The transition through the portal felt different this time.
There was no sensation of distance folding cleanly, no brief stretch of color or pressure snapping back into place. Instead, it felt like sinking. Like being swallowed mid-step.
The light shifted first.
When my boots touched solid ground again, the world around us was dim and vast. A cavern stretched in every direction, its ceiling lost in shadow, its walls pulsing faintly with a cold red glow. The surface wasn’t stone, not quite. It was too smooth in some places, too uneven in others, as if it had been shaped rather than carved.
North glanced around slowly, blades already half-formed in her hands. Steve rolled his shoulders, lightning crackling faintly beneath his skin. Knight stood still, head tilted, tail coiled low.
Lyrate broke the silence first.
"Where are we?" she asked quietly.
"I’m not sure yet," I replied, already letting my perception expand outward.
At first, it felt like mapping a cave system. One chamber opened into another, then another, each larger than the last. Tunnels branched and twisted, some narrowing into tight passages, others opening into cavernous hollows that could have swallowed cities. The red glow was everywhere, diffused through the walls like bioluminescence.
But the farther my perception spread, the more wrong it felt.
There was no emptiness between these spaces. No true separation. Everything connected too smoothly, too organically. The tunnels weren’t tunnels at all. They were channels.
My perception pushed farther, past what should have been the outer boundary.
And then it clicked.
My breath slowed.
"We’re not inside a base," I said.
Everyone turned toward me.
"We’re inside something."
Knight’s eyes narrowed. "Inside... what?"
Before I could answer, the cavern shuddered.
The walls rippled.
What we had mistaken for stone flexed, subtly at first, then violently. The red glow flared brighter as the surface around us contracted, and suddenly the air itself felt thick, heavy with pressure and malice.
Corrupted energy surged.
Deathmist flooded the chamber from every direction, rolling in like a tide, carrying with it a presence so vast it was almost abstract.
An abomination.
A living vessel.
My perception snapped fully outward, no longer tracing chambers but form. A massive silhouette drifted through the void beyond, its shape unmistakable now that I could see it whole. Wide and flat, with sweeping wings that curved like blades through space. A colossal stingray-like creature, its body riddled with veins of corruption.
We were inside it.
The realization had barely settled when the walls split open.
Flesh peeled back.
Thick tendrils erupted from every surface, each one ending in a grotesque mouth lined with spiraled teeth. They lashed toward us in a coordinated strike, dozens at once, moving faster than siege weapons.
I scoffed.
Essence surged from my core and rippled outward in a single, expanding wave.
The tendrils disintegrated mid-lunge, their bodies unraveling into ash and vapor before they could reach us. The shockwave tore through the chamber, carving space clean around us.
But the abomination didn’t recoil.
It screamed.
The deathmist thickened, condensing into a suffocating flood that slammed against us from all sides.
"Ash," I said calmly.
Runes flared.
A translucent barrier snapped into place around the group just as the corruption crashed against it. The shield held, runes burning hot as they resisted the overwhelming force pressing inward.
Now that I was focused, I saw it.
The walls.
Runes were etched into the flesh itself. Dense sealing arrays woven directly into the abomination’s body, layered so deeply they distorted space within the creature.
I tried to teleport us outside the creature.
Nothing happened.
Space refused to respond.
I frowned slightly and reached again, pushing harder this time, only to feel my control slide off an invisible lock.
We weren’t just inside it.
We were trapped.
Ash’s voice came from beside me. "Biological Sealing runes. This thing locks space internally. Once you’re inside, teleportation is restricted unless it allows it."
I exhaled slowly. "That’s incredibly stupid."
Another tremor rolled through the chamber as more flesh began to move, the abomination reacting fully now that it understood what we were.
My perception shifted again, searching inside its body.
"Found it."
Deeper within its body, beyond layers of corruption and rune-reinforced tissue, I felt a distortion. A foreign structure embedded inside the creature, stable where everything else was chaotic.
A portal.
Likely the relay exit.
"That’s our way out," I said, pointing into empty air. "There’s a gate deeper in."
Before anyone could respond, the walls began to close.
Flesh surged inward, sealing passages, compressing space as the abomination tried to isolate us from the rest of its body. The path toward the portal warped, narrowing rapidly.
Steve glanced at me. "So... plan?"
I looked around at the walls of living corruption pressing closer and sighed.
"Do I just make this thing one of my summons?"
There was a beat of silence.
Then everyone spoke at once.
"No."
"Absolutely not."
"That’s disgusting."
"Please don’t."
I blinked and looked at them. "Why not?"
Knight’s tail lashed once. "Because I do not want to spend eternity traveling inside that."
North grimaced. "Also, no."
I stared at them for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright. Your loss."
I stepped forward and raised my palm.
The Star of Origin activated.
A vortex opened, small in size, but impossibly dense. The pull was immediate. Deathmist began ripping free from the abomination’s body, drawn toward the star like iron filings to a magnet. The creature convulsed, its corruption unraveling as layers of power were stripped away.
Its scream this time was violent.
The walls cracked.
The runes flared and burned out one by one as their power source vanished.
When the deathmist thinned enough that I could see the creature’s true form beneath, I clenched my fist.
Essence gathered.
Time seemed to slow.
I stepped forward and threw a single punch.
BOOM!
The impact was violent.
A hole tore straight through the abomination’s head, clean and absolute, its body freezing for a fraction of a second before collapsing inward on itself. The massive form began to disintegrate, its flesh breaking apart into matter as the corruption sustaining it vanished entirely.
The pressure vanished with it.
Space unlocked.
I didn’t wait.
I folded space around us and shifted the group directly into the chamber I had sensed earlier.
We appeared in front of the portal, its surface already destabilizing as the creature died around it. Ash moved immediately, stepping forward as runes flared across his hands. He entered the relay coordinates, layering sealing arrays over the gate even as the surrounding structure crumbled.
The portal flared.
We stepped through.
And the relay base snapped into existence on the other side.