The walls closed in.
Not in the slow, creeping way of shifting stone but with a sudden, deliberate contraction, like a giant fist clenching around them. The floor lurched, tilting sharply, and both Rhea and Kael slid down a slick incline.
"Move!" Kael shouted, but the passage ahead twisted and warped before their eyes, sealing over with sinewy tissue.
Rhea dug her claws into the wall to stop her slide. Her fingers sank into the surface,warm, pulsing, and slick with the same bioluminescent fluid they had spilled in the heart chamber.
The air turned damp and hot, thick enough that every breath burned her lungs. A deep tremor rumbled underfoot.
"It's closing off exits," Kael said, eyes darting. "It's changing its own structure."
"That's not all," Rhea growled. Her ears caught it first,a faint, wet slithering echoing from every direction.
Shapes began to emerge from the walls themselves.
They weren't tentacles this time. They were humanoid. Twisted figures made of the same flesh as the cavern, their eyes glowing faint blue, their movements jerky but purposeful.
The scent hit her—old death and fresh blood.
"They're not alive," she hissed. "They're pieces of it."
Kael lifted his sword. "Then we cut them down."
The first one lunged. It didn't attack like a person,it simply threw itself at them with all its weight, a mass of claws and teeth fused into warped flesh. Kael met it with a slash, the blade biting deep, but even as it split apart, the halves writhed on the ground.
Another came from Rhea's side. She caught it mid-leap, driving her claws into its chest, ripping until it fell limp,only for the wall behind her to bulge, birthing two more.
The labyrinth wasn't just alive,it was reproducing its own defenders.
The ground shifted beneath them again, the incline now a funnel pulling them deeper, toward a pulsing glow far below. The figures swarmed in from every side, herding them like prey.
"We're not getting out unless we find the brain," Kael gritted. "And fast."
Rhea slashed at another creature, her muscles burning. "How do you know this thing even has one?"
Kael's eyes flashed in the dim light. "Because if it didn't, it wouldn't be this organized."
They moved in bursts,fighting, sliding, leaping over slick ridges until the tunnel ahead opened into a chamber unlike the others.
It wasn't vast like the heart's cavern. It was small. Too small for the power they felt here. The walls pulsed in tight rhythm, the floor shifting under their feet as though trying to eject them.
At the center, suspended by a web of glowing tendrils, was a mass of blackened tissue the size of a wolf's skull. It pulsed faintly, but the power radiating from it was unmistakable.
"The brain," Kael breathed.
The creatures didn't wait. A dozen of them poured in through every opening, faster, more desperate. The walls shook violently, cracks of light opening between the tendrils.
Rhea's wolf roared inside her. End it.
She leapt.