Chapter 16—"Oops."

The tunnel stretched on endlessly and twisted and narrowed at points which forced them to squeeze through jagged rock formations. The air grew colder the further they went and the moisture clung to their skin, soaking into their wounds.

Echidna slowed her steps.

She raised the torch slightly. Her eyes narrowed as the light illuminated a massive hole in their path.

It was massive a hole in the ground on their path. 

She then turned slightly toward Chael. "Down is the only way. But there's a creature there."

Chael looked ahead and frowned, positioning the spear head so that it reflected everything visible in the pit. But there was no creature.

"I don't see anything." Chael said, suspiciously, "If you're playing some game, just know that I can snap you in half right here."

Echidna frowned, turning back toward the pit. "I didn't see one either, I just have a really bad feeling that-"

She was about to say something else when they saw it.

Down at the bottom and barely visible in the dim light, a dog crawled out from a hole in the wall.

Given it's appearance it could hardly be called one, though.

Its body was thin and malnourished with its ribs pressing sharply against its frost-covered skin. Its fur was patchy and white and blended almost perfectly into the frozen ground. It stood motionless, its dull, sunken eyes staring up at them. Its breath was misting faintly in the cold air.

Something about it was wrong.

It looked almost ghostly - like it had been trapped in this place for far too long.

Echidna narrowed her calculating eyes.

"It's weak," she murmured, "We can kill it. But we're in no condition to fight recklessly. If we-

"

Before she could finish, she felt something slam into her back.

Her body lurched forward as the ground beneath her vanished and soon she was falling.

The last thing she heard before hitting the ground was Chael's voice.

"Oops."

Echidna hit the icy stone hard and the impact rattled through her bones. The air ripped from her lungs as she tumbled, rolling onto her side. Pain flared in her leg and her wounds screamed anew, but she barely had time to process it because right in front of her, staring menacingly was the dog.

It let out a low, guttural snarl.

Echinda froze.

The creature moved first. It didn't lurch forward like a normal beast. Instead, it t blurred, its limbs snapping unnaturally into motion and its thin, rotting frame surging toward her with unnatural speed.

Echidna barely rolled aside before its fangs snapped inches from her throat.

That was far too close. 

Her heart pounded violently as she kicked out on instinct, her boot slamming into its ribs. The creature skidded across the ice, but it barely reacted.

It was all felt so wrong. The way it moved, the way its sunken eyes twitched, the way its body didn't crumple like a living thing should. It was like a corpse refusing to die.

Echidna scrambled onto one knee and her fingers desperately grasped for her knife but the creature was already lunging again.

She barely raised her arms in time as claws tore through her sleeves. A hiss of pain escaped her lips, but she didn't falter.

Gritting her teeth, she slammed her knee into its stomach, using the force to shove it off her. She rolled to the side as it crashed down, its limbs twitching and its jaw still snapping even as it sprawled across the ground.

It got back up. Its sunken, yellowed eyes locked onto her, its jaw twitching, like it was barely holding itself together.

It lunged one last time.

And before it could reach her, spear-head with a flaming broken shaft buried itself in its skull.

The beast stiffened mid-air and let out a violent jerk of its body, then collapsed at her feet with a sickening thud.

Echidna sucked in a breath, her chest rising and falling fast as adrenaline still coursed through her veins.

Then, a shadow dropped down beside her. It was Chael.

He landed effortlessly, as if he had simply stepped down from a ledge rather than having just kicked her into a pit. His posture was relaxed despite the black fabric wrapped tightly around his ruined eyes.

He didn't look at her nor did her acknowledge her. Instead, he stepped forward and gripped the shaft of the spear and yanked it from the creature's skull casually. Strangely. there was no blood. It was as if the creature wasn't even alive in the first place but Chael didn't think much of it

"You absolute bastard..." Echinda growled in rage, still injured and shaken.

Chael's lips curled slightly in something mocking and cruel. "That's for earlier."

Echidna stared at him.

For a moment, her mind blanked, then she remembered what happened some hours ago back at the cave's opening, and how she had stabbed him.

His expression didn't waver and they didn't even seem to hold an ounce of real malice. It was mocking yet indifferent, like she was nothing more than an amusing inconvenience.

Her body shook with anger. She wanted to hit him and wanted to throw him into a pit next to see how he liked it. But she knew down to her bones that she was absolutely helpless in the hands of a Harbinger.

Echidna exhaled sharply through her nose and pushed herself up onto her shaky, wounded legs and said with suppressed rage, "Whatever, Let's keep going."

They walked through this cave a little while longer. It was progressively getting colder and colder but they pressed on. The air grew colder and colder with each step, the icy stone beneath them making every movement feel heavier, sharper. The torch in Chael's hand flickered weakly and casted a stretched-out shadows against the cavern walls.

Chael's spearhead reflected nothing but endless stone, jagged formation and the occasional glint of frost beginning to form on the ground.

Still, something gnawed at the back of his mind.

"How did you know?" His voice cut through the silence.

Echidna frowned. "Know what?"

"That the dog was there." he said. "You saw it before it even came."

She grimaced, turning her head slightly as her silver hair fell all over her face. "Did I?"

Chael stared at her.

A long, drawn-out silence followed.

Echidna didn't elaborate nor did Chael press further.

They continued forward, their breaths turning visible in the frigid air. The cold was almost unbearable now and the tunnel seemed to narrow. The frost thickened against the walls.

Then a thin veil of fog ahead appeared.

The moment they passed through it, a wave of freezing air crashed against them.

Echidna sucked in a sharp breath, pulling her tattered cloak tighter around her shoulders. Even Chael, despite his Veiled-Harbinger constitution, felt the chill seep into his bones.

But neither of them said anything.

Because before them, stretching out under the dim glow of a pale moons, was something impossible.

It was a city. It wasn't ruins nor was it an abandoned husk of stone and ice.

A vast, sprawling metropolis carved into the side of a mountain, its towering spires glowing faintly under the eerie sky.

Thin streams of mist curled through the air, illuminated by countless lights lining the winding streets. Bridges of stone arched over frozen rivers, spiralling towers stretched toward the heavens, and layered rooftops jutted out in elegant, impossible formations.

It looked like something out of a myth. It was something that should not exist here, buried beneath the ice.

Echidna exhaled, her breath shuddering.

"...Holy hell."

Chael said nothing.

But for the first time in a long while, he felt small.