As they slept on their backs, the blood sat just below their ears. Through the night, or at least the time which they slept, the blood level rose. It began to fill their ears.
Leto was agitated by the feeling and woke up, beside him, Amira was churning in her sleep. She seemed uncomfortable as well but refused to wake.
He stood up and by now, the blood was up past to the lower part of his shin.
'It's rising.'
Leto's mind raced, processing what the rise in volume could mean. As Leto stood in the warm blood, it continued rising, reaching to the corner of Amira's eyes and lips. Leto woke her up in fear that it would continue rising and begin to encompass her body. It had already covered her lower half and stomach, but wasn't yet high enough to cover her chest.
"What's wrong?"
Amira rubbed her eyes as she awoke, they were highly irritated from the blood touching their corners and after she looked down at her hands, she paled.
"Leto! I- my eyes are bleeding!"
Leto quickly knelt down beside her and examined her face, then a small laugh left his mouth.
"Are you laughing? What could possibly be funny!? I'm bleeding!"
Leto laughed again and patted Amira on the head.
"Your not bleeding, the blood level rose while we were sleeping. It went up to your eyes and I didn't want it getting higher so I woke you up."
Amira looked down at the water and noticed that it was indeed higher, while she sat on the ground, the blood had crawled to the top of her thighs, before it hardly reached halfway there.
"Oh… sorry."
Leto chuckled again then resumed spectating the blood.
Then he shifted his attention to the stone wall. There should have been some sort of indication as to where exactly the highest point it reached had been.
And there was.
Halfway up the side of the wall before it curved to make an arch, there was a faint red line, indicating that it either never went above there or hardly ever did. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the line was halfway up the wall, not half his hight. The tunnel had several feet of clearance between the top of the pairs head and the crest of the arch. Meaning that halfway up the wall was roughly to Leto's chest, and nearly to the base of Amira's neck.
Attempting to traverse through the thick blood at such a depth would be difficult, extremely so. The viscosity of blood was higher than water, meaning it would be much harder to move through.
Leto inspected the blood as it slowly rose, then he tried something. He'd been curious about something for a while, and now was a perfect opportunity to test it.
Leto had practiced controlling his Soul Aether for years now, and he'd mastered it in that time, being able to form many different objects or find creative ways to implement it into different objects. And so, with no difficulty whatsoever, he willed his Soul Aether to flow towards his eyes.
When he focused a large amount of Soul Aether in one area of his body, the veins surrounding it began to glow with a soft, dark radiance.
Then, Leto's sight went through a sudden and profound change. He began to notice things, multiple things. When he'd tried this before, streams of ethereal light would flow throughout the world in all sorts of colors. Down here however, it was different.
It was red. All of it was. He searched for any different colors, only when he looked at himself and Amira would he find them. His was a gray, glowing light, and Amira's was a golden light that seemed to be woven with red, a different red, it was a lighter shade.
As he continued to view the flow of what he assumed to be Soul Aether, he noticed something. It seemed strangely… alive. The flow seemed as if it was trapped within the blood but wanted out. Some faint parcels would abandon their path and flow towards Leto or Amira.
Then, he finally realized it.
"Run!"
Leto grabbed Amira by the arm and dashed away, not bothering to grab his shirt which he used as a pillow. There was no time to.
Behind them, the blood surged, it began to flow erratically, toppling over itself and chasing the two humans.
"What is going on, Leto?!"
"I'll explain in a bit, just run!"
Up ahead, there was the beautiful colors of Soul Aether flowing once again, the presence of the ominous red was behind them. Leto had manifested a dagger out of Soul Aether and infused a large amount into it, he plunged it into the blood as he ran, leaving a fissure in the air.
Oddly, the fissure spread, eating the blood just as it had done with the other beasts.
'I knew it… Damn it!'
The blood was alive.
As the Blood continued to chase them, they came closer and closer to areas with almost no red permeating them.
The depth had receeded once again and was down to their ankles again. Leto looked back and saw that the red Aether was now far behind them.
"It's slow."
"What's slow?"
Leto looked over at Amira with a grim expression.
"The Blood. It's alive. It began to try and consume us I think, that's why it rose while we slept, it had time to catch up to us."
Amira paled at his words. Terror gripped her heart and she leaned forward to rest her hands on her knees. Her breathing grew more laborious and she stuttered.
"A… a- alive? H- how? How is that possible?"
"I don't know. But I do know we need to widen the gap between us and it."
Leto placed his hand on her back and injected a bit of Soul Aether into her, bringing some color back to her face.
"We need to move."