There was no way out.

  The hole I had fallen through was, at the very least, three times smaller than the space I now found myself in. From below, it looked like little more than an irregular mouth opened in the earth, a distant circle of light that promised no salvation.

  The walls rose far too high. In some areas they were smooth, almost polished; in others, they were riddled with dozens of dark ducts that looked deliberately excavated. The upper edge was out of my reach even if I had been in perfect condition.

  I wasn’t.

  There was no way out.

  There was something inside those small ducts opening in the walls. Irregular holes, damp, breathing out a thick darkness. This time, I wasn’t going to be as lucky as before.

  The real danger I had been tempting for hours had finally arrived.

  And with it, an immediate, heavy regret that settled in my chest like a slab of stone.

  A hiss, mixed with a wet growl, emerged from one of the holes.

  The red dots appeared first, glowing faintly in the gloom. The sound intensified, closing in at full speed, as if something were crawling desperately through the tunnel, driven by hunger or instinct.

  I barely had time to process it before its face shot straight toward me.

  The space down there was wide enough to move… if it weren’t for the irregular stakes emerging from the ground, completely surrounding me. They formed a natural, jagged circle, like a petrified forest, preventing me from backing away more than a meter in any direction.

  The creature leapt straight at me.

  I tried to dodge it on pure reflex, convinced it would fly past me.

  It didn’t.

  Its teeth sank into my calf before I could react.

  I screamed.

  The pain was immediate and piercing, as if I had been stabbed with red-hot iron. I looked down and saw what was attacking me: it was small, much smaller than I had imagined. A purple worm, slimy, glossy, writhing as it remained attached to my leg, clinging with a repulsive strength.

  “GET OFF, YOU FILTHY PIECE OF SHIT!”

  With my right shoulder burning from the previous wound and now that thing sucking my blood, I tried to rip it off with my right hand. My fingers slipped over its wet body, coated in a thick, hot slime.

  It wouldn’t let go.

  Desperate, I moved my hand to its head and pressed hard, trying to crush those tiny eyes that, somehow, I felt fixed on me.

  The worm let out a sharp, unbearable screech.

  With a violent yank, I managed to tear it off.

  It left my leg marked with several small holes, each one bleeding uncontrollably.

  It had too many teeth.

  The creature fell to the ground convulsing, its body twisting like a living rope. Then I saw that it didn’t crawl like a normal worm. It used six… or eight extremely thin legs, thinner than dry leaves, which it used to propel itself at an absurd speed toward the nearest hole.

  I had no doubts.

  I was in a nest.

  A nest full of those things.

  Every sound coming from the walls felt as if hundreds of bodies were moving at the same time, brushing against one another inside the damp earth. I shouldn’t have let it go. I should have skewered it right there with one of those strange stakes jutting out of the ground.

  But it was too late.

  I looked around in desperation. The only exit was the vine hanging from above, but it was too far away, and my shoulder barely responded. I grabbed the stick I had at hand and held it in a defensive position. It was thick, solid. It felt real in my hands. That would have to be enough.

  If I wanted to live, I had to do everything within my reach.

  Even if I lost an arm.

  Empty your mind.

  I forced myself to do it.

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  I stopped thinking and focused all my attention on the sounds. I turned my head in every direction, searching for those glowing eyes. Horrible red eyes.

  Silence.

  The noises stopped abruptly.

  Then I heard the shriek.

  They were about to launch themselves.

  They moved slowly, carefully, as if they understood I wasn’t supposed to notice them. On pure instinct, I reacted and struck one in midair, barely deflecting it.

  I didn’t hurt it.

  Instead, the sudden movement caused the wound on my shoulder to open a bit more. I felt the warmth of blood seeping beneath the fabric.

  I swallowed the pain.

  I couldn’t lose focus. If I did, they would take advantage and bite me again.

  I wasn’t in any condition to kill them one by one. I extended my arm and placed the branch horizontally in front of me, presenting it as a target.

  Let them bite that.

  Not me.

  It worked better than I expected.

  The stick withstood the impacts. They weren’t especially strong, nor did they seem to think much. They simply launched themselves in straight lines from the holes, one after another, guided by the smell of blood.

  I blocked one.

  Then another.

  Two more.

  Four.

  Six.

  With all the sounds I had heard before, I expected a dozen to attack at once. But the ones that fell to the ground fled, dragging themselves back into the tunnels.

  The relief didn’t last long.

  I didn’t see the next attack.

  A worm went straight for my head. It slammed into me like a stone thrown from short range. It didn’t manage to latch on, but it made me lose my balance. I fell backward, and the stick moved out of my defense.

  The creature touched the ground and, without hesitation, ran straight toward the open wound on my leg.

  The pain was worse than before.

  Its teeth dug in deep and it began to suck my blood desperately, as if it hadn’t tasted anything in days. I tried to stab it with the sharpest tip of the branch. Again and again.

  But its body wouldn’t break.

  It stretched.

  Like rubber.

  Resisting.

  I couldn’t stop it from feasting on me.

  Finally, with a crooked, desperate strike, I managed to pierce it. I didn’t stop. I kept stabbing—one, two, three more times—until its body split in two.

  A thick, viscous green liquid spilled from its insides, with a putrid smell that churned my stomach.

  I was exhausted.

  A kind of fatigue unlike anything I had felt since arriving in this world. It wasn’t just physical. It was as if something were draining my energy from the inside.

  The air seemed to be running out.

  Then I noticed it.

  The place was closing in.

  The stakes emerging from the ground were slowly growing, rising like teeth, already reaching halfway up my body. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the space was becoming narrower and narrower.

  The holes in the walls seemed brighter now. I could clearly make out their edges.

