Part 7: "Veins of the Vault"
After the attack, the remaining Hollows press forward. The Vault shifts around them—walls breathing, passages changing. They find signs of older teams—scratched warnings, broken equipment, dried blood. Cael's powers remain dormant, but the others are now afraid of him. When they reach a fork, a choice must be made: toward noise—or silence. And silence in the Vault is never empty.
---
Cael looked down at his hands.
And the voice inside him whispered:
SOON
---
For a long time, none of them moved.
The air in the corridor had changed. It wasn't just heavier—it was thicker, denser, almost viscous. The mist clung tighter now, wrapping around their legs like something sentient. Behind them, the creature's remains—if anything remained—had vanished into the shadows. As though the Vault had swallowed its own child.
Cael stood first. His breathing was slow, deliberate. Controlled. Every instinct screamed that the others were watching him differently now. Not as a comrade. Not even as a threat.
But as something alien.
Ryle was the first to move. He sheathed his broken dagger and dusted off his coat like it mattered. His face was pale.
"We can't stay here."
His voice was flat. Controlled. But his eyes didn't meet Cael's.
Dren snorted, rubbing his face with one gloved hand. "No shit."
"We need to regroup," Ryle continued. "Make a plan. Keep moving until we find a landmark. A chamber. A split. Anything."
Cael didn't answer. He turned and began walking.
The others followed.
---
The Vault shifted with every step.
Subtle things at first: stone patterns rearranging behind them, wall textures smoothing where they had been rough seconds ago. Then the light changed—the red glow beneath the veins in the stone grew stronger, brightening with every beat. The walls pulsed with them, in sync.
Like a living thing.
Like a lung.
They passed remnants from older groups. Torn cloth. A claw mark ten feet high. The burned-out shell of a flare emitter still fused to a skeleton's hand.
No one said anything.
Then they came to the wall.
A section of the corridor, just ahead, was different. The stone glistened darker, almost wet. Carved into it were rows of markings—scratched with weapons, with fingernails, with desperation. Words in different languages, symbols from different houses. All of it clustered around a central shape.
A circle.
Hollow.
Cael stepped close.
The others stayed back.
He ran his fingers across the markings, not reading—feeling. The grooves buzzed beneath his touch.
He could feel voices trapped in the wall.
DON'T GO ALINE
THEY HEAR BREATH
BLEED AND IT FEEDS
And, again:
THE WALLS MOVE WHEN YOU BLEED.
He pulled his hand back. His fingertips were warm.
---
They walked in silence for what felt like an hour. The mist made distance a lie. The walls pressed closer, then widened again. The floor shifted—sometimes smooth, sometimes cracked. Once, they walked across something soft that squelched underfoot.
They didn't ask what it was.
The girl finally spoke.
"My name's Nisa."
Everyone stopped. Even Cael.
She looked at Cael. "If we're going to die here, I don't want to be a stranger when it happens."
Cael nodded once. "Cael."
"Ryle," Ryle said, voice low.
Dren muttered his name.
Then they kept walking.
---
The corridor finally changed. Not in lighting. In structure.
It split.
Two directions.
To the left, a low grinding sound echoed—mechanical, rhythmic. A pulse, like machinery in motion. Familiar, almost.
To the right, absolute silence. Not emptiness. Silence. The kind that felt unnatural.
Cael stepped to the center.
Ryle looked between the paths. "I hate this."
Dren squatted and touched the floor. "Left is alive. Right is..."
"Waiting," Nisa said.
They turned to Cael.
Ryle spoke gently. "You choose."
Cael looked at both paths.
The Vault was humming. Behind his eyes, pressure built. The silence called to him.
He pointed right.
No one argued.
They walked into the quiet.
Behind them, the left corridor sealed shut.
---
The silence became deafening.
No footsteps echoed. No breath escaped. Their own heartbeats seemed muffled.
They passed through arched halls where statues had once stood—now just broken pedestals and stone dust. The mist didn't follow them here. Something else did.
At one point, they saw a shape in the distance—tall, thin, unmoving. Watching. But when they turned toward it, it dissolved like ash.
Nisa grabbed Cael's arm.
"Something is walking behind us."
He nodded.
They didn't look back.
They didn't stop.
They just kept walking.
---
They entered a hall lined with what looked like stone mirrors—dozens of vertical slabs polished to near-reflection. But what they saw in them wasn't their own faces.
Cael approached one and saw himself as a child—alone, weeping, standing in a field of bones. Another slab showed Ryle surrounded by flames, screaming. Dren's showed nothing but black.
Nisa stared into hers for a long time, unmoving.
"We shouldn't stay," Cael whispered.
"They're showing what we fear," Ryle said, voice trembling. "Or what we already know."
The reflections began to shift on their own.
One slab showed the four of them walking.
Then three.
Then two.
Then none.
"Move!" Cael snapped.
They ran.
---
After another endless walk, the walls widened into a natural chamber—a dome covered in dangling strands of light, like bioluminescent vines. The floor was covered in dust, and in its center lay a body—not recent, but not old.
The armor was cracked. The body curled inward, one hand gripping a flare emitter.
On the floor beside the corpse, scrawled in what looked like blood:
THEY LEARN FROM US.
Ryle knelt by the corpse. "This guy had gear. He was a bonded."
Cael stepped away from the group. The lights above shimmered. Somewhere deeper, something laughed.
"They don't just learn," he said.
His voice was cold.
"They evolve."