For a few fragile seconds, there was peace.
The walls stopped trembling. The red light that had saturated everything dimmed into a faint ember glow. I could hear my own breath again, ragged and shallow, but human.
Maya sat against the wall, cradling Ethan's head in her lap. "He's burning up," she whispered. "But he's breathing."
I crouched beside them, scanning the chamber. The runes still glowed faintly, their light flickering like dying fireflies. The massive heart in the center beat sluggishly, each pulse slow and irregular.
It should have felt like victory. But it didn't.
The silence had weight—too heavy, too deliberate. Like the mansion was holding its breath, listening.
Then came the first creak.
A distant groan rippled through the chamber, echoing from somewhere deep below. The ground shifted slightly beneath us. Dust trickled from the ceiling.
Maya's head snapped up. "Arlen?"
I held my breath. Another sound followed—the unmistakable rhythm of footsteps. Not human ones. Heavy. Wet. Too many legs.
"No…" I muttered. "It's waking up again."
The veins along the walls began to twitch, light pulsing through them like blood through arteries. The heartbeat quickened, stronger with each second.
Ethan's eyes fluttered open. "You shouldn't have done that," he rasped. "You made it remember."
"Remember what?" Maya asked, panic creeping into her voice.
He looked at her, and for a moment, his expression was almost pity. "That it isn't trapped here. We are."
The chamber shuddered. The bone spire split open, releasing a torrent of black fluid that cascaded down the walls. From within the fluid, limbs began to emerge—arms, claws, faces twisted in perpetual agony.
Maya screamed. I grabbed her and Ethan both, dragging them toward the exit tunnel. The floor buckled beneath us, tendrils lashing out like whips. One caught my shoulder and tore through the fabric, leaving a stinging welt that pulsed in time with the mansion's heart.
We stumbled through the tunnel, the walls closing in, the heartbeat pounding so loud it felt like it came from inside my own chest.
Ethan stumbled but forced himself forward. "It's calling the rest of itself," he gasped. "The lower chambers—the roots. They're waking too."
Maya's flashlight flickered violently. "Roots? What do you mean roots?"
"This isn't a house," he said weakly. "It's a body. It grows. Every wall, every room—it's part of it."
The tunnel around us began to convulse, the walls squeezing inward like a contracting throat. I pushed ahead, ignoring the burning in my lungs.
We reached a junction where the passage split into three. The one behind us collapsed completely, sealing off our escape with a wet crunch.
Maya looked to me, wild-eyed. "Which way?"
Before I could answer, Ethan lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the left. "That way. I can… feel it. There's something deeper. It's where the thoughts come from."
"The thoughts?"
"The mind," he said faintly. "If we can reach it, maybe we can make it stop dreaming."
It sounded insane—but then again, everything about this place was insanity given form.
The heartbeat quickened again, this time angry. The floor buckled, throwing us forward. Ethan fell hard, coughing blood. The veins on his skin glowed brighter, almost burning through.
Maya knelt beside him. "He can't go on—"
"We don't have a choice!" I snapped, pulling him up. "If we stop, it wins."
We stumbled into the left passage, the heat unbearable now. The air shimmered with energy, the walls alive and breathing. Every few feet, we passed what looked like remnants of other travelers—shattered gear, torn clothing, a half-crushed skull.
Maya's voice was trembling. "How many people has it taken?"
"Enough to build itself," Ethan murmured. "Every life feeds its mind. Every death becomes another wall."
We pressed forward until the tunnel opened into a new space—a vertical shaft, descending into darkness. In the center, a spiral of flesh and bone wound downward like a staircase carved from ribs.
Maya stared at it, horrified. "We're supposed to go down that?"
The air pulsed once more, and the walls whispered in unison—hundreds of voices, chanting our names.
There was no going back.
I looked at Maya, then at Ethan—half-conscious, pale, but still breathing. "If that thing below really is its brain," I said, "then we end this there."
She nodded once, tears streaking down her face. "Then let's finish this nightmare."
We stepped onto the bone spiral, the heart's echo fading behind us as we descended into the mind of the mansion itself—where every secret, every memory, and every soul it had devoured waited for us in the dark.