Shadows in the Tunnels
The deeper Eliana descended into the goblin kingdom, the more the walls seemed to breathe.
What had once been stone tunnels now twisted like intestines—slick, organic, and pulsing with a sickly humidity. The moss clung to every surface like decay, whispering in clicks and rustles, a secret language only the mad understood. Her torch did little to push back the shadows; they moved with her, swaying like curious serpents just out of reach.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen sunlight. The surface world felt like a dream now, something faded and distant. Here, underground, the rules of reality had shifted. The dark had weight. The silence had teeth.
She passed skeletons that weren't human. Some had two heads. Others had jagged tusks or horns fused into skulls that shouldn't have been able to walk upright. One corpse had clearly been dissected and studied, each bone labeled with symbols she couldn't read—inked in dried black blood. And the worst part? Some of the bones looked like they'd been reassembled.
Practiced.
Refined.
Eliana swallowed hard and moved on.
The laughter started the second night. Soft. Playful. Like children hiding under beds. But it never stopped. Every few hours, it would return—just close enough to let her know she was being watched. Never a full voice. Just fragments. Giggling. Breathing. Murmurs in broken Common.
"Paaaatieeentttt…" one voice hissed from behind a stalagmite.
"Let her fester," another crooned from above.
She barely slept. When she did, she dreamed of being dissected—awake and aware, watching goblin surgeons pull her apart just to see how she screamed.
On the second day, she made camp near a fissure that leaked warm air. It felt safe—until she noticed the footprints.
Dozens. Barefoot. With elongated toes.
They surrounded her while she slept.
She didn't scream when she woke to find them. She didn't run. She simply stared into the dark and whispered, "Do it, then."
But they didn't.
Instead, a few hours later, they returned. Not to attack. Just to watch.
She saw their glowing eyes reflecting like cat's eyes in the dark—five, maybe six sets. All still. All waiting. Their patience was crueler than any blade.
They were studying her.
Judging her.
She tried ignoring them. She kept walking, setting small traps of her own. A tripwire with broken bone shards. A pit camouflaged with fungus. None of it caught anything.
They stepped around each one like they were testing her answers on a written exam.
Her food tasted off now. Not poisoned, just… tampered with. Spiced with something bitter. She found tiny strands of moss she hadn't gathered herself. Once, she swore the firewood she collected moved on its own. Her hands trembled every time she raised something to her mouth.
Every bite became a gamble.
Every drink a question.
Her only comfort came from a single carved stone she found buried beneath an outcrop—an old traveler's token, weathered with age, etched with the symbol of an adventurer's guild long forgotten. She clutched it at night like a relic.
And on the third day, they finally spoke.
A goblin emerged from the dark. Alone. Taller than the others, lean with sickly green-gray skin and a cloak made of stitched scalps.
It didn't smile. It didn't threaten.
It simply knelt across from her campfire and said in near-perfect Common:
"You learn slow," it hissed, eyes glowing faintly gold. "But you learn. That's rare."
Eliana didn't move. She didn't speak. The words coiled in her ears like poison.
She watched the goblin tilt its head slightly, as if amused by her silence.
"Your traps are crude. Your mind is still… soft. But soft things survive, sometimes."It leaned forward. "If they learn to grow teeth."
Then it disappeared. Not by running—by fading into the darkness, like it had never been there.
Eliana sat there for hours after, her heart pounding in silence.
She didn't sleep that night. She didn't cry. Instead, she whispered to the stone in her palm:
"If you want me to grow teeth… then I'll grow fangs."
And the goblins—still hidden, still watching—seemed to approve.
Lessons in Blood and Ash
Her next battle wasn't with goblins—it was with herself.
It began with the smell. Not rot—but heat. Scorched metal, singed flesh, and the sharp, burnt tang of blood spilled too quickly. She followed it like a predator, even though something inside her screamed to turn back.
She found it slumped against a jagged wall—a dying ogre, its massive form sprawled across the floor like a broken statue. Its stomach had been torn open, entrails steaming against the cold stone. Its chest heaved with rattling breaths, eyes clouded but not unseeing.
Something had gutted it clean and left it behind. A message? A trap? Or worse—a test?
Eliana stood at the edge of the carnage, breathing hard. Her fingers clenched around her dagger, but she didn't move.
She didn't have to.
The ogre's eye twitched toward her. Just barely. Its lips parted, and a gurgled sound escaped—like a word without shape. Not mercy. Not rage. Just pain.
Eliana's breath caught. This thing had once killed humans without thought. It had likely crushed skulls like fruit. And yet now, it looked… small. Pitiful.
"I could walk away," she whispered.
She should have. Everything about this moment felt wrong. Her reflection in a puddle of blood looked more feral than human—matted hair, sunken cheeks, wide, desperate eyes.
But she was starving.
Not for food. For strength.
Power was the only currency down here. The only language. And if she wanted to speak it fluently, she needed to become fluent in suffering.
With shaking hands, she approached.
Her blade entered with barely any resistance. The ogre didn't scream. It only sighed, and then went still.
Eliana worked quickly, though her stomach rebelled with every cut. She carved into the carcass—not randomly, but with precision. She'd learned from observing scavenger goblins: marrow was potent, heart fluid even more so. Nerves, glands, adrenal tissue—all held fragments of instinct, of mutation, of evolutionary memory.
