The Descent That Wasn't Chosen
There was no warning.
One moment, Eliana had stepped onto the black altar, stone slick with forgotten blood and echoing silence. The next, the world tore open beneath her.
It didn't feel like falling.
It felt like being swallowed.
A pressure like drowning in tar seized her lungs. The space around her twisted, cracked, and folded in on itself—walls became sky, breath became fire, and then everything was dark.
When she woke, it wasn't light that greeted her, but a smell—something rotten and wet, like flesh melting into soil.
Eliana rose slowly, her orc frame aching as if her bones had been rearranged. She was lying on cold stone, slick with a layer of moisture that clung to her skin like sweat from a fever dream. The tunnel walls were different here. Wrong. Twisted. Veined with pulsing green lines like the veins of a diseased corpse. The air trembled.
She had been underground before. But this was something else. Something deeper.
Something older.
She had gone down, yes—but this was beneath down.
And she was alone.
She didn't know how long she stood there, listening to the hum in the walls—the thrum of something watching her from within the stone itself. She turned, expecting the altar behind her.
There was nothing.
No altar.No path back.Just tunnels.
Cracked. Oozing. Alive.
She began walking, unsure if her legs moved from choice or if the tunnel pulled her. The ground beneath her feet pulsed slightly with every step, like muscle contracting beneath skin. Her footfalls made no echo—swallowed instantly by the thick, oppressive silence.
No wind. No air.
Only moisture and the sound of her breathing.And even that began to sound foreign—like someone else breathing through her mouth.
She tried to mark her path. She gouged deep lines into the walls with her claws—but when she looked back, they were gone. Healed. Swallowed.
She wasn't in a tunnel. She was in something's throat.
And it was getting narrower.
The walls began to compress. She ducked. Then crawled. Her tusks scraped the stone. Her back hunched into a painful arch. Still no end. No upward path. No clue how she had been moved from the altar. The magic was ancient and wrong. Not crafted by goblins. No runes. No spells. Just will. As if the altar wanted her gone. Or worse—delivered.
Each chamber she passed held whispers she couldn't understand. Not words. Not voices. Just… emotions. Regret. Rage. Ecstasy. Thousands of lives, echoing from the walls like worms writhing beneath her skin.
She entered one tunnel that led her into a cavern so large it felt like stepping into a collapsed lung. The walls were covered in masks. Dozens. Hundreds. Faces carved into the stone, their mouths sewn shut with strands of shadow. The moment she entered, they began to weep. Black ichor ran from their eyes, dripping onto the floor like oil.
She didn't stop walking.
Because if she stopped, she knew they'd scream.
There was no time here. No direction.
Only down.
Endlessly down.
She began to forget what the sky looked like. The moon. Her name. Valerius.
Her orc body, once mighty and new, now felt bloated—misshapen. She passed reflections of herself in pools of black water, and they did not move when she did. One time, she thought she saw her human face staring back. Eyes hollow. Skin stretched. Lips mouthing something she couldn't hear.
She broke the reflection with a rock. But the whispering in her ears didn't stop.
"You are not real," they hissed.
"You were never real."
She stumbled into another passage, this one slick with fungus that pulsed when touched. Tiny glowing spores drifted in the air, dancing like fireflies with broken wings. She inhaled without choice. The air was thick with it.
For a moment, she forgot why she was walking.
For a moment, she felt peace.
Until something laughed inside her chest.
Not from her throat.
From beneath her ribs.
She began to run.
Deeper. Deeper still.
Not toward salvation.
But because whatever was behind her had finally stood up.
And it was following.
Among the Giants
The tunnels here were not just deeper—they were impossible. They stretched like the arteries of a slumbering titan, twisted and knotted, carved not by claw or chisel but by time itself. The walls bled a dull green glow, not from moss or fungus, but from something older—veins of stone pulsing faintly with an alien heartbeat, as though the very earth remembered what had once crawled through it.
Eliana moved like prey. Quiet. Careful. Lost.
The air was thicker here—oily, wet, tainted with the scent of old blood and something fouler still, something that pulsed behind her eyes and made her teeth ache. The ground squelched underfoot. It wasn't soil. It was flesh-like, porous, breathing. Some part of her screamed to run. To claw her way back. But there was no back. There was no altar. No path. Just forward.
And then—she saw them.
Not goblins. Not as she had known them. These were behemoths, hulking shadows too massive to be real. Towering brutes with torsos like split boulders, arms dragging through the black gravel, eyes glowing not with hunger but with intelligence—cold, calculating, ancient. Their tusks were not just teeth but bone sculptures, carved with runes that hummed with buried power. Their muscles flexed with slow purpose. These weren't monsters.
They were kings.
Silent. Watching. Breathing.
