Burning Beneath

The ground gave way, and Sam plunged into a void so deep it felt endless.

But she wasn’t falling fast.

She was being pulled.

The air thickened, clinging to her skin like cold oil, and the glow from the fractured ground above shrank until it was nothing but a flicker, then gone.

Darkness consumed everything.

Then—impact.

But it wasn’t harsh.

She landed on something soft, something breathing.

The ground pulsed beneath her, warm and alive, like she was standing on the chest of something enormous, slumbering just below the surface.

The air smelled different here. Damp, metallic, and laced with something sharp and electric.

A low hum vibrated in her bones, like a distant storm gathering strength.

She stood slowly, eyes adjusting to the dim light that began to bleed through the dark.

Ahead of her stretched a maze—towering walls of black stone, slick with moisture, pulsing faintly like veins under skin. The path split endlessly in all directions, each corridor twisting unnaturally, bending in ways that defied logic.

The walls weren’t still.

They shifted.

Slowly, deliberately.

As if the maze itself was alive, waiting for her to make the first move.

Far off in the distance, a sound echoed—metal dragging against stone.

Not chasing.

Leading.

Her instincts stirred again, urging her forward.

But this place wasn’t meant to be solved.

It was meant to consume.

Somewhere deep within the maze, that fractured figure with the mask—her darker self—was moving too.

But it wasn’t hunting her.

It was guiding her.

Toward the center, where something even older and far more dangerous was waiting.

Something that wasn’t just a reflection of her mind—
It was the source of it.