They smell it before they see it — the bridge that the hush built from all who thought they could outrun it. The tunnels open like a mouth of damp stone, and beyond the drop yawns wide and bottomless.
A single span arcs across: vertebrae locked together, rib cages spliced for railing, femurs lined like planks underfoot. It creaks with a breathless groan when the braid girl tests it with her boot. Rafi grips her wrist before she can take another step, but she shrugs him off — there's nowhere else to go but down, and down is worse than across.
The abyss beneath is a lung for the hush: it exhales old air so stale it tastes of bones and rot. Shapes drift far below, too big to be bugs, too soft to be real. Rafi stares until his eyes swim and the chasm seems to grin up at him.
The braid girl starts first, toes balanced on spine-bone, braid swinging like a bell rope behind her. She never glances down — just watches him over her shoulder, daring him to follow or die here alone.
Halfway across, the hush tests them.
A tremor quivers through the rib-rails. One snaps behind Rafi's heel. He freezes, arms spread, the way he used to balance on broken playground swings when the world still made sense. A groan rolls up the bridge's bones.
He looks at her — braid girl, already crouched ahead, palm flat on the ribs like she can soothe the hush's hunger if she's gentle enough. She gestures sharply: keep moving.
Rafi forces his feet to obey. He thinks of his mother's hands washing his hair, his father's laugh cracking like thunder. He thinks of the hush wanting those memories to turn to stone mouths, and rage cuts through the fear.
Step by step, they inch forward.
Below, shadows swim faster — drawn by the scent of their heartbeat drumming on bone.
Halfway becomes two-thirds. Two-thirds becomes almost.
Then the hush whispers — not in the air but inside Rafi's skull: Wouldn't it be easier to fall? It would catch you. It would keep you warm.
He almost believes it — until he sees her hand, stretched back for him. Real skin, real blood. He grips her wrist with every scrap of faith he has left.
Together, they stagger off the last rib cage and land on solid tunnel stone. Behind them, the bridge sighs and sags lower, a tired spine folding into the dark.
They don't look back.
Ahead waits the Hollowed Kin — and the truth about how lost children become the hush's bones.