We leave her cell together.

  I walk. She slithers.

  Sarrah’s coils whisper over stone as we pass through the shattered doorway, water sliding away from her body in ripples that catch the low light. I carry my sword on one shoulder, the weight familiar now, balanced, an extension of my posture rather than a burden. My other shoulder is free, and she claims that space without asking, her presence warm and close.

  Her hand slips into mine as naturally as if it has always belonged there.

  It is an odd thing to notice how quickly something becomes normal.

  “What is next, handsome?” she asks, her voice light and pleased, the words curling with amusement. There is no tension in her now, no guarded edge. She watches me with open interest, head tilted slightly as she glides alongside.

  “The third cell,” I answer.

  She nods, gold catching the light as her jewelry shifts and chimes softly.

  “I thought so,” she says. A grin curves her lips. “I will leave you to it.”

  Her fingers squeeze mine once before she releases my hand. She turns smoothly, already angling her body back toward the fork in the corridors.

  “I suppose I should go see that hobgoblin you have,” she adds, eyes bright with mischief. “It would be rude not to.”

  As she passes me, she trails a finger along my chest, light and deliberate. The touch sends a brief, sharp awareness through me, not distracting, just… acknowledged.

  Then she is gone, her coils carrying her down the corridor toward Kragus and the growing presence of The Condemned.

  I watch her go for a moment.

  The dungeon feels different now.

  Alive in a way it wasn’t before.

  I turn back toward the intersection.

  The fork opens up again, familiar stone corridors stretching away in clean, brutal lines. Where once there had been silence and tension, there is movement now. I see them almost immediately.

  Hobgoblins.

  More than before.

  They stand in pairs and small groups, posted at intersections and doorways, armor matte black and uniform. Short swords rest at their sides, shields slung where they can be brought up in a heartbeat. They don’t stare. They don’t challenge.

  They acknowledge.

  A nod here. A fist to the chest there.

  Order is taking shape.

  I bare my teeth in a small grin.

  Good.

  I turn down the last corridor.

  The air changes as I move away from the others. The stone here is older, worn smoother by time and use. The passage bends subtly, not straight like the others, but with gentle curves that make sightlines uncertain. My footsteps echo strangely, sound carried and swallowed in equal measure.

  This one feels different.

  Intentional.

  At the end of the corridor stands the door.

  It is thicker than the others. Reinforced steel set deep into the stone, scarred by old impacts and gouges. The frame around it is cracked and repaired, cracked and repaired again, as if many have tried to break through and failed.

  I stop in front of it and set my feet.

  There is no talking this time. No testing. No negotiation waiting on the other side.

  I shift the sword from my shoulder and grip it with both hands.

  Then I strike.

  The blade crashes into the steel with a shriek that carries down the corridor. The impact sends a tremor through my arms and shoulders, through my spine and into the stone beneath my feet. The door dents inward, but it does not give.

  I strike again.

  And again.

  Each blow lands heavier than the last, my body settling into the rhythm of destruction. The metal screams. Bolts shear. The frame begins to deform, stone cracking around it as the door is forced to accept what it was never meant to withstand.

  I step forward between strikes, driving the blade like a wedge, prying and battering until the resistance weakens.

  With a final, brutal blow, the door tears free.

  It collapses inward in a cascade of steel and stone, crashing into the darkness beyond.

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  I step over the wreckage.

  The air inside is not dry.

  It is close. Stale. Thick with the smell of damp fur, old filth, and something sharp and animal that prickles at the back of my throat. Dust hangs in the air, but it is mixed with drifting motes of hair and grit that cling to my skin.

  The space beyond the door is wrong.

  Not a chamber.

  A warren.

  The stone floor has been broken up, dug into, burrowed through. Tunnels spiderweb outward at different heights and angles, some barely large enough for a human to crawl through, others wide enough for something much larger to pass hunched and low. The walls are scarred by claw marks and gnawing teeth. Debris litters the ground. Bone fragments. Shredded cloth. Rusted scraps dragged in and hoarded.

  I hear movement immediately.

  Not one set of footsteps.

  Many.

  Scraping claws. Soft skittering. The faint, nervous chitter of creatures that live in darkness and numbers. Something shifts just out of sight, then vanishes into a hole in the wall too small for me to follow.

  This place is alive.

  Not ordered like Kragus’s halls. Not seductive like Sarrah’s chamber.

  Infested.

  I straighten and inhale slowly, letting the scent settle in my lungs.

  I can feel him.

  Not see him yet, but feel him.

  A presence deeper within the warren, clever and cautious. Watching through many eyes. Waiting for me to commit myself fully before showing his face.

  This will not be quick.

  This will not be clean.

  This will be decided by endurance, inevitability, and who runs out of places to hide first.

  I step fully into the warren.

  ***

  The warren is watching me.

  I feel it before I see it. The air is close and stale, thick with damp fur and old filth. Narrow tunnels branch off in every direction at different heights, holes punched through stone like rot. The floor is littered with grit, bones, scraps of cloth dragged in and abandoned.

  I take two steps inside and stop.

  Eyes.

  Small points of yellow and red glint from the darkness. One pair, then three. They blink and vanish, then reappear somewhere else. Beady and patient. The kind of eyes that never sleep.

  More appear.

