Lyra crawled through the collapsed tunnel, broken and gasping. Every drag of her body across the wet stone sent fire up her ribs and arms. The air was thick with the stink of mold, rot, and old stone. Her battered hands scraped over rubble, searching blindly for any solid handhold.
The lightning shard in her grip was already cold, the last flicker long gone. Dead weight. With a grunt of disgust, she hurled it into the rubble. It clattered somewhere out of sight, swallowed by the ruin.
For a breath, she stayed frozen. Then, a faint shimmer caught her eye. Distant, thin, but enough to break the suffocating dark.
Bigger shards, cracked stormglass, half-buried in the ruined walls and floor on the far side of the tunnel—flickered weakly, throwing jagged pools of dying light across the wreckage. It wasn't enough to see clearly, but it gave shape to the ruin.
She forced herself forward, crawling faster now, sharp breath stabbing through her side with every move. Behind her, the sharp clicking of bone against stone echoed through the tunnel. Panic flared up her spine. She clawed her way forward faster, scraping knees and palms raw, driven by the sick certainty that something was dragging itself closer.
The crawl ended abruptly as she spilled into a vast, devastated hall, shards of dim light cutting ragged lines across the ruin and skeletal remains hanging grotesquely from snapped beams.
Lyra didn't slow down.
Just move.
The air hung heavy and sour, clinging to her skin.
The silence pressed so hard her ears rang.
She gritted her teeth, forcing her battered body forward, feeling the walls with numb fingers.
No full light. No clear guide. Only scattered glimmers from half-buried shards, throwing shapes across the ruin.
"Keep moving," she whispered to herself. The sharp click of bone against stone echoed closer, faster. Her breath hitched, panic clawing up her throat. "One step. Then another."
The ground sloped unevenly under her, slipping away into cracked pockets of dim light. Every crawl forward felt like a blind gamble. Stones shifted. Dust filled her nose and mouth. She pushed herself up, almost falling again, and stood shakily. Around her, flickering stormglass shards set into the ground and walls gave the hall a weak, ghostly light.
She turned, trying to get her bearings.
Above her, rafters lost in blackness sagged like ribs, barely visible in the weak glow.
Towering pillars loomed in the distance. Crushed walls sagged around the edges. The floor was shattered and treacherous. There was no clear path, only wreckage, shadows, and the stale, choking air of a place long buried.
Her skin crawled. Every instinct screamed that eyes were on her, buried in the dark.
She staggered forward, upright but swaying, every step a battle against pain and exhaustion. Her hands brushed along the stone as she forced herself toward the faint light ahead. Above her, the ceiling vanished into black. From somewhere high and unseen, a thin whisper of laughter trickled down, slithered down the ruin. She clenched her jaw and kept moving, refusing to look up.
Finally, a space. Lyra stumbled into it, half-falling behind a pillar. She gasped for air, clutching her side where the pain burned hottest. Biting her lip to stay silent, she forced herself to crouch lower. Slowly, trembling, she turned her head back toward the tunnel she had crawled from, pulse pounding. She stared into the light, heart hammering.
Panting, she stayed low, frozen.
Broken columns leaned against each other, ready to collapse.
Fallen arches loomed overhead, barely visible even to her dark-trained eyes. The stink of rot thickened.
And at the mouth of the tunnel behind her—something moved.
She froze, listening.
Not stone shifting. Not rubble settling.
Deliberate. A dry, scraping sound. Bone against stone.
Lyra sank into the wreckage instinctively, making herself as small as possible, blending with the dim light.
Just move.
Stay small. Stay invisible.
Something crawled from the tunnel with a sick, grinding scrape. Lyra stared, breath locked in her chest, as a single skeletal figure dragged itself into the weak stormglass light. It was tall and pieces of armor fused awkwardly to its frame. Cracks spidered through its bones, and stormglass shards were embedded deep into its ribs and limbs, pulsing faintly. Empty sockets stared forward, unseeing, as the thing shambled closer with a clatter of brittle steps.
Lyra flinched, heart slamming against her ribs. She inched lower, barely breathing.
It turned its empty sockets slowly, its body pulled by unseen threads, as if some distant force were guiding its limbs toward any hint of life.
