My footsteps rang too loudly.
Each step I took echoed through the glass cave, sharp and brittle, like I was walking through the inside of a crystal bell. The sound bounced off the walls and came back wrong, delayed, distorted, and sometimes overlapping itself. It felt as if the cave was listening, memorizing the rhythm of my movement, committing it to some vast, unseen ledger.
I slowed.
The echoes didn't stop; they continued and continued, the sound traveling far into the beyond through the cave.
They kept going, repeating my steps long after my foot had already settled. I clenched my jaw and continued forward anyway, forcing myself not to look too closely at the walls. They shimmered faintly, glass layered upon glass, polished smooth in some places and jagged in others, like frozen waves caught mid-crash.
The fog kept thickening.
At first it had only brushed my ankles, a low-lying haze that clung to the ground. Now it reached my knees.
