And she went somewhere she shouldn’t have.
I kneel, breath tight, chest burning with something too close to panic. My fingers slide into the thin gap beside the board, and even before I lift it, I know what’s waiting underneath.
I lift.
Cold air blasts up from the dark — wet, old, heavy. It smells of stone soaked in blood long washed away.
A tunnel yawns below me, the steps disappearing into blackness.
My heart slams once — hard enough to make my vision pulse.
“Of course.”
Of course, she came down here.Of course she went chasing ghosts and secrets and whatever the hell she’s hiding behind those big, wounded eyes.Of course, she walked straight into Giovanni’s graveyard of sins like she’s immune to the monsters that live in the dark.
I grip the edge of the opening, leaning over the pit.
The darkness stares back at me — thick, impenetrable. A living thing. A warning.
My pulse thunders.She’s down there.Alone.Untrained.Unarmed.Being hunted.
I feel it — a wrongness in the air, a vibration under my skin, the echo of something violent moving through the tunnels beneath my feet. Something close. Something closing in.
My jaw locks.
No hesitation.No prayer.No thought.
Just movement.
I swing my legs into the opening and drop onto the first step; the chill sinks instantly into my bones like a threat. The candlelight above flickers, stretching my shadow down the narrow passage as if it’s trying to warn me back.
Too late.
“You should’ve stayed in your room,” I mutter, descending into the dark.
But that’s the problem with Pia.
She never fucking stays where it’s safe.And now the dark has her.
The Tunnels and the Trail of Fear
The tunnels hit me like a memory I spent years trying to bury — cold air thick with the taste of rusted secrets and old blood. The air sticks to your throat, reminding you what happened down here and who did it.
Giovanni built these tunnels as his kingdom beneath the kingdom.He trained us here.Beat us here.Made us into Rivas here.
And I fucking swore I’d never walk them again.
But Pia is somewhere in the dark.
So I walk.
The lantern swings with each step, its light carving jagged shapes into the stone walls — shadows that lurch and twist like they’re alive. The floor is uneven, dust shifting beneath my boots as if the earth itself doesn’t want me here.
It smells of damp stone.Old sins.And something sharper — adrenaline, fear, maybe hers.
I move fast. Too fast. My pulse is a drumbeat in my throat, pushing me forward even when my training screams slow down, breathe, think.
I can’t think.Not when she’s down here.
