The group stood still at the edge of the new bio and looked at it with apprehensive expression.
What lay ahead of them was nothing like the subway station they once knew, it has completely changed in the layout and the appearance.
The walls no longer have the gray stone of the underground but instead bulged with more fleshy matter, more than in the walls behind them.
Roots as thick as arms and trunks that twisted unnaturally sprouted from the walls, rging with the fleshy surface showing grotesque sights.
Leaves hung from the stalks, yet their colors were all weird. They have deep crimson, sickly violet, and streaks of black run through them.
The air in front of the entrance was damp and heavy, carrying a sweet almost rotten scent that made their stomachs churn even after all they had been through.
Kade was the first to break the silence, he spoke in his low and tense voice. "This... isn’t part of the subway anymore. It doesn’t stretch this long. If we walk in there, I think it would feel like stepping into another world."
Ethan’s jaw tightened as his eyes darted across the leaves and branches sprouting out.
"What if this whole place is so kind of creature?" Ethan said with his high imagination.
Nadine’s gaze fixed on the warped forest of red roots ahead. She frowned.
She reached out, stopping just short of touching one of the tendrils.
"These plant things are alive, Myles. I can feel it," Nadine said.
A faint tremor happened beneath their feet and made them alard.
Myles furrowed his brows. He glanced at the others and spoke in a calm voice but edged with caution. "It doesn’t matter if it’s alive or not. You all know what is inside this place. I’m sure that there’s sothing valuable deeper inside, just like the Soul Forge Altar."
For a mont, none of them spoke.
The shadows in the organic bio moving, shapes rustled behind the trunks as if watching them.
The oppressive silence and anxiety of the next choices they have to make pressed against their chests.
Ethan shook his head. "But I’m not sure about this."
Kade tightened his grip on his weapon, eyes flicking toward Myles. "Myles, you’re the one leading us. If we go in and it’s too much, we’ll all die here. But I also wanted to know what more treasure we can find inside."
Myles didn’t answer imdiately. His gaze traced the alien growth and the way the fleshy walls seed to throb like a heartbeat. His mind racing.
His instincts that there would be danger inside, but beneath that warning ca another voice—an opportunity.
If there was more secret hidden beyond this bio, it could make them stronger and raise their chance of survival even more.
Nadine finally exhaled and stepped forward until her foot hovered just above the threshold.
She didn’t look back when she spoke. "No matter what it is, we must enter. If we hesitate now we’ll gain nothing while we have this change. We’ll only fall further behind whatever is out there."
Her words lingered in the thick air.
The group exchanged tense glances, then with reluctance silently braced themselves.
Myles smiled. When he was actually not certain, her presence grounded him again and he could see everything more clearly, see his purpose and resolve again.
"Okay. We move again," Myles spoke while looking at the rest of them. "You are not as weak as before, and I’m sure that out there, there will be sothing worse that has not appeared yet. We must not stop now."
One by one, they agreed.
Then they followed Myles toward the bio.
The mont they stepped past the threshold, the damp air thickened around them.
The fleshy walls pulse with bigger size, almost as if they inhaled and exhaled sothing.
Strange plants clung to the walls, like thorns that dripped with clear viscous fluid, or vines that twitched like living nerves.
Their weapons were already drawn and their every sense sharpened.
They walked in silence, the only sounds being the soft squelch of their boots against the moist ground and the faint rustling of the plants that seed to bend toward them.
For nearly a full minute the tunnel stretched on, coiled and twisted into the depths.
Then suddenly the fleshy corridor widened, and the world around them changed.
The tunnel’s walls peeled away. A gust of cold and foreign wind rushed against their faces.
When their eyes adjusted, what they saw made their hearts skip a beat and their eyes widened.
They were no longer in a subway, nor anything resembling the underground building.
In front of them now stretched an expanse that looks so vast it made them feel small and insignificant.
Above them was not the familiar ceiling of stone and concrete but a sky painted in shifting shades of black and deep violet and clouds that twisting unnaturally.
Flashes of eerie green light crackled between them like lightning but without any sounds, casting the land below into jagged shadows.
Beneath their feet lay soil, but it was not the earth they knew.
The ground was dark, almost charred, and there were veins of dim crimson light running beneath the surface like blood.
From the cracked terrain sprouted grotesque plants like trees with white trunks and branches that ended in sharp tips, vines that moving lazily across the ground, and flowers as large as shields that opened and closed rhythmically, breathing mist into the air.
The horizon stretched endlessly. They could see jagged ridges that seed to move if one stared too long, as though the land itself was alive.
Far in the distance, sothing massive shifted beneath the dark sky.
Nadine swallowed her saliva. "This looks like it really is another world."
"It’s not just a new bio." Kade said while the grip on his knife tightened until his knuckles turned white.
Myles didn’t speak. His eyes scanned the alien expanse, the strange plants, and the blackened sky.
His instincts told him one truth—this place didn’t have the sa level of danger like the place before.
—
Reviews
All reviews (0)