The corridor ahead narrowed into a vaulted throat of stone. The air shifted—cooler, damper. A mineral tang coated the back of her tongue.

  Miri didn’t trust the silence.

  They tightened instinctively—Fen front, shield angled; Tamsin drifting left for line of sight; Tony low and prowling; Miri just off Fen’s right shoulder where she could see and move.

  They took a few careful steps forward.

  The wall to their right bulged.

  “Fen—” Miri started.

  The stone ruptured.

  A creature tore through it in a spray of powdered rock — long, low, plated in segmented stone like overlapping geometric shields. Too many limbs. No visible eyes and a mouth full of razor teeth.

  It hit Fen full-force and the impact boomed through the corridor.

  Stone Skin flared just as its jaws clamped onto his shield. Sparks spat where teeth scraped reinforced metal.

  “Got it,” Fen grunted.

  The thing didn’t roar. It vibrated.

  The sound thrummed through the floor, up Miri’s legs, into her ribs.

  Tony launched for its exposed flank. Claws found purchase between plates. The creature twisted unnaturally, hind limbs scrabbling against stone.

  “Tamsin!” Miri snapped.

  Wind gathered in a tight spiral around Tamsin’s arrow. She loosed.

  The shot struck center mass and skidded off.

  “Underside!” Tamsin adjusted instantly.

  The monster reared, trying to drag Fen sideways toward the wall it had breached, which was closing.

  “Not there,” Miri muttered as she darted in.

  Her blade flared bright as she slashed along a seam where two plates overlapped. This time she felt it—resistance giving way, not much, but enough.

  Fen shifted his weight deliberately. “Now,” he breathed.

  He pivoted hard.

  Tremor Pulse detonated from beneath his boots.

  The shockwave cracked outward through the corridor, destabilizing the creature’s stance just long enough—

  Tony hit it like a thrown anvil and the beast slammed sideways. Its pale underbelly flashed.

  “Now!” Miri shouted.

  Tamsin’s second arrow punched clean into the exposed joint beneath its forelimb.

  Miri drove forward, reinforcing her blade and stabbing deep into the gap she’d carved earlier.

  Arc Bolt discharged point-blank into the wound and the creature convulsed.

  Fen ripped his shield free and brought it down like a guillotine against the fractured seam.

  Stone plates shattered. The vibration stuttered.

  Stopped.

  [ You have defeated Stone Stalker Lv? ]

  For one ragged breath, none of them moved. Then—

  The floor dropped.

  Not all of it.

  Just the center.

  Stone vanished in a rectangular slice beneath Miri and Fen.

  “Left!” Tamsin barked.

  Sidestep. The world shifted half a body-width and Miri landed hard on solid stone instead of open air.

  Fen wasn’t as lucky. His back foot caught the edge as the section fell away. He lurched forward, barely catching himself with his shield before pitching into the darkness below.

  Tony sprang—

  He hit Fen full in the shoulder and drove him sideways just as the rest of the stone sheared loose.

  The slab fell. Gone.

  A chasm yawned where the corridor had been.

  Tamsin grabbed Miri’s collar and hauled her back another step as the opposite wall shuddered.

  A second rupture, from behind them this time.

  “Move!” Fen barked.

  Another Stone Stalker burst from the closing wall, smaller but faster.

  No formation this time. No anchor.

  It lunged for Tamsin.

  Tony intercepted midair, slamming into it with enough force to rattle teeth. They crashed against the narrowing corridor.

  The ceiling began descending.

  “Forward!” Miri shouted. They had seconds.

  Fen planted himself between the creature and the narrowing passage ahead, shield up.

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  “Go!”

  Tamsin ducked under his arm and sprinted. Miri followed. Tony disengaged at the last possible instant and bounded after them.

  Fen was last.

  The ceiling dropped another foot. The corridor behind them collapsed entirely, sealing shut with a thunderous finality.

  Fen dove, the ceiling scraped his shield as he rolled through. Stone slammed down inches behind his boots.

  Darkness swallowed the passage. The second creature was gone, the echo of its earlier vibration lingering in the air.

  They stood in a new chamber now—longer, narrower—beathing hard with pulses hammering in ears.

  For half a second, it looked like they’d won.

  Then the floor lurched.

  The entire corridor shifted with a grinding roar, one side dropping hard and fast.

  “Brace—!” Fen shouted.

  Too late. Stone beneath Miri’s boots angled sharply and she lost purchase. Her stomach flipped as it moved in a direction that wasn’t forward anymore.

  She slid. Hands clawing for friction. Boots skidding uselessly on polished stone.

  “Tamsin!” she snapped.

  Fen moved without thinking.

