Round 203

The walls' breathing pattern stopped completely—everything except that low pulsing hum growing stronger like a heartbeat counting down seconds until next adaptation phase. Hera's breath caught in her throat at the sound, every nerve ending screaming at her to run. But running meant abandoning Silra and Halie to this nightmare alone, and she couldn't live with that. So instead she forced herself forward, one hand pressed against the wall for balance as the passage shrank tighter around her. The stone felt fever-hot in places, ice-cold in others—living tissue beneath the ancient rock, shifting and changing with every pulse of that damned heartbeat rhythm. She could hear Halie's voice echoing behind her: "Abby's trapped—I can't see but feel them dragging her toward something metallic." The words sent a fresh jolt of panic through Hera's chest. She pushed harder, muscles burning as she scrambled over rubble and ducked under low-hanging stalactites that pulsed with the same sickly light as the walls themselves. Every few seconds the humming shifted—adapting, learning their patterns like a predator stalking prey. She knew she should be taking notes, documenting this impossible architecture for future teams, but right now her only focus was reaching Abby before whatever had taken her consumed them all.