“The walls will crush. The air will leech you. And if that fails, the screaming will finish the work.”
He clapped once. The sound cracked through the tunnel like a rib snapping underfoot.
I flinched. Salvatore stiffened beside me.
“Most of you die here,” the guard hissed, lips peeling back. “When you fall, you become the road. They’ll crawl over you. Your blood will oil their knees. Your teeth will splinter beneath their hands.”
A shiver ran through me like wire drawn through bone.
From the edges of the chamber, more shapes slid forward—men or something close to men. Bronze greaves dulled by grime. Goat-hide armor slick with filth. Eyes glazed like river stones. Spears pressed against our backs—cold, inevitable. They herded us forward.
Into the throat.
This corridor was narrower, carved from wet limestone. The walls sweated; the air reeked of mold and pitch. It swallowed sound and flame alike. Darkness clung like oiled leather lined with volcanic glass. Fragments of clay tablets crunched beneath our shackled feet—names of the condemned, shattered into dust.
Then a voice ahead—huge, hungry—rolled through the dark?—
“This is your first taste. Your first gauntlet. You will crawl. You will scream. You will break. And if fortune favors you…”
A pause.
“The bastard at your side binds your fate. If he stumbles, you go down with him. If he dies, you carry him. You will drag his weight through every chamber that follows until your own skin strips away in ribbons.”
The laughter that followed split open like thunder inside the pit—wild, feverish, exalting. It echoed until it no longer sounded human at all.
Then the crowd surged—not as men, but as meat.
Limbs flailed, slick with sweat and grime from weeks of labor. Panic moved us where thought could not. Elbows jabbed. Chains rattled. Bare feet slipped through filth. We were no longer human—just bodies pressed into motion, one breathing carcass forced forward.
The air curdled into a stew of breath and carnage, thick enough to chew.
Blood, piss, bile, and smoke churned together until breathing felt like drowning.
The stench grew aware of itself.
Urine. Vomit. Decay.
It didn’t just cling—it crawled. It moved between us, slid beneath our tongues, crept into our lungs. The air itself was a parasite.
Behind me, someone gagged—a full-bodied heave—and then the wet slap of vomit struck my back. Hot, sour, viscous. It rolled down my spine like glue, reeking of bile and despair.
Salvatore muttered a curse, his voice little more than a rasp.
I bent double, my stomach convulsing. Nothing came but a dry wheeze, like death trying to clear its throat.
Then Salvatore’s leg gave out.
The chain snapped tight.
A brutal jerk.
Pain shot through my knees as I was dragged sideways into him.
He hit the wall first—shoulder meeting stone with a crack that made my teeth ache. I crashed into the sludge coating the floor.
Salvatore gasped. The sound came shallow, frantic—like a man drowning on dry land. His chest hitched with every breath, the noise of it a rattle that spoke of endings.
Maybe the guards were right.
