The Gore Mines - Chapter 5.

Chapter 5: Terror In Truth

I came to hours later, buried beneath a twisted mess of scorched metal and shattered glass. My body screamed as sensation returned in painful waves. I couldn’t move at first—not out of injury, but shock. Every breath was a struggle, filled with smoke and blood. My ears rang with a dull throb, but I was alive.

Somehow.

I blinked until my vision sharpened, revealing the wreck—flames danced along torn cargo crates, broken gear scattered like bones in a grave. The train’s carcass groaned in the distance, still settling from the impact.

It felt like getting hit by a goddamn freight truck, and somehow I’d crawled out of hell still in one piece. Nothing broken—at least not on the outside.

Pain coursed through every nerve as I pushed the wreckage off my back and pulled myself free from the mangled remains of the engine cabin. Sparks flickered above me, and the stench of diesel and burning plastic filled the air.

I stood, wobbling, and yelled into the dark:

“BARRY! WHERE ARE YOU?! SOUND OFF! ANYONE! NOW!”

Nothing. Then— A hand.

Twitching, trembling—rising slowly from a pile of debris. My heart stopped.

I limped over, adrenaline numbing the fire in my legs, and tore back the sheet of steel trapping him.

It was Barry.

God, Barry.

His body was scorched and bloodied, face half-covered in soot. His legs—gone. Several compound fractures also littered his body as he bled out. His eyes fluttered open just long enough to see me.

“JD... what happened…” he muttered, before a ragged cough wracked his body. Blood spat from his lips. Then the pain hit him.

And he screamed.

A choked, broken wail of someone realizing what’s been lost.

I dropped to my knees, pulling him clear of the wreckage as the tunnels rumbled around us, small rocks raining down from above.

“Come on, Barry! You're not dying on me, you hear? Not here. Not like this.”

I eased him onto his back, trying not to look too long at the severed stump or the burns covering his chest. I pulled our masks from my bag and fixed one onto his face.

“Stay with me. I’m going to find the med kit. Just—hold on.”

But he grabbed my wrist.

His grip was weak, trembling.

“No… no, JD. Just… stay. Please. I’m not gonna make it. Just... just go, save yourself and leave me behind. I'm dead anyways...”

He coughed again—more blood filled his mask. His breaths came shallow, ragged. He removed the mask, discarding it. It was hopeless after all.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, knelt beside him, and wrapped my hand around his.

“I’ve got you, Barry. I won’t leave you I promise.”

We stayed there like that, surrounded by fire, ash, and the death moans of twisted steel. Again I pleaded with Barry to try and escape as I desperately looked for some way to stop the bleeding. Although it was hopeless.

He laid their eyes drifting skywards as he chuckled weakly. 

“Don’t say that—we can make it! I’ll get us back to town, get you fixed up. I just need to find something to patch you up.”

Barry looked at me with a deadened stare, eyes hollow and unblinking. “Don’t be a dumbass... Look at me.”

Tears threatened to spring forth from behind my mask. I didn’t want to believe him. I couldn’t. But I saw it in his eyes. The panic and the pain—it was too much. Too real.

“Barry, please... You're the only friend I’ve got in this hell. I can’t lose you, brother.”

He tightened his grip weakly, his skin cold and slick with blood. Around us, the flames hissed and cracked like cruel whispers.

“Just... promise me one thing,” he rasped. “Find a way out. This... might be your chance.”

His voice was barely audible now. “For escape... to tell someone... what's happening here...”

Another hard cough racked through his body.

His hand trembled, then slackened in mine. “I... promise.” I said, voice cracking.

And just like that, the last remnants of Barry were consumed by the silence of the mines. I sat there breathing heavily staring at my blood-caked hands, trembling. My friend, my brother, was gone.

I screamed out into the open air. A howl of agony, of loss, into smoke and fire and stone. I screamed until my lungs felt like they’d rupture, until my voice gave out and the pain swallowed everything else.

Then… I just sat there. Staring. Ash fell like snow. Metal creaked and hissed, the fire starting to die.

I whispered the only prayer I remembered, a broken fragment from my childhood—one I barely believed in. I muttered it to a dead friend and stood.

There wasn’t time for grief. Not yet.

I scavenged the crash site for anything I could use—tools, rations, medical supplies. The rest of the crew... there was nothing to save. Limbs, torn flesh, shattered bone. Blood painted the walls like cave art from a nightmare.

Everyone else was gone.

