Round 324

The walls flexed around them, alive with purpose now. The breathing stopped completely—everything except that low pulsing hum growing stronger like a heartbeat counting down seconds until next phase. Abby stumbled, her hand grasping for the wall to steady herself, fingers brushing against slick surface coated in something warm and living. The symbols on the wall seemed to shift, their pulsing light intensifying as she stared at them through vision blurring with terror and exertion. The air around her grew even thicker, heavy with an otherworldly energy that made her skin crawl. She could feel it pressing against her from all sides now—something ancient and hungry and impossibly large trying to force itself into their reality through these walls.

The hum of the entity's power grew louder, more insistent, until it was all she could feel. Every breath pulled more of that thick fluid into her lungs, coating her insides with its sticky warmth just like it coated her outsides. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly against the living stone as she tried to push herself away, but the substance had already seeped into every pore, every orifice, every crack and crevice of her body. She could feel it moving inside her now—slipping between cells, wrapping around organs, filling her bloodstream with its alien essence.

Terror gripped her so completely that she could barely think past the desperate need to survive without becoming another conduit for this thing's corruption. But how? The tunnels were too narrow to maintain distance anymore—not when every breath pulled more of this stuff into her lungs and every movement just spread it further across her skin. She couldn't fight it off physically, and Silra was trapped between those plates downstairs while Jeane had descended into god-knew-what in the lower depths.

She was alone here with this thing's consciousness seeping into every inch of her being, and there was nothing she could do to stop it except pray that whatever Silra had planned worked fast enough. Because at this rate, she'd be fully consumed long before anyone could help her—assuming help was even possible anymore after what they'd seen downstairs.

The walls flexed again around her, closer this time, and she felt something like a caress against her cheek as more of that living fluid oozed from the pores in the stone. The entity's hunger pulsed through her in waves now—each one stronger than the last until she could barely remember what it felt like to be just human anymore.