The air pressed down on them, thick and rotten, as if the atmosphere itself had soured. It crawled into their lungs, clung to their skin, and oozed into their minds like a living thing. The darkness wasn't just darkness—it was a breathing, pulsing void, threaded with veins of something that glowed sickly and faint, the light writhing through the walls like parasites tunneling through flesh.
Damien stumbled forward, his body lurching with every ragged breath. His heart beat like a caged animal. His hands shook, but his eyes were sharp. The fear was there, the terror gnawing away at the edges of his sanity, but there was no time for disbelief. Not after what he'd seen. Not after Eden's cold, grounding stare had forced him into acceptance. This was real. All of it.
"Damien," Eden's voice steady, a spear through the fog of dread clouding his mind. "Focus. Stay present. You need to keep moving."
He nodded, forcing himself to look around. Raelyn was ahead, her back pressed against the undulating wall as if trying to merge with it, her eyes wide and glassy with the familiarity of terror. Amara stood beside her, muscles taut, her fists clenched and trembling.
"This place is worse than before," Amara growled, her voice thick with fury and something darker—something broken. "It's changed."
Raelyn shook her head, her nails digging into her own arms. "No. No, it's the same. It's just... angrier."
A wet, fleshy squelch echoed from somewhere beyond the darkness, followed by the low, hungry rumble of something massive and alive.
Damien shuddered. "It sounds close."
"It's always close," Raelyn whispered, her voice thinned by panic. "And it never stops."
The air twisted around them, distorting sounds and smells until Damien couldn't tell if the stench of rot was real or just part of his own decaying thoughts. Everything blurred together in a sickening, dreamlike churn.
"It's trying to break us," Eden said, her tone infuriatingly calm. "We can't let it."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Damien snapped, his voice rising before he could stop himself. "How are you still so calm?!"
"Because it wants you to panic." Eden's gaze met his, sharp and cutting. "You think you're the only one losing their mind? I just don't show it."
A low growl rolled through the maze, a tremor shaking the floor beneath their feet. The walls trembled, patches of glistening, throbbing tissue twitching in reaction to their presence. It was watching them. Tasting them.
"Don't stop moving," Amara barked, her eyes blazing. "If you stand still, you die."
They stumbled forward, Eden's grip on Damien's arm like iron. Amara led them, her steps fierce and determined, dragging Raelyn along as if her own terror was fuel instead of poison.
The corridors twisted and reshaped themselves as they walked, shifting like intestines rearranging in some monstrous body. The air grew hotter, the foulness so thick Damien could taste it. His vision swam, shadows writhing at the edges, but he kept moving, kept breathing.
"This place is feeding off us," Amara muttered, eyes darting between the pulsating walls. "It's stronger than before. More...vicious."
Raelyn flinched as the corridor shifted again, the fleshy walls pressing inward as if trying to swallow them whole. "It doesn't want us to leave. It wants us to suffer."
Damien's stomach twisted. "What the hell is this thing? Some kind of...organism?"
"It's worse than that," Raelyn whispered. "It's a nightmare made real. A living, breathing hell that bends itself to torment whoever's trapped inside."
As if in answer, the maze shifted with a sound like tearing meat, the air filling with the iron tang blood. Something crawled through the dark, a slithering mass of slick muscle and exposed bone. Damien saw the briefest glint of malformed eyes, red and glistening, before they vanished back into the shadows.
His body went cold.
"Keep your eyes forward." Eden's grip tightened, her finger practically brushing his arm. "Ignore it. Just keep moving."
"But—"
"Now, Damien." Her voice was steel. "If you acknowledge it, it will acknowledge you."
His throat dried up, the world shriveling on his tongue. All he could do was follow Eden's lead, his feet dragged over the pulsing, shifting ground.
Amara took the lead, her steps fast and reckless, desperation bleeding into fury. "The last time we were here, we found the heart. And if we want to survive, we have to find it again."
Raelyn tumbled, her breath coming in shallow, frantic bursts. "What if it's different this time? What if there is no heart?"
"Then we die." Amara's tone was flat, resigned. But there was something else beneath it—something hateful and alive. "But I'm not giving this place the satisfaction."
The sounds of pursuit grew louder. The wet, dragging noise, like tendons tearing away from bone. And always, always, that sickening, guttural breathing.
"Run," Amara hissed.
They surged forward, their footsteps echoing in the fleshy corridors. The maze twisted and shuddered, trying to throw them off-balance, to split them apart. The walls rippled, bulging outward as if trying to entrap them in its living embrace.
Damien's chest screamed with effort, his muscles burning with exertion. Eden never released her grip, guiding him through the shifting nightmare like a phantom made of iron and frost.
A monstrous roar split the air, so close it felt like it ripped through Damien's own chest. The sound of something massive, chasing them with a hunger that went beyond simple malice.
"They way!" Amara screamed, throwing herself down a jagged, torn corridor that dripped with blood and bile.
Damien's vision blurred, the world turning into a dizzying nightmare of flesh and darkness and noise. His thoughts fractured, breaking apart under the weight of the maze's relentless attack.
But he kept running.
They all did.
Even when the walls began to close in. Even when the growls and slithering sounds became the only thing he could hear. Even when the darkness itself started to whisper his name.