Then I saw it—half-buried under a tangle of steel and stone: one of the Baron suits. Wrecked beyond repair. But the second… it was intact.

I clawed through the rubble, clearing the cockpit and legs. A few quick repairs—makeshift at best—but enough.

I ignited the crystal core, and the diesel engines growled to life. The whole cave trembled under its voice. The pulsing red heart of Necronium lit up like a malevolent eye.

And that’s when the headache hit—a splitting, piercing stab behind my eyes, like the crystal wanted to crawl inside my skull and plant roots.

Gasping, I fumbled through the med kit and jabbed a syringe of morphine into my thigh. Relief surged through me like warm water, numbing the pain—and my fear.

I loaded up what I could, climbed into the cockpit, and sealed the hatch shut.

The cockpit groaned and hissed as the mech stood upright, towering 20 feet over the shattered train. I activated the external lights, sweeping the tunnel ahead. Flickering lamps above barely clung to life—several now dark forever.

Then came the rumble.

Cave-in.

“Oh shit—no. No no no, Not now. Not fucking now!”

The tunnel entrance began collapsing, chunks of stone plummeting like artillery fire. I threw the Baron into gear, the joints grinding, hydraulics wheezing as the machine lurched forward.

I didn’t have time to escape—just enough to brace, curling the Baron’s massive frame around itself like a metal cocoon.

Boom.

The tunnel erupted, a thunderstorm of collapsing stone. Lights blew, sparks showered the inside of my cockpit as the world shook violently. The whole tunnel system felt like it was dying around me.

Then... silence. Only the quiet shuffle of settling debris remained. A steady alarm flashed as the debris settled. 

I uncurled the suit and stood, turning to look for the exit. Gone. Completely covered from the rubble of the cave in. A mountain of rock blocked the way back home.

But something else caught my eye.

The crash site—where the train had collided with the shaft wall—had opened something. A thinner section of stone had collapsed inward, revealing a dark passage leading deeper.

I stared at it, heart pounding with uncertainty. Clearing the debris with the Baron could risk another cave-in… or worse.

So I did the only thing I could: I walked forward—into the unknown. I was almost pulled into the chasm

The suit's lights cut through the dark, but the tunnel ahead was endless. The morphine blurred time, dulled my judgment. Step after step, the Baron’s metal feet thundered through forgotten stone.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t care.

All I knew was that Barry was dead, my crew was gone, and something waited ahead—something older, something deeper.

Something the crystals were keeping warm.

As I walked, the morphine dulled my nerves into a numb, weightless drift, turning the world into a haze of smothered pain and flickering hallucination. Time lost all meaning. The cave swallowed me like a gullet, each step pulling me deeper into a subterranean womb of madness. The core of my suit pulsed — not with light, but with life — bleeding a sickly crimson glow that throbbed through the stone like arteries beneath skin. 

My body ached, but not like before. The ache was deeper now, like something inside me had started to rot. Grief gnawed at the base of my skull, a dull rail spike of memory hammering into my thoughts. Barry was gone. Ripped apart. Dying in my arms. And now I was alone, sealed in steel and sorrow, dragging his ghost with every step. I made him a promise... I would make it out. I would warn anyone and everyone. That lie — that hope — was the only thread holding my mind together.

I chuckled, hollow and breathless at first. Then louder. Until it bent into something unhinged — a laugh echoing inside the cockpit, bouncing off metal and madness. I wiped at my eyes, felt tears trapped behind my mask. This suit was my savior, and the Baron marched like it had a will of its own. Then it hit — a blinding surge of pain ripping through my skull, narrowing my vision into a pinhole of light. Passing by the morphine, unleashing a vast torrent of agony. My ears screamed with tinnitus, the world vanishing in a storm of silence and the pulsing of my own heartbeat. The symptoms were too familiar. I knew what this was. Long-term exposure, just like with Gideon. Now it was happening to me, I was certain. Fear gripped every part of my body and mind. I had been changing all this time, but now it was coming to its grotesque end. 

“I am certain I'm not long for this world.”

And then... I heard him.

"J…D…?"

My breath caught. My radio static grew louder as all sound around me faded into the background. Then the voice. Calm. Lifeless. A whisper from the dead. “Cold... Pain... agony ... Hunger.” Barry’s words came like shards, torn from whatever remained of his soul. But it wasn’t just a voice. It was in me, crawling behind my eyes, threading through my thoughts. “Do you feel it?” he asked. “The gnawing, intoxicating bliss… of agony... how his herald hungers...The first Great feast is upon us...” He lifted his hand as I looked at my own seeing it rise. I looked back to the vision of Barry as he tore the flesh from his arm. Blood poured into the void around him but he made no sound. No cries of anguish, no pain, just a lifeless glare at me. I looked back at my hand seeing my ruined forearm blood spewing freely. Deep tears were enough to see bone as flesh hung limply.

