The boy's eyes glistened too bright in the dark. Fevered. Hollow.
The one rocking in the corner muttered fast, his knees clutched tight to his chest. The woman didn't move at all—except for the hand gripping her weapon, knuckles sharp and white.
My throat ached with a sound I barely recognized as my own.
"You're alive."
The words tasted strange, almost like a lie.
The boy gave a slow nod. The rocking man didn't stop. The woman's stare pinned me like a nail.
"Not for long if you brought it with you," she said. Her voice scraped flat against the stone, carrying no tremor, no hope.
The air thinned in my chest. I shook my head fast, too fast. "I didn't. It doesn't need me to. It's already here."
Her eyes narrowed, suspicion weighing heavier than the weapon in her hand. For a heartbeat I thought she'd swing it at me.
But she didn't.
Instead, silence spread like rot, filling the chamber until the boy's breath broke it. "You… you fought it?" His voice was thin, nearly gone.
I froze. The truth clawed up my throat before I could bury it. "…Yes."
The rocking man stilled. The boy's lips parted in shock. The woman's face didn't change—but her grip on the rebar shifted, tighter.
"And it let you live," she said.
The way she said it chilled me more than the dark. Not a question. A judgment.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My body was too heavy, my lungs too raw. I just stood there, bleeding into the silence, as if their eyes were another trap I couldn't escape.
The woman's stare flicked past me toward the tunnel I'd come from. Her voice dropped to a rasp. "Then it's not done with you."
The rocking man started muttering again, faster now, words tumbling over one another. "It follows the sound. The scent. The warmth. It remembers."
"Stop it," the woman snapped.
He flinched and went still again, clutching his knees tighter.
The boy spoke next, his tone brittle. "How did you get down here?"
"I fell," I said. The truth was messier than that, but there wasn't time to untangle it. "I thought I could get out through the lower tunnels."
The woman gave a short, humorless sound—half laugh, half cough. "There's no 'out.'"
Her words sank through me, heavy as stone. "There has to be."
"Everyone says that," she said, and turned her face away.
For a while, no one spoke. The air felt thinner with every breath, as if the tunnels were slowly drinking it from us. I could hear the drip again—distant, deliberate.
The boy's eyes darted toward the ceiling. "It's close."
The woman rose in one slow, deliberate motion, her rebar scraping faintly against the floor. "Then we move."
"To where?" I asked.
"Down," she said. "Always down."
I hesitated. "That's where it came from."
"That's where it ends," she said simply, and started walking.
The boy scrambled to follow, the rocking man dragging himself after them on shaking legs. I lingered a moment, staring back into the dark where I'd come from.
Something moved there.
Not a shape. A feeling—like the space itself bending, leaning closer.
My pulse stuttered. I followed the others.
We moved single file through the narrow tunnel, our breaths echoing off the stone. The woman's steps were steady, practiced; the boy's quick and nervous. The man whispered under his breath again, a constant string of broken words I couldn't make out.
After a while, the boy glanced back at me. "You said you fought it."
"I tried," I murmured.
"Did you see its face?"
The question hit harder than I expected. "No."
He nodded slowly, as if that confirmed something he'd already known. "It doesn't have one. Not until it takes yours."
The man let out a sharp laugh that broke halfway through and turned into a sob.
"Quiet," the woman said again, but her own voice wavered this time.
The tunnel curved sharply, the floor sloping downward. My legs ached with every step. The air grew warmer, thicker. The walls began to pulse faintly with moisture, as if the stone itself were breathing.
The boy stumbled once, catching himself against the wall. His hand came away streaked with something dark. Not water.
He looked at it and didn't speak.
The woman slowed, eyes darting forward. The passage ahead opened into another chamber, faintly lit by something pale and shifting—light that shouldn't exist this deep.
The boy whispered, "We're here."
The woman didn't look back. "No. It's here."