They slipped back into the violet-lit chamber like hunters slipping into a storm.
The crystal glow above pulsed slow and sickly, casting the webs in bruised color. Silk coated the walls in layered sheets and ropy bridges, drooping into catenary arcs over a floor spangled with chitin shards and shed skins. The air was noisy in a quiet way—tiny fibrils humming, egg-sacs ticking faintly, a low breath that wasn't theirs reverberating through stone.
Inigo raised one hand: hold.
The shadow at the far end wasn't a boulder. It was a back—armored with layered plates the color of tarnished iron, stippled with white scars. The body filled a hollow between four columns of stone, legs folded in a throne of web. A sloped abdomen—vast, pitted, striated with ugly seams—rose and fell with that subterranean breath.
Lyra leaned close, voice thinner than a whisper. "It's bigger than a troll."
