The claws closed in, their bone tips gleaming like knives.
"Run!" Astro grabbed my hand and pulled, his grip desperate and bruising.
We ran. Not toward the sealed door. Not toward the walls sprouting death. Deeper. Into the Den's core where shadows gathered thick enough to hide in, thick enough to taste.
Behind us, I heard Ori scrambling out of his broken cage, metal scraping against bone. His footsteps pounded after us, uneven and panicked.
The claws lashed out. One caught my shoulder, tearing through fabric and skin with a sound like ripping canvas. Pain flared hot and immediate but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
Astro pulled me around a corner I hadn't seen before. A passage that appeared in the bone wall like the Den had opened a mouth to let us in, wet and dark.
Or to swallow us whole.
