The chamber’s scream beca a physical force, rattling Mira’s teeth and driving needles into her eardrums. She yanked at Elena’s arm, but the spiral walls clenched around the slit, resisting with sick, muscular strength.
“Don’t let go!” Elena’s voice tore from her throat, raw and wet. Her fingers were ice-cold, slick with the milky residue, slipping in Mira’s grip.
The pounding below beca rhythmic—climb, pause, climb, pause—as if the colossal thing in the spiral could sense her hesitation. The red veins along the walls flared brighter, their glow matching the branching crimson creeping higher up Mira’s leg.
She dug the knife into the closing slit. The blade sank deep, cutting not like into flesh, but into sothing fibrous and sinewed. The wall reacted violently, bucking and twisting, the faces within it contorting into silent screams of rage.
“Mira, hurry!” Elena’s arm was halfway free now, her shoulder erging from the fleshy seam. Behind her, the space beyond was not a tunnel but a pulsing void—like being inside a giant heart, its walls slick and contracting, each beat sending tremors through the chamber.
From the void, sothing else moved.
Mira caught a flash of pale limbs and a shape dragging itself closer, too quick, too fluid. It wasn’t the sa creature she’d seen climbing earlier—this one was smaller, faster, and disturbingly human in outline... until it tilted its head and revealed three identical faces stacked vertically down its torso.
The top face smiled.
The spiral trembled under Mira’s boots. The pounding below stopped. That could only an one thing—the larger creature had reached the chamber’s base.
“Mira—look out!” Elena’s scream ripped through the heart-void, but it was too late.
The wall to Mira’s left ruptured. A limb—jointless, boneless—snapped through, wrapping around her midsection and yanking her toward the floor. The grip was burning-hot, the surface slick like a newborn’s skin.
She slashed with the knife, severing the limb. It recoiled, splattering thick red fluid that hissed as it hit the spiral’s surface. The sll was chemical, acrid—like burning copper.
“Mira, now!” Elena cried.
With a final, desperate pull, Mira wrenched Elena free. They both stumbled backward into the heart-void. The slit sealed shut behind them with a wet, decisive sound.
Inside, the air was heavier, almost liquid. The walls pulsed around them, each contraction pushing them forward along a narrow, winding path. Behind, the sound of tearing flesh and splintering bone echoed—sothing enormous was forcing its way in.
Mira looked at Elena—pale, trembling, but alive. The red veins were spreading up both their legs now.
“What is this place?” Mira asked between ragged breaths.
Elena’s eyes darted to the walls, as if afraid they might be listening. “The spiral doesn’t end here. This is the throat.”
“The throat of what?”
The walls contracted sharply, nearly knocking them over. Ahead, the path widened into a gaping opening, its edges lined with teeth-like ridges. Beyond, sothing vast shifted in the darkness, its presence undeniable.
Elena swallowed hard. “The heart’s maw... and it’s hungry.”
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