Round 213

The walls pulsed again in response to her movement, their breathing falling into sync with the rhythm of her own racing heart. The symbol etched into the stone seemed to glow faintly now, drinking in the ambient energy from downstairs like some sick parody of a sunflower turning toward light. Halie's eyes narrowed as she watched—was it her imagination, or was the pulsing actually speeding up? Each expansion and contraction coming faster than the last, timed perfectly with her own deteriorating coordination.

"Abby," she called out, voice steady despite the fear coiling cold in her gut, "I need you to stay still. Don't rub it or try to scratch—might make it worse." She pulled out her notebook with shaking hands, trying to focus on recording the pattern's progression instead of the horror of watching her friend being consumed alive from the inside out. Every second counted—she needed to document everything before her own vision failed completely and she became just another corpse feeding the thing below.

The silvery tendrils were already halfway up Abby's bicep now, branching out like some grotesque tree growing beneath her skin. With each passing moment, they seemed to pulse stronger, to spread further, to dig deeper into flesh and bone. Halie's stomach twisted with nausea—she knew exactly what happened when corruption reached the heart. And she had no intention of letting that happen to Abby if she could help it.

Hera's tentacles tightened around Abby protectively as they stumbled into the narrow crevice she'd found moments earlier. The air here was cool and damp, smelling of ancient stone and something else—almost like decaying flesh now, mixed with.