The tunnel opened into a larger chamber. Noah stepped through, his void glow pushing back the darkness, and stopped.
The chamber was massive—maybe forty feet across, the ceiling lost in darkness overhead. And covering the walls, floor, ceiling, everywhere, were bones. Human bones, beast bones, all fused together by that black substance, creating a grotesque tapestry of death.
In the center of the chamber, something moved.
It was big. Bear-sized, maybe larger, its bulk dominating the space. The body was ursine—thick muscles, heavy limbs, covered in matted fur that was more black substance than actual hair. But extending from its sides were additional limbs, eight of them, thin and articulated like spider legs, each one ending in a sharp point that clicked against the bone-covered floor. The head was wrong, too elongated, too angular, like someone had grafted a monkey's skull onto a bear's neck and then stretched it.
