“Brother…?”

  The word slipped out before I could stop it, soft and almost reverent, as I stared into the red-orange glow of the heart pulsing in the void before me.

  Everything felt big again, like it had when dealing with the Unseen in its dimension. I was standing in front of and talking to a Primeval. This was something no human being was ever supposed to comprehend, let alone interact with. Though all that was left was this shuddering mass of soft tissue.

  It wasn’t a heart in any true sense… more a shriveled mass of desiccated sinew and ancient flesh, flexing and loosening with deliberate slowness, like it needed to remember how to keep itself alive. It was rooted to this place with crimson and void black tendrils of shadow that cradled it in a protective orientation, creeping into the blackness above and below, though I couldn’t see where they connected to something, if they did at all.

  She knew. This thing… this personification of starvation… she sensed the thing inside me. Hunger could feel Annihilation.

  “The power of annihilation… how it swells within you…” Her voice didn’t speak the words so much as crack them across my brain, a laugh like stone splitting echoing faintly behind the syllables. “Growing, bursting… raging. We never truly understood, did we? How foolish we were…”

  I blinked, caught halfway between what I had just witnessed in the vision and the reality of this empty, devouring void. My mind still raced to keep pace with her meaning.

  “Those memories… you showed me that for a reason. They were yours, weren’t they?”

  I already knew the truth; I just needed to hear it said, as all I was looking at was a clump of still living meat.

  I felt no threat. Not even a flicker of true danger. Even in the presence of this Primeval force, the oldest predator in creation, the Shadow of Annihilation in my veins left me unshaken.

  “You needed to see,” she replied, and this time her words trembled not with weakness, but something older. Something like dread. “You must understand why I rebelled. Why I… chose their side.”

  She remembered him… Myordrakien. Even if his form had changed beyond recognition, beyond the towering being of wrath that descended on her, she could feel the presence of her elder brother. And now, that same dread vibrated throughout the void again… and it was coming from within me.

  “You are not him… and yet… he clings to you... in you. A fragment? An heir of Annihilation? We’ve heard whispers, scraps of his shadow bleeding through our realm whenever he brushes past. Fragments from my children’s minds, forced into mine through our connections.” The heartbeat grew stronger, as though her words forced life back into the organ. “But now, staring into your flesh… I see far more than whispers. You are him… in some terrible way.”

  She didn’t understand… she couldn’t understand. She came from a time before Death descended on the world. Death seemed to be outside of even the Primevals. That’s why she viewed him in her memories as this shadow that came creeping for them after they betrayed Myordrakien. He was alien to them… foreign and not from their world. She feared him… they all feared Death, they had to; if Death made Hunger, the Unseen, and the Abyss flee their world… he was beyond them. She couldn’t understand that Death and Annihilation made a deal. The fact that her eldest brother had returned in this strange way, bound to a mortal in service to Death, couldn’t have ever been a thought in her ancient mind.

  My own memories flashed across my mind. The moment Death took the blade from me. Things were starting to click a little bit. If Hunger felt that same coiling shadow of Death himself… things may have gotten crazy. Better to keep that to myself for now.

  The glow rippled across the pulsing heart, forcing a hush before I finally spoke again.

  “Where am I…? What is this place?”

  The grinding voice pressed in close, brushing the air like claws across stone.

  “You stand in the deepest chamber of my being. The hollowed core… the Pits. They are what remains of my Primeval form, buried in the earth. My children were born of my flesh, and I offered myself to keep them alive. They devoured… and devoured… until my body became their refuge. And still I let them take more.”

  A heavy pause split her words, and the heart shuddered in the dark; slow, strained, almost exhausted.

  “I hid here when the Second Destruction came for us after your fall…” She faltered, as though she had to correct herself. “After he fell to our betrayal.” Silence again. Only the echo of the heartbeats, and a distant stir of something ancient moving within the darkness.

  I looked in the direction I felt it, but I saw nothing. I pulsed my eyes to black, but I didn’t see anything… just endless darkness.

