Chapter 15 · Tamer of the Ash Wilds - Chapter 15: The Hatchery Still Breathes

The floor dropped out under Lin's boot and he went down hard, shoulder slamming into rusted grating. The air tasted like burning metal and something older. Something rotting.

Crunch hissed, low and sharp, claws scrabbling against the edge of the hole Lin had just punched through.

"Stay," Lin said. His ribs screamed. He could feel the bruise spreading already, hot and tight under his shirt. "Stay up there."

Crunch didn't stay.

Of course he didn't.

The grey shape dropped through the gap, landed beside him with a thud that rattled Lin's teeth. Crunch's ears were pinned flat, nose twitching. In the dim flicker of emergency lighting still somehow clinging to life down here, his eyes caught the glow wrong. Too bright. Too focused.

Lin pushed himself up. His palm came away slick. He didn't look at it. Didn't need to. Blood or coolant or both, it didn't matter. What mattered was the door.

Twenty meters ahead, half-buried under a collapsed support beam, a hatch with a faded bio-lock panel. Still lit. Still waiting.

Vira's coordinates had dropped them into the old sub-level. The place nobody went because the beasts that nested down here didn't show up on surface scans.