Chapter 112: Ch110. The seventh day
Miles exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders as he stood at the edge of the sinkhole.
Strangely enough, even though Miles had already gotten used to it, his body ached less and less than during the previous days, and he still did not know why it was like that. But the sensation of relief was more than welcome.
The Maw loomed before him. A gaping abyss of twisted metal, shattered bones, and shadows too deep to see through. It stretched wide, devouring everything in its path.
An open wound in the fabric of The Horizon.
The air around it pulsed, thick with something unseen, something old. Miles felt it before he even stepped inside. A hum, almost like static, but layered with something else.
Something alive.
And then, the whispers started.
It was not like the Hatter, speaking from his mind and taunting him. The whispers were faint at first, curling around the edges of his consciousness, like fingers barely grazing his mind.
They were not words, not yet. Just emotions. Fragments of longing, rage, sorrow. Thousands of voices overlapping, but none of them fully breaking through.
Kurt stood beside him, arms crossed, watching.
"This is your final test, kid." His voice was steady, but there was a weight behind it. "I’m not going with you. You’re going to check if that thing we barely survived against back then lives in here, and you’re going to kill the bastard alone, or die trying."