Utisz, with each stride urged on by Yulia's whispered guidance, made his way through the twisting corridor, the echo of his own footsteps a metronome amidst the chaos. Behind him, a torrent of eyeless abominations surged, their blind desperation palpable as they clawed their way forward, a writhing mass intent on not letting their quarry escape into the burgeoning light.

The ground beneath him trembled, a testament to the sheer number of his pursuers, their collective force a quake that promised to swallow him whole.

Then, ahead, a luminescence began to swell. It drew closer, a beacon amid the darkness, while the cacophony of the monsters swelled into a singular, deafening roar—a symphony of hunger and rage for prey slipping from their grasp. Utisz felt their swiping claws rake across his flesh, the fabric of his makeshift garb giving way to reveal wounds that bled with his exertion.

The roar crescendoed around him, a maelstrom of sound and fury, until they crossed the threshold into a cavern.

All went silent.

The incessant roar ceased, replaced by the oppressive shine of crimson light. Time itself seemed to languish under its gaze, shadows fleeing from the cavern to leave only stark and smooth stone.

He looked up.

A bleeding star, carved by celestial knives, peered out from a sharp wound in space.

It blinked, and swivelled.

It was gazing at them.

Pain erupted in sharp relief as the light touched his skin, a sensation of being unraveled, layer by layer. The red star's light was flaying, it shredded anything it gazed upon.

Utisz lunged at a nearby creature that had strayed into the cavern after him, its death providing him with a grotesque yet necessary shield from the light. Skin, fat and muscle were already falling off in slices off the corpse.

The mental tapestry woven between him and Yulia stretched taut, fibers of thought and essence strained to their limits.

Utisz ran on and ducked into another tunnel, his breath ragged, his body a map of exhaustion and lacerations.

A rumbling.

He shot to his feet, picking up his lantern and readying his dagger as a monstrosity emerged from the gloom of an adjoining passage. It was a leviathan of flesh, its girth so immense that the tunnel itself seemed to contort in protest. The creature could not claim the dignity of standing; instead, it heaved its colossal form forward on limbs grotesquely disproportionate—hands sprawling as wide as banquet tables, each digit rivaling the length of a man.

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A swarm of eyeless guardians clambered over it, their blind devotion palpable as they scurried to shield and hasten their matron's passage. They were the same vile pursuers that had harried him before, but now they were a mere accompaniment to the horror that held Utisz's gaze—a grotesque parody of maternity.

The behemoth's belly, distended and gravid, was a canvas of translucent flesh, stretched taut over the countless forms writhing within. A macabre display of creation, where the stirrings of new life were etched in blue veins and marred by the angry red of skin stretched beyond its limits.

The surface of her abdomen was a living tapestry of horror, undulating with the press of limbs and the push of faceless visages desperate to break free from the confines of their incubator.

As the mother-beast's attention shifted, the hive's focus coalesced on Utisz. Claws, sharp as the daggers of thieves, clenched in anticipation; jaws, brimming with needle-like teeth, hissed a collective hunger.

He spun round with a thrust to meet the first attacker and was rewarded with a pained howl as the dagger punched into the guts of the first of the fiends to draw close, stabbing deep, so deep that it burst out the black in a spray of emerald blood. He tore it back, and the creature slumped to the side, muscles tightening and pulling close like a dying spider. There were more of them ahead. Dozens. More than dozens. They clawed their way across the floor, across the walls, across the ceiling. More crawled over the flesh of their mother, clawing themselves up from behind her to join those that might fight ahead. The mother herself moved quicker, pressing harder against the stones, clawing her way forward.

Without warning, the cavern was illuminated by a blinding eruption of white flame. It tore through the space with divine fury, an avenging force that left no trace of the creatures it consumed. The intense heat passed over Utisz, a mere breath away from annihilation. The monstrous horde and their grotesque matriarch were reduced to nothingness in an instant, the white fire cleansing their existence so thoroughly that not even ash remained to mark their passage.

"The Inquisitors have arrived," Yulia's voice resonated with urgency. "They are already commencing their purge."

Utisz needed no further urging, running as the heat of a blast furnace rose at his back. The air became hot, going from zephyr to wind to gale, snatching at his clothing and driving him forward. In the far, unlit reaches of the dungeon, there was a vast cacophony from beasts and vermin as they were stirred from their lairs; hideous cries of great and mournful things, their calls loathsome and freakish to the ear.

Occasionally they caught a glimpse of one of the foul beasts, things of stretched and spidered limbs. All of them were headed in the same direction — away.

With Yulia's guidance pulsing like a beacon in his mind, he dashed towards an inconspicuous part of the wall, illuminated only by the subtle glow of his lantern. Here, a doorway—hidden in the extra degrees of this place—waited. He plunged through it, into a passage that constricted around him like a vice.

The tunnel ahead was a claustrophobic nightmare, its dimensions narrowing with each desperate stride he took. The walls seemed to press in on him, the ceiling inching ever closer, until the act of moving forward became a battle against the very earth itself. Ultisz was forced to contort his body, to crawl and wriggle like a creature far removed from the upright gait of humanity. Every breath became a labour, every movement a testament to his will to survive.

And then, there was a break in the oppression, a sudden and merciful release. Sunlight—a concept so alien to the dark depths from which he'd emerged—broke upon him with the gentleness of a mother's touch.

"Keep moving," Yulia urged, "The Inquisitors' reach is long, and their zeal unyielding."

He stumbled out of the dungeon's maw, gasping for the untainted air of the forest. Without pausing to gather his bearings, Utisz plunged into the underbrush, the dense foliage swallowing his form as he put distance between himself and the purging flames of the Inquisitors.