She filled a flask with warm crimson liquid and forced it down her throat.
The effect was immediate.
Her body convulsed. A white-hot fire ripped through her spine, her arms, her legs. She collapsed, seizing on the blood-slick floor, nails scratching deep grooves into the stone. Her muscles spasmed uncontrollably. Her vision darkened at the edges, her breath coming in short, broken gasps.
And then—clarity.
A sensation burst behind her eyes. It wasn't sight, but awareness. New movements played out in her mind like muscle memory she'd never earned. She could visualize a new way to strike—low, angled, predatory. She could feel her tendons adjusting, rewiring for burst power. Her balance shifted. Her bones felt… different.
Her body wasn't just absorbing the ogre's power—it was learning from it.
When it finally stopped, she lay still for a long time, drenched in sweat and blood. Her limbs twitched with aftershocks. Her teeth ached as if they'd been filed down and reshaped.
She sat up slowly. Everything felt too loud. Too sharp.
She caught sight of her reflection again in the blood.
Her eyes glowed faintly.
Her pupils had thinned.
Her tongue was forked at the tip.
She vomited twice, dry-heaving even after her stomach emptied. Her throat burned. Her vision swam.
This wasn't strength—it was mutation.
"What am I becoming?" she whispered, voice hoarse.
Her hands were shaking—but not from weakness.
She stared down at them. Slim fingers, stained with blood, trembling not from fatigue but from fear. Not of what was out there.
But of herself.
She backed into the wall, curling into herself. And for a moment, just a moment—she broke.
Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Her lips pressed into a thin line, refusing to let the sound escape. She clutched her knees, cold and alone, in a kingdom of monsters.
"Monsters don't cry," she muttered. "So I won't."
But she did—just once, when no one was watching.
When she finally stood, her tears had dried. Her face was empty. Her eyes were cold.
And her mouth—her new mouth—smiled, just slightly.
Not because she wanted to.
But because she had finally passed the test.
A Kingdom of Thorns
Weeks passed.
Or maybe months. Time didn't move normally in the goblin kingdom. Down here, the sun was a myth, and the moon a forgotten promise. The only things that marked the passage of time were her scars—fresh ones layered over old, like pages in a violent diary.
Every gash, every bruise, every cracked nail became a calendar.
She lost count around the thirty-second fight.
Eliana no longer relied on brute strength. That had been her first mistake. Down here, muscle meant nothing without mind. Goblins didn't fight fair. They didn't fight head-on. They fought with wire-thin trip lines, collapsing tunnels, paralyzing poisons brewed from moss and fungal spore.
And so, Eliana adapted.
When a goblin trapper stalked her from above, she left behind a false scent trail and watched him fall into his own snare—his scream muffled by the snapping of bone and rope.
When a hobgoblin commander demanded tribute in return for safe passage, she offered a false map to a "treasure chamber" hidden deeper in the caverns. In truth, it was a bat hive soaked in salt and bones. The hobgoblin never returned. The bats fed well that night.
Each victory etched something new into her psyche. Something quiet. Something calculating.
And each loss—because yes, she still lost—honed her even sharper.
There were days she didn't speak a word. Nights she didn't sleep, only rested with eyes half-lidded and one blade clutched in hand. She learned to consume just enough food to live, just enough water to not hallucinate.
And yet… hallucinations still came.
Faces of people she couldn't remember. A warm sun she hadn't seen in ages. A melody her mother once hummed.
She began to forget their names.
It frightened her—at first.
Then it stopped mattering.
She came across the chamber by accident, chasing the echo of a goblin scout through a crumbling tunnel.
The air changed. It smelled older. Hungrier.
The walls were slick with sap-like tar, and the floor was littered with shattered bones—human, goblin, and beast. At the center of the chamber, a broken stone mural loomed, half-buried in rock and vines that grew without sunlight.
It wasn't the size of it that chilled her—it was the silence. As if the very earth dared not breathe here.
Eliana approached, drawn like a moth to a dying flame.
The mural was primitive, yet disturbingly detailed—etched by claws, painted in long-dried blood that had darkened to rust. It depicted a goblin, but not like the ones she knew. This one was massive, regal in its horror. Eyes like empty sockets, fangs bared in a smile that knew secrets no soul should carry.
It sat atop a throne not of stone—but corpses.
Human, goblin, orc, ogre. All species, all ages. All bowing or broken.
The paint had flaked, but the presence behind it remained. Eliana could feel it watching her.
Beneath the image, carved in spidery runes that pulsed faintly with residual mana, were the words:
"The throne is not taken. It is survived."
She stared for a long time.
A tremble passed through her fingers as she reached out, tracing the lines of the ancient king's fangs. The grooves were deep—cut with devotion, or madness. She wasn't sure which.
A dozen emotions stirred inside her: rage, sorrow, disbelief.
And hunger.
Not for food. But for meaning.
Was this what she was becoming?
Had every blood-soaked step led her to this?
She fell to her knees, the cold of the stone biting through her.
Her voice came out hoarse, nearly broken, but steady.
"Then I will survive," she whispered.Her fingers curled into a fist against the floor."I will crawl, bleed, and kill my way to that throne.""I will take it."
She sat there for hours, unmoving, watching the painted king.
And somewhere in the shadows above, unseen eyes blinked. Watching. Listening.
The goblin kingdom had heard her vow.
And it would not make the path easy.