The Upper City smelled of fermented sweat and hot iron.
Rheell and Lumis walked through the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, mimicking the weary pace of the orphaned children milling about in the alleys. Lumis's hood was pulled tight, but her tail —a restless snake beneath her dress—wound around her thigh whenever someone passed too close.
" It's so noisy ," Lumis muttered, gritting his teeth. His ears, even sharper than humans', picked up everything : the squeal of wagon wheels, the cries of the offal vendors, the cry of a baby on a balcony.
Rheell didn't respond. He was focused on not killing .
A man tripped over him, spilling a jug of stout.
— "Watch where you're going, brat!"
The instinct was swift: claws extended, fangs bared . But Rheell remembered in time. Her nails were no longer black. They were human. Her teeth were no longer sharp. Just childlike.
" I'm sorry," he stammered, his voice breaking.
The man spat and left.
First lesson learned: Humans hate, but they don't always kill because of it.
They found refuge in the Blacksmiths' District , where the smoke from the furnaces masked their scent. The houses were made of wood and beast bone, stacked like carcasses.
Lumis was fascinated by a stall of abyssal toys :
— "What is that?" he pointed to a glass-eyed rag doll of Karnash.
" For children ," grunted the seller, an acid-scarred old man. "Five credits."
Lumis looked at Rheell. They had no money.
But Rheell had learned something new: stealing .
With a swift movement, Lumis distracted the man while Rheell plunged his hand into a barrel of Ghul-Teke teeth (used as currency by the poor).
Second lesson: Humans value useless objects more than fresh meat.
It was on the Bridge of Tears , where fishermen hung lamps made of deep-sea fish bladders.
Lina was there, studying a map marked with bloodstains.
— "The attacks are consistent... but there's no pattern ," he muttered, running a finger along the Level 2 routes.
Lumis, curious, came too close.
— "What are you looking at?"
Lina turned, and for a second, their eyes met .
Amber vs. Green.
Monster vs. Hunter.
Lina frowned.
— "What district are you from? I don't recognize you."
Rheell intervened, pulling Lumis back.
— "We're new."
Too late.
Lina's hand rested on the pommel of her Nyx-Terath bone dagger .
— "New... huh?"
Before Lina could say anything else, a knight approached her to show her something, at that moment Rheell and Lumis disappeared from her sight.
Third lesson: Some humans smell lies.
The streets were lit with pith lanterns , globes of stretched skin filled with Kharis larvae fluid. The light was golden, warm... and painful to their dark-adapted eyes.
They hid in an alley, where Rheell vomited black bile.
— "It hurts," Lumis moaned, rubbing his eyelids.
A beggar child watched them from a wooden box.
— "Have you never seen lanterns?"
Rheell looked at him. The boy smelled of sickness. Of rotten meat.
— "No," he lied.
The boy laughed.
— "You guys are weird. I like you."
And he offered them a piece of mushroom bread .
Lumis bit him... and spat him out instantly.
— "It tastes like death!"
The boy laughed louder.
Fourth lesson: Humans eat poison and call it food.
At the Public Steam Bath , they learned about nudity .
The women washed themselves with boiling water dripping from Drelgor's bladder pipes. Rheell and Lumis stood motionless, seeing how their bodies had no tails. They had no luminous scars.
" Is something wrong?" asked a woman with whip marks on her back.
Lumis pointed to her tail , hidden under a towel.
— "Is this... bad?"
The woman paled.
— "For the gods! What is that? Did a beast bite you?"
Rheell struggled to get out, dragging Lumis along.
Fifth lesson: Different things are scary.
In the Song Square , a musician played a Velkrash bone flute . The sound was high-pitched, like the cry of a dying bird.
Lumis cried.
" Why does it hurt here?" he asked, touching his chest.
Rheell was at a loss to respond.
But a man without legs , sitting on the ground, yes.
— "Because it's beautiful, little one. Beautiful things always hurt."
Sixth lesson: Humans keep sadness in their songs.
On the roof of an abandoned blacksmith's shop , Rheell and Lumis shared a roasted rat.
— "We can't stay ," Rheell said. Lina had seen them, and the lady remembered her tail .
Lumis nodded, biting the bone until it broke.
— "Downstairs... safer."
But Rheell looked toward the Palace of the Dawn Warriors , where the skin banners of unknown Beasts of the Abyss fluttered.
— "No. First, learn. Then... hunt."
Last lesson: To beat humans, you have to think like humans.
In her diary that night, Lina drew two figures .
One with yellow eyes.
Another one with something sticking out from under the cape.
And he wrote:
"Guys I've never seen before, were there beasts that disguise themselves as humans?
What the hell is creating the Abyss?
-----
The Broken Bone Quarter smelled of fermented urine and rusted iron. The streets were paved with broken flagstones and fragments of discarded armor, and the houses—if they could be called that—were heaps of rotting wood, beast bones, and abyssal scrap welded together with Skavrith resin.
Rheell and Lumis moved in the shadows, watching.
— "Here," Rheell murmured, pointing to a half-ruined structure that had once been a beast-cutting shop . The door hung on a broken hinge, and the interior was filled with rusted tools and piles of untanned hides.
Lumis touched one of the walls, where someone had scrawled "Guild Property" in black ink.
— "What is... 'guild'?"
