The Flesh Halls
Anthony moved.
The halls of the cave narrowed, walls pressing closer with every step. Shadows thickened. The air smelled iron-heavy, damp. He kept moving. Step by step. Hands brushing walls for balance. His arm still purple and numb. Breathing shallow and uneven. Hunger gnawed at him.
Hours passed. Footsteps echoed faintly. The further he went, the more the cave shifted around him. Walls slick, folding and stretching in impossible angles. Green growth clung to walls and ceilings, filament-thin and bulbous. Shapes moved inside it, writhing, twitching. Bones, embedded and scattered, leaned like supports. Crystalline shards reflected torchlight, splitting shadows into dozens of moving patterns.
Anthony pressed forward, low, cautious. Small forms skittered across floors and walls, disappearing into corners or merging with green filaments. Larger forms loomed in the distance, deliberate, organic but not human.
Eventually, the halls opened into a vast chamber. Shaped like a V, the apex pointing upward. In the center, a pedestal—massive, two or three humans could barely wrap their arms around it. Black stone, steel, rusted metal layered over its surface. At the very top, a crystal glinted faintly.
Anthony approached carefully.
Then movement.
The walls to his left shifted and twisted. From the fleshy folds emerged beings. Human-shaped, but not human. Fiends, demons—Anthony didn't care to classify them. They moved toward him, deliberate, dangerous.
He tried to fight. Knife slashed, but the first struck body only staggered. He threw it again. Staggered. Not enough. Revolver out. Shot twice. Bodies faltered. Nothing else.
His gaze snapped to the pedestal. Shot grazed the crystal.
The pedestal cracked.
From inside, bone erupted. Arms, jointed and wrong, tore the pedestal apart. The figure pulled itself free. Eight feet tall, skeletal, stripped of skin. Bone blackened in some places, white in others. Inside its ribcage, organs burned without flame, pulsing, exposed.
The fiends that had emerged from the walls turned toward it. They didn't last.
One was grabbed by the head and crushed in a single motion. Another was shot through the torso—its body snapped apart mid-step. A third lunged and had its skull torn free, eaten in a wet, final movement.
It moved without hesitation. Lethal. Deliberate. Overwhelming.
Anthony didn't wait to see more. He ran.
Corridors twisted around him. Walls bent, floors tilted. Light from his torch flickered across slick tissue, green growth, and crystalline shards. Forms moved, darting, merging into walls and ceilings. Anthony leapt over hanging veins, crawled through narrow gaps, barely keeping ahead of the chasing shadows that followed his wake.
Hours passed. Endless corridors, impossible angles, repeated structures. He vaulted, slid, crawled. The skeletal figure didn't appear outside the chamber, but the weight of it pressed in every step.
Eventually, the cave opened. Light filtered through the exit. Anthony stumbled into the forest. Air hit him sharp, lungs burning. Legs trembling, arms sore. He ran. Hours. Sun rose, painting treetops gold.
Finally, he slowed. Found a clearing. Collapsed. Hands dug into soil. Made a fire. Cooked the flesh he had scavenged. Ate. Silent. Exhausted. Alive.
Anthony stayed low, eyes on the treeline. The forest breathed around him. He was human, primal, and for now, he survived.