Chapter 76 - The First Chamber

The descent continued in haunted silence, boots striking warm metal in irregular rhythm as Group Three spiraled deeper into the breathing ruins. No one spoke about what had happened 400 meters above—about Andrew, about the executions, about the blood that had tried to hunt them like a living predator with predatory intelligence. The silence was heavy with processing trauma, with minds trying to reconcile the horror they'd witnessed with the need to keep moving, to keep surviving in a place that wanted them dead or transformed into something worse than dead.