The light shifts as we descend, not dimming entirely, but thinning, filtering through narrow cracks in the ceiling inuneven strands that distort depth perception, making distance unreliable, and I adjust accordingly, relying less on sight and more on spatial awareness, on the subtle echo of movement against stone, on the way sound travels differently through hollow space.
Aeryn’s steps change as well. She is compensating for something. The next sequence confirms it.
Three corridors branch ahead, each identical in width and structure, their walls etched with faded markings that once held meaning but have since eroded into abstraction, and I pause just long enough to observe her before making a choice.
She looks to the left. Only briefly. Then forward again. I take the right. Her breath shifts.
The corridor narrows quickly, the walls pressing closer, the ceiling lowering just enough to force a slight adjustment in posture, and the floor beneath us slopes downward at an angle too gradual to notice without attention, leading toward something concealed beyond the immediate line of sight.
I continue without slowing. Behind me, Aeryn does not speak. She waits. The mechanism triggers three steps later. The walls contract fast.
Stone grinding against stone with violent force as the passage attempts to crush anything within it, and I pivot sideways, pressing into the narrow gap where the contraction does not fully close, a flaw in the design that exists for maintenance, and I hold there, measuring the timing, the rhythm of the movement.
Aeryn moves at the last possible moment. Not before. Not during. At the exact point where delay would result in injury.
She slips into the same gap just as the walls slam together, her shoulder brushing mine before the pressure releases and the corridor resets, opening once more as though nothing has occurred.
I step forward again.
“You knew,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You waited.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Her gaze meets mine, steady despite the proximity, despite the confined space that leaves little room for evasion.
“Because you would have walked into it anyway.”
“Incorrect.”
“Would you?”
I consider the question.
Then, “Yes.”
A flicker of something passes through her expression.
We reach the final sequence of defenses without further exchange, though the silence between us has shifted, sharpened by the accumulation of what remains unspoken, and the ruin reflects it, the air heavier now, the structure more deliberate in its resistance, as though it senses proximity to its core.
The chamber ahead is guarded differently. No immediate traps. Instead, a wide, open space with a raised platform at its center, surrounded by a ring of carved stone pillars, each one etched with symbols that pulse faintly beneath the surface, their energy dormant but not inactive.
A threshold. I step forward. Aeryn does not.
“Go on,” I say.
She remains where she is.
“You don’t need me for this part,” she replies.
“I do.”
“For what?”