  He caught Tamsin’s wrist just as the floor tipped away beneath her. Her boots left the ground but she didn’t fall — his grip locked around her forearm, shield arm braced against a protruding seam in the wall.

  The corridor split.

  A section of flooring detached entirely and dropped into darkness.

  Miri went with it. She hit the slanted stone once, twice, then vanished over the edge.

  “Miri!” Fen barked.

  Tony didn’t hesitate.

  He leapt into the darkness to find Miri.

  * * *

  Fen saw Miri fall. Tamsin felt it.

  The split in the floor. The sudden absence of weight beside her. The rush of displaced air as her friend fell away.

  She dropped to the edge and leaned over.

  “Miri—”

  Her voice vanished before it finished forming.

  No echo. No sound at all. The void swallowed it.

  For half a second something sharp and ugly rose in her chest.

  Not fear. Not yet.

  Something closer to anger. Her hand flattened against the stone lip.

  The cut was clean. Engineered. Controlled. Not random collapse.

  Measured.

  Good, she told herself.

  Measured means survivable.

  Fen was breathing too fast beside her. She could see it in the rise of his shoulders even if she couldn’t hear it.

  “She would have rolled,” he said.

  Tamsin nodded once. “Yes. Tony went to protect her.” And then she stood. “We move.”

  Side by side they continued down the corridor until—

  Light extinguished.

  Sound severed.

  The world narrowed to pressure and skin.

  She blindly reached for Fen’s hand, wrapping her fingers around his wrist.

  Tamsin did not panic, she cataloged.

  Boot on stone. Fen’s wrist under her fingers. Air on her face.

  She exhaled deliberately and felt the way the air moved across her lips.

  There.

  Even stripped of sound and sight, air still existed. It always did.

  She stepped forward, pulling gently on Fen’s wrist, and he followed.

  The air ahead of them bent. Subtle, but wrong.

  She shifted half a step left, pulling Fen with her.

  Something heavy displaced the air where his head had been a heartbeat before.

  She didn’t hear it strike, but she felt the vacuum in its wake.

  Good.

  It was predictable, not chaos… just structure disguised as chaos.

  She guided him in increments. Small adjustments, never more than necessary. Never wide. If she overcorrected, she would trigger something else.

  A change in floor texture brushed under her boot.

  Raised edge. Plate.

  Tamsin stopped.

  The vibration traveled up through her leg before the trap triggered.

  She shoved Fen forward and angled her body toward the incoming pressure. Impact struck her hip instead of his spine, pain bloomed hot and sharp. She absorbed it without sound and recentered herself.

  The air shifted again. Secondary mechanism.

  She dropped her weight lower and pulled Fen down with her. Something sliced above them, close enough that she felt it part the air over her scalp.

  Her pulse hammered — not from fear but from calculation. She adjusted her breathing, shallow and steady.

  Air flowed differently near edges. Different near drops, near moving components.

  The maze breathed. She listened with her skin.

  Three steps forward. Pause.

  Air thinning ahead.

  Tamsin extended her boot. Nothing.

  Drop.

  She pulled Fen back before his weight committed. The void below exhaled faintly upward.

  Deep.

  She angled right, where the air curled, brushing along her cheekbone.

  Wall. Safe.

  Fen’s hand tightened around her forearm when something struck his back. She felt the shock travel through him. Blood scent reached her a heartbeat later.

  He stayed upright.

  Good.

  She didn’t waste time checking the wound. Movement first. Survival first.

  They took another hit—this one shallow, slicing along her thigh. Warmth spread under leather. Pain registered, but it was irrelevant.

  Tamsin kept moving. If she stopped to feel it, she would slow. If she slowed, the maze would punish.

  The corridor narrowed. Air compressed. Ceiling low.

  She flattened her palm against stone and felt vibration.

  Not a trap, just machinery resetting behind them.

  Good.

  The air ahead widened suddenly.

  Tamsin stepped forward and light detonated back into existence, sound crashed down around them.

  Fen swore. She did not.

  She looked down at the blood on her thigh, then checked Fen’s back, soaked dark with blood.

  Both breathing. Both upright.

  Miri was not here. Tony was not here.

  For one fraction of a second, the anger returned. Hotter this time.

  Then she locked it away.

  Alive, she told herself.

  Controlled descent. Ten feet. Tony would have adjusted midair. Miri would have shielded if needed.

  Alive.

  Above them, applause.

  She didn’t look up. She took a healing draught and drank without breaking eye contact with Fen.

  Warmth spread. Skin sealed. Pain dulled.

  “We move,” she said.

  No tremor. No doubt. Not because she wasn’t afraid, but because fear would be dealt with later.

  Right now, there was only structure.

  And she would find it.