I slowly began to step back as I watched the scene unfold before me.

  The Neverslacks moved strangely.

  They clung to the stone as if they'd forgotten how to use their bodies, writhing and squirming not with urgency, but with an awkward, fumbling patience. It was like watching a hand try to write using fingers that had never held a pen.

  For a long moment, I thought they were wounded... sick, maybe. But no — they pulsed with life, fresh and eager.

  It wasn't weakness that made them move this way.

  It was something deeper. Something built into them.

  Only after staring at them for what felt like an eternity did I notice their size.

  They were small — impossibly small. Barely larger than the insects that clung to rotting fruit.

  And then the truth began to uncoil in my mind like a slow, cold snake.

  They didn't chase because they never had to. They were born into a world already filled with food — a flood of flesh for the taking.

  Movement wasn’t natural to them. It was a relic, a forgotten instinct that surfaced only when absolutely necessary — like a phantom memory from a different time.

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  With every breeding, they split, shrank, and multiplied — a slow degradation not just of body, but of purpose. Where once there might have been the chase, now there was only the wait.

  Where once the gentle drip of water from stalactites filled the cave with sound, now the fall of Neverslacks marked the steady end creeping closer to me.

  Because I moved slowly, deliberately, they only crawled toward me — hesitant, confused. But if I ran, if I dared to break the fragile rhythm of the cave, they would leap from the stalactites in a clumsy, ravenous rain.

  The potion in my body would hold them back from sinking into my flesh — but it wouldn't stop them from clinging to anything they could touch.

  They would burrow into my clothes. Hide in my boots. Creep into my pack.

  And wait.

  Every 200ml bought me just an hour — and I had only three small vials left.

  I turned back, searching for the crack that had led me here.

  It was gone, swallowed by a darkness so deep that even the light fairy at my side seemed to cower from it.

  If I lost my way for even a heartbeat, the Neverslacks would find me.

  I stood at the jagged edge of the lake, staring into the endless black that swallowed the walls of the cave.The water below was pure darkness — so dense it looked like a sheet of glass hiding something far deeper.

  I tightened the worn breathing device fitted around my mouth — a fragile creation, barely holding together, designed to extract what little oxygen the water could offer.It wasn't meant for a place like this.If the lake’s pressure didn’t tear me apart, the device’s limits surely would.

  The light fairy hovered beside me, its small glow shivering in excitement — not from fear, but from the scent of treasure hidden deep below.It sensed no danger.Only precious things buried in the dark.

  I pulled one heavy breath through the strained tubes, feeling the deep resistance in my lungs.

  And without another thought, I plunged into the abyss.