Chapter 64 - Maggots Behind the Eyes

The words didn't echo. They bypassed sound altogether—slipping straight past Kai's ears and drilling into the tender architecture of his mind. They didn't vibrate; they crawled, alive and writhing, like parasites whispering secrets in a language no human throat was meant to speak. Wet and invasive, they tunneled behind his eyes, coiling through the delicate tissues of thought and memory, like maggots beneath a sheet of cracked glass. Kai staggered back, hands clutched at his skull as if he could force them out, force them to stop thinking for him. His breath stuttered, coming in gasps, and the cave around him convulsed as if responding to his panic. Stone groaned in unnatural cadence. The ceiling reared upward—not like a collapse or quake, but like a mouth opening far too wide, the bones of the earth unhinging to swallow.