She sank into a cleft in the wall, holding herself like a ghost, unsure if she belonged here—if she had ever belonged anywhere at all. Her mind tried to call them orcs, tried to define them by her limited understanding. But that word shattered against them. These were not orcs. Not even ogres. They were something beyond. Something in-between. She didn't know their name.
And maybe names didn't matter down here.
She watched them speak in low, resonant grunts and gestures, language built on weight and posture and silence. Every movement they made disturbed the tunnel, sent vibrations rippling through the veins of the earth.
And then she stepped forward.
Not because she felt ready. But because she had no choice.
The ground did not tremble with her footsteps. The air did not shift. Her breath caught in her throat as a dozen of them turned to regard her. Their eyes narrowed—not in hostility, not in fear—but in confusion. As though she were a mistake in the code of their world. An interruption in a sentence meant to end differently.
One tilted its massive head. Its lip curled in what might have been amusement. Or disgust.
She stood as tall as her body would allow. Her tusks gleamed. Her muscles were coiled and lean. But under their gaze, she felt reduced—small, unfinished, wrong.
And then one of them spoke.
Not in words, but in a low exhale that vibrated her ribs. A sound that crawled through her brain like fire.
"Child," it said, not in insult but in simple fact.
The rest looked away. Disinterested. Dismissive. One even turned its back to her entirely, as if her presence was already a memory.
She wasn't a threat.
She wasn't an equal.
She wasn't even a curiosity.
She was pitiful.
Eliana's throat tightened. She wanted to scream. To rip something apart. But what would be the point? In this place, in this deep artery of a forgotten world, her rage was a candle flickering before a storm.
And yet—even as her pride bled—something colder stirred within her.
This is what the hobgoblin meant.
This was the truth of power.
She had cracked the illusion of her world—only to find herself at the bottom of another one.
And now… she had to climb again.Through shadows. Through blood.Through giants that had already forgotten her name.
Or worse… had never bothered to learn it.
Kingdom of the Forgotten Flesh
Eliana walked deeper.
The tunnels pulsed with ancient breath, narrowing, then widening like the lungs of some slumbering god. Her footsteps echoed not as sound but as tremors through the very bones of the earth. Every twist of the path bled into another artery of darkness, each one crawling with something more grotesque, more impossible.
And then she saw them.
Goblins.Just like her.But not like her at all.
They prowled in packs, moving like shadows given hunger. Their skin was armored in thick, bark-like plates. Their eyes gleamed red, not with curiosity but with calculation—predators honed by generations of slaughter. They didn't hiss or chatter. They didn't cower or scream. They were silent. Focused. Cold.
She had been born of weakness—scratching her way up through pain and humiliation.
These ones?They were born of war.
The hobgoblins here weren't twisted guards with crude armor and dull blades. No. These were titans draped in scavenged bone and muscle, their bodies covered in battle-worn sigils carved straight into flesh. She saw one lean forward to feed—not on meat, but on another goblin's corpse, still twitching. And not one nearby creature flinched. This wasn't madness.
This was normal.
The orcs here? They towered over her. Their breath steamed from wide nostrils like beasts half-forged in flame. They moved with patience, with purpose. One dragged a serpent the size of a tree behind him, its body still coiling weakly, head severed and drooling venom. Another carried a bone club so massive it gouged the stone with every step.
Eliana hid behind a jagged fang of black rock, eyes wide, breath held. She didn't want to be seen.No—she didn't want to be noticed.Not here.
A young goblin stalked nearby. Younger than her when she first woke in this nightmare world. But his steps were precise. His claws were curved and sharpened. He wore a necklace of goblin teeth—his own kind. When he sniffed the air, she swore he smelled her.
And still, he walked on.
They were all… better. Faster. Stronger. Built in the dark. Molded in war. There was no softness here. No clumsy rituals. No chaotic infighting for scraps of meat. This place was a crucible—and every monster born of it had already survived more than she had.
Her skin prickled with a creeping dread.
Had she been coddled?Was her suffering nothing?
She watched two orcs duel in silence—no words, no screams, just the sound of cracked bones and gurgling blood. One was impaled on the other's tusk, then tossed aside like rotten meat. And the watchers?
They applauded with silence. Not out of respect. But because death was expected.
This was no society.
This was a machine, built to crush the weak and forge the worthy into horrors the surface world could never imagine.
Eliana clutched her chest, breath stuttering.
She had thought she was strong.
She had thought she evolved.
But here? She was a larva crawling through a nest of kings.
Her mind twisted with the sick realization—she hadn't even seen a Kizin yet. These weren't the apex predators. They were still climbing too.
She was not ready. Not for this place. Not for what was coming.
But there was no turning back now.
Because now they had seen her.
And this time, they didn't look away.
The Mountain of Lies
Eliana wandered deeper, the breath of the tunnels colder now, tighter—like the stone walls were closing in, pulsing with the memory of a thousand deaths. Her claws scraped the ground, trailing the scent of blood and dust. Each echo felt heavier. Her strength felt smaller.