  “I wanted to live,” she eventually whispered. “To escape the fate carved into me before I ever took form. I wanted that… more than anything.” Another low pulse, hungering. “Almost as much as I wanted to feed.”

  Hearing Hunger speak to me like this left me momentarily disoriented. Her voice pressed into my skull in pulses, Primeval energy resonating against my consciousness, trying to weave itself into my mind. And all the while, Myordrakien’s presence snarled back against it; silent, but full of murderous intent. From a human point of view, it was unnerving… two titans pressing against the walls of my thoughts.

  “Though what we fought for was lost the moment you fell,” Hunger said, her words heavy and without emotion. “Something else arrived. Drove us from the world we carved out for ourselves. It forced us into hiding. Forced me to fracture myself; to divide my power, scatter my essence to others, and disappear before that… thing… discovered where I buried myself.”

  The air around me shivered as another voice ruptured across the void. My voice… yet not mine.

  “YOU SPEAK ONLY BECAUSE YOU FELT THE UNSEEN PERISH.”

  The words thundered through the heart-chamber, vibrating the pulsing meat that glowed with each pulse.

  Hunger shot back without pause, almost as if she had expected this accusation. “I’m not hiding any longer. I stuck… I'm a prisoner.” Her tone twisted, an ancient frustration bleeding through the statement. “I hid when the shadow that replaced you appeared… when we broke the very order of the design. But now…” She hesitated, a jagged edge of regret cutting through her voice. “Now I have been betrayed. Betrayed by my own children. I only gave up my power temporarily… yet, my children are… clever and resourceful. They found a way to deny me ages ago and keep my power from me. They have taken my own body from me, turned it into a den of transients and tainted hungers. Hungers too weak to be called my own… yet… even they are my descendants… even in their disgusting weakness.”

  That was when Myordrakien reacted. A surge of black hatred exploded out of me, rising like ancient smoke from a tomb just broken open. It coiled around me, thick and sentient like an ethereal form standing beside me, towering, even though it was barely more than shadow in this already black void. We stood in silence, and yet I could feel his voice… his will pressing against my mind.

  Kill her.

  My voice spoke out quickly, and it surprised me. “NOW… YOU DIE!”

  It wasn’t a threat. It was a verdict. Annihilation’s intent rushed forward, gathering into my mind and body with every cell in our beings intent to shred this heart to pieces. I felt my body start to burn as the transformation began. Teeth burning through, talons slicing fire as they extended from their resting places.

  And then…

  “Wait! If you kill me here, you only destroy this imprisoned voice. My conscious will.”

  Her words came fast, a raw screech that clawed through the darkness and made even Myordrakien’s murderous intent freeze for a heartbeat.

  “My power remains… scattered. In many places. My children still carry it. They possess relics… eight slivers of Hunger that will endure even if you annihilate my heart. The design will still be denied.”

  I didn’t move, mostly because I still didn’t understand. But I felt Myordrakien hesitate. The wrath paused… not gone, just reassessing, reading the void, as though he sensed something hidden beyond my perception.

  And then I said something that clearly neither Primeval expected from me:

  “…Relics? What do you mean by relics?”

  Hunger seized the chance; her answer was immediate, desperate to keep Annihilation restrained even for a moment longer.

  “When I fled the entity that came in your absence, sank beneath the world and carved a lair… I tore my power apart willingly. Eight fragments of my being split away, becoming seeds to plant separately, only leaving me the ninth. That is what remains here in the heart chamber.” The heart pulsed under her next words. “Children were born… each one holding a shard of what I once was. Different aspects of Hunger. They roam freely now.”

  I felt Myordrakien narrowing his attention, the furious urge to obliterate still simmering, but now… interested.

  “So… even if we kill you here… that power survives out there… with them?”

  “Yes,” Hunger answered, almost gently. “Most importantly… for me… destruction of my heart would not free me from this prison. I would continue to linger… divorced from my own power, unable to fight back against what my children have become. Until every last one of them is destroyed, and their stolen essence bled back into the whole, I cannot truly die.”