I screamed. I thrashed against the walls of the cockpit, looking around frantically inside as the Baron trudged onward. I saw nothing — no figure, no presence — just the growing certainty that something had followed me into this place. My heart thundered. My breathing was frantic. Then visions grew in intensity as my mind warped: flashes of Barry’s corpse, split and shifting, memories being altered and consumed. Bones cracked and twisted into alien angles. Skin sloughed off like wet paper. His face peeled open, revealing teeth and claws erupting from within. He looked at me. Or it did — the thing he had become. Eyes like hollow pits, voice like steel dragged across bone. He stepped toward me, uneven and spasming, snarling in pain. Rage. Hunger.

Then, darkness.

I awoke hours later, head slumped against the pilot seat. My limbs were numb. A pulsing red warning glared from the console: LOW FUEL. I groaned, wiping blood from my nose, and checked the depth meter. The numbers made no sense. “Thirty-two kilometers...” I whispered. “That’s not possible.” The old mining train only descended five. How had I gone this deep? How long had I been unconscious?

Panic bloomed in my chest. My hands began to tremble.

That’s when I saw it.

A ripple — a pulse — of crimson light passing over the cavern walls like a wave. It swept past the Baron’s cockpit, illuminating everything in a hellish glow. The walls responded. The cave shuddered. And beneath it all, I heard it. A thump. Another. A rhythm, like a heartbeat echoing through the stone. My vision blurred. My skin crawled. Without thinking, I set the Baron to follow the light, the last drops of fuel coughing through the engines. The heartbeat grew louder. Faster. My suit groaned with exhaustion as I reached the end of the tunnel.

The final shaft yawned before me. The final push, the final test.

Then silence.

The Baron gave out. Power systems flickered and died. The last thing I saw on the console before it blacked out was a line of text: NO FUEL.

I disembarked in darkness slowly, cautiously looking around.

The air was thick and wet, and I had to fight to breathe through my filter. The air reeked of decay and death. My boots crunched over bones, slime, and something that squirmed. The tunnel narrowed, then burst open into a vast chamber so massive I couldn’t see the ceiling. At the center of the cavern, suspended by massive sinews of tendril-like tissue, was a heart. An impossibly large, living heart, pulsing with gore, leaking streams of black-red blood into the chasms below. The walls of the cave were lined with rotting flesh, quivering sacks of meat, and twitching bodies impaled or fused to the stone. Large piles of maggots, feasted on corpse mounds. Some of the bodies — most of them miners — were still moving, twitching and spasming as their bones twisted and mouths screamed in silent agony. A whisper of madness told me the truth. They weren't dead, at least not completely, it looked as if they were being consumed by the glowing red organ that centered this den of evil.

This was the source. This was the womb of Necronium and something so much worse.

This was not natural. The piles of corpses, arms extended to the heart. Reaching for the loving embrace of their dark god. Like a feverish divinity the horde writhed and wriggled, squealing, screaming, and squelching. Guttural gyrations of churning flesh, blood, and bone.

I backed away, bile rising in my throat. My boots slipped in gore. I fell to my knees, the sight overwhelming what remained of my fracturing mind. My hands shook and my spine shuddered. Sweat poured from my brow freely as my breath grew heavy and feral. No man should ever witness such horror, such loss, and... pure display of suffering. 

That’s when they began to emerge. Figures, Barely human anymore — malformed, mutating, wrapped in slick cocoons of viscera — tore themselves free and stumbled toward me. Their screams were wet. Their eyes were wrong. I stood on shaky legs and ran, sprinting through hell, past broken bones and mangled tools. Then — salvation — buildings. Buildings, half-submerged in meat, blood-drenched structures from a town long buried. I looked for any structure I could take refuge in, the outskirts of town approached rapidly. I darted past a decayed hanging sign, letters rotted off leaving a few characters behind. It read the ....g...ore Mines.

I crashed into the door of an old storage unit, threw it open, and slammed it shut behind me. The creatures thudded against the door. Then came silence. I collapsed, sobbing into my gloves, whispering no over and over like a prayer. I shouldn’t be alive. I shouldn’t have seen this.