And then she saw him.
A hunched figure, barely moving. A throne of broken bones had grown around him, fashioned from skulls and discarded armor. He didn't rise when she approached. He didn't flinch. Just sat—like a tumor grown into the rock itself.
The elder hobgoblin was ancient.Not frail—ancient.
He was a monument of sinew and scars, flesh leathered by centuries of war, tusks filed down and stained black. His eyes, yellowed like rotting parchment, flickered with something deeper than judgment. Recognition. Understanding. But no respect.
No fear.
No awe.
Just… pity.
"A fine beast you've become," he rasped, his voice dragging like rusted chains through an open wound. "But still blind."
Eliana bristled. The pain in her chest returned, sour and hot. "I defeated your Lord," she hissed, stepping forward. "I earned this body—this strength."
The old hobgoblin didn't even blink. "And what did it earn you?"
Silence.
Eliana's breath caught. The words struck deeper than they should have. It wasn't a question—it was a sentence.
"You think you've climbed the mountain, child," the hobgoblin growled, rising now, bones cracking with the sound of old stone breaking. "You haven't even seen its base."
His presence towered over her, not in height, but in weight. In truth.
"You were raised in rot. Bred in a pen. The colony above? That pathetic nest of writhing filth? It's not a kingdom. It's a breeding ground."
Eliana's eyes widened, her heart beginning to pound.
"You were born there so you could die there. The weak are bred. The strong are culled. And if one slips through—like you—they are let loose. To feed the real ones."
Her mouth was dry. "No… the orc I killed—he was… he ruled. They called him king."
The elder's laughter was hollow, cracked, a death rattle given shape. "That bloated fool was a guard. A glorified warden. He was stationed above to oversee the livestock. He kept you penned, managed your torment. You killed a gatekeeper, girl. Nothing more."
Eliana felt her knees buckle, but she stood.
"You were never a queen. You were meat being fattened. And now that you've grown teeth, they'll come. The real ones. The ones that rule. The ones that evolved beyond form and name."
He pointed down the tunnel—toward a yawning black that devoured all sound.
"That way lies the first colony. The true beginning. Where goblins go to ascend or to be consumed."
Eliana swallowed, her thoughts unraveling.
All her pain. Her triumph. Her rage.It was… cultivated?She hadn't escaped anything.
She had been released.
"And the Kizin?" she asked quietly, the name like poison on her tongue.
His eyes burned now. "You're not ready to hear that word. Not yet."
"But I want to see them. I want to rise."
"You will crawl," he said, voice like a chisel against her bones. "You will starve. You will bleed. And if you're lucky—if the tunnels don't devour your soul—you'll catch a glimpse of what true power looks like. Then you will wish you had died with your brothers in the pit."
He turned, merging with the stone, with the silence.
"And what if I don't stop?" she called after him, her voice cracking.
The old hobgoblin paused.
"Then may whatever gods watch this hell have mercy on you… for the Kizin will not."
The darkness swallowed him.
And Eliana was alone again, surrounded by a truth more terrifying than any pain she had felt.
She wasn't a ruler.
She wasn't even a contender.
She was the first bite of something far worse.
The Shape of Kings
The elder hobgoblin didn't vanish. Not yet. His silhouette remained in the gloom, half-swallowed by stone and shadow, as though the darkness itself clung to him, unwilling to release its prophet.
He turned his head just slightly, voice scraping the stone like claws on bone.
"You still don't understand, do you?" he whispered, not mockingly—mournfully.
Eliana said nothing. She felt frozen. Not by fear, but by truth.
"You think our kind crawls upward by chance? That strength is a gift earned through hatred and survival?" He scoffed, then leaned on a spear older than her bones. "We were built to consume. To evolve. Every wound we suffer, every drop of blood spilled—it's fuel. You think you've clawed your way into power? No. You've been shaped for it."
He turned to her now, fully, and for a heartbeat, she saw what lay beneath the folds of age.
Not just power.
Understanding.
"The hierarchy is carved into our flesh, branded into our marrow. Goblin. Hobgoblin. Orc. Ogre. Oni. And beyond that..."
His voice fell to a whisper.
"...the Kizin."
Eliana's body stiffened at the word. The stone walls seemed to inhale, the ground itself bracing for it.
"The Kizin?" she asked, her voice brittle, throat tight.
The elder nodded slowly. "Creatures of shadow and flame. They don't walk… they descend. Reality curves when they pass. They do not command empires—they warp them. They do not fight battles. They end histories. Only a handful in our cursed lineage have ever reached that form. The rest of us... we feed the climb."
He stepped forward, and the tunnel felt smaller.
"You thought the orc you killed was a king?" he spat, his tusks flashing yellow in the dim light. "He was a sentinel. A warden. A tool. The true Goblin King… you never saw him. You never could. That thing would've unmade you with its gaze."
