The eerie sound of footsteps echoed from dozens of sharp legs.
It scraped across the stone like blades raking against a spine, reminiscent of centipedes...but these were not centipedes.
They were far worse. Because these monsters were enormous.
Ren didn't dare breathe. He was trying to learn how to stop breathing…
Or maybe, he was about to stop for real.
He had no idea how far the Iron Spiders had dragged the cocoon.
All he knew was that he was still alive. Still dangling.
And gravity was toying with him.
Blood rushed to his head. His heart thudded in his temples.
The throbbing, hazy sensation… as if even his soul was being hung upside down.
"So this is what it feels like to be a smoked sausage…"
Ren thought wearily.
His situation…
…wasn't all that different from a preserved sausage.
Trapped inside a tight, suffocating cocoon, his skin slick with sweat and web dust. Dragged by creatures he didn't dare name.
And on his body… almost nothing left, aside from a makeshift chitin armor, already frayed from the nibbling of spiderlings.
The cocoon swayed again. A slight jolt, as if something had just tugged one of the threads beneath him.
Ren swallowed. His throat was parched.
Above was darkness.
Below, also darkness.
And he was… suspended, caught between two layers of unnamed hell.
A small clack echoed. Then another. And another. Steady, unhurried… but deliberate.
They were climbing somewhere.
Not just across a surface.
But within something.
Ren had the dreadful feeling he was being pulled into the bowels of a massive creature, a living fortress made of web and iron, woven together by centuries of death.
A nest.
A prison.
A tomb.
The spiders hissed in meaningless sounds, like they were communicating… or arguing.
Then, a cold breeze swept past, not wind.
A breath.
The cocoon froze in place. Ren held his breath not by choice.
But because his body, by pure instinct, rejected life.
For a brief moment.
He felt like he had died.
And then… everything continued.
The cocoon shuddered slightly, then was dragged further, deeper.
Downward.
After a long, time-distorting journey, finally… the ground ceased to tremble.
The cocoon stopped swaying. No more shrieks, no more screeching of chitinous legs against stone.
Ren strained his ears.
Silence.
A strange kind of silence, as if the whole world was holding its breath with him.
"They've stopped…" Ren thought, his cracked lips mouthing the words silently.
Drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, sliding along his cheek and into his neck, a freezing contrast to the stifling heat of the cocoon.
And then he heard… footsteps. But this time, not many-legged ones.
Not spiders.
Something… else.
A sound rang out. So faint it barely seemed real.
Knock.
A knock?
Ren held his breath, pressing his ear to the cocoon wall. The pitch-black space made his other senses terrifyingly sharp.
Knock.
Again. Clearly a knock.
As if… someone...or something was tapping the shell of these giant rotting-meat sausages to check which ones were still "usable."
The sound came from a distant cocoon… then another, closer.
It was moving toward him.
Ren frowned. Something was off.
The rhythm…
Knock… knock knock… knock.
It had a pattern.
A pattern he'd… heard before?
Morse code?
The thought flashed like lightning through the dark.
Ren frowned deeper. He'd never studied Morse formally, but remembered a few basics, stupid games from the Legacy days, boring battlefield signal drills.
Knock… knock knock… knock…
Short, long, short.
A pause.
Then another sequence.
Knock knock… knock… knock knock knock.
Definitely intentional.
The thing outside… knew Morse?
Ren's blood felt like it stopped flowing. A creature? Or… a person?
No… someone was sending a message… Or something.
In the cramped, wet darkness...this suffocating womb of death, Ren's heart pounded.
He pressed closer, mentally repeating the sequences, trying to decode them.
"STILL ALIVE?" That's what it might mean.
Ren wasn't sure.
He had never been sure of anything in this nightmare.
It could be a person. Another Sleeper, a rare survivor, dragged into the spider nest like him, still conscious, smart enough to use Morse for help.
Or it could be…
A monster.
Something intelligent. Too intelligent for its kind.
Something that had seen… or eaten a person, and mimicked the signals before the victim died.