The human mind isn’t meant to witness a god’s afterbirth.

After some time, the tremors in my hands subsided — not gone, just buried under layers of shock and stubborn instinct. The morphine haze had faded to a dull fog, enough to let panic settle into a corner of my mind instead of ruling it. I forced myself to breathe, to focus, to move. My eyes scanned the storage hall, this mausoleum of dust-choked crates and rusting machines. Abandoned vehicles sat like hushed corpses under layers of cobwebs. The silence hung heavy, broken only by the soft groan of metal far in the distance — the monsters hadn’t found me… yet.

I walked slowly, feeling like an intruder in a tomb, brushing past old industrial carts and ancient mining gear. These boxes, stacked floor to ceiling, had to be part of the town’s central storage. I broke open the first with a wrench, finding nothing but shredded clothes, spoiled rations turned to black paste, and something else — dried blood, dark and flaking, covering the inside like a warning. Another crate held expired medical supplies — half the syringes were broken, but I took what I could. When I reached the larger crate — something sturdier, sealed tighter — I grabbed a crowbar from a nearby work bench, and wedged it under the lid, snapping the nails with slow, cautious pries. The top gave way with a groan and I stepped back.

Inside, beneath a dust-caked olive tarp, was salvation.

I ripped the cover away and my breath caught. A full rack of weapons — shotguns, pistols, battered rifles — all old but well-preserved. Beside it, a smaller crate stacked with ammunition, flares, and—my eyes widened—several sticks of mining explosives. I stood there, stunned. Not just a way to fight back… but a real chance at survival. To purge whatever the demon heart sent my way. Maybe even collapse the cavern entirely. That thought stirred something deep in me — not hope, exactly, but purpose. Still, I remembered my promise. Barry’s blood still coated my gloves. I had to escape, to tell someone. These weapons might help me survive… or they might give me a soldier’s death.

In the corner of the storage, half-buried in rags and shadows, sat a military jeep. I approached it, each step a prayer. The frame looked intact. I popped the hood — engine dusty but whole. The battery rusted but dry. I searched the nearby shelves and found a lockbox — the keys still inside, like fate was watching. “This could be useful,” I muttered. That was an understatement. It was everything.

Upstairs, I found a small window, a warped sheet of glass stained with decades of grime. I wiped it clean with my sleeve and scanned the cavern beyond. Monstrosities roamed in the distance, twitching and gnashing, some dragging parts of other corpses behind them. But beyond them — towering at the far side of the cavern — I saw it. A shape too geometric to be natural. A long rusted platform that stretched upward into the black. An elevator. My throat tightened, tears stung my eyes. “That’s it…” I whispered. A way out. A way to keep my promise. To escape hell itself. I broke into a relieved laugh but quickly covered my mouth hearing the distant roars.

I moved fast. Loaded ammo into the back of the jeep. Slung explosives into a rucksack. Guns holstered and packed. My nerves were unraveling, but I fought to stay calm. This wasn’t a suicide run — not yet. There were miles of nightmare between me and that elevator, and the moment I turned that ignition, they'd come.

I took one last breath. “No sense waiting now.”

My hand trembled on the key. The jeep sputtered, coughed, then roared to life, the engine noise splitting the silence like a scream. Almost immediately, a chorus of shrieks echoed in reply — dozens, maybe hundreds — surrounding me. I slammed the gas pedal, and the jeep burst forward, tearing through the rotted garage doors in a shower of splinters and rust. Blood-soaked streets lay ahead, lined with crushed bones and collapsed shacks. Limbs flung into the air as the tires chewed through the terrain. My hands were locked on the wheel. My heart thundered, matching the growing terror I felt.

Then I saw them.

A pack of flesh beasts — corpse monsters warped beyond recognition — sprinting in from all sides. Their limbs bent wrong. Their eyes glowed with madness. I pressed the accelerator to the floor. The jeep jolted forward, engine howling. They kept pace, their mutated legs hammering the ground with terrifying grace. One lunged at the side — its impact rocked the jeep, metal groaning — but I gritted my teeth and held the wheel steady.

I grabbed the shotgun from my lap, racked a shell. I desperately raised my gun, aiming carefully as the jeep rocked about on the uneven terrain, finally lining up my shot before firing. “FUCK YOU!!!” I screamed, and pulled the trigger.

