The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 813: Where Light Thins (End)

Chapter 813: Where Light Thins (End)
"Stop—" she gasped between clenched teeth "—breaking the rules."
Her words were a mistake.
The sound bounced off the walls.
Even that small shout echoed strangely, stretching into a series of warped repetitions.
stop... break... break... rules...
The crystal veins along the ceiling pulsed.
More creatures poured out of the walls, drawn to the vibrations.
"Fine," she hissed. "New rule. No more talking."
She focused on breathing through her nose, keeping her teeth clenched when she moved.
She shifted her stance, trying to keep to the quieter patches of floor even as she fought.
Steel flashed.
Bodies thudded.
Each time one of the stalkers hit a wrong patch of stone, the echo surged and the gravity twisted. Sometimes it threw them into each other. Sometimes it tried to throw her into them.
Once, a chunk of ceiling gave way entirely.
A thick slab of stone and crystal tore free overhead.
Rhaen saw it start to fall.
Her body was half a second behind.
She tried to roll.
Her bad leg refused to help.
Pain flared white in her side.
For a heartbeat, she knew, with cold clarity, that this was the moment. This was where the shaft, the boss, the careful markings all ended.
Above her, something moved.
The Chimera soldier perched in a crack near the ceiling had been waiting, limbs hooked into stone, mandibles still.
It felt the gravity twist and the slab start to tear.
The urge to harvest, to move in, tightened its muscles.
But another pattern overrode it.
Protect ground.
The boss room. The shaft. The future route.
The human was part of that now, whether as scout or bait.
The soldier launched itself upward instead of down.
It hit a thinner section of the ceiling near the slab’s edge and drove its claws in hard. The stone there had already been weakened by old magic scars.
The extra stress made it crack early.
A jagged piece tore free first, smaller than the main slab.
It fell between Rhaen and the worst of the collapse, hitting the floor at an angle that deflected some of the debris.
The main slab still came down.
But it hit the smaller stone, bounced, and shattered into several chunks instead of one solid crush.
One piece clipped Rhaen’s shoulder and glanced off her arm, sending a flare of pain through her already bruised muscles.
Another smashed into the floor where her head had been a heartbeat ago.
Dust and small shards rained down.
Rhaen lay there for a few seconds, ears ringing, vision full of white specks.
The stalkers that had been clinging to that section of the ceiling went down with the slab.
Several lay crushed, legs twitching.
The gravity surge eased.
Sound settled back into its wrong, stretched pattern.
Rhaen rolled onto her side with a groan.
Her breath came in short, sharp pulls. Her whole body shook.
She shoved a fallen stalker off her legs and pushed herself to her knees.
Only two of the creatures were still moving.
She killed them quickly, before the tunnel decided to flip sideways again.
Then she just knelt there, sword tip on the stone, shoulders heaving.
Above her, the Chimera soldier blended back into the crack, unseen. Small bits of crystal clung to its carapace. It stayed very still, waiting to see if the dungeon would notice the interference.
In the hive, the shared map updated.
Rockfall. Gravity surge. Human: Alive.
In the war tent, the projection had gone completely black for the three heartbeats when the slab fell.
When the picture came back, dust hung in the air. The tunnel looked different.
Rhaen’s outline was half lost in the haze.
Lira’s hand was tight on the edge of the table.
Cerys’s jaw was clenched so hard the muscle jumped.
Serelith’s smile had faded. Her eyes were wide, focused.
Vyrelda let out a breath between her teeth.
"Well," she said softly. "That was almost it."
Mikhailis exhaled slowly.
Too close,
he thought.
<Statistically,> Rodion said,
"You’re not helping," he muttered.
Elowen’s fingers tightened around her cup.
"Can we stabilise the view at all?" she asked.
Rodion’s answer was dry.
"Meaning?" Cerys demanded.
"Meaning," Mikhailis said, "the dungeon and I are now fighting over camera angles."
Serelith huffed a breath that might almost be a laugh.
"You would make even that sound petty," she said.
Rhaen spat dust and wiped a smear of blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.
She looked up at the ceiling.
A crack ran where the slab had fallen. Above it, in the deep shadow, something gleamed for a second.
