The chamber shook with a scream that split the silence, raw and jagged as though torn from the marrow of Druven's soul. His back arched violently, muscles rigid, his fists clenched tight enough for his knuckles to pale.

The emerald glow that had been pulsing gently through his body surged all at once, flaring against the walls like a storm contained within skin and bone.

"Druven!" Rhavri's voice cracked as she lurched forward, her hands pressing against his shoulders in panic.

Her breath came quick and shallow, heart hammering in her chest as she thought Druven was having a backlash from the healing, "Stay with me! Please—look at me, stay here!"

Elyrra flinched at the sudden outburst, her staff rising instinctively.

The aura around her dimmed as she steadied her hand, her brows knitting.

Druven's body eased after a few moments, his scream breaking into ragged gasps, chest rising and falling with uneven rhythm. But though his body slackened, his mind was no calmer.

His consciousness tumbled inward, collapsing into a maelstrom of memories.

"What is this?" she whispered, half to herself, half to the air, "Is it the healing breaking him, or something deeper?"

A few minutes earlier…

The dark pressed tighter, squeezing him from all sides.

Druven staggered forward, or perhaps only thought he did—it was impossible to know. The Nest twisted memory and nightmare together, but this time the visions shifted.

He found himself standing at the edge of the beetle nest's entrance, Kalren at his side. The air was heavy with dread, yet he remembered the fire of conviction burning in his chest. He had to see what lay within.

"Don't do this, Druven," Kalren's voice echoed, urgent and strained, "We don't know what waits inside."

But he had ignored him, setting his jaw and walking forward. The band of beetles was something that they hadn't witnessed before but what made him go in was the deep feeling of disturbance in his intuition.

It was as if it was telling him that there was something really significant inside the nest.

The tunnel swallowed him whole, its walls damp and veined with roots, its length stretching endlessly into the dark.

'This place is huge...' he thought to himself.

Shadows and images surged around him in scattered fragments, as if he were stumbling through them in real time.

One moment, he was walking for what felt like ages through damp tunnels, his breath echoing in the dark.

The next, the path widened and awe struck him—a cavern vast and endless, the sheer scale of the nest overwhelming.

The sound of countless beetles pressed in from all directions, their skittering legs rattling against stone. Hearing more beetles entering from a nearby entrance, he pressed against a wall, every nerve sharp, eyes darting.

Figures appeared—an entire party hauling food deeper into the nest, vanishing before his eyes.

Curiosity gnawed at him, though fear pressed at his chest.

'There are over a hundred of them…' he thought, terror clutching his chest. The sheer number crashed into him like a wave, dragging up memories of the last horde he had seen.

His breath quickened, heart pounding as the weight of that past trauma pressed down, threatening to smother him. His legs felt weak, his mind overwhelmed, yet he could not tear his eyes away from the tide of creatures. The memory, still overwhelming as ever, caused him to take a step back.

And as he shifted slightly, his foot brushed loose stone.

The sharp crack of it against the tunnel wall made a sound enough to disturb the stillness in his area of the clearing.

Several beetles froze mid‑stride, their antennae twitching as their heads turned sharply toward him.

'Sh*t!' he mentally shouted as panic set in and he hurriedly hid behind a mound of rocks,

His breath caught in his throat, panic flooding his chest as their legs began to scuttle closer, scraping against stone with a dreadful rhythm.

He pressed his back against the wall, every muscle taut, knowing that even the smallest movement could betray him further.

'Please don't see me… Please don't see me.,.' he prayed in his heart as he held his breath, afraid that even the movement of air to and from his lungs would expose his position.

The sound of their armored bodies approaching seemed to fill his surroundings, a nightmare chorus growing louder and closer.

'I'm dead…' the thought slammed through his skill like a hammer, cold and absolute. His mouth went dry, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He could almost feel their mandibles already rearing into him, their countless legs swarming over his body as he was dissected.

For a heartbeat, he saw no escape- only the inevitability of being torn apart from the dark.

Then, just as they were about to reach him, the ground suddenly trembled.

An earth‑shaking rumble rolled through the whole passage, dislodging dust and sending tiny cracks of dirt sifting from the ceiling.

The beetles faltered, their antennae snapping upward, their attention torn away from him.

The rumble deepened, reverberating like the growl of something impossibly vast beneath their feet, until it abruptly ceased, leaving a thick silence in its wake.

In that silence came a new terror—a roar, massive and primal, bursting from a wide entrance further down the tunnel.