Its head — if you could call it that — exploded into wet ruin. The body tumbled and skidded behind me in a smear of black ichor. I laughed — sharp, manic — and racked another shell, the sound grounding me more than anything. No time to think. Just drive. Just get to the elevator.

“Almost there, JD… just move your ass.”

The roar of monsters grew behind me. The screams ahead were worse. But the path was clear, and the way out was real.

And if hell wanted me back, it’d have to catch me first.

As I sped across that chasm of ruin, the crimson fog clinging to the earth like a fever dream, I spotted it—a lone church in the distance, rising like a dying lung from the rot. Just then, one of the creatures latched onto the back of the jeep.

Its claws scraped across the roof, howling and shrieking, a wet, gurgling roar that pierced straight through me. I panicked, trying to line up the shotgun, but it was all motion and chaos. The thing lunged forward, putrid arms and splintered claws reaching for my head, breath reeking of decay and something foul. Its claws dug into the roof ripping it to pieces. Desperate to unpackage its next meal. I ducked just in time, heart pounding like war drums in my ears. I jerked the wheel toward the church—my only hope of shelter.

But the lift… it was too far.

Then came the slash—jagged claws tore through the rear tires. The jeep screamed, sliding across meat and mud as I lost control. To my right: a massive boulder. We hit it with a deafening crunch, and the world flipped.

I flew from the driver’s seat. Pain exploded through my body as I landed, bones rattled and breath stolen, but I didn’t stop. I blinked through the haze, shaking my head, searching for the creature—thank God. The jeep had pinned it to the stone, twitching in a mess of gore and bone.

No time. I grabbed what supplies lay scattered from the crash.

The church was close now. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my weapons, and sprinted toward it. The meat underfoot was slick and pulsing. I crashed through the rotted front doors, slammed them shut, and began piling whatever furniture I could find against them—old pews, tables, shattered icons.

Then I bolted up a nearby stairwell. The church was small, with a bell tower that reached like a finger toward the cavern’s ceiling. No crypt. No basement. No sanctuary. Nowhere to run. But I hid—huddled in the shadow of the bell, ears straining.

Outside, they moved.

I heard the wet slap of limbs dragging across meat-soaked stone. A chorus of shuffling, sniffing, squelching. The air felt like syrup in my lungs. Closer. Closer.

Then… they passed by.

A ragged sigh escaped me, and I slumped back against the rotting walls. My sweat chilled against my skin. Every breath came with the taste of mold and blood. I sat in that dark tower, whispering to myself, voice trembling. Finally giving time to process the sights of the mines

“How... Why is this thing here? Why... why... Why? How could this happen?”

I scanned the room, every creak and groan of the church like a scream. My thoughts turned to the Gore Mines. To the endless tunnels. To the people who vanished down there—fed to something alive, something ancient. Something cruel.

“All these people, down here to this, this thing… a denizen of evil”

I remembered the first time I saw one of the creatures. Gideon, the first malformation. The scale, the hunger, It wasn’t just a monster. It was a system. A living, breathing atrocity that called out—not with words, but with instinct, pulling us deeper. It fed not just on flesh, but on purpose.

It wanted out.

It wanted to spread.

This couldn’t be allowed to happen.

I had to warn someone. I had to escape. I couldn’t count on the guards—they knew. They had to. Even that smug bastard McCreedy. He knew. He must have.

Barry died in that pit. I saw it.

And now it’s up to me to destroy this twisted god, this vile ecosystem of bone and blood.

“No one else has to suffer this. No one else should be turned into that.”

But the thought brought no comfort. My voice echoed in the tower, falling flat in the dust and ruin. I stood again, body aching, heart racing.

I searched the church for supplies, tearing through every rotting drawer, splintered cabinet, and overturned pew. Nothing—nothing but dust and decay. Then, behind the cracked altar, I noticed a pew shifted slightly out of place. Beneath it, half-buried in rubble, was a hatch.

The wood groaned as I scraped away debris with shaking hands. The smell hit me first—an eye-watering stench of rot and wet stone. I heaved the hatch open and descended into a narrow staircase swallowed by darkness. Only a faint crimson glow seeped down through the gaps in the floorboards above, bathing everything in a sickly red haze.

The air was thick, damp, and wrong. My boots sloshed in something I refused to identify. Shapes emerged from the shadows—bodies. The first wore the tattered robes of a pastor, slumped like a discarded doll. The rest… miners. Limbs twisted unnaturally, clothing shredded, rusted tools scattered like the aftermath of a slaughter.

