The passage was suffocatingly quiet, the air thick with the damp scent of earth and the rhythmic, distant thrum of the water processing infrastructure. The ambient hum of the Underlayer's geological foundation felt like a low, vibrating heartbeat, one that seemed to quicken in synchronization with Raizen's frantic pulse.
Raizen stood there, his back against the cold, weeping stone of the tunnel, his chest heaving. He looked small.
For all his fourteen months of survival, for all his tactical brilliance in navigating these veins of the world, he looked like a man standing before an inevitable landslide.
"Tell me," Raizen said, his voice cracking despite his best efforts to keep it steady.
He swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the shadows Rex cast across the floor. "What is the meaningful difference between what the Legion did... and what you did tonight?"