The sound shook the air itself, and in an instant the beetles erupted into motion. Without hesitation they seized their loads, mandibles clamping tight, and surged as one in a frenzied rush downwards toward the source of the roar, seeming to forget Druven entirely as the clearing emptied in a heartbeat.

After a few seconds, Druven risked a glance, slowly poking his head out from behind the rocks. Only one beetle remained, scrambling with its load.

It suddenly paused, flinching mid‑sprint, mandibles clicking as its eyes caught the slightest movement as its compound eyes flicked toward him.

Lub-dub!

Druven's heart froze.

'Yike!' he recoiled, pressing flat to the stone—certain he was finished. A punishing heartbeat, two… and then nothing.

The beetle hesitated, dismissed him, and hurled itself after the others—the roar clearly overriding every other instinct.

'Eh?...'

Confusion speared through him, 'It saw me. Why leave me?'

The tunnels still thrummed with the fading stampede.

'That call… it must be what is commanding them. Whatever's below outranks prey.'

He forced his breathing slow, testing his limbs as he got out of his hiding place, 'No fresh wounds. Legs steady enough.'

Assess his state, he let out a sigh of relief before instinctively turning around, facing the entrance that he had emerged from.

He had just faced death and almost got caught… There was no way that he was going to survive if he was caught.

However, just as he took the first few steps, the thought of returning empty‑handed curdled in his gut.

'That call…' he pondered to himself, 'without a doubt came from a beast and it did not sound at all like a beetle…'

'Am I going to go without finding out? What people who come here encounter whatever that is?'

'I can't let Tholn down… Rhavri… I need to find out for them and find out more before telling them,' the thoughts gnawed away at him, 'but you nearly just died…'

Sigh…

He swallowed, wiped his palms on the stone, and began to edge toward the tunnel's downward slope—each movement slow, cautious, and deliberate.

Every step forward felt like a betrayal of instinct, yet his legs carried him, trembling, deeper into the dark. The air ahead was eerily still, a suffocating quiet that magnified every beat of his heart until it thundered in his ears. He felt small, fragile, a trespasser in a place that had never been meant for him.

'One mistake, and I'll vanish like the others,' he thought to himself, reminding himself to be cautious.

As he descended further, the passage widened until it spilled into a grand cavern, and his breath caught in his throat.

'By the Nest…' he thought, eyes widening.

The sheer immensity of it struck him dumb—sloping ledges spiraled downward like natural stairs carved by time itself, vanishing into a depth so profound it seemed bottomless. His thoughts stuttered.

'How far does this go? Could anything survive down there?'

The vastness made him dizzy, the enormity of the underground world mocking his insignificance.

'I'm nothing here… a single speck.'

Countless tunnels yawned open across the walls, each one gaping like the maw of some waiting predator, each one a potential artery for swarms.

His mind raced with the implications, 'If all of these are used and they all fused countless number of entrances like the earlier clearing… there must be hundreds… no, thousands of them…'

This realization clawed at his chest like a thousand blades, it felt as if it was constricting his lungs until he could scarcely breathe. Fear lanced through him sharper than any blade, an icy current rushing through his veins.

'I can't fight this. No one can. This isn't a nest… it's a kingdom of monsters.'

Druven's legs quivered, the strength threatening to abandon him entirely.

'Move, damn it… move!' he urged himself, but his body stayed frozen, pinned by terror that only mounted higher with every heartbeat.

He wanted to scream, to flee, to deny what he was seeing—but all he could do was stare, paralyzed, as dread rooted itself deeper in his heart.

The fear swelled to a peak, suffocating him, until a voice slithered through the cavern, words curling like blades in the dark: "Looks like a lost rabbit has stumbled into the bear's cave…"

It was not loud, yet it carried everywhere, coiling through the stone and air alike. Smooth, mocking, commanding—like temptation itself given form.

The sound shook him to his core, as if the shadows themselves whispered his doom. Druven instinctively knew it was meant for him, felt it pierce past flesh and bone to claw directly at his soul.

Before he could even comprehend the words, another sound followed—the sudden eruption of countless wings beating in unison from the depths below.

The thunderous rhythm rose like a storm, rattling the stone beneath his feet and flooding the cavern with the promise of a horde ascending from the unseen abyss.

Suddeny…

"Druven!" Rhavri's voice, clear and desperate, cut through everything, ringing louder than the wings, louder than the mocking voice. It struck straight into him, pulling his senses back as darkness suddenly covered his vision.

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