  A line of them along a low tunnel mouth. Another cluster higher up in a gap between stones. A few on the floor itself, close enough that I can hear tiny claws scratching at the rock.

  More.

  They multiply with frightening speed, the warren filling with pinpricks of light until it looks like a night sky turned sideways.

  I tighten my grip on my sword and take another step.

  The eyes surge.

  The rats come all at once.

  It is not one wave. It is the whole floor moving. A tide of fur and teeth and squealing hunger. They pour from holes too small for anything else, from cracks in the stone, from tunnels that should not exist. They swarm my legs first, then my waist, then my chest.

  I stomp.

  The first step crushes several, bodies popping under my weight, warm liquid splashing my ankles. I stomp again and again, trying to break the mass, but there are too many. I slash downward with the sword, the blade carving through a knot of them, sending mangled bodies flying.

  It doesn’t matter.

  They climb over their dead.

  They bite.

  Pain blooms across my calves and thighs as teeth sink into flesh. Claws rake my skin. I feel blood start to run, hot and thick.

  I snarl and swing again, wide this time, the greatsword scything through the swarm. Heads and bodies scatter. The floor becomes slick with gore.

  Still, they come.

  They find my hands. They latch onto my wrists and forearms, teeth grinding, claws digging. I shake them off, smashing them against the walls. More replace them immediately.

  I can kill them.

  I can kill thousands.

  That is not the problem.

  The problem is time.

  They are not trying to win by strength.

  They are trying to win by erosion.

  I feel my regeneration working at first, closing bites as quickly as they open, sealing claw marks before the blood can run far. My body knits itself with calm efficiency, heat spreading under my skin as wounds vanish.

  Then the bites keep coming.

  And my healing begins to slow.

  Not much at first. A wound that would have closed instantly takes a heartbeat longer. Another bite stays open long enough for blood to drip.

  The rats do not slow.

  They speed up.

  They chew.

  They tear.

  They drag.

  They are not just hurting me. They are draining me.

  I feel it in a way I have never felt before. A pull from inside my body, resources being burned faster than they can be replaced. Healing is not magic. It is work. Work needs fuel.

  My breath grows heavier.

  I can still swing the sword, still stomp, still crush, but the swarm keeps forcing me to spend. Spend strength, spend stamina, spend whatever internal store makes my body knit.

  A rat climbs my chest and bites into the meat near my collarbone. Another sinks its teeth into my neck. The pain is sharp, bright, and suddenly too present.

  They are getting higher.

  I roar and slam my back into the wall, grinding bodies between stone and muscle. I rake my claws down my torso, tearing rats off in clumps, throwing them aside.

  They climb right back.

  One leaps at my face.

  Its teeth catch my cheek and rip.

  I blink and feel wet warmth spill down my jaw.

  Another rat leaps.

  It hits my eye.

  The pain is blinding.

  I jerk my head back, but the thing hangs on, teeth sunk deep. It thrashes, claws digging into my eyelid.

  I grab it and tear it off.

  Too late.

  The eye is gone.

  A second rat hits the other side.

  Then another.

  My world becomes red and yellow pinpricks and then darkness.

  I scream, the sound deep and ragged, and it turns into a growl as rage takes over.

  I am blind.

  The rats keep coming.

  They are on my face now, on my scalp, biting at my lips, tearing at my ears. They swarm my shoulders and arms. I swing the sword by feel, the blade whistling through the air and hitting stone with a shower of sparks when I misjudge distance.

  I can’t see.

  I can only feel.

  I feel teeth.

  I feel claws.

  I feel blood.

  And I feel my regeneration failing to keep up.

  Not stopping.

  Just losing ground.

  This is what it means.

  I am not invincible.

  I heal.

  But I need energy.

  Mass.

  Fuel.

  The realization cuts through the pain like a blade.

  I stop trying to swat them away.

  I open my mouth.

  The next rat that climbs onto my chest gets seized by my hand. I shove it into my mouth and bite down.

  Fur and bone crunch.

  Warm meat bursts.

  It tastes like filth and iron and life.

  My stomach clenches, then something inside me flares.

  Heat.

  My body responds instantly, greedily, as if the act itself is a switch.

  I grab another rat.

  And another.

  I don’t throw them.

  I eat them.

  My jaws work like a machine. Bite. Crunch. Swallow. Bite again.

  The rats keep swarming.

  Good.

  They are feeding me.

  I feel my regeneration surge.

  Wounds tighten. Cuts knit. The raw, torn sockets where my eyes were begin to close, not restoring sight, but sealing flesh, stopping the bleeding, stabilizing the damage.

  The pain is still there.

  Terrible.

  But it shifts.

  It becomes noise.

  Background.

  I plant my feet and start grabbing blindly, hands snatching writhing bodies from my chest and face and arms, shoving them into my mouth, chewing and swallowing without pause.

  My belly becomes a furnace.

  Energy floods my limbs.

  The swarm changes.

  I feel it.

  The rats hesitate for the first time, their bites becoming less frantic, their movement less confident. They were meant to devour.

  Now they are being devoured.

  I laugh.

  It starts as a low chuckle, ragged with pain.

  Then it grows.

  It turns into a deep, rolling laughter that shakes my chest and echoes through the warren.

  Blind, bleeding, covered in teeth marks and fur, I keep eating.

  And I keep laughing.