Not crystal.
Chitin.
Her skin prickled.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus through the dust.
The gleam vanished.
The crack was empty again.
"Of course," she whispered without thinking.
Her voice came out hoarse. The echo stretched it.
course... course...
She shut her mouth and pushed herself fully to her feet.
Her body protested every movement.
Her mind did not let her stop.
It took a lot to survive in a place like this.
It took even more to survive long enough to recognise patterns.
She had felt the watcher on the second floor. She had seen the scars on the Warden that no ice shard or hammer had made. She had felt the cleared corridors where monsters should have been and were not.
Now a stone that should have killed her had fallen just wrong enough to miss.
Not luck.
Luck was not this precise.
"Third player," she murmured through her teeth. "You’re not just eating what the dungeon spits out. You’re... helping."
Helping was the wrong word.
Guiding.
She did not like that any more.
Her paranoia sharpened into something colder.
If something down here could change how the ceiling fell, it could also choose not to, next time.
She adjusted her grip on her sword.
"Fine," she said to the empty tunnel. Her voice stayed quiet, barely above a breath. "Watch me, then. See if I make you regret your investment."
She stepped over the broken stalkers and moved on.
Far away, in Kharadorn’s inland command, a crystal set into a bowl of water shivered.
A seer, eyes glazed, snapped back to herself with a small gasp.
"Another surge," she said. "Same pulse as the earlier one. Deeper this time."
Kael stood at the edge of the chamber, arms folded.
He had not slept in some time. The faint stubble on his jaw and the shadows under his eyes made him look harder, not softer.
"Guardian?" he asked.
The seer shook her head, hair brushing her cheeks.
"No. Smaller. More... focused. Like a nail, not a hammer."
An aide at the side table cleared his throat.
"General, we have enough data now to guess a likely route," the man said. "If we send a small extraction team down the southwestern access, they might intercept whoever is moving there."
"Whoever," Kael repeated.
There was no point pretending he did not know who the aide meant.
Rhaen had gone in with her team days ago. The last floor-wide tremor from the Warden had lined up nicely with the time she should have been testing the second floor.
Then nothing.
Now this.
"If we send a team," he said slowly, "we send them into a path the dungeon is already watching. And possibly into the hands of whoever else is stomping around down there."
The spymaster, thin and sharp-eyed, toyed with a pen.
"And if we do not," she said, "we accept that our best scout may die alone after doing exactly what you asked her to do."
Her tone was matter-of-fact, not accusing. That made it worse.
Kael looked at the shivering crystal in the bowl.
He thought of Rhaen’s dry smile. The way she checked every route twice before sending anyone else down it. The way she had laughed at his stupid jokes even when she was too tired to stand.
"I sent her in knowing this was a one-way coin flip," he said quietly. "I do not get to be surprised if it comes up skulls."
The aide shifted.
"Sir, with respect—"
"With respect," Kael cut in, "if I throw more people after her now, I do not save her. I just feed the dungeon."
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"If she lives and comes back, I will give her every honour I have. If she dies, I will still use what the dungeon did when it killed the guardian. We can map tremors and mana surges. The stone writes stories even when the dead cannot."
He dropped his hand and straightened.
"For now, we wait," he said. "We watch. We do not throw good steel after a blade already in the air."
The spymaster’s mouth tightened, but she nodded.
In the bowl, the crystal’s glow dimmed again.
On the Sea-Glass Concordat’s flagship, Silver Current, Miren tapped a chart.
"Inland surge again," she said. "Same source. Same type."
The captain grinned.
"So," he said, "our mystery climber went down another rung."
"Or was pushed," Miren replied. "Either way, the window is narrowing. If we want to send a ghost unit into the western access, now is the time. They can ride the disruption before the dungeon smooths it out."
"Tell them to go," the captain said. "And tell them not to be heroes."
"Heroes die," Miren said.
"Heroes get statues," the captain corrected. "Ghosts get the job done."
Back in Silvarion’s camp, the tent had gone quiet again.
The projection showed Rhaen walking through the aftermath of the rockfall, slower now, more careful.
The image still flickered at the edges, but it held.
Elowen’s eyes were on the pane, but her thoughts were a few steps ahead.
