The creature awoke to the echo of metallic strikes resonating through the walls of the abyss.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
They weren't footsteps. They were something larger, more violent. She curled up among the rocks, her golden skin (the gift of the glowing creature) pulsing faintly in the dark.
The humans were returning.
But this time… they were different.
From her hiding place, she saw them pass:
Three figures wrapped in heavy fabrics, but not like the other hunters. These wore no shining armor. Their faces were hidden behind bone masks, and instead of torches of fire, they carried crystal spheres that glowed with a bluish, cold light.
One of them stopped right in front of her hiding spot.
The creature held her breath (since when did she know how to do that?).
The human raised his sphere of light… and spoke:
"There are fresh markings here. Golden-cloaked larvae. We must hurry before those from the Upper City arrive."
His voice wasn't a growl. It was soft, almost musical.
The creature felt a strange impulse:
I want to hear more.
The humans continued onward, speaking among themselves in words the creature didn't understand, but that began to form patterns.
—"Kharis" (when pointing at glowing walls).—"Vermis" (when stepping on crystal husks).—"Nyx" (when gazing into the deeper dark).
The creature followed in silence, mimicking their steps, learning:
That they raised their hands to signal a stop.
That they touched their masks before drinking from hidden flasks.
That they breathed differently when afraid (faster, shallower).
And then, the smallest one lagged behind.
He was thinner than the others. His mask had a crack that revealed one green eye (green like the liquid in the walls?).
He knelt beside a puddle, moved his light sphere aside, and pulled something from his satchel:
A crystal butterfly—just like the ones the creature had seen before, but dead.
The boy placed it on the water and murmured something.
The creature crept closer, not understanding why this human didn't frighten her.
The boy looked up… and saw her.
His pupils widened.
But he didn't scream.
He extended a trembling hand, as if he wanted to touch her golden skin.
The creature stepped back.
The human spoke a new word:
"Solitary…"
Then the others called out:
"Lirin! Don't fall behind!"
The boy (Lirin?) jumped to his feet, but before leaving, he dropped something on the ground:
A piece of his broken mask.
When the humans were gone, the creature picked up the fragment.
It was smooth on one side, rough on the other. When she looked into it, she saw her distorted reflection:
Eyes too large. A mouth full of tiny teeth. And her skin… now marked with golden patches that shimmered in the humans' fading light.
She flipped the mask fragment over.
Someone had carved something on the back:
Two intertwined spirals.
A symbol? A name? A map?
She tucked it between the folds of her altered skin, where the shimmer would hide it.
That night, she dreamed of new sounds:
— Laughter that didn't hurt.— Words spoken softly.— Something called "Lirin" that tasted like moonlight.
And when she awoke, her throat did something strange:
She tried to mimic them.
The sounds that came out were rough, broken.
But they were hers.
The abyss sang badly today.
The creature felt it first in the walls: an irregular tremor that made her claws vibrate against the stone. Then came the smell—acidic, like rotting metal—and finally, the sound.
Something massive was moving through the lower tunnel.
Before, she would have fled.
But today, she had golden skin that hid her, and a fragment of human mask that weighed heavy on her chest.
Today... she wanted to see.
She crawled to a rocky ledge and looked down:
The creature filled the entire tunnel.
It had no true shape—a mass of writhing tentacles coiled around a central core where dozens of jaws opened and closed in discordant rhythm. Each mouth drooled a black liquid that hissed as it touched the floor.
But the worst were the eyes.
They weren't fixed in place. They sprouted randomly among the tentacles—yellow pupils spinning independently, as if each saw a different world.
One of them stopped.
It looked directly at her hiding place.
The creature felt her golden skin turn to liquid terror.
She leapt back just as a tentacle sliced through the space she had occupied. Stone exploded where the acid struck.
She ran.
The tunnels she knew so well became traps—each crack too narrow, each ledge too brittle.
She heard the thing slithering after her—not fast, but certain, as if it already knew all her possible paths.
In a tight turn, she stumbled over something soft:
Another of her glowing creatures!
This time, there was no time for wonder. She grabbed it and smashed it against the floor, creating a luminous puddle.
When the thousand-mouthed monster appeared, she lunged toward it, smearing her claw with the glowing fluid and plunging it into the first eye she saw.
The roar shook the abyss.
She ran.
She wasn't fast enough.
A whip of acidic flesh struck her from behind, tearing a chunk of skin from her side.
The pain was so intense she saw colors that didn't exist.
She dragged herself into a fissure barely wider than her shoulders, feeling the acid continue to burn, her golden blood mixing with the monster's black.
The thing tried to follow, but it was too big.
Its eyes—the ones that remained—turned toward her with something that wasn't hunger.
It was hate.
And then, it spoke.
Not with words, but with images that invaded her mind:
— An empty abyss.— Humans hanging from hooks of flesh.— And her, small and insignificant, being devoured again and again.
The creature screamed (or was it the monster?).
She didn't know how long she was unconscious.
She awoke in a side-cave, her wound sealed with a shimmering scab where her skin struggled to regenerate.
The piece of human mask was still there, stuck to her chest with dried blood.
Outside, the abyss breathed calmly again.
But something had changed:
Now, she truly understood fear.
Not fear of dying.
Fear of being remembered by something that wanted to destroy her.