The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 812: Where Light Thins (3)

Chapter 812: Where Light Thins (3)
"If she dies at all, you will have to get in line," he said.
The light from the pane painted the tired lines under his eyes, but his voice stayed light.
Inside, the knot in his chest pulled tighter.
He could feel the dungeon now, in a way he hadn’t before. Not as a mind, not exactly, but as pressure. A slow, heavy pulse pushing against the tiny threads his hive had sunk into its edges.
Predator noticing another predator.
"Keep mapping," he said under his breath.
Whether he meant the scouts or Rhaen herself, it was hard to tell.
Rhaen did not see the flickers.
She only felt the air change.
The last curve of the spiral opened into a deeper glow. The mana here was thicker. It pressed against her skin like humidity, making each breath feel heavier.
She reached the final step and stopped.
The shaft opened onto a wide gallery.
The ceiling arched low overhead, held up by thick stone pillars and old wooden supports that had been half turned to stone, half wrapped in crystal veins. The floor sloped gently downward in places, like shallow bowls carved by old water.
Rail grooves cut across the stone, the remains of old tracks that had once carried carts. Some still held twisted metal shafts where rails had been before they melted.
Crystal had grown here too, but less like a forest and more like invading roots. Thick veins pushed through walls and ceiling, sometimes bursting open in jagged clusters.
Rhaen stepped carefully off the stair mouth and onto the gallery floor.
Her compass device stirred on her belt.
She pulled it out and held it flat on her palm.
The floating needle swung, then slowly turned toward a deeper tunnel ahead and to the left.
The shards around the edge glowed a little brighter.
"Echo hall," she murmured, thinking of the map fragment’s note.
She looked around.
The gallery branched into several tunnels. Some had collapsed entirely, their mouths choked with rock and crystal. Others gaped open, promising more dark.
She picked the one the compass liked.
As she moved toward it, she noticed something strange.
In some patches of the floor, sound behaved oddly.
Her footsteps usually made a soft, damp thud on stone. But when she stepped across certain faint lines in the floor, the sound stretched, echoing a fraction of a second too long, as if the air remembered it and did not want to let go.
She stopped and tested it.
One step to the side.
Thud. The sound bounced off the walls and faded normally.
Back onto the faint line, which looked like nothing more than a thin variation in the stone.
Thud—
—and the echo lingered, repeating in a quieter, distorted way.
Thud. Thud.
Like someone else walking behind her.
Her skin crawled.
She stepped off the line.
"No spellwork. Sound kills," she reminded herself under her breath.
She walked lighter, rolling her feet more. Her sword stayed in her hand, point low, body balanced.
Old scorch marks blackened parts of the walls and ceiling. In one widened section of the gallery, a whole device lay half fused to the rock: metal rings twisted around a central core of crystal that had exploded outward. The stone around it was pitted and cracked.
A League body lay nearby, or what was left of one. The torso was intact, but the limbs looked like they had been pulled in different directions and then frozen mid-twist.
Rhaen did not step close.
She had seen what happened when magic misfired in confined spaces.
Her path toward the left tunnel took her along the safer-looking edge of the gallery.
She kept her breathing shallow and even, listened for the wrong kind of echo.
Above her, unseen, a Chimera scout crept along the underside of a low beam.
The mana currents in this chamber were worse.
Where the shaft had been a slow spiral, here they smashed and bounced. The dungeon’s power hit the crystal veins, reflected off old mine sigils, and created pockets where energy pooled too thick.
The scout extended one limb toward a glowing patch near a ceiling crack.
The air around its claw warped.
For an instant, the scout’s vision doubled. The human below appeared in two places at once. Its limb looked stretched, as if pulled by two different gravities.
Pain—not physical, but something close—flashed through its shared awareness.
Retreat.
It jerked back, clamping all limbs tight around the beam.
In the hive, several small patterns dimmed. The Queen’s focus narrowed.
The dungeon’s pressure pushed harder now, like a hand trying to smooth out a wrinkle in fabric.
At the edge of the gallery, the image over the war table flickered again.
Not just once.
Several spots on the pane went black in uneven patches, like stains. When they cleared, some details were wrong. A scorched mark Rhaen had just passed appeared unburned in one frame, then burnt again in the next.
"That is not pleasant," Serelith said softly.
She leaned forward, eyes intent.
"Can you compensate?" Elowen asked quietly.
<To a degree,> Rodion answered. <I can cross-check input from multiple scouts and our own mana-sense to smooth out lost frames. But if the core increases amplitude again, full coverage will become impossible.>
"So we will get static," Mikhailis said. "And then snow. And then nothing."
