'Why do I keep suffocating?'
Eli's chest burned.
How many times had his chest burned and seized like this? How many times had he felt the air ripped from his lungs, his body dragged to the brink of collapse?
The water pressed from every direction—heavy, cold, merciless. It wasn't just filling the cavern, it was crushing it, swallowing every trace of light and sound.
The roar in his ears wasn't noise anymore; it was pressure, a relentless weight grinding into his skull until every thought rattled like glass about to shatter.
His lungs convulsed, spasming violently, begging—screaming—for air.
He forced his eyes open.
The world was nothing but black and blue, warped and distorted. The faint scarlet shimmer of Kairo's aura bled into the water like diluted ink, their only light in the abyss.
Debris churned past them—splinters of rock, shards of stone slicing through the current like knives, each one close enough to graze.
And then—movement.
Shadows.
