Ethan didn't fall.
The tavern floor straight-up LIED to him, then swallowed him whole like a hungry esophagus made of black stone.
89… 88…
Those numbers aren't ticking anymore.
They're TEETH now.
Actual gnashing gears embedded in the walls, chewing the countdown down to bone.
Thom's last scream?
Snipped clean.
Emma's red pulse?
Gone.
Sealed above like they never existed.
Then the landing.
Not on stone.
On a SEA OF BLOOD, ankle-deep, warm, spelling secrets every time he moves:
H U R A Y
W A S
H E R E
One glowing spider thread drifts down like a lit fuse.
Touches the blood.
BOOM.
Letters ignite, burn, scar themselves into the rock forever.
And then the real horror flexes:
A suspended snake-dragon corpse, jaws yawning wide enough to swallow moons.
Impaled clean through the skull by a sword jammed straight into the cave ceiling.
Blood is still dripping from fangs like it died five seconds ago.
Ethan gets close.
Real close.
And the pumpkin emblem on the hilt starts GLOWING.
Not orange.
Not jack-o'-lantern cute.
This is a nuclear pumpkin.
This is the mark of the final evolution.
That sword knows his name.
That snake died screaming it.
The countdown for Ethan.
Or for whatever's been waiting down here to WAKE UP wearing his skin.
A deafening SHIIIIIIING rips through the cavern as the sword tears free of the snake-dragon's skull.
For one frozen heartbeat the corpse just hangs there, impaled, dripping.
Then gravity remembers its job.
The entire cavern groans.
The ground bucks like something alive trying to vomit.
The snake-dragon's titanic body peels away from the ceiling in slow motion,
blood sheeting off it in red curtains,
fangs still twitching.
"RUN! GET AWAY FROM THE SNAKE, IT'S COMING DOWN!"
Ethan's voice cracks into something inhuman as he stumbles backward, kurambit already burning in his fist.
The first scream answers him from somewhere in the dark,
then another,
then a wet chorus of panic as the shadow of the falling god-beast swallows the cavern whole.
The body hits.
The impact is biblical.
Stone explodes.
Bones the size of tree trunks shatter on impact.
A shockwave of blood and dust slams into Ethan like a freight train, hurling him off his feet.
When the red haze settles, half the cavern is gone.
Just a steaming crater of meat and rock where people used to stand.
In the middle of it all, the weapon lies humming, half-buried in the snake-dragon's ruined skull.
Ethan crawls forward on shredded knees.
The pumpkin emblem flares once, like a dying star recognizing its heir.
Then the blade moves on its own.
It rips free of the corpse with a wet, hungry shriek and **flies straight to his hand, ring-first, sliding over his finger like it was always meant to be there.
"You can move… on your own?" Ethan whispers, voice cracking.
The emblem answers by burning white.
Steel liquefies, folds, reshapes in the span of a heartbeat.
The straight sword is gone.
In its place: a single perfect karambit, curved like a fang ripped from the mouth of God, spine etched with the same nuclear pumpkin that now brands the inside of Ethan's palm.
The glow fades to a low, satisfied ember.
The blade purrs against his pulse, quiet, content.
It has waited centuries for the right throat.
It finally found it.