The cavern breathed.
It was the only word Kai could find for it, the only frame his mind could wrap around the impossible rhythm of the place. With each blink, the obsidian walls seemed to shift and sigh, as though the stone itself were inhaling the sulfur-thick air and exhaling it back in gusts of heat and whispering echoes.
Shadows moved in slow spirals across the slick rock, curling like sentient vines, and veins of quartz pulsed dimly, in time with that strange, steady breath. It wasn't alive—not in any natural sense he recognized—but it wasn't dead either. Something ancient stirred here, something aware. It knew they were here. It watched.
At the chamber's heart, fire twisted in silence. Not the reds and oranges of a camp or hearth, but something unclean, unnerving—emerald flames that licked the stale air with unnatural grace. It reminded Kai of spring turned sour, of envy incarnate, of life devoured and regurgitated.