  The heart shuddered; its glow flickering weakly in the dead black of the void.

  “I only ask to remain long enough to aid you in their destruction… and to ensure that I end afterward. Their betrayal must not go unanswered…” There was a hesitation in her tone, an almost reverent lowering of her voice. “…just as my betrayal must not be forgiven. This was never the life I wished for. It is not the future our brothers promised us when we chose to betray you.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  For a moment, the chamber fell silent. Myordrakien didn’t answer, but I could feel his presence tense, still… listening. The violence was still there, but it now hovered in the air like an executioner’s blade waiting to drop on her neck.

  I exhaled and stepped forward, if only to keep myself between him and the heart so this conversation could continue.

  “How do we even know we can trust you?” I asked, my voice echoing slightly in the vastness. “What happens after we kill them? Where does that power go? What guarantees it won’t all just come right back to you? Let you pull yourself out of the earth and tear apart half the world in the process?”

  The words rang sharper than I expected. Myordrakien said nothing… but I could feel a grim sense of approval. He was thinking it too… maybe he urged the words into my mind for me to ask.

  Hunger answered with an eerie calmness. “I do not wish to be whole. Because if I am whole again… I may lose myself to that same hunger. I may forget what I want now.” A faint tremor ran through the heart. “You do not have to send it back to me. It can be contained, redirected. You will need a vessel; someone or something to hold the slivers until they can be dispersed properly. You might even absorb it yourself… or destroy it.” A pause split her words as she thought about how she would say something. “Though I doubt that is possible. The relics would simply draw the loose power back in, merging as they have done before. One by one until nothing remains of them but the stolen relics. Only when each bearer is slain can my essence return to the world as it was meant to.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And you’re just okay with us slaughtering your precious little spiders?”

  The heart flared, pulsing brighter for an instant as Hunger replied, “Only two of them still keep the form of spiders. The others have shaped themselves into… other things. They call themselves Elders.”

  The word struck something in me. The Elders of the Pits. The monsters I’d been swirling around in the periphery of for a while now. The spider in Forest Park might have been an elder… and it was right there. I could have already killed one if it hadn’t gotten away.

  “I asked you something,” I growled, stepping closer to the floating heart. My teeth sharpened as my eyes blackened. “Why should I trust you?”

  Another long, slow pulse, like the heart was gathering its courage.

  “Because…” Hunger whispered, “…I can give you something. Something I know my brother would want returned.”

  My breath stalled. “And what is that?”

  The answer came suddenly, like Hunger had been keeping this secret for an eternity and finally was able to tell someone.

  “Stolen power. A fragment of Annihilation… still hidden in the last spark of myself. The piece I consumed the day we shattered the original design.”

  I didn’t even have time to doubt her. Myordrakien’s reaction slammed through the void like a detonation.

  “WE ACCEPT YOUR OFFER. YOU WILL DIE LAST.”

  The words leveled the chamber, vibrating the heart off kilter slightly. There was a sense of urgency in Myordrakien that I had never felt before. The thought of gathering more power… it was overwhelming. How could he be… even more?

  In response, the red-orange glow of the heart abruptly dimmed, choked beneath a deep, resonant hum. From somewhere inside the organ, a shadow began to bleed outward. At first it was like a wisp of ink in water… but instead of dispersing, it thickened and darkened. The internal stain grew heavier. The glowing red-orange light receded, forced back to a shrinking core no bigger than a few inches across the sinewy flesh.

  Something ancient was unfolding within the heart… something black and familiar. A power so final that it only had one origin. It was the power of Annihilation. Myordrakien… was silent, watching, and hungrily waiting for this.

  The darkness continued to thicken inside the heart, swirling and folding in on itself like some impossible vortex. The faint red-orange glow was nearly eclipsed now, reduced to a trembling pinpoint in a sea of endless black. Then, without warning, the heart expanded. It didn’t beat. It swelled.

