The tunnels didn't end.
We walked until my legs felt hollow, until the ache in my shoulders blurred into something numb and distant. Each step landed heavier than the last, the sound swallowed almost instantly by stone.
There were no doors. No signs. Nothing to tell us if we were moving deeper—or only circling the same ground.
The boy's breathing filled the silence. Short, ragged, desperate. He hadn't let go of me since the fight, his fingers clawing into the fabric of my sleeve. Every stumble jerked me sideways. Every whimper echoed too loudly.
"Quiet," the woman warned, her voice flat. She didn't slow, didn't glance back, her rebar dragging its rhythm against the wall. A steady scrape. A metronome.
But even that rhythm faltered.
At first I thought it was her hand slipping. But then I saw it—faint scratches along the stone, deeper than her iron could cut. Parallel grooves glistening faintly in the dark, fresh and jagged.
The woman stopped. Her head tilted. Not a word left her lips, but her grip tightened on the weapon.
The boy whimpered, pressing into my side.
I forced myself to look at the marks. They weren't clean. They were torn, as if dragged repeatedly over the stone until it gave way.
I wanted to believe they were old, that the walls had always been this way. But the truth pressed sharp and undeniable:
We weren't the only ones leaving a trail.
The boy's voice cracked in a whisper. "It's following us."
"Or leading us," the woman murmured.
The words sank cold into my gut.
We walked on.
Time lost meaning. I couldn't tell how long had passed. Minutes. Hours. My body didn't care anymore. My legs moved because stopping wasn't an option.
The tunnel forked, and forked again. Each path looked the same—stone walls slick with damp, ceilings low enough to force us to bend. I scratched my hand along the surface as we walked, trying to leave some mark behind. But every time I looked back, the mark was gone. Smoothed over, as if the stone had swallowed it.
The boy began to mutter. Not words, not really—just broken sounds, fragments of prayers or names or promises. His voice trembled so badly I couldn't tell if he was comforting himself or already broken.
"Keep him quiet," the woman said again, sharper now.
"He's just a kid," I muttered.
"Noise is a beacon," she snapped. "You want to survive, silence him."
My stomach twisted. I pulled the boy closer, pressing a hand over his mouth, feeling his breath shake against my palm. His tears wet my fingers.
I hated the woman for being right.
We moved again.
The walls grew tighter, the ceiling lower. The air heavier. The drip returned, faint at first, then steady. I knew it wasn't water. Not anymore. Each sound landed too heavy, too deliberate.
The boy clutched me harder. The woman's pace slowed, shoulders tense.
Shadows moved in the corners of my eyes, subtle and wrong, as if the tunnels themselves were shifting. I blinked, and the shapes seemed to stretch, elongate, reform behind us. The grooves in the stone ahead were no longer random—they guided us, lured us.
The silence between each drop stretched longer and longer, until I found myself counting the seconds.
Waiting for the sound that meant we weren't alone.
The first scraping came from the left fork, sharp and deliberate. My heart thudded as I spun, but there was nothing—only the faint glint of stone reflecting some distant, unseen movement.
The drip landed on my shoulder, cold and precise. Not water. Not mercy. It reminded me: it was here, watching, testing, hungering.
The boy whimpered again, voice muffled against my hand. I tightened my grip, felt the pulse of fear in his chest. I swallowed hard. We couldn't stop. Not yet.
The woman whispered from behind, almost to herself: "Follow the marks. Don't break the rhythm. Don't let it know hesitation."
I realized the truth then: the tunnels weren't just a prison—they were a predator. And we were walking straight into its teeth.
I drew a ragged breath. The next step would take us further into the hollow path. But we would move. One foot. Then the next.
And keep moving.