The iris pulsed under Mira’s palm—warm now, almost fevered. The pounding below had turned into a continuous, resonant vibration, as though sothing enormous was scaling the spiral at terrifying speed.
Elena’s scream ca again, thinner this ti, as if dragged away.
Mira’s chest tightened. She glanced at the eyeless man still standing in the archway. “If I go in... how do I get her out?”
He stepped forward, the red liquid in his sockets swirling faster. “You don’t pull her out. You bring her through. Anything left behind will keep climbing until it finds the gate again. It always does.”
“That’s not an answer,” Mira said, but the pounding made argunt feel pointless. Her ankle throbbed in sync with the vibrations, the cold and heat now climbing her calf.
Hinge. Key. Gate.
The voice was back—clearer, closer.
Mira gritted her teeth and knelt, tracing the tip of the knife along the seam of the shell. The strange milky residue still clung to the blade, and wherever it touched, the pale surface split like wet paper.
A sliver opened—just enough for a rush of damp, tallic-slling air to hit her face. Sothing moved in the dark below, fast.
“Mira,” the man said, and for the first ti his voice carried sothing almost human—urgency. “Once you start down, you cannot stop climbing until you reach the heart. Do you understand? If you pause... the spiral will take you too.”
Her throat felt dry. She thought of Elena’s last words: Burn it. The contradiction between that plea and this stranger’s warning gnawed at her, but there was no more ti to weigh it.
The pounding was so loud it felt like it was coming from inside her ribs. She widened the seam. The iris peeled back reluctantly, strands of shell snapping wetly. The spiral waited below—still that sa living, pulsing surface—but now it glowed faintly from within, veins of red light winding downward like molten rivers.
Without another word, Mira slid her legs through the gap, gripped the rim, and lowered herself until her boots touched the warm spiral floor. It flexed slightly, almost like it was testing her weight.
The eyeless man didn’t follow. He just stood above, head tilted. “If you see the faces,” he called softly, “don’t speak to them.”
Mira began to descend, the spiral carrying her deeper into the dark. The pounding was deafening here, coming from all directions.
Then—half a turn down—she saw movent. Far below, in the dim red veins, a shape clung to the wall, hauling itself upward. It was enormous, its pale limbs folding and unfolding in impossible ways. And in the center of its shifting bulk—Mira saw Elena’s face, her mouth open in a silent scream.
The thing was climbing faster now.
Mira tightened her grip on the knife. There was no turning back.
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