This chapter contains intense survival themes. Revised for clarity and platform guidelines while preserving story impact.
⚠️ EXTREME CONTENT WARNING ⚠️
This chapter contains:
• Graphic violence & limb loss
• Intense psychological torment
• Blood, injury, and despair
Reader discretion is **strongly** advised.
Not suitable for sensitive readers.
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The mine's exit lay silent in the afternoon light, shadows stretching like mournful fingers. The crew collapsed on the dusty ground, each breath a struggle. Their faces etched with dust and fear.
The manager rushed over, scanning every one of them.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked, voice urgent.
They all nodded. They said nothing. Their eyes were hollow, burdened.
Then the manager turned from the cluster and paused—
"Wait... where's Jack?" His voice faltered.
Silence dropped like a hammer.
One of the miners stepped forward, head bowed, voice shaking:
"We... we lost him."
The manager's face froze. He said nothing. Just turned and walked away—each step slow, heavy, dragging him into something darker than the cave itself.
—
The next morning, Jasmine sat on the edge of her bed. The phone in her hand felt too heavy. News of Jack's death had found her—sharp as a blade, cold as the stone that crushed him.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry out.
Just... cried. Quietly. Endlessly.
The scene faded to black—
Her heart in pieces.
And the world... still moving.
His cheeks were hollow, skin pale and drawn tight across sharp bones. His lips, split and bloodied, barely moved with each shallow breath. The air was heavy, stale, and frigid, seeping into his marrow like poison.
His body shivered uncontrollably, bones rattling beneath thin clothes soaked in cold sweat.
He glanced down at the cracked watch on his wrist.
"Day Eight."
The words echoed inside his head like a death sentence. His stomach churned, empty and forgotten, the pain of hunger replaced now by a dull, constant burn.
His tongue scraped dry against the roof of his mouth, throat parched to the point of agony. Somewhere in the distance, a droplet of water dripped, again... and again. Mocking him. Hope, so close — but unreachable.
His trembling fingers fumbled with the switch on his helmet, and the dim torch flickered to life. A weak beam sliced through the pitch-black abyss, illuminating jagged stone and despair.
His gaze fell to his leg — twisted, crushed beneath a monstrous slab of rock. The pain hadn't dulled. If anything, it had become a cruel reminder that he was still alive.
He bit down on his knuckle to silence the scream building in his throat.
"Why...?"
His voice cracked, barely a whisper.
"Why does it always have to be me?"
He reached slowly for the tool lying beside him — the digger. Its metal frame was slick with grime, cold in his grasp. For a moment, he hesitated. Then, he clenched it tighter.
This pain... this momentum... is the only thing I can control.
And then —
CRACK!
The sickening crack of shattering bone echoed like thunder in the cavern's hollow stillness, followed by the sharp, wet splatter of blood painting the cold stone beneath him.
The air thickened with the metallic scent of pain—raw, suffocating, almost sentient.
Jack's cheeks were sunken, lips cracked and dry, breath trembling as he raised the blood-slick digger again with both hands.
Another strike.
A white-hot wave of pain tore through his body like lightning. His scream was primal, guttural—ripping through the silence, only to be swallowed by the cave's dark, uncaring abyss.
Then—the final blow.
With a brutal sound, flesh and bone gave way. His foot, crushed and broken for days, was finally severed.
Blood poured freely, warm and thick, soaking the jagged stone beneath him like a silent offering.
Jack's hands trembled as he tore strips from his shirt, binding the mangled stump in a desperate knot. His skin was pale. His breath shallow. But he didn't stop.
With nothing left but sheer will, he dragged himself forward—inch by inch.
Fingertips scraped the ground, muscles screaming, eyes burning. Every motion carved agony through his frame, but he kept moving, leaving a trail of blood behind him. A red line in the darkness. A symbol of defiance.
No tears.
No pleas.
Only a quiet fire in his eyes.
If the world wanted him dead, it would have to kill him properly.
Because Jack wasn't giving up.
Not yet.
He kept going. Each inch was war.
His blood soaked into the cold stone floor like ink, marking every inch he claimed with agony. The scent of iron hung heavy in the stagnant air. His fingers clawed at the ground, nails cracked, trembling from exhaustion.
Every pull forward sent lightning through the mangled stump of his leg, yet he moved—slowly, stubbornly.
The cave around him was dead silent, save for the ragged rasp of his breath... and the sickening squelch of blood pressing through his makeshift bandage.
His vision swam—blurry, dim, a slow fade into black—but his mind refused to surrender.
"Not like this..." he croaked, voice barely audible, cracking like fractured glass. "I'm not... done yet."
The shadows around him whispered of death, but in the stillness, memories rose like distant stars in the night:
The laughter. The cruelty. The fists. The silence.
But then—
Jasmine's voice, soft and clumsy, telling him not to give up.
Granny's hands, aged but steady, always making tea no matter how hard life got.
Their warmth flickered inside him like embers.
Pain? It was nothing now. Just another lie the world tried to use to stop him.
He grit his teeth, eyes burning—not from the dust, not from the injury—but from rage. From resolve.
If he was going to die, it wouldn't be like this.
Not forgotten.
Not weak.
Not small.
With every breath, every inch, Jack wasn't just crawling—
He was ascending.
Hours dragged like centuries.
Jack crawled through the suffocating dark, each movement sending shockwaves of agony through his ruined leg. The blood-soaked bandage clung weakly to the stump, now cold and numb. His breath came in shallow gasps, his body trembling, not from fear—he was far beyond that—but from sheer exhaustion. Every inch he moved felt like dragging the weight of his entire past.