I forced myself to search them. Cold, stiff pockets yielded nothing until I pulled an old leather-bound journal from one corpse. The first page bore a name—Arthur Mathews, age thirty-three, miner and the year 1938. The early entries were mundane, almost gentle—notes on daily life, camaraderie with coworkers, the slow grind of work. No hint of what had come. In my time, the year now 1972, a time that like hundreds of years had passed by comparison.

But then… the tone shifted. The handwriting grew frantic, jagged. The words reeked of paranoia and despair. He wrote of the mine’s slow death as the iron ran dry. Then one name leapt from the page like a curse: Mr. McCreedy—the new boss. Son of the founder.

The entries darkened further. Strange rituals. Whispered chants in the dead of night. McCreedy and his chosen few delved into occult rites, seeking more ore, but found something older—something living. Workers began to vanish. Others suffered “visions” that drove them to madness or the noose. And then came… the “Herald” the rancid heart of death that now loomed over in it’s conquered domain. The old town spiraled into decay and rot.

One day, it was complete—a ritual to call forth an evil so ancient its name should never be spoken. The details of the summoning were torn away, but one word remained, scrawled over and over until the page tore: “Baal. The lord of madness, god of ruin, harbinger of the feast” And a crude, shaking sketch—a massive, pulsing heart fused to the bedrock, a tumor that breathed. The same heart that now sparked my mind to terror, the grandfather of these foul demons. The right hand of a dark malice filled god. No love for man or our struggles, it was beyond all petty suffering of the individual.

Arthur’s final entries were a descent into hopeless terror. He called the heart the patron’s gift, a divine cancer sent to McCreedy by Baal himself. The price was the town—its people reshaped, minds broken, flesh twisted into weapons. All to feed the heart’s hunger. The writing is scarred and fanatical, a level of corruption and devotion to the words. A mind shattered and snuffed out when its time came to feed the beast. 

By the time I closed the journal, my pulse was pounding in my ears. The journal slipped from my grasp, a quiet thud of leather on wood. The truth sat like ice in my stomach—McCreedy’s greed had invited something beyond human comprehension. This place was a blasphemy. The mine, the town, the creatures—it all had to be destroyed before the infection could spread.

Outside, something screamed—a wet, inhuman sound. My hands were slick with sweat as I clutched my weapon. Everyone here was gone, trapped in eternal suffering, slaves to the heart’s will. And I was still inside its domain.

As I closed the journal and let it rest on my knee, my mind narrowed to a single, burning thought—gutting that sick bastard. He would suffer like he made everyone above and below suffer, choking on the same horror he’d unleashed. Barry, my crew, myself—we deserved retribution. I’d hunt him down, strip away his flesh and hope, and leave nothing.

But first, I had to escape.

I took stock of my weapons: Shotgun—about twenty-five shells. An old service revolver—fifteen rounds. A battered rifle—twenty rounds. And dynamite: three bundles, four sticks each.

A decent arsenal, but against thousands of those things, it might as well have been a pocketknife. Every shot would have to matter.

That’s when the idea hit me—if I couldn’t kill them all, maybe I could bring the roof down on their rotten heads. At least enough to by some time to escape, or so I hoped.

I moved back upstairs, slow and deliberate, planting dynamite along the church’s weak points. I worked in silence, hands steady but heart pounding. Each bundle was placed to tear at the structure’s spine. Then I looked up toward the bell tower—the lure.

I tied the fuses together, making sure one spark would set them all off, and pulled my lighter from my coat. The small flame hissed to life. I lit a cigarette, inhaling deep, letting the nicotine settle my nerves. The smoke curled above me, twisting in the stale, corpse-scented air.

It was a stupid plan, sure—but it was my only chance. I couldn’t kill that heart alone. I could, however, make it scream.

I climbed the stairs, the old wood groaning under my boots, until I reached the narrow ladder to the bell top. From here, one pull on the rope would send the sound rolling across the cavern like a war drum.

I checked my weapons one last time. Loaded. Ready.

I braced myself at the top of the spire, staring out over a wasteland of bone and rot. Far beyond, the monstrous heart pulsed, steady and strong, casting its sick glow over the endless field of decay. Between me and it’s—legions. Skinless horrors. Hulking, blood-bloated masses. Skeletal things darting through the shadows. A standoff, a battle, a war... my desperate gamble would result in victory or death. Either way the time was now, no more waiting no more hiding. Fight or Die.

I took one last breath, my hand closing around the rope.

Final chapter will be posted tomorrow!!!