  A slow, massive inhale reverberated through me as though it were dragging in the entire void around us. It was Myordrakien… I could hear his voice rumbling soundlessly through the air, a sound closer to anticipation than rage. The entire chamber vibrated with it.

  Something shifted inside the heart. A pulse, but this time it wasn’t blood. It was Annihilation.

  Invisible, but undeniable, a force slammed into me before I even registered it happening, ripping through the air like a silent storm. It hit my chest in a single violent surge, bypassing flesh entirely and finding the core of me, driving straight into Myordrakien’s shadow coiled in the cage of my soul.

  I staggered back… and then the pain struck. Every muscle in my body locked. It was like lightning had been poured directly into my veins; I collapsed to the ground of the void, every limb jerking violently as the power flooded me. A strangled sound tore from my throat… not quite a scream, not quite a growl. My eyes rolled back, vision cracking into blinding white static.

  Myordrakien’s presence writhed within me with sudden acceptance and recognition. It was assimilating his old power within his current existence. He wasn’t just accepting it; he was devouring it. Swallowing what was once taken from him, shifting it into places I couldn’t go or control. He was doing things I couldn’t understand. All I could do was fall into a seizure of pain and confusion as Primeval entities traded power and made a deal. Humanity was not meant for shit like this. In the panic and struggle of my mind, I cursed this fucking life.

  It hadn’t happened in a while, but for a split second… I was angry. Angry again that I was caught in all this. My life was stolen from me. Everyone and everything I loved and cared for so far removed that I might as well be on another planet. All this stuff… this Primeval shit… it was too big for me sometimes… all the time. I just wanted to be small again. I just wanted to be human… with Seth, Mom, and Dad… with Vicky and Caydee. I wanted to forget all this was real and live in the blissful ignorance of my old life. I wanted to clock in at work, cook dinner for my wife again… drink beers with Dad, Seth, and my brothers-in-law. As I seized on the ground… I felt something old and forgotten break in me again.

  The thought ended quickly.

  The invisible torrent finally subsided, drawn fully into me with a last invisible snap.

  I lay there, shaking… breath ragged, limbs twitching uncontrollably as the spasms slowly began to fade. It took a long moment before I had the strength to move. The void seemed to breathe with me, each inhale echoing faintly around the chamber.

  Finally, with trembling arms, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. I was unharmed by Myordrakien’s power, keeping me safe. Our relationship was strange… he was my power… I was his body. But there was still a disconnect between us, as obviously, my human form couldn’t deal with power on the scale that I had just felt.

  The heart still floated before me. Its red-orange glow had returned… but it was weaker now. Dimmer after letting go of the portion of power it had retained for so long. Now, all it had left was the small Hunger it kept when it divided itself. It had relinquished everything it had stolen.

  My breathing came in shaky, uneven pulls as I forced myself upright. My legs still trembled from the surge, my heart hammering like it wanted to break through my ribs and follow the fragment that had just rejoined its master.

  Myordrakien was silent… but I could feel him more clearly than ever before. Like a massive shape standing just behind me in the dark… watching, waiting to be unleashed.

  I swallowed the iron taste in my mouth and lifted my head toward the heart.

  “So… what do you want, exactly?” My voice came out hoarse, almost slurred from the jolt I’d just endured. “You want me to keep going down there… find your Elders and kill every single one of them?”

  The heart pulsed once… slow, deliberate.

  “That is exactly what I want.” Hunger’s voice carried a strange clarity now. No regret. No bitterness. Just a cold and resolute finality. “I still feel six of them within the hollow of my body. As long as they remain inside me, I know their precise location.” Another pulse of the heart surged brighter this time as we made moves forward. “I will give you those locations. One at a time. The first…” The glow shifted, as though turning toward me, “…is very close to where I took you from.”

  I prepared myself, feeling like this was coming to an end, and it wouldn’t be gentle as she sent me back.

  “I will return you to the place I pulled you from,” Hunger continued. “Back to the higher paths of the Pits… and to the vampire who walks beside you.”

  My eyes narrowed slightly. “You can feel her?”

  “Of course.” The mental voice held something new now, curiosity… and faint approval.

