The drag came again. Closer this time.
I shoved myself off the wall, legs weak but moving anyway. Each step echoed down the tunnel, swallowed almost instantly by the dark. My breath came out in ragged bursts, so loud I wanted to claw it back down my throat. Too loud. I was giving myself away.
But silence was worse. Silence meant it was listening.
I kept my eyes forward, even when the urge to glance over my shoulder nearly split me in half. I didn't need to look. I could feel it back there—not touching me, not yet—but near enough that the air itself seemed to recoil.
The tunnel stretched on, narrower now, the ceiling forcing me to duck. Pipes groaned overhead, dripping rust into shallow puddles. My boots splashed with every step, each one a gunshot in the stillness.
Faster. Just a little faster.
The whisper curled through the dark, brushing the back of my neck like cold breath.
"Sora…"
My chest seized. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood, forcing my legs to keep moving. I didn't answer. I couldn't. To answer was to acknowledge it. To give it power.
The drag behind me quickened, stone shrieking under whatever weight it carried.
It was following. Hunting.
And I was running out of tunnel.
The walls pressed tighter, forcing me sideways through a broken stretch of pipe and concrete. My shoulder scraped metal, sparks of pain flaring white-hot. My lungs rattled, the taste of iron thick on my tongue.
For a heartbeat, I thought I'd lost it. The drag fell silent, swallowed by the weight of the tunnel.
Then—
Clang.
The sound slammed through the dark, a pipe struck hard enough to vibrate under my hand. I jerked back, pulse spiking so fast I nearly blacked out.
It knows. It's playing with me.
I shoved forward, half stumbling, half running, until the tunnel spat me into a wider chamber. A collapsed maintenance hub, maybe—broken benches, rusted ladders leading nowhere, the ceiling gaping with cracks that bled thin trickles of water.
The air was heavier here. Warmer. Breathing.
I froze, chest heaving. Three tunnels yawned ahead, each one darker than the last. No signs. No markings. Just black mouths waiting.
Which way?
The silence pressed in, patient and suffocating. My body screamed to move, but my legs locked, trembling. If I chose wrong—
The drag sounded again, closer, echoing off the stone.
Left. I didn't think. I just ran.
The tunnel tightened immediately, ceiling dripping, walls slick with mildew. My boots slipped on algae-slick stone, my shoulder clipping hard against the wall. Pain flared down my arm, but I forced myself upright, stumbling onward.
Behind me, the sound followed. Slower than me, but steady. Never faltering.
The tunnel warped as I ran. My light—if I still had any—flickered, shadows twisting into impossible shapes. My vision blurred, and for an instant, I saw another path—a bright one, sunlit, leading to open air. My brother stood there, reaching out.
This way, Sora.
I almost took a step toward it.
Then the light blinked out, leaving only stone, dripping and black. My breath hitched. The hallucinations were getting worse.
I rounded a bend—
And my stomach dropped.
Another dead end. Concrete collapsed into a jagged heap, slick with black water.
"No." The word scraped out raw, torn from a throat too dry to speak. I shoved at the rubble, clawed at it, bloody palms slipping over cold stone. My chest hitched with ragged sobs I couldn't swallow back.
It was useless. The wall wasn't moving.
The whisper came again, low and thick with hunger.
"So…ra…"
I spun, back pressed to the dead-end wall. My vision blurred with sweat and blood. My legs trembled so violently I thought they might snap.
The dark shifted.
Not just sound this time—movement. A shape darker than the tunnel itself, swelling forward, blotting out what little light there was. Too large. Too wrong.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. My mind screamed run, but there was nowhere left to go.
The whisper rose, curling into a rasp that filled every inch of space.
"I found you."
The voice was layered now—my brother's, my own, something older beneath it. My name echoed back in broken fragments. Sora. sora. sora.
I stumbled sideways, hand hitting wet stone, nails clawing grooves into it just to keep from collapsing. The air grew thick with the scent of rot and metal. The shadow pressed closer.
Something brushed the side of my face—cold, wet, deliberate. I jerked back, choking on a cry. The shape loomed taller, leaning in, until its presence blocked everything.
Then—another sound. Not behind. Not ahead. Below.
A crack in the floor. A faint draft.
I dropped to my knees before I could think, fingers scraping stone until they found it—a hole, narrow, broken, barely wide enough to crawl through. My pulse hammered in my skull.
Behind me, the darkness inhaled.
I didn't hesitate. I threw myself into the crack, body twisting, scraping through the gap just as the shadow lunged.
Stone tore skin. My ribs crushed tight against jagged rock.
But I was moving—down. Away.
The last thing I heard before the dark swallowed me whole was its voice, distant but still near enough to bleed through the walls:
"Sora…"