"It’s either that or start describing it like a badly tuned radio."
Cerys shot him a look.
"Is this amusing to you?"
"No," he said. "It’s familiar. Things that adapt to get rid of me tend to make the same faces on the way."
Lira’s fingers brushed lightly against his sleeve, a small, grounding touch.
He glanced back at her.
Her expression stayed composed, but her eyes were dark.
"Please do not lose her," she said, voice very soft.
He held her gaze for a breath.
If I can help it,
he thought.
Rhaen reached the mouth of the left tunnel and stopped again.
The air here felt thicker.
She listened.
No obvious sound. No dripping water. No scratching.
She took a hesitant step inside.
The tunnel was narrower than the gallery, carved by human hands long ago and then gnawed by dungeon growth. Crystal veins ran along the ceiling in jagged lines, some humming faintly with light. Old support beams crisscrossed overhead, patched with stone.
Her first three steps sounded normal.
The fourth rang.
The note that came back was wrong. Too clear, too long, like hitting the rim of a glass.
Rhaen froze.
The air around her chest tightened.
She backed up one step, carefully placing her foot where it had been.
The ringing stopped.
She swallowed and let out the breath she had been holding.
"Echo chambers," she murmured. "All right. We walk like ghosts."
She tested with the point of her sword now and then, tapping lightly ahead. When the sound came back muted, she moved forward. When it came back sharp, she shifted to the side until it dulled.
It was slow work.
Her ribs ached. Her thigh burned. Sweat ran down her back under her coat.
Ten minutes in—maybe more, time bent here—the tunnel widened.
The floor dropped in a shallow dip, then rose again.
And something moved on the far wall.
At first she thought it was just the light shifting.
Then the "stone" bulged.
A patch of wall cracked and split open like a mouth.
A long, pale shape slid out—thin, legged, ending in hooked limbs that dug into the rock.
Then another.
And another.
They were not like the leech-creatures above.
These were longer, thinner, their bodies covered in small crystal scales that lay flat against them like coins. Their heads were narrow, with too many eyes and no visible mouth. They moved with eerie silence, bodies clinging to the walls and ceiling as if gravity was only a suggestion.
Rhaen went very still.
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.
The nearest creature’s head tilted.
Its eyes were dull, but something in them shifted as its head angled toward her chest.
Not her torch. Not her blade.
Her heart.
They moved.
The first one launched itself from the wall, body coiling, then uncoiling in a sharp spring. The others followed a heartbeat later, a loose wave of pale, silent bodies.
Rhaen did not shout.
She threw herself sideways instead, toward the part of the floor she remembered as "dull sound."
The first creature hit the spot where she had just been.
Its body met the sharper echo-line.
Sound exploded.
Not loud in the normal way. There was no roar, no thunder.
But the air around the impact point rippled. The stone under it shuddered. For a moment, gravity twisted sideways.
Rhaen felt the pull.
Her body lurched, as if the floor suddenly sloped at a violent angle.
Her boots slipped. She went down on one knee, breath knocked out of her.
Several of the creatures were caught mid-leap when the echo triggered.
They twisted in the air as if flung, their bodies flickering, then slammed into the ceiling. A few stuck. One cracked against a beam and tore open, spilling dark fluid that floated for a second before splashing down.
The rest corrected.
They did not scream. They did not hiss.
They just re-angled, limbs digging into whatever surface they touched, and came at her again.
Rhaen forced air back into her lungs.
Her sword came up in a short arc. She met the first creature’s body mid-swing.
The blade scraped along crystal scales, sparks flying.
She leaned into the cut.
The edge found a seam between plates and bit.
The creature’s weight ripped the wound wider as it tried to twist away. It fell to the floor, legs twitching.
The next one hit her shoulder.
Hooks dug into her coat.
She snarled and slammed her back into the wall, pinning it. Her dagger flashed, stabbing up under the body into the softer joint near the head.
The world tilted again.
Another echo had been triggered.
This time the pull went up.
For a dizzy heartbeat, Rhaen felt weightless.
Her boots left the floor.
She grabbed at the wall with one hand, fingers scraping until they found a crack. Her shoulder screamed as her body’s full weight—and then some—pulled on her grip.
The dead creature slid off her coat and floated a hand’s breadth before the gravity twisted back. It hit the floor with a wet slap.
"Stop—" she gasped between clenched teeth "—breaking the rules."