Rheell couldn't answer. But the place was abandoned, and that was enough.
In one corner, they found an escape tunnel —a narrow passageway leading to an underground chamber, probably used to hide contraband.
— "Home ," Rheell said, testing the word in his mouth.
Lumis laughed, a sound that still sounded too sharp , like glass shattering under pressure.
— "Home ," he repeated, as if the concept were as foreign to him as it was fascinating.
They had to eat without being seen, so they devised a plan.
The sick were easy to find.
The Broken Bone Quarter was full of them: coughers, the unhealed wounded, old people whose bodies smelled of necrosis . Humans the world had already forgotten.
His first prey was a woman with gangrenous legs , lying in an alley next to an empty barrel of brandy.
— "Please... some water..." he whispered, reaching out with a trembling hand.
Rheell crouched down in front of her, studying her face. There was no fear in her eyes. Only resignation.
It was fast.
A bite to the jugular to prevent screams. Lumis, with her now more human-like nails , split the skull with surgical precision. The brain, gray and shiny, throbbed one last time before being devoured.
The taste was bitter and sweet at the same time , like rotten fruit mixed with honey.
And with it came memories :
— The first kiss from a man who was already dead.
— The pain of childbirth in the rain.
— The last coin she spent on liquor, knowing she'd never see another sunrise.
The neighborhood children didn't ask questions.
To them, Rheell and Lumis were just two more orphans with stolen clothes and too-bright eyes.
" Shall we play Abyss Hunters?" asked Tobin , a skinny boy with burn scars on his arms. He was wielding a stick like a sword.
Lumis blinked, confused.
— "Play... hunting?"
— "Yes! I'll be Captain Vorak, and you guys will be monsters ," Tobin said, laughing.
Rheell watched, trying to understand. Why play hunt when they could do it for real?
But Lumis leaped forward, spreading his arms like tentacles.
— "You're Nyx-Terath! Grrr!"
Tobin laughed so hard he fell backward.
Rheell tried to laugh too. It came out as a stifled grunt.
" You look like a Ghul-Teke with a stomach ache!" Tobin said, rolling on the floor.
Mareth , the neighborhood midwife, was a woman with calloused hands and a soft voice.
One afternoon, he found Lumis whining over a stray cat that had been crushed to death by a cart.
" Does it hurt?" Mareth asked, leaning forward.
Lumis looked at the animal's carcass, then at his own hands.
— "I don't know what this is," he said, touching his chest.
Mareth smiled sadly.
— "It's a shame, little one. It hurts here ," he said, pointing to his own heart.
Lumis frowned.
— "Why? Cat wasn't food."
Mareth didn't understand. But he stroked her hair as if she were human.
Lumis was no longer a larva.
His body, now almost completely human, held secrets:
— Her tail : She could retract it beneath the skin of her back, like a dormant muscle. When it emerged, it was as sharp as a bone dagger , capable of piercing wood.
— Her palms : From her hands could spurt a clear acid (for defense) or a golden liquid that healed wounds. Once, she used it on a dying dog. The animal licked her hand as if it knew she wasn't human... and yet it trusted her.
— Her voice : She learned to modulate it, but when she laughed or screamed, it still sounded like a chorus of abyssal whispers.
Rheell was a perfected predator:
— Strength : He could split a human skull with a single grip.
— Speed : Even shadows seemed slow compared to him.
— Smell : He could discern fear, lies, and disease in a single breath.
But the biggest change was inside.
Each devoured brain left him with borrowed memories :
— The taste of an apple in someone else's mouth.
— The pain of a wound that won't heal.
— The peace of dying old in a warm bed.
In the neighborhood there was an old man who liked to tell stories, his name was Dalk.
Dalk was a retired hunter with a wooden leg carved from the bone of some abyssal creature. He spent his evenings at the Last Descent Tavern , drinking moonshine and telling stories to anyone who would listen.
" On Level 5, there are singing trees ," he said, tapping his wooden leg against the ground. "And if you stay still too long, their roots will drink your blood."
Lumis and Rheell exchanged a glance. They'd been there. But they listened as if for the first time.
— "And Level 7?" a boy asked.
Dalk leaned forward, lowering his voice.
— "Not even the Noctis go there. They say there are things that not even the Abyss wants to awaken."
Lumis squeezed Rheell's hand under the table.
Meanwhile someone suspected.
The disappearances were few. Calculated.
Only the sick. Only those no one would miss.
But Lina had sharp eyes.
In his diary, he noted:
"12 missing in 3 weeks. All terminally ill. All from the Broken Bone Neighborhood.
"Is someone playing God?"
No one on the Council paid attention to him.
Until one night, Agatha called her into her office.
— "What do you know about miracle cures?"
Lina frowned.
— "Rumors. A child who survived the abyssal fever. A dog that healed from mortal wounds."
Agatha handed him a glass vial . Inside, a drop of golden liquid floated.
— "This isn't human. And I want to know what makes it."
In the Broken Bone Quarter, Rheell and Lumis gazed at the fake stars —pith lanterns that hung from the towers of the Upper City, mimicking a sky neither of them had ever seen.
— "Shall we stay?" Lumis asked.
Rheell thought of the brains they'd eaten, the friends they couldn't devour, the home they never knew they wanted.
- "For now."
And in the depths, the Abyss breathed , as if waiting.