The crack in the cliff hadn't finished opening when the sound erupted.
It wasn't a roar.
It wasn't a scream.
It was something far worse.
A screech tore through the air. A warbled, inhuman wail that clawed at the eardrums like a rusted hook dragged across glass. It sounded like every dying thing in the world had been forced to cry out through the same broken throat. High-pitched, low-pitched, guttural and shrill all at once. And underneath it, like a rotting lullaby, came the unmistakable sound of crying infants.
Not one.
Dozens.
Maybe hundreds.
It wasn't just heard, it was felt. Like something had screamed into the bones of the mountain, and the stone had passed it on to the bones of everyone still standing.
Lucian stumbled back instinctively, hands flying to his ears, though it did nothing to mute the sound. His blindfold fluttered against his cheek as he gritted his teeth, resisting the primal urge to collapse. His knees buckled slightly under the weight of it, not from pain, but from sheer revulsion. His stomach turned as the pitch warbled again, rising into a crescendo that felt like it could peel the skin off his face.
A mercenary nearby let out a strangled cry and dropped to all fours, vomiting violently onto the stone.
Kaela pressed her back to the wall, eyes wide, her torch flickering violently in her trembling hand. Blood trickled from her right nostril. She didn't even seem to notice.
Behind her, Tavian had both hands clamped over his mouth, eyes staring off into the mist as though trying not to exist. His dagger clattered uselessly from his grip and spun off into the dark.
The screech went on, never catching breath, never rising or falling in pattern. It spiraled into itself, like a loop of agony repeating across eternity.
Garrick roared something that seemed to be orders or maybe they were curses but they were swallowed by the wall of sound. He looked like he was screaming underwater, his mouth wide, face red, veins bulging, but no one could hear him.
Joran tried to move forward, perhaps out of instinct, perhaps to restore order, but the moment his foot crossed the blood-slick threshold where Kellan had died, he froze mid-step. His entire body locked up, like the sound had reached inside him and seized his spine. His eyes went wide, the hand holding his sword trembling as it almost fell limp.
And still, the screeching continued.
It shifted tones occasionally like something learning how to imitate pain. At one moment, it sounded like a wounded wolf crying out in desperation. The next, it was like a baby's gurgle strangled mid-laugh. Then it became a grinding shriek, like metal tearing itself apart from the inside.
Lucian gritted his teeth harder, his body shivering uncontrollably. He dropped to one knee, planting his dagger against the ground just to steady himself. Not even the pain of having his eyes burned could be compared to this sound. Not this wrongness.
It wasn't just noise.
It was language.
The sound wasn't just meant to scare them, he felt like it was meant to unmake them.
To speak directly into the pieces that made them human and show them where the cracks were.
Lucian pressed his free hand to the ground and tried to breathe through it. But even his breath felt invaded, each inhale coated in a sour film, like he was breathing in rot. The copper taste of blood thickened on his tongue.
It wasn't the smell of fear.
It was the stench of memory.
Like the mountain had swallowed screams for centuries and was now vomiting them back up.
Kaela dropped to a crouch nearby, both hands trembling, one pressed to her head. "It's inside my ears," she managed, her voice hoarse and broken. "It's inside..."
The cliff wall pulsed again.
It sent out waves that were barely visible to the human eyes. It was as though the stone itself had lungs, and it was exhaling with a sound that had never belonged in this world.
And then…
The screech began to split.
It started doubling in layers. One version stayed high-pitched, like a siren of newborn wails and tearing sinew but the other sank lower, deeper than human voices could reach. A thunderous, droning sound, like a thousand men chanting beneath a lake of blood.
And suddenly, they all understood something at once:
This wasn't the sound of a creature in pain.
It was the sound of something rejoicing.
Of something old, and buried, and shackled for too long, now feeling the cool touch of air for the first time in ages and savoring it.
One of the mercenaries cracked first. He turned and bolted down the tunnel behind them, screaming something incoherent. His voice barely registered before he vanished into the fog. No one stopped him.
They couldn't.
They were all barely holding it together.
Lucian clenched the dagger in his palm so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Shut up," he hissed under his breath. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut up…"
But the mountain did not obey.
The screeching did not stop, it peeled into silence. Not as though it ended, but as though it had slithered backward into some dark crack in the world, leaving only the ringing echo of its violation behind.
And then came the sound.
