Round 177

The corridor had gone from merely dark to actively hostile. Every pulse of the wardstone felt like teeth gnawing at the structure holding them together. The building's groans were no longer distant complaints but immediate warnings.

Halie leaned harder against the door, her burned hands screaming protest as she tried to maintain their only barrier between the corrupted suite and themselves. The mirror she'd braced it with was sliding on the slick floor—someone had spilled a whole bottle of lube during the earlier... incident—and her grip strength had plummeted after touching that wardstone energy directly.

"Jeane," she hissed, "what's happening? This feels worse than before." The stone's pulse had changed rhythm again, accelerating like a heart racing toward failure. She could feel it through the wood frame now, each beat making the whole structure shiver.

Silra dropped to her knees at the edge of the barricade, pressing both palms flat against the floorboards. Her enhanced elven senses screamed warnings—the way the timber creaked under stress, the subtle shift in pressure as weight above redistributed dangerously, the groan of stressed nails and cracking plaster. This entire section was moments from catastrophic failure.

"Everyone back away from the door," she ordered, voice tight with urgency. "Hera especially—get clear." The civilian woman was pressed against the barrier like a child clinging to her mother, but Silra didn't have time for gentle reassurance. She needed space to work and she needed Hera out of harm's way before the entire corridor came down.

The wardstone pulsed again—harder, faster—and something in the wall above them cracked audibly. Dust rained down from the ceiling. They were out of time for careful planning. The building was taking its final breaths and they were trapped beneath it.