Borrowed Teeth

The Riftline was dying around them, and its death throes were monstrous. Kael's boots slipped on the shuddering floor as the corridor walls pulsed like a living throat around them, the fleshy surfaces splitting open to release guttural, wet shrieks that vibrated through his bones. The air had turned thick with the scent of burning copper and something sweetly rotten, coating his tongue with every panting breath.

Lyss stumbled against him, her silver eyes wide with a terror that went beyond fear of death. "It's digesting them," she gasped, her voice barely audible over the Riftline's screams. "The ones who died—it's breaking them down. Recycling them."

Ahead, Veyra slammed her Bloodecho-enhanced fist into a rusted maintenance hatch. The metal shrieked as it buckled inward, revealing a vertical shaft studded with broken ladder rungs. "Up," she snarled, her voice raw. "Unless you want to become nutrients."

Kael's left arm twitched violently against his side.

It had started an hour ago—just a numbness in his fingertips at first, a distant tingling he'd mistaken for exhaustion. Then the whisper had slithered deeper, coiling through his muscles like black oil, until now, when his fingers spasmed toward the knife at his belt without his permission.

"She's slowing us down," the whisper murmured through his clenched jaw, its voice a perversion of his own. "Leave the silver-eyed girl. The First Hunger wants her most of all."

Lyss didn't hear it. She was too busy staring at the ceiling, where thick ropes of tendon and obsidian vein pulsed downward like grotesque roots. "It's herding us," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Like sheep to slaughter."

The freight elevator was a trap.

They realized it too late—the moment the rusted doors groaned open to reveal the thing standing inside.

Taller than any Hollowborn they'd faced, its body was a grotesque fusion of chitinous armor and scavenged Duskbound gear, the plates fused to its flesh like a second skeleton. Where its face should have been, seven fractured Duskbound masks had been melted together, their red eye-slits glowing faintly in the dim light.

But worst of all was its voice.

"Subject K-27." The words were Commander Dain's, but warped, stretched thin over something inhuman. "You are recalled for reassignment."

Kael's Mark burned like a brand. The whisper in his head hissed like a scalded cat, its presence coiling tighter around his thoughts.

Veyra reacted first. Her Bloodecho flared, the cracks in her skin glowing crimson as she lunged—only for the creature to catch her fist midair with a wet snap.

"Bloodecho Subject V-12," it droned, its voice devoid of inflection. "Reassignment: Nutrient processing."

Then its chest split open.

Ribs peeled apart like the petals of some grotesque flower, revealing a pulsing cavity lined with hooked tendrils. Nestled inside, suspended in black fluid, floated a human heart—still beating, threaded through with obsidian veins.

Lyss made a sound like a wounded animal. "That's—that's a person's heart."

The Hollow General's masks tilted. "Correction: Formerly a person. Now a component."

Kael's Shadowecho surged before he could think.

Darkness erupted from his Mark, forming jagged blades that sliced upward—only to freeze inches from the creature's throat.

His arm had betrayed him again.

Fingers he no longer controlled wrenched the shadows sideways, carving a gash across Veyra's shoulder instead. She roared, blood spraying as the whisper laughed through Kael's lips.

"Whoops."

They barely made it to the surface.

The service tunnel collapsed behind them in a spray of bone shards and black bile, the Riftline's death throes shaking the earth beneath them. Kael crawled forward on hands and knees, his traitorous left arm dragging behind him like a corpse.

Then—light.

Not the Riftline's hellish glow, but true, unfiltered sunlight. Weak and sickly behind banks of perpetual ash-clouds, but sunlight all the same.

The world beyond was a graveyard of broken cities and worse things.

Fleshy Hollowborn nests clung to skyscrapers like tumors, their surfaces pulsing in unison. Below, glowing blue cages hung from twisted girders, their human contents eerily still. And everywhere, the smell—like rotting fruit and ozone, thick enough to choke on.

"Farmers," Lyss whispered, her voice hollow. "They're farming us."

A new voice answered from the ruins above:

"Not just farming. Curating."

The figure perched on the collapsed overpass wore a coat stitched from Duskbound armor plates, their face hidden behind a clockwork mask of grinding gears and spinning dials. One gloved hand extended toward them, palm up in mocking invitation.

"Your happiest memory of Nia," the Ticker said, their voice humming like a rewinding tape. "That's the price to hide you from them."

Behind the mask, something clicked.

"Or you can stand there and let the Duskbound's hounds find you."

As if summoned, a howl split the air—closer than any of them would have liked.

Kael's Mark burned. The whisper laughed.

And for the first time since the Dimming, real sunlight touched his skin.