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Chapter 28 - Chapter 28: Molecule By Molecule

Chapter — The Room That Wasn't (Rewrite, Part 1)

The silence pressed in on them like a wet cloth over the face. Tyke stood still, heart thudding, staring at the walls of the "room" that suddenly did not look like walls anymore.

They pulsed.

Not a trick of the shadows, not his imagination after too much fear and too little sleep. The surfaces—those gray-black slabs he had mistaken for stone—contracted in slow, meaty shivers, the way ribs move around a lung. He thought he saw veins, thick and sluggish, running beneath the surface.

The girl clutched his sleeve. Her fingers were freezing, but damp too, like she had dipped her hands into running water. "Tyke," she whispered. "It's… breathing."

He wanted to deny it, to laugh in her face, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The air stank of copper and wet mold. Each inhale they took seemed borrowed, as if the room allowed it, then drew it back from their chests.

"Great," Tyke said at last, forcing his voice into its usual drawl. "So we're not trapped in a room. We're trapped in… lungs. That's much better."

The girl didn't smile. She was pale, eyes wide, lips cracked.

A sound skittered through the chamber.

It wasn't footsteps. It was wetter than that, a dragging shuffle that clicked at odd intervals, like claws scrabbling on bone. Tyke's skin prickled. He turned slowly, dragging the girl with him, until he saw the first of them.

A husk.

It stumbled from the far corner, its body bent and loose, as if its bones had been rearranged by drunken hands. Its mouth hung open, slack, and something like saliva strung from jaw to chest. Its eyes were gone—nothing but pits filled with a dull gray shine.

Another husk followed. Then another. Their faces were familiar. Not personally, but in shape. People, once. Faces that might have laughed, or cursed, or kissed someone. Now reduced to these empty vessels, shuffling toward him with that low wet growl.

The girl clung tighter to him.

Tyke lifted his chin. "Well. I was just complaining the room was boring. Guess it heard me."

He shoved her behind him and bent to scoop a length of rusted iron from the ground—a rod, maybe part of the room's "furniture," though if the walls were alive, he didn't want to think what this had grown from. The weight was good. He gripped it like a bat.

The husks drew closer.

The girl whimpered, then stiffened. Her hand clutched at her side, where the wound had split her skin. Tyke had bound it earlier, crude and sloppy. Now the cloth was soaked, not red but silver.

Light seeped from her body.

Tyke saw it in the corner of his eye—a gleam that didn't belong in this place. He turned, startled.

Her blood glowed like mercury, bright enough to cast shadows across the living walls. The husks froze. Their mouths gaped wider, their bodies trembling. A shiver of hunger rolled through them.

"Oh no," Tyke muttered. "Don't you dare be interesting right now."

But it was too late.

The girl doubled over, gasping. Silver leaked between her fingers, streaming down her arm in bright rivulets. Each drop that struck the ground sizzled, burning into the living floor. The walls quivered in reply.

The husks screamed.

The sound ripped through the chamber, raw and animal, and they rushed forward in a frenzy.

Tyke swung the rod with both hands. It crunched into the first husk's skull, sending it collapsing in a twitching heap. Black-gray fluid leaked out, smoking where it touched the silver droplets.

"Stay behind me!" he barked, dragging the rod free.

"I—can't—" she gasped. She dropped to her knees, wracked with spasms. The glow spread up her neck, her veins becoming threads of light.

More husks poured from the walls, slithering out as if born from the flesh itself. Tyke's stomach churned, but he met them head-on, roaring, smashing the rod across skulls, shoulders, spines. Each impact jarred his arms to the bone, but he refused to let them reach her.

Behind him, her scream rose, high and thin, like metal being torn in half.

The silver spread further, crawling across her face now. Her eyes shone blindingly bright, every blink like a camera flash. She clawed at her own skin as if she could hold the glow in, but it only poured faster.

"I can't stop it!" she sobbed.

"You don't stop it," Tyke snarled, hurling another husk back into the wall. "You own it. You hear me? Whatever this is—make it yours before it eats you alive!"

The ground lurched beneath them. The walls convulsed in slow, greedy pulses, as if excited by the scent of her blood. Veins swelled, bulging outward. The chamber itself seemed to bend closer.

Tyke tightened his grip on the rod. His muscles screamed from fatigue. His mind raced with the obvious: they couldn't fight forever, not with her burning alive from the inside out. But there was nowhere else to run.

No doors. No escape. Only the Pit.

The iron rod slipped from Tyke's blistered hands and clanged against the floor, echoing like a dropped bone in a cavern. The sound drew every husk's attention at once. They snapped their heads toward him and the girl, their eyeless sockets glowing faintly, their jaws slack but drooling.

"Perfect," Tyke muttered through cracked lips, scrambling to retrieve the rod. His knuckles were raw, nails split from clawing at the living walls. He bent, snatched the rod, and whirled around just as the first husk hurled itself at him.

It struck like a dog leaping for a throat. Tyke swung the rod upward, shoving it between the husk's teeth, the metal jamming its jaw open. Hot black fluid poured across his forearm, burning into his skin like acid. He gagged at the stench. With a roar, he shoved the rod deeper, until the back of its head burst like a melon.

The corpse spasmed. Then the floor sucked it down, bones and all, reabsorbing it in seconds.