She stayed absolutely still, her body locked tight with fear. She couldn't breathe. Her chest squeezed painfully, her mind refusing to believe what her eyes saw.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Lyra's mind screamed to run, to flee into the dim-lit ruin, but her body refused. Shaking, paralyzed by fear, she tried to step back and her foot, slick with dust and blood, slipped against a loose stone.
The scuff echoed like a gunshot in the dead air.
The skeleton didn't stop, bone fingers clawing the floor. It shambled forward with a sound like knives dragging over stone.
She twisted aside, feeling the rush of air as a jagged shard of bone scraped past her shoulder.
Breathless, she ducked around a fallen pillar, boots slipping in the muck. She needed a weapon—anything.
Ahead, near the entrance of the hall, a skeleton slumped motionless against the rubble. Its bones were brittle and still, but clutched in one hand was a rusty sword, and a dented shield lay by its side. The metal was battered and corroded, but in Lyra's desperate mind, they looked like salvation.
She moved.
The skeleton scrambled after her, limbs cracking with every desperate step.
She dove low, dodging a clumsy swipe, and in a single brutal motion, yanked the rusty sword free from the motionless skeleton's grasp. It wrenched loose with a screech of old metal, almost too heavy for her battered arms.
The rusty blade weighed heavy and dead in her hand. No magic. No flicker. Just old iron and desperation—barely sharp enough to cut, but better than nothing.
Skeleton lunged.
Lyra slashed, pure instinct. The rusty sword bit into bone with a sickening crunch, splintering brittle ribs and sending fragments skittering across the floor.
The skeleton collapsed into a pile of brittle shards at her feet. She staggered back, staring.
The blade hadn't sliced clean—it smashed through brittle ribs, shattering bone into useless pieces. Whatever foul strength had been stitching the skeleton together gave out with a final, sick crack. Lyra staggered back a step, gasping once, every instinct screaming: move.
She dropped the sword with a clang, eyes locked on the pile of shattered bones.
The world tilted.
"What... what was that?" she croaked to herself, voice thin and shaking.
The sword lay forgotten beside her boots. She didn't dare reach for it again. Her hands shook. Her legs threatened to give out.
Then—a low scraping sound echoed through the hall.
Not from the thing she had just shattered.
The air above felt wrong.
Heavy.
Like something waited, perched unseen among the sagging beams.
Dust drifted from the rafters, stirred by a breath she couldn't hear.
Laughter drifted again but this time from directly above.
Lyra froze. Slowly, terrified, she lifted her head.
Barely visible in the weak stormglass flicker, two big red eyes glowed back down at her from the rafters.
But the sound woke the others.
From the walls, from the ceiling, from the cracks in the stone more skeletons stirred.
She didn't wait.
She ran.
Splintered pews and shattered beams blurred past her as she bolted through the ruin. Pain screamed through her ribs and her torn hands, but she forced her legs to move. Bone scraped stone behind her—a scraping, hungry sound growing louder.
She vaulted a fallen arch, nearly stumbling when her foot snagged on a splintered beam. Breath tearing from her throat, she ducked low, slipping between piles of wreckage. Behind her, the dead dragged themselves after her, slow but relentless.
Every crash of her boots on stone echoed. A clawed hand raked past her shoulder—she spun away just in time.
She couldn't fight them all.
A doorway loomed ahead—half-buried in debris, but open.
She hurled herself toward it, shoving through fallen stone with bruised shoulders.
More shapes stirred in the black—too many.
Lyra slammed into the chamber beyond the door, shouldering it closed with a grunt of pain. Broken rubble jammed into the frame as she collapsed against it, gasping.
Bone fingers scrabbled at the other side.
The dead battered against the door, but it held.
A voice drifted from the dark, a low, almost gentle whisper. "There's no need to hide."
Lyra flinched, heart hammering, voice wrapped around her throat.
She sagged to the floor, lungs straining, knees buckling under her. Her vision swam in and out as she fought for breath.
From the rafters, something dropped. Red eyes flared in the dark. It moved with a slow, jerking shuffle, the sound of brittle joints grinding with each step.
Horror rooted Lyra where she crouched. The air turned cold, sharp as ice against her skin. She caught the faint stink of rot thickening. Every instinct screamed to flee, but her battered body refused to move.