The line jerks harder. Painfully so. It feels like my leg is going to slip out of the hip socket. I whimper in pain, trying to hold that and my panic at bay.
I slide closer to the creature. Its body is still partially buried in the tunnel wall, pushing forward with relentless precision. He moves faster.
One step.
Two.
Then he grabs the filament wrapped around my ankle. He wraps his hand around it and pulls. Hard.
The tension spikes instantly, the line vibrating under the strain. The creature reacts, not with sound, not with aggression, but with adjustment.
Its head tilts. Recalculates.
That’s all we get. He twists, pulling sharp and violently. The filament snaps sideways, scraping against the rock edge of the choke point and catches. The line jerks tight at a new angle and the creature pulls against him.
The rock holds for a second. That’s all it takes. Kaelreth moves, stepping between me and it, forcing the angle tighter and wrapping the line around the jagged edge of the stone instead of letting it run clean.
“Don’t move,” he says.
I don’t. I can’t if I want to. The tension shifts again.
The creature pulls. The rock resists. The line strains and something in the tunnel above us cracks loud and sharp. Dust rains down. A fracture spreads across the ceiling, splitting outward from where the creature forced its way in. My pulse spikes.
“Kaelreth—”
“Hold.”
The command cuts through the surging adrenaline. I’m not calm, more terrified to the point of freezing. The creature pulls and the rock gives, just a little.
The line jerks violently, tightening around my ankle, dragging me another inch forward, then the ceiling collapses.
Stone crashes between us and it, slamming into the space where the creature’s body is forcing through, pinning part of it in place. The line goes slack. Then tight again.
Then—nothing.
The pressure releases all at once. I’m free.
I gasp, scrambling back. Kaelreth grabs me, pulling me away from the choke point. He lifts and holds me against his side, carrying me deeper into the tunnel. The dust thickens and the sound of shifting stone fills the space.
The creature doesn’t scream or thrash, but I feel it moving. Still trying. Still coming.
“We didn’t stop it,” I say, breath shaking now.
“No,” he says, not slowing or looking back.
He tightens his grip on me and swings me around front, carrying me deeper into the dark. Away from the collapse. Away from the thing that’s still trying.
“It’s not done.”
“No.”
And neither are we.
He sets me onto my feet, quickly assessing me with a single look. I nod that I can do this, and then we are moving, heading deeper into the tunnel. His grip is firm enough that I don’t question or fight it. I don’t think about anything except keeping up.
The air is thick with dust. The sound of shifting rock chases us down the passage, like it’s tracking us.
My lungs burn. Every breath comes sharper than the last, my legs not fully recovered from before. From him, from everything that we were—no. Not now. Focus.