Like a child mimicking human voices.
Or worse… like a predator imitating its prey to lure in the next.
Ren swallowed hard.
The cocoon trembled slightly, not enough to be called shaking, but not entirely still. Maybe the knocking was just the surface. Beneath it, something was watching.
"Shit," he whispered softly. Not swearing...but trying to prove to himself he still existed.
The knocking stopped.
Outside, silence returned. But it wasn't peaceful.
It was the kind of silence where the whole world was holding its breath.
Ren clenched his fist, then released it. Again. Repeating. To stay awake.
Should he respond? A signal… a word?
Or pretend to be dead and wait for whatever's coming?
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath… then extended a finger...slow, careful and tapped the hardened silk wall imprisoning him.
Knock. Knock… knock-knock.
He chose the simplest signal:
S - O - S
Hope.
And desperation.
The sound rang out, faint as claws scraping wet stone.
In the spider's lair, among hundreds of dangling cocoons like half-rotted corpses, an ancient message was sent, adrift like a prayer into the void.
Silence.
Then…
Knock. Knock-knock-knock… knock.
Ren froze.
A reply.
A real reply.
Not instinct. Not random bumping.
A message.
He clenched his fist, heart pounding in his chest. The signal continued, clear, steady, unwavering.
There was someone or something, that knew exactly what it was doing.
The response was:
"Still alive?"
Ren went still.
That was a very human question.
But it was also a question that anything in this nightmare had the right to ask in return…
Ren didn't answer.
He forced himself to remain silent, breath held tight in his chest. Part suspicion… part fear. He wasn't ready to trust, wasn't that foolish or that desperate...yet.
But the thing outside wasn't done.
Knock. Knock. Knock-knock. Knock.
The signals kept coming.
No longer rhythmic. Now urgent, uneven, like whoever was sending them was desperate… or in danger.
Knock-knock-knock! Knock… knock-knock-knock—!
Ren frowned.
Though he couldn't translate all of it, he felt the emotion behind each tap. Not deception, not a trap...but pleading.
A strange thought flickered through his head: It's afraid?
He wasn't the only prey down here.
That thing… person or monster, was also running from something.
Or maybe… just another unlucky soul, dumped into this cesspit of reality like Ren.
The tapping didn't stop.
Patient. Steady.
Not the sound of panic or frenzy, but a quiet plea, trying to say something, even knowing how laughably slim the hope was.
Ren closed his eyes and listened. Some fragments he could guess.
They were simple...old, primal questions of humanity.
Anyone there?
Are you still alive?
A foolish way to seek someone in the dark.
…But sometimes, that's all that's left.
And then… a cluster of letters rang out, clear as a slap in the night:
V – A – L – O – R.
Ren froze.
His eyelid twitched, hand clenched tighter in the damp darkness.
Clan Valor…?
His mind scrambled. Fatigue vanished in an instant.
If it was true, then the one out there wasn't just a Sleeper… but a Legacy… possibly of a vassal house…
Or… something pretending very well.
Just as Ren hesitated, unsure whether to respond or keep pretending to be dead…
A voice spoke.
Weak. Hoarse. As if the speaker's throat had been scorched by sand and blood.
"I… Stephen… heir of Clan Pandavar…"
A single short sentence, nearly torn apart by breathlessness...but it pierced the thick cocoon silk, reaching Ren's ears like a needle through the dark.
He jolted.
That name. That voice.
A faint memory stirred… a shadow beside the light.
Caster.
Yes...if Ren's memory hadn't failed him, then Stephen… was one of the few Legacies who'd accepted to enroll at the academy. Always seen beside Caster during those days.
Friend?
He wasn't sure. Only knew this: if it was real… then here was another soul trapped…
Then this was another soul trapped in this coral hell, and that person was also falling apart bit by bit.
Or worse...
It wasn't Stephen anymore.
Just an empty shell, pretending to be human.
Ren held his breath, eyes wide open in the dark, heart pounding in his chest.
What was he supposed to do?