A low, slithering drag, like something impossibly vast scraping against the inside of the cliff. Stone groaned. Dust shuddered from the ceiling. The crack widened.
Then… it emerged.
At first, it looked like the wall itself was melting.
A slathering wetness pooled at the edges of the fissure, thick and clotted, not blood but something worse. It oozed in viscous globs down the polished cliff face, steaming where it met the ground. It stank sweet, like rotting fruit and bile. A scent that clung to the inside of the nose and gagged the throat.
Lucian stumbled back, his dagger clenched, but his legs refused to move. His body knew what was coming. Every primal instinct screamed for flight.
And then the legs appeared.
They unfolded from the crack one by one, long, jointed and segmented. At first glance, they looked like bristled centipede limbs, twitching and glistening with wet slime. But the closer they came, the more wrong they became.
Because each limb was not covered in hairs.
They were covered in tiny hands.
Baby hands.
Hundreds of them. Fingers twitching and spasming, some clutching at nothing, others forming tiny fists that beat rhythmically against the stone as if they were still alive. As if they were still trapped in some dream of the womb.
Then came the body.
It dragged itself forward, and the crack tore wider to accommodate its bulk. The creature's torso, if it could be called that, was a bulging mass of glistening segments, each one stitched with the faces of children. Infants. Toddlers. Boys and girls no older than ten.
The faces did not sleep.
They wept.
Some screamed. Others blinked slowly with milky eyes. A few simply stared upward with mouths open in silent, eternal cries. Their skin was pallid, sewn or fused directly into the thing's hide. And between them, thick veins pulsed, feeding whatever grotesque existence the monster clung to.
Tavian collapsed to his knees beside Lucian, dry-heaving. "What the hell is that?" he whispered hoarsely. "What the hell is that..."
The creature's head emerged last.
It wasn't a head so much as a swollen mound of fused skulls, half-melted together and encased in something like bone, something like shell. Its mandibles were jagged, serrated like sawblades and opened with a sickening click-clack that echoed off the chamber walls like bones being shattered in a mortar.
Its eyes, dozens of them were human.
Human baby eyes.
Set randomly along its face and neck. Too many. Too still.
And then it saw them.
The heads of the mercenaries whipped around to face it as the creature gave its first full, body-wracking shudder, spraying ooze across the blood-slick stone. A sound issued from its throat. It sounded more like a groan.
A groan that mimicked a baby's first cry.
"Fall back!" Joran screamed, voice hoarse with horror.
Garrick raised his rifle, a matte-black energy model humming softly with stored charge. He squeezed the trigger. A concentrated plasma bolt zipped out with a shrill hiss and struck the creature's side.
Instead of burning through, the bolt splashed uselessly against the rotten flesh, vaporizing in a burst of sickly steam. The energy dispersed along its slick surface right into one of the infant faces stitched into the hide.
The face twitched. Then blinked. Then screamed.
A dozen more faces followed, eyes opening, mouths stretching, unleashing a chorus of infant wails that ricocheted through the cavern like a swarm of dying sirens.
The centipede lunged.
It moved with impossible speed for something so large. Legs blurred. Baby-hands scrabbled. The first man it reached was snatched into the air, impaled on a spear-like leg and dragged into its maw with a crunch of splintering bone.
Blood sprayed in a geyser across the mist.
Lucian yanked Tavian to his feet just as the centipede lunged again. They staggered back, boots skidding over loose stone and dust. Kaela and Vael fired pulse rounds from their rifles, glowing bursts that sparked harmlessly against the creature's armored flesh, leaving sizzling scorch marks but doing little else.
The cavern echoed with overlapping screams some human, others shrill and gurgling from the stitched faces riding the centipede's spine.
The beast coiled, then slammed its body sideways. The shockwave rippled through the air like a physical blow, hurling several mercenaries off their feet.
"There! Left tunnel, there's a split in the wall!" Tavian shouted over the chaos, his voice sharp but not afraid. There was a hint of exhilaration in it, something wild and reckless. "We can funnel through!"
Lucian didn't hesitate. "Move!"
They bolted as a group, weapons blazing and boots hammering against stone. The centipede shrieked again and gave chase, its slick form slithering over shattered bone and gear. A few weren't fast enough, two Ironbrand mercs were caught by a sweeping leg. One vanished in a spray of blood. The other screamed until a cluster of infant faces smothered him, silent and wet.