Eliana's hands trembled. Not from weakness. From the unraveling of everything.
The pain.The fire.The endless torment.
Had it meant anything?
Had she been fighting toward a throne—or just dancing for the amusement of her makers?
Her voice cracked as she spoke. "All my victories… all my pain… was it just—"
"—the sharpening of a blade," the elder cut in. "The forging of a weapon. You were honed, child. Not crowned."
Behind him, the tunnel twisted. It led downward still—always downward. The air grew colder. Heavier. And it smelled of old blood and sulfur.
"If you move forward," he continued, "you will reach the heart. The true goblin kingdom. The Cradle Below. There, the weak are consumed within hours. There, the old do not exist—they are devoured or made into statues of warning. There, you'll find the ones who no longer remember speech. Who have forgotten mercy."
Eliana's eyes narrowed. "And the king?"
The hobgoblin's gaze darkened. A shiver passed through the tunnel like a breath of the dead.
"He doesn't rule," he said, voice low. "He waits. His mind no longer touches this world. He speaks in visions. In nightmares. In things that aren't dreams, but warnings."
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
"Because I was once like you," he said. "And no one warned me."
He turned, slowly retreating into the black veins of stone.
"But go," he added, almost softly, like a curse. "If your will is strong, perhaps you'll crawl far enough to see the base of the mountain. To look up… and realize it has no peak."
And then he vanished—swallowed by the endless dark.
Eliana stood, alone once more, surrounded by stone that whispered. By tunnels that groaned like living lungs. She could feel it now—not just the weight of the earth but the ancient pressure of something watching.
The Cradle Below waited.
And she moved toward it.
Not with confidence.Not with fear.But with a terrible hunger that even she didn't yet understand.
And somewhere in the dark, the true king stirred.
The Mouth of the Kingdom
The air grew colder the deeper Eliana moved, but it wasn't the kind of cold that kissed the skin or made bones shiver. This cold was alive—ancient, writhing beneath her flesh like phantom insects. It crept into her lungs, her teeth, her marrow. Every step down the tunnel was a descent not just into stone, but into a history not written—grown. Breathed. Screamed.
Behind her, the whisper of the old hobgoblin still echoed.
"Climb, broken child…"
But this didn't feel like climbing.
This felt like falling.
The path twisted like intestines—slick, dark, unnatural. Walls pulsed faintly, almost too subtly to notice, as if the very earth was alive and watching. Her fingers brushed the stone, and something beneath it… moved.
She kept walking.
Because she had no choice.
Her legs ached, her mind fractured at the edges, but she didn't stop. Couldn't. There was no turning back. Not after what she'd learned. Not after what she'd become.
At last, she reached a jagged plateau where the tunnel widened into a vast mouth. And what lay beyond it made her breath hitch.
A kingdom.
The true goblin kingdom.
It stretched out before her like a wound carved into the world. Glowing fungi the size of trees pulsed with bioluminescent rot. The sky was a churning dome of black stone and sulfur mist, held up by colossal bone-like pillars. Rivers of viscous, glowing sludge carved through the land, and the structures—if they could be called that—were towering, asymmetrical things of flesh and metal, fused and grown into the cavern walls.
And the goblins…
They moved like predators. Swift. Coordinated. Evolved. This was no horde of idiot beasts—this was a society. A nation forged in pain and sharpened on slaughter. There were goblins the size of ogres, oni with horns that scraped the cavern ceiling, and things that bore no name, no shape Eliana could define. Beasts with wings of stretched sinew, centipede-limbed hulks that whispered to each other in languages older than thought.
She took a step forward and whispered to herself, fists clenched tight against the tremor in her fingers.
"I will not become a beast."
A voice behind her, raspy, knowing.
"You already are."
She turned—eyes narrowed, teeth bared. The hobgoblin stood behind her, just at the lip of the tunnel's mouth, arms folded over his chest, watching the kingdom with haunted familiarity.
She spat, voice low and feral, "Then I will become a monster they can't ignore. One that remembers."
For the first time, the old hobgoblin smiled. Not cruelly. Not mockingly. But like a scar smiling. Like someone who'd seen this moment play out a hundred times and still felt a flicker of something raw and painful.
"Then climb, broken child," he said. "Climb until even the sky shatters beneath you."
And then he turned, retreating into the darkness once more.
Eliana faced the kingdom ahead. Every instinct screamed to run, to hide, to collapse and vanish into the stone.
But something stronger burned in her gut.
Not hope.
Not courage.
Defiance.
And so she stepped forward—into the forbidden land, into the marrow of a kingdom not meant to be seen by failures like her.
The air thickened. The shadows deepened. Eyes in the dark turned toward her.
And somewhere in the heart of the kingdom…
The true Goblin King opened an eye.