"Whatever is down there with her," she said softly, "it is not just the dungeon and the League."
Mikhailis nodded once.
"And it is not us," he said. "We didn’t cut those old scars on the guardian. We didn’t erase those corridors."
He could feel the hive listening and the dungeon pushing back.
Three predators.
One tired human in the middle.
He set his hand lightly on the table, fingertips brushing the map’s edge.
"Mark the next chamber she enters," he said. "If the mana feels anything like that last surge, we flag it as potential second anchor."
<Already preparing tags,> Rodion said.
"It’s fine," Mikhailis murmured. "I like my dungeons grumpy."
Elowen gave him a sideways look.
"You like anything grumpy if it gives you an excuse to be more reckless," she said.
"Untrue," he protested softly. "I also like pleasant tea and wives who don’t let me destroy myself."
A corner of her mouth twitched despite her worry.
"Then listen when I say this," she replied. "Do not risk the hive to save her. But do not use her up completely either. If she walks out, I would prefer she does not walk out as an enemy."
His gaze met hers.
For a moment the jokes slipped.
He looked older then, in the light of the flickering pane.
"I will do my best," he said quietly. "Even if my best is ugly."
Her hand shifted on the table, fingers brushing his knuckles for the briefest moment.
"Your best is why I let you keep insects under my palace," she said.
Serelith made a soft, pleased sound.
Cerys rolled her eyes but did not comment.
Lira, behind him, let out a slow breath she had been holding.
Rhaen’s tunnel finally opened into a different kind of room.
The air changed as soon as she stepped through the arch.
It felt structured.
The chamber was not natural. It was a hall.
Old stone walls rose on either side, carved and fitted with care. Columns ran down the length of the room, each one wrapped now in creeping crystal. The ceiling arched overhead in a shallow curve, ribs of stone and glass crossing it like the inside of a great beast.
The far wall was a mosaic of sigils.
Some were the same style as the stones on the landing above: straight lines, circles, intersecting angles. Others were newer, grown over the old ones like veins. Dungeon glyphs, curved and organic.
They fought for space, overlapping.
The floor was a smooth slab of stone etched with a web of lines like the grooves in the boss room, but more complex. Mana flowed along them in thin streams of light, moving in patterns that made her eyes ache if she tried to follow for too long.
The air hummed.
Rhaen stopped at the edge of the etched area.
She planted her sword tip on the plain stone just before the grooves started and leaned lightly on the hilt.
Her lungs burned. Her leg trembled. Every bandage on her body felt one breath away from soaking through.
"If I map this," she whispered, "I change the war."
Her voice barely carried.
The echo here was strange too, but it did not try to kill her.
Not yet.
Above her, unseen, a cluster of Chimera scouts clung high on the walls, just below the meeting of stone and crystal.
The mana patterns in this room were unlike anything else they had tasted.
Dense. Structured. Pulsing.
The hive marked it at once.
Potential Anchor Node 2.
Core-adjacent.
In the Broodmind Chamber, the Queen’s attention sharpened. Lines of thought tangled and untangled around the new node.
In Mikhailis’s head, Rodion’s voice came with a new edge.
<Alert: central switching hall detected. Mana flow suggests connection to deeper layers and possibly to core-feeding arteries.>
The image over the table brightened as the etched floor came into view.
Elowen drew in a slow breath.
"Found it," Vyrelda murmured. "Or one of the ’it’s.’"
Serelith’s eyes shone.
"Oh," she said softly. "Now that is interesting."
Far below, the dungeon felt the same moment.
Ashen River’s core pulsed.
Mana surged through the etched lines on the floor, brightening for a heartbeat. The pressure in the room increased, pressing down on stone and carapace and flesh alike.
The scouts stiffened.
Rhaen felt the hair on her arms rise.
Far away, League instruments, Kharadorn scrying crystals, and the Sea-Glass navigator’s runes all shuddered in sync.
One heartbeat.
One shared spike.
Three predators and one exhausted human all looking at the same room.
Rhaen tightened her grip on her sword.
"Witness," she told herself again. "Walk. Watch. Survive."
Then she took her first careful step onto the sigil-inscribed floor.