The spiral staircase twisted like the throat of an ancient beast, narrow and stifling. The stone walls scraped Auren's shoulders as he stormed up each step, Jasper slung across his shoulder like dead weight. Meredith kept pace just behind, her breath coming out in sharp, desperate pulls, each step threatening to buckle beneath the pounding urgency.
The creature's roars reverberated through the stone, a guttural symphony of fury, making their skin crawl with cold tendrils of fear.
Suddenly, a sickening crunch echoed from below—stone tearing, bones snapping. Auren felt the vibrations lurch through the staircase. He didn't need to look back to know: it had breached the passage.
"We need to move faster."
Meredith's voice cut through the chaos with forced calm, though her widened eyes and white-knuckled grip on the wall betrayed her terror. This was, after all, something neither of them had faced before.
