They push on until the wood gives way to stone again — a low passage carved not by tools but by the patient chewing of water and roots over centuries. The braid girl goes first this time. Her bare feet leave smears of blood where old cuts split open, but she never looks back at Rafi, trusting he'll follow. He does. Always.
The hush hums low here, vibrating through the stone floor, coaxing them deeper with the promise of answers if they just listen carefully enough.
They duck beneath a lip of rock and spill into a chamber that stops Rafi dead.
The walls aren't smooth like the tunnel behind them — they're lumpy, blistered. He steps closer and realizes the lumps are mouths. Hundreds of fossilized human mouths pressed into the cavern walls, teeth bared mid-scream or frozen mid-song. Some look child-sized. Others old. All half-swallowed by stone, like the rock itself fed on their last words.
A cold sweat oils Rafi's neck. The braid girl lifts her hand to touch a mouth near her head. It whispers when her fingers graze its cracked lips. No sound — only a sensation inside her bones, a language older than voice.
She flinches but does not back away. She presses her palm harder, forehead against the stone. Rafi hisses her name — but she's gone somewhere inside herself, pupils wide and glassy, lips moving without breath.
The hush laughs. He can't hear it, but he feels it — a flicker in the mouths as if they're trying to suck breath out of the chamber. Rafi grabs her shoulder and tries to yank her free, but the hush tightens its hold: a thousand whispers pour into her skull all at once.
She collapses before he can stop her.
Rafi drops beside her, heart a cannon shot in his chest. Her eyes flutter under lids bruised purple. He slaps her cheek, gentle first, then harder. Nothing. Her lips move, mumbling secrets she should never know — about him, about herself, about everything buried in the hush's belly.
He presses his mouth to her ear, blocking the fossil mouths with his own living warmth. He shouts no without words — just breath, raw and fierce. Something breaks.
Her eyes snap open, wild, terrified. He drags her away from the stone teeth. She vomits secrets on the cavern floor, sobbing, clutching his arms like he's the last true thing left.
Above them, a fresh crack crawls across the stone ceiling, dripping black sap. The hush is pleased: it almost kept them here.
Rafi spits on the nearest stone mouth, cursing every dead child who fed the hush. He pulls the braid girl to her feet. She's trembling, but alive. And together, they stagger back into the tunnels — toward a bridge made of bones, toward whatever horror comes next.