The deeper they ventured, the more the tunnel seemed alive with memory. Faint murmurs curled around them — voices lost to time, pleading in a language that tugged at the edges of Cael's mind. Each step forward felt like crossing a threshold between the present and a haunting past.
Selene paused, her breath catching as she traced a carving etched into the stone floor. "This… this is an ancient binding. Long broken, but still faintly potent."
Cael knelt beside her, fingers trembling as he touched the faded symbols. A chill ran up his spine. "If we can restore this, it might hold the breach."
"Or it might trap something worse."
A sudden flicker of movement caught Cael's eye — shadows dancing just beyond the torchlight, retreating when looked at directly. The breach's hunger was more cunning than either had imagined.
"We're not alone," Selene whispered.
A low growl echoed through the chamber, reverberating against the stone like the breath of a buried beast. The darkness thickened, pressing close like a living thing, cold and suffocating.
Cael rose slowly, hand gripping the dagger at his belt — a relic forged to pierce both flesh and spirit. "We face more than a wound. This is a reckoning."
The tunnel walls seemed to pulse with anticipation, and with every heartbeat, the line between the past and the present blurred — as if the very earth remembered, and waited to judge.