Absolute darkness. Absolute chaos. The world was a symphony of destruction—the high-pitched shriek of tearing metal, the deep groan of shifting rock, the percussive slam of collapsing structures. Dust and debris rained down, and the floor bucked beneath them like a dying animal.
In the heart of the dead machine, Ethan fumbled in his pack, his hands acting on pure survival instinct. He pulled out the greasy, cloth-wrapped stick—the primitive boar-fat torch he had made in another lifetime. With a flick of his lighter, a single, defiant flame sputtered to life, casting dancing, monstrous shadows against the ruins of the futuristic corridor. It was a pathetic, primordial light against an apocalypse of technology.
The crystal in his pocket was now just a cold, dead stone. They were on their own.
"This way!" Ethan yelled, grabbing the travois. "The tunnel is caving in behind us!"
They scrambled through the labyrinthine service tunnels, their only guide the flickering torchlight. Passages they had used minutes before were now impassable piles of rubble. New chasms had been torn open in the floor, revealing terrifying drops into deeper darkness.
Amidst the cacophony of the collapse, a new sound emerged. It was a weak, distorted, electronic voice, stuttering from unseen speakers. The Librarian. Its once-commanding tone was now a broken, pathetic loop, filled with static.
"Error… System… cascade… failure… Error… Containment… breach…"
The god was dying, and its death throes were pulling down the mountain. The sound was not triumphant; it was horrifying.
They reached a dead end, the path ahead completely blocked by a wall of twisted conduits. To their right, a vertical service shaft plunged into blackness. The groaning from the ceiling above them intensified, threatening imminent collapse.
"It's the only way," Chloe said, her face grim in the torchlight. "Down."
There was no time to second-guess. Rigging their climbing rope to a thick, exposed beam, Ethan went first, rappelling into the abyss. Chloe followed, leaving Maya clipped to the rope on the travois. From below, the two of them hauled her down, a terrifying, dangling pendulum in the dark, as the world above them finally gave way in a deafening roar of final destruction.