The girl whimpered behind him. "Tyke—it's not just them—it's the room. It wants—"

"I noticed!" he snapped, slamming the rod against another husk's skull. "Trust me, hard to miss the fact we're fighting inside a giant digestive tract!"

But the sarcasm rang hollow. His arms were trembling, shoulders aching with every swing. For each husk he smashed, three more dragged themselves free from the walls, as if the Pit itself spat them up on demand.

And the girl—she was no safer than him.

Her wound had burst completely. The crude cloth binding was gone, eaten by her own light. Silver streamed freely now, a river cutting through her ribs, her side, her legs. It poured onto the floor in glimmering puddles. The husks moaned whenever it touched them, not in pain, but in hunger.

Tyke risked a glance. His heart stuttered.

She was glowing brighter by the second, seams ripping through her skin like cracks in pottery. Her veins shone like molten wires. Her hair was lifting as if weightless, each strand bleaching white.

Her eyes locked on him, tears streaming down her face—silver tears that hissed on her cheeks. "I can't stop it," she sobbed. "It's taking me. I think—I think it's eating me from the inside."

He spat blood from a split lip. "Then spit it out. Spit it in its face. You're not a snack. You're—hell, I don't even know what you are—but you're not a meal!"

The husks screamed in unison, a chorus of hunger. They flung themselves against him, scraping, biting, tearing. His arms were shredded, his shirt in tatters, blood soaking his chest. The rod grew heavier, slicker. He swung until his shoulders threatened to rip from their sockets.

Still, more husks came.

Still, the glow grew.

The walls convulsed, ribs cracking, muscle knots bulging outward. The floor heaved, splitting to form a platform beneath the girl, raising her higher like a shrine offering. Tyke lunged after her, slashing through the swarm, skin blistering from her radiance.

"Don't you dare float off on me!" he bellowed, dragging himself onto the platform. His palms burned, the flesh peeling, but he clawed up anyway.

The girl arched her back, a scream ripping from her throat—though it was no longer just hers. Another voice, vast and ancient, echoed through her cry. The chamber roared back, veins bursting as if in applause.

Her body convulsed. Silver shot outward in jagged beams, slicing through husks, dismembering them instantly. Their bodies hit the ground twitching, only to melt into the floor and vanish.

Tyke shielded his eyes, teeth clenched against the searing light.

Her voice broke through the roar: "Run!"

He laughed, hoarse, desperate. "Run? Where? Into the wall's stomach lining? Yeah, sounds like a plan!"

The platform convulsed beneath them. Veins tightened like ropes, yanking her deeper into its grip. Tyke lunged, seizing her shoulders. Her flesh scorched his hands, but he didn't let go. His own skin began to blister, peel, crack—but he held tighter.

"Listen," he snarled into her glowing face, forcing her to look at him, "you don't leave me here, you hear? If you burn, I burn. End of story."

She sobbed, silver tears streaming. "Why? Why would you stay?"

He pressed his forehead to hers, even as the heat burned through his skin. "Because I don't run. Not from freaks. Not from pits. Not from you."

Her trembling steadied for just a moment. She lifted a glowing hand, seared his cheek with her touch, and whispered: "Then we die together."

The chamber screamed, louder than before.

The floor split down the center. The platform cracked like bone, shoving them both into the abyss. The rod tore free from Tyke's hands. His stomach lurched as gravity seized him, pulling them down into the Pit's gullet.

They fell.

The fall stretched into eternity.

Darkness whipped around them, full of shapes that weren't shapes, whispers that weren't words. Silver streamed from the girl's body, a trail of burning stars that carved the shadows apart. Each drop seared Tyke's skin, boiling his blood, but he clung to her anyway.

Her scream fractured, breaking into static. Sometimes it was her voice. Sometimes it was something else—something older, hungrier, using her throat as a conduit.

It hurts.

It wants me.

It wants you.

Tyke gritted his teeth, snarling against the wind of their fall. "Then it's got to choke on both of us."

The abyss opened wider below. He saw teeth—or maybe bones, or ribs sharpened into ridges. The Pit's throat yawned like a maw, eager to swallow.

Then they struck bottom.

The impact shattered him. His ribs cracked, his lungs collapsed, his skull split open. He felt his body fold like wet cloth. The girl remained clutched to him, her body incandescent, splitting apart with every breath.

Silver mist exploded outward. It devoured husks, walls, bone. The Pit shrieked, its anatomy thrashing in agony. Tyke could barely hear it through the ringing in his skull. He pressed his forehead to hers again, whispering through bloodied lips:

"Not bad for a room, huh?"

Her laugh broke in half, fragile, lost. Then her body burst—dissolving into silver mist that rushed into his lungs, his eyes, his heart.

He screamed silently as it burned through him, unraveling his thoughts, peeling his flesh, searing his bones. His body collapsed inward, pulled apart molecule by molecule.

Darkness pressed in.

And then—

A voice.

Smooth. Mocking. Amused. It came not from the Pit, not from the husks, but from inside his own head.

"Nice ability, huh?"

Tyke's last thoughts twisted into fury, confusion, terror. He knew that voice. He had always known it.

El Como.

The Pit fell silent. The girl was gone. Tyke was gone. Only the voice lingered, chuckling softly in the dark.

"Shame you didn't get to use it longer."

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