  The exit hole was closer.

  “Is the ground… rising?”

  I wanted to believe it was a fortunate coincidence.

  But breathing was becoming harder and harder. Each breath of air felt thinner than the last. Even though I was closer to the exit, I still couldn’t climb.

  I didn’t have the strength to block any more attacks.

  Then I heard the heartbeats again.

  They were strong.

  Too strong.

  The ground vibrated to the rhythm of those pulses.

  As if that entire place…

  were alive.

  I realized it when I leaned on the piece of wood, the only thing still keeping me upright.

  The ground began to split open.

  “No… no… not now…”

  The body of the worm I had killed slipped and fell downward. I expected to see a void, a bottomless pit.

  There wasn’t one.

  It fell onto a mass of slick flesh that received it with a wet sound… and slowly swallowed it, as if absorbing it.

  Then I understood.

  Those “glass shards” on the ground.

  Those stakes.

  They weren’t rocks.

  They were teeth.

  I didn’t allow myself to freeze.

  I took a leap of faith toward the vine.

  It didn’t matter how much pain I was in. It didn’t matter how exhausted I was. If I didn’t do it, I would die anyway. And in that moment, I would rather bleed to death than be swallowed alive.

  I took two clumsy steps and a small jump toward the wall. I used my good leg to push off the surface, seeking enough distance.

  My fingers closed around the vine.

  I managed to hold on.

  I wrapped my left arm around it to secure myself without relying entirely on strength. I clung to it like a wounded animal refusing to let go of its last branch.

  And even so, I couldn’t help but look down.

  There was no more earth.

  A massive band of teeth stretched downward, vanishing into the darkness. Giant fangs, curved, coated in thick saliva that dripped in viscous strands into those endless jaws.

  I had been standing on that thing’s mouth.

  It was enormous.

  Terrifying.

  The mouth seemed to be closing downward, as if the ground were coming together again. For a second, I wanted to believe it was retreating.

  My instinct told me otherwise.

  I tried to use my right arm to climb.

  The instant I lifted it, I felt something tear inside. Before I even touched the vine, the arm collapsed, powerless.

  A white pain pierced through me.

  The improvised tourniquet was instantly soaked with blood. The dark cloth absorbed nothing anymore. The bone of my shoulder protruded through torn flesh.

  With every millisecond that passed, my mind repeated only one thing:

  Move.

  “MOVE!”

  I screamed, not for anyone else, but to force my body to obey. With my good leg I searched for support against the wall, pushing blindly, guided only by touch as the earth thundered.

  The ground trembled as if something gigantic were shifting beneath it.

  I pushed off.

  I shot outward.

  I let go of the vine.

  I couldn’t hold it anymore.

  I fell on my back onto solid ground. Air, sunlight, the open sky struck me all at once. It was like waking from one nightmare only to fall into another.

  I didn’t move.

  I didn’t make a sound.

  I stayed there, motionless, savoring that tiny instant of relief, while the pain began to claim every corner of my body.

  Then the hole exploded.

  The earth burst upward with brutal force. Rocks, dust, and fragments were hurled in all directions. A shockwave flung me several meters away from the edge, rolling me across the ground without control.

  The mother emerged from the nest.

  She burst out like a projectile, fired into the sky. Her colossal body rose more than five meters above the ground, twisting in the air before crashing back down. She was an elongated, segmented mass, covered in plates and slime, with a circular mouth ringed by blade-like teeth.

  I fell on my back again, near a steep slope.

  I slammed into the ground with a dull impact. A barely audible groan escaped my lips.

  I must have looked like a corpse.

  I was practically dead.

  I barely managed to turn my face to see the worm queen descend violently back into the earth, crashing down with an impact that made the entire terrain tremble.

  The tremor pushed me.

  And I fell.

  I rolled downhill uncontrollably.

  Each turn was an explosion of pain. My shoulder, my leg, my ribs, my head. I felt bones crunch, muscles tear, wounds reopen.

  I was bleeding out.

  Maybe poisoned.

  Being smashed again and again against the ground.

  The speed began to slow until I finally stopped with one last blow, face-first into the grass.

  I couldn’t move.

  There was a flower in front of my face.

  In that moment, it was the most beautiful thing I had seen since arriving in this world.

  With superhuman effort, I tried to focus my vision forward.

  I wanted, at the very least, to say one word. Something. How happy I was to have made it.

  There it was.

  The destination I had seen from the hill.

  An open field, full of flowers and scattered plants. The sun shone brightly over that living ecosystem, vast, free.

  I made out figures moving.

  Wolves.

  Birds.

  Wild boars.

  Few, scattered… but real.

  At least I had done it.

  I had arrived.

  I knew I didn’t have much time left, but even so, I felt that this world had already given me more than I deserved.

  Then I saw it.

  A massive red boar. Gigantic tusks curving outward, spines protruding from its back. It was coming from afar, kicking up dirt with every stride, the ground trembling beneath its weight.

  It was coming straight toward me.

  The end was approaching.

  If it wasn’t my wounds… it would be that.

  I closed my eyes.

  I waited.

  Each second, its hooves sounded closer.

  Five meters.

  Four.

  Two.

  One.

  A sharp sound of skidding across the earth cut through the air.

  Then…

  silence.

  “You’re having a hard time, human.”

  The voice pierced through my ?????? of the end.

  Deep.

  Calm.

  Terrifying.

  I tried to open my eyes.

  In front of me stood a strange figure. Its silhouette was similar to a human’s, robust, but its outline wasn’t solid… it seemed covered in fur.

  It was approaching slowly.

  Before my eyes closed again, I noticed a detail.

  Ears.

  Pointed ears.