Chapter 45
It begins (3)
The baby's cry didn't stop.
It never paused, never cracked, never ran out of breath. It rang like a cursed siren over the still mountains, clawing at the fabric of reality. The noise didn't feel like something being made—it felt like something being forced into their ears, injected into their skulls, a weapon of pure sound wrapped in the shell of innocent weeping.
Mia, despite her usually calm and hardened demeanour, just listened for a moment—face tight, shoulders coiled. Then she finally exhaled and muttered, "It's okay. I'm sure you've all heard of these types of spawnlings…"
Her voice sounded distant. Blunted. As if even speech had to fight through the thickness of the air now.
"They attract prey by sound... or scent," she continued, her tone clinical but her eyes sharp. "They have these massive mouths—oversized, gaping holes stretched far past anything natural. And inside the mouth, embedded in the back of the throat... is an eye. One massive, completely black eye. That's the last thing people see."
Nobody spoke.
"When you lean in—out of curiosity, out of empathy, out of reflex—the mouth snaps shut like a steel trap. And it doesn't let go. The inside secretes acid. It melts your flesh, bones, everything. Your brain liquifies in seconds. It drinks it. Slurps it up through the eye. What's left is a collapsed, headless husk, twitching on the floor..."
Mia's voice lowered, as if the words themselves weighed more now. "Other Deadline creatures usually gather around these spawnlings to eat the leftovers. Which makes it even more disturbing that those same creatures are running away from this one."
A chill ran through the group.
Jas couldn't help the sharp shiver that racked her body. "That's... absolutely terrifying," she whispered, instinctively leaning toward Leo. Her fingers twitched as if itching for a weapon. Her eyes didn't stop scanning the terrain.
"It's just a spawnling," Mia assured, though her stance had subtly shifted—one leg back, ready to bolt. "And based on how insistent the sound is, it's nearing its transition to devilborn. We deal with it now, before it becomes something worse."
Bryan blinked rapidly. "But… if it stays away from people, what the hell does it eat?"
Mia glanced back at Bryan. "Other Deadline creatures. If it doesn't find humans, it just feeds on whatever it can pull in. Flesh is flesh."
The baby's wailing suddenly escalated—sharp and violent like a siren pressed against their eardrums. IAM gritted his teeth. Veins bulged on his temples. It was like his brain was vibrating.
"We have to move." Mia's voice cut through like a blade. "Now. Before it changes."
IAM wanted to lie down, sip water, take a nap. Anything but walk toward that sound. But all the training, all the pushing, all the pain—it would mean nothing if he turned back now.
So he followed. Toward the noise. Toward the madness. Feeling more and more like the dumbest character in a horror movie.
The trek up the stone ledge was grueling—not for the body, but the mind. The wailing was unrelenting, amplified by the confined rock walls. It wormed into their skulls like a parasite. The climb itself was straightforward for reinforced bodies, but every foot gained felt like a mile of resistance from some invisible force.
When they reached the plateau, the terrain changed. Signs of something unnatural decorated the rocky landscape—deep claw marks gouged into the stone, strange holes like pockmarks carved into the walls, long grooves dragging across the ground as if something had been dragged. Strange dents that didn't match any known creature's body.
IAM didn't speak. Couldn't. The closer they got, the more wrong everything felt.
And then, through the fog and echoes of crying, they reached it—a jagged opening in the side of the mountain.
A cave.
IAM froze. "Okay, yeah, let's turn around and talk this over with some tea or something," he blurted without thinking, already backing up half a step.
Mia ignored him. She stepped forward and peered inside, her hand on the rocky edge. "Tunnel… opening at the back. I can't see far, but it's cramped. We'll have to go single file."
She turned back, her bob swinging slightly. Her voice steadied. "This is it. Focus up. I know you're nervous, but I've seen what you're capable of. Let the training take over. Don't freeze."
They nodded—some hesitantly, some with forced bravado.
Then they entered.
The tunnel squeezed them.
Not physically, but psychologically. The rock walls seemed to pulse slightly. The crying echoed from every angle—close, far, inside them. The narrow walls scratched their armor and skin, poking like thorned fingers trying to tug them back. The dampness clung to the skin like sweat already spilled, and the air... the air was wrong. Too warm. Too thick. IAM felt like he was swallowing fog.
He could smell decay. Blood. A faint iron stench masked in something sweet and curdled. A smell no one should know.
Every step forward was a battle against nausea and instinct.
And then—
They reached the opening.
Darkness greeted them like a mouth waiting to close. Mia silently tossed a glow orb across the room.
It landed, rolled, and exploded into light.
What it revealed was...
Wrong.
The walls were ragged and moist with claw marks. Sticky black liquid clung to the rock, webbing out in branching veins like a cancer. Rotting organic matter, feces, and blood smeared the floor. It was hard to tell what was stone and what was flesh. The heat in the room hugged them tightly, smothering them. Beads of sweat poured down their brows instantly.
They snapped into formation—instinct now. Kon raised his shield and took the front. Bryan gripped his twin metal claws, one in each hand, white-knuckled. Mia and Leo flanked the middle, both with short blades drawn. IAM brought up the rear with Jas, whose crossbow was already cocked, her eyes glassy with tension. IAM's hand hovered over his gun, refusing to draw. If he fired by accident, they'd all die. Probably screaming.
They crept forward.
Each step closer dragged them through the horror—the wailing still stabbing at their minds. Then—
They saw it.
In the centre of the open chamber, beneath a shaft of darkness, stood the source.
It was small.
A thing that should have been harmless.
Three feet tall. Shaped like a flower of flesh. Pink, slimy folds blooming outward in a way that made the stomach churn. Where a stem should be, there was a stalk of mangled tendons. At the top: a mouth. Stretched wide. Unnaturally wide. So wide it looked torn.
The inside pulsed.
Greenish acid oozed from the ridges of the maw and pooled at its base. And behind the acid... was the eye.
Black. Wide. Watching.
It blinked, once, slowly—moisture crawling over the massive cornea.
And it wailed.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere.
But that wasn't what made them freeze.
IAM's eyes were drawn up—beyond the spawnling, toward the ceiling.
And then he stopped breathing.
There was flesh.
It coated the entire ceiling like a hide stretched taut. But it moved. It twitched. Dozens of sharp, jagged teeth slowly turned in a circular pattern, grinding like a blender around a central fleshy opening that puckered and pulsed. Black liquid built in the centre, bubbling, waiting to drop. The sound of stretching meat and grinding cartilage echoed. Strings of viscous tissue dangled down like strands of saliva from a predator's mouth.
No one moved.
No one could.
The creature above was not just flesh.
It was alive.
It was watching.
And it was waiting.
Mia's mouth fell open, her expression hollow. Her hands trembled at her sides. "This... This can't be..."
Jas stifled a scream behind her palm, her whole body shaking.
Kon—unshakable Kon—didn't move. He just stood, shield in hand, frozen like a statue, eyes locked on the ceiling.
Bryan's eyes were wide and bloodshot. Leo stepped in front of Jas without thinking, his own blade forgotten in his hand.
IAM… couldn't think. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. His mind flashed white, sparks dancing across his thoughts. Nothing made sense. The air was heavy. Time had stopped.
Because what they saw—what hung above that grotesque spawnling—was not some strange mutation.
It was a Devil.
A real Devil.
Not theory. Not whisper. Not folklore.
A real one.
A creature that ascenders feared.
A being that the Hold, and every archive ever written warned against.
IAM's heart stopped, then thundered.
The spawnling... was not just becoming a devilborn.
It was the bait.
The thing above...
That was the true horror.
And it was awake.