. Shouts. Fighting. Perhaps safety. And for a moment—one brief, beautiful moment—he thought he was going to make it.

  Then. Snap.

  Pain detonated through his right leg. White-hot. Blinding. His momentum carried him forward even as his body registered that something essential was missing, and then he was tumbling, slamming against the wall inches from the exit. Inches from salvation.

  His eyes dropped to his legs.

  Most of his right was simply gone.

  The kneecap barely hung on. The stump was a ragged mess of torn flesh and exposed bone, blood pumping in rhythmic spurts. A worm writhed a short distance away, coiling around the severed appendage. It took moments to devour it—seconds, really—and he watched in horror as it uncoiled itself and rose higher, segments bunching with terrible purpose.

  More piled in. Streaming over the cots in a wave of black, drawn by blood and movement and the simple animal terror radiating from his every pore.

  It became clear.

  He wouldn’t make it. He wouldn’t get to say his last goodbyes.

  The slums of Middlec were a cruel place. A place where you would not survive unless you either gave in to the Collar Gang or eked out a pitiful life amongst some of the smaller gangs. It was a place of suffering. He thought he’d die there, thought he’d either mess with the wrong person and get stabbed in a dank alley, drowning in those black puddles, or get crushed by a wayward cultivator who thought he was an eyesore.

  Never did he think he was going to be eaten by a worm.

  The tears streamed from his eyes, splashing onto the cold stone.

  He should have told Rachel how he’d felt sooner. He should have avoided that door. Should have stayed well enough away, kept to himself and kept playing dice. This was not a path people like him could walk.

  Then the wave slammed into him.

  And darkness swallowed him.

  —- —- —- —-

  “Get back!” Wymon yelled, pulling the collar of a mercenary that stepped far too close to the worm lashing its black tail, far too close to the man’s face. With a tug, the man collapsed to the floor, the creature’s carapace appendage whipping through the air just by his head.

  Wymon dived in right after it, a Thirteenth Wick crackling to life as flames danced along the twin daggers’ edges. He ducked in low, jabbing the blade into the worm’s carapace and igniting a gout of flame that washed over the creature. It writhed and writhed; the force threw him off his feet and sent him tumbling to the side, mud slopping beneath him.

  These things were far stronger than he’d expected, almost as if within their relatively compact forms was a full-on mana engine.

  He watched in frustration as the flames died down on the worm within seconds, and the creature was already on him.

  This fight was getting really tedious.

  So far, serving under Raquel had been quite an annoying affair overall. He’d known coming into this trial realm would have its problems, but he’d relished the opportunity at first—sent in by Acella, Core Formation mistress warding over the southern slum. He should have been here strengthening himself. If Raquel hadn’t pulled rank on him, he might have.

  Now, any idea of him or his squad mates making significant improvements was looking like a far-off dream.

  Scrambling to his feet, he dodged to the side, the black shape shooting past him as his hand whipped out and slammed the blade into its passing form. Thirteenth Wick’s molten edge caught against the carapace, letting out a gout of flame, which obviously the creature shrugged off.

  Why wouldn’t it?

  This worm was proving to be far more maddening than any of the other bugs waiting to attack them outside the fortifications. If anything, they were reminding him a bit of the creatures he’d encountered at the Hilda festival, just a lot more durable.

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