The helmet light flickered, barely clinging to life, casting shaky beams along the jagged stone. The silence was deafening—broken only by his labored breath, and the sickening squelch of blood and bandage against rock.
Then... he saw it.
Just ahead, in the edge of the flickering glow — a patch of wall.
It looked different.
The stone wasn't rough and solid like the rest. No... it shimmered faintly, its surface soft, almost translucent, like cracked glass over something... breathing.
With trembling hands, Jack reached for a jagged stone beside him—his fingers barely obeying, slick with blood and shaking from exhaustion. He raised it weakly and struck the strange wall.
Clang.
The sound echoed like thunder in the hollow silence, bouncing off stone and shadow alike. Again. And again.
Each strike sent vibrations through his frail body, every impact a defiance against death.
Clang... Clang... Clang.
He didn't know how many times he hit it—only that he couldn't stop. Not now. Not when something was waiting beyond this veil.
Then—crack.
A thin fracture snaked across the shimmering surface. Jack froze, breath caught in his throat.
Drip.
A single drop of water slid down the wall.
Jack's eyes widened in disbelief. Like a starved beast, he pressed his cracked lips to the narrow crack, drinking the bitter liquid that trickled out.
It was cold, metallic, and sharp... but it was life.
He gasped, pulling back only to unstrap his helmet. He caught more of the water in its curved surface, then drank again—greedily, desperately—like a drowning man finding air.
Tears welled in his eyes—not from the pain or the cold, but from the simple taste of hope.
He wasn't done yet.
Not now.
Still half‑dead, Jack rose onto one leg, the other lost but not his will. His body trembled, each movement a testament to the fury of his survival. There was no destination. No hope. Only instinct.
Hours dragged through the relentless darkness. His torch flickered—an ember in the abyss. Then his light caught it: a horrifying sight.
A beast. Huge. Fallen. Its fur matted, its eyes lifeless. Dried blood marked its ruin.
Jack stared.
"No... I can't."
He whispered in a rasp.
"It's a dead monster... probably poisoned, diseased..."
But his stomach clenched—pain, hunger, raw and uncontrollable. His vision blurred. His knees collapsed.
"I'll die anyway..."
With trembling hands, he crawled. The cave's stone bit into his palms. The beast's body lay like twisted conquest. He reached out, fingers slick with his own blood and the beast's decay.
He ripped a chunk of flesh.
Warm. Unclean.
His teeth sank into it—once. Twice. Again.
Blood coated his mouth. He gagged. Then swallowed.
Again... and again...
Until the hunger fog became rage. Until survival wasn't a choice—it was the only law left.
"I must survive," he whispered through bloodied teeth.
"I must survive..."
"I must survive..."
Jack tore the beast's fangs from its skull which was easy as the bones had soften. With nothing but his steel belt and sheer, unrelenting will he was able to remove it.
Each snap of bone echoed like a scream, his trembling fingers slick with blood and desperation. He didn't flinch.
He didn't pause. Sparks burst into the shadows as he ground the fangs against stone, sharpening them into crude blades—imperfect, savage, but alive with the raw instinct to survive.
His breath was ragged as he limped forward, dragging his broken body through endless dark.
Pain was a constant rhythm, dull and sharp all at once, but Jack had long stopped listening to it. Then—
Click.
His blood—still warm, still real—splashed against a smooth patch of cave wall. The stone pulsed. Then, with a groan like an ancient beast exhaling, it split open, not like a door... but like flesh parting at an old scar.
Jack froze, one hand clenched around his makeshift blade.
"What... the hell?"
The passage ahead breathed cold. Heavy. Like the cave itself had been holding something in for centuries. Then—
fwoom.
One by one, ancient candles burst to life on either side, their flames casting flickering shadows across an enormous underground hall.
It was no ordinary chamber.
This was carved by something older than memory, lined with runes that hummed faintly in his bones. Stone pillars spiraled toward a ceiling lost in darkness.
Jack stepped inside, the weight of the air pressing on his shoulders like fate itself.
He didn't know it yet... but this was the 100th floor of the ancient cave.
The final floor.
The same cave from which Iris and her team fight above.
And something was waiting.
A low, guttural growl rolled through the chamber, echoing off the ancient stone like a war drum in a tomb.
Then—another. And another. From the shadows, figures emerged—towering, hunched beasts that moved with unnatural grace. Their bodies were draped in jagged bone-armor, fused into flesh like something grown rather than worn.
Twisted horns curled back like scythes, and their eyes—a glowing, molten yellow—pierced the dark like twin stars of malice.
Jack's breath hitched. He raised his crude fang-blade, hands shaking but eyes steady.
Then, one stepped forward.
It was larger than the rest, its presence suffocating.
Its hooves cracked the stone beneath it as it moved, and when it spoke, its voice sounded like gravel soaked in venom, ancient and cruel.
"Human..." it rasped. "Why have you come here?"
Jack blinked. Talking beasts? His mind reeled. "Wait... they never taught this at school..."
But there was no time to think.
A deeper tremor shook the hall. From the rear of the group, the largest emerged—nearly twice the height of the others. Its bone armor shimmered faintly, etched with symbols that pulsed like veins.
Its eyes were green—not alive, but toxic, hollow.
Then it grinned.
A jagged, horrific grin that stretched too wide, too wrong, revealing rows of serrated fangs that dripped with black saliva.
"Human," it hissed, voice like a death bell.
"This will be your last day."