The air reeked of rotting meat and rusted metal.
Mael landed on something soft and wet—a surface that yielded under his weight with a sickening squelch. When he tried to stand, his hands sank into what seemed like a mountain of corpses turned to moss. Tattered Elysium uniforms jutted from the decomposing mass like withered flowers in a cursed garden.
"Welcome to the dumping ground," Hex muttered, lighting a bone lantern that cast a ghastly green glow. "Where they toss the leftovers from their experiments."
Lien dropped down behind them, slamming the trapdoor shut. Above, the Hunters clawed at the metal but didn't follow.
"They won't come down," she said, wiping sludge from her face with a shaky hand. "The Underworld has… owners."
Mael gripped Vorpal, which throbbed in his hand like a freshly torn-out heart. The sword seemed excited, as if it recognized this place.
"What is this?" he asked, batting away a strand of sinew dangling from the ceiling.
Hex illuminated a wall covered in carvings. The markings depicted beings with inverted mouths (the Devourers) being hurled from a tower into a bleeding sky. But the most chilling figure stood atop the tower—a man in an immaculate suit.
"The Headmaster," Mael breathed.
"He wasn't always human." Lien pointed to other engravings: the same man, but with elongated limbs and insect eyes, crawling out of a meteorite. "He brought them. The Devourers. And Elysium isn't an academy…"
"It's a cage," Hex finished. "And we're the bait."
A noise made them turn.
Something moved in the corpse-pile.
Not a Hunter.
Something worse.
The creature's skin was translucent like the Devourers', but its mouth wasn't inverted—it spanned its entire torso, lined with teeth that rotated like gears. And the most horrifying part?
It spoke with Mael's father's voice.
"Son," it said, slithering forward. "You've finally reached where it all began."
Vorpal howled in Mael's grip.
Then, the walls of the Underworld split open, revealing the truth beneath Elysium:
A gigantic spinal column buried deep, so vast it vanished into the darkness. And impaled within it—a sword twinned to Vorpal.
"Mine," the creature crooned. "The one your father stole."
Mael staggered back. His scar burned like never before.
"What… what are you?"
The creature smiled with its thousand teeth.
"What the Headmaster locked away. The First Devourer."
"And you, Mael, bear its mark."