Chapter 1451: Story 1451: The Hatchlings’ Pursuit

The shriek rippled through the chamber, setting every orb on the wall quivering. Cracks splintered across their translucent skins, releasing a chorus of scraping claws and muffled screams that didn’t sound like infants at all, but the agonized moans of something born already starving.

Mira shoved Elena toward the gap. “Move! Now!”

They squeezed into the opening, jagged bone edges slicing their arms as they clawed their way through. Behind them, the chamber erupted—a shattering storm of shells breaking apart. The newborns spilled into the space, a skittering tide of skeletal forms with torsos too long, limbs too many, jaws unhinged and snapping like wet branches.

The gap was narrower than expected, pressing the air from their lungs as they crawled. Mira could feel them coming—those clicking claws striking stone, scraping closer. One latched onto her ankle, its grip shockingly strong. She kicked, but its jaw clamped down, teeth sinking into her boot.

“Elena—!”

Elena twisted, jamming a shard of bone she’d ripped from the tunnel wall into the creature’s skull. The newborn shrieked, its body thrashing wildly before dissolving into the yellow ooze that had once encased it. The fluid sprayed across Elena’s face, burning like acid. She screamed but kept moving.

The tunnel spat them into another corridor, this one sloping steeply downward. They slid helplessly, the bone floor slick with ooze, gravity carrying them into the dark. Behind, the hatchlings poured after them, tumbling in a chaotic swarm.

Mira’s hands flailed for something—anything—to stop their descent. She caught a jutting rib, the sharp edge slicing her palm open, but it slowed her just enough to catch Elena before she barreled past.

They slammed into a ledge. Below stretched a pit, wide and bottomless, its depths glowing with a faint green light that churned like liquid. The smell rising from it was unbearable—rot and bile, like a stomach digesting corpses.

Elena gagged. “It wants us to fall.”

The hatchlings were closing fast, their screeches echoing, the tunnel behind rattling with their fury.

“We’re not giving it what it wants,” Mira growled. She scanned the ledge and spotted a narrow bridge of interlocked vertebrae spanning across the pit. It looked ready to collapse at the slightest touch.

They had no choice.

They sprinted, the bone bridge groaning under their weight, vertebrae popping loose and falling into the glowing depths. Mira didn’t dare look down. Halfway across, one of the hatchlings leapt onto the bridge behind them, its claws anchoring deep into the bone. Then another.

The bridge sagged. Cracked.

“Run faster!” Mira screamed.

They dove the final stretch, hitting the opposite side hard enough to knock the breath from their lungs. The bridge gave way entirely, dragging a dozen shrieking hatchlings into the pit. The glow below flared, swallowing them with a hiss like steam.

But not all had fallen. The rest clung to the walls, scrambling upward, their hunger unbroken.

Mira pulled Elena to her feet. The corridor ahead loomed, dark and silent—for now.

“Then we keep running,” Mira whispered, though her voice trembled. “Because it’s not done birthing.”