  “She bears my mark, even if she is unaware of it. Her flesh has been altered… twisted by what she has consumed. Her kind are not meant to feed solely on vampires. Yet she did… and survived.”

  There was a slow, pulsing hum… almost like the heart was purring.

  “Such singular appetite is… unusual for that branch of my bloodline. Such a refusal to lower herself to consume the weaker blood. It is… admirable in a way.”

  I clenched my jaw. “Leave her out of this. She’s not of this world…” I said, speaking of the Primevals.

  “That is not my intent. I only speak of what is. And I will return you to her unharmed. But remember this…” The heart’s glow flared, casting the void in pulsing red. “The first Elder waits nearby her. And it already senses that a power like its mother has entered this domain.”

  A heavy beat thundered through the chamber, as though the void itself had just exhaled.

  “Prepare yourself. I will send you back now.”

  Before I could respond, the ground beneath my feet simply gave way.

  A ring of emptiness opened around me like a mouth tearing itself out of the void. There was no time to react, gravity seized me, and I dropped straight down into absolute blackness.

  The descent didn’t feel like falling. It felt like being devoured. Stone and earth rushed past me in a blur, yet it didn’t cut or harm me. It was as though the rock itself parted just wide enough to let me pass, only to scrape shut behind me like teeth. I could feel it all around me… sliding over my skin, pressing against my shoulders and legs, dragging me in a twisting, suffocating tunnel that coiled through the crust of the world like the intestines of some ancient beast; realistically, it probably was something like that.

  Minutes passed… or maybe seconds. It was fast, violent… and then… I was expelled.

  The tunnel simply ended and spat me out, my body slamming against solid stone with a heavy thud. Air burst from my lungs, and for a heartbeat, I just lay there, blinking against the sudden dampness of a cavern.

  A blurred shape flickered at the edge of the faint red light that emanated from the crimson veins in the rock walls.

  “Sam?!”

  Alex’s voice was sharp, relieved, and just a little wild.

  In the next instant, she was kneeling beside me in a blur of speed, crimson hair cascading forward as she grabbed my shoulders. Her grip was strong… almost desperate.

  “Hey… hey, talk to me,” she hissed, pulling me upright. “What the hell happened? You just vanished…”

  She brushed the hair from her eyes, scanning my face with that intense, predatory focus of hers. And for the first time since this began, I realized how comforting it was to see her standing over me instead of some ancient primeval being.

  I drew in a shaky breath, muscles still twitching from the lingering spasms.

  “…I’m fine,” I muttered, even though I clearly wasn’t. “Hunger just… needed to talk.”

  Alex stared at me for another moment, her crimson eyes narrowing slightly… more concerned than suspicious.

  “Hunger…?” she echoed quietly, brow furrowing as she helped me into a sitting position. Her voice wasn’t sharp this time; it was low, unsettled. She glanced back toward the wall I’d disappeared into, then back to me. “Sam, I thought this place ate you. You vanished. You sank into the rock like it swallowed you whole. And you told me, literally just told me not to touch that shit. So why the fuck did you?”

  Her voice cracked with something I rarely heard from her. It was not anger, not sarcasm… but maybe… fear. Beneath that initial feeling was something deeper: suspicion.

  Her crimson eyes searched mine, almost as if she was trying to see past my skin and into whatever was inside me. To the mystery that lingered in my existence.

  “This place… you talked to it,” she muttered. “Didn’t you? You actually talked to something down here…”

  I let out a shaky breath, forcing a faint, humorless smile, but it felt wrong on my face.

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Yeah… I did.”

  Her expression hardened, not with hostility, but with a grim realization, like an old fear she’d kept buried was finally crawling to the surface.

  I lowered my gaze for a moment, feeling the weight of Myordrakien pulsing in my chest with its newly reclaimed power.

  “…and I think,” I said, lifting my eyes to hers, “If you are going to continue on with me… we need to talk.”

  She shifted back a little, sensing that something was coming. Something that she wasn't prepared for.