But the tunnel disagreed.
The walls around them suddenly constricted—
stiffening,
pulling inward,
the entire passage beginning to fold toward the center like a throat preparing to swallow.
The floor tilted.
The ceiling dropped.
Air pressure plunged.
Something deep in the beast's respiratory system was about to collapse.
The first hint of vacuum brushed their skin—
a cold, crushing emptiness rolling toward them—
The warning wasn't a sound.
It was the shift—
a sudden tightening in the living walls around them,
a tension gathering like a giant muscle drawing breath before a killing blow.
Then the entire passage lurched inward.
Not slowly.
Not by degrees.
It snapped shut—
like a colossal fist
closing around them
in a single violent clench.
The fleshy walls convulsed toward the center,
folding over each other in rippling waves,
muscle sliding over muscle in a grotesque, unstoppable crush.
The floor buckled upward.
The ceiling slammed down.
Space shrank in a heartbeat.
Caleb's boots skidded on the trembling ground.
Ethan braced an arm against a collapsing wall and felt it pulse under his palm,
hard as forged iron.
Marcus tightened his hold on Neol as the pressure knocked him sideways.
Then—
the air vanished.
Not leaking.
Not thinning.
It was sucked away so completely
that even the sound of their own gasping chests
was torn from their throats.
A silence so absolute it felt like drowning.
Caleb inhaled—
and nothing entered his lungs.
His throat seized.
His eyes bulged.
Ethan's body locked,
muscles fighting instinctively against the vacuum crushing his ribs inward.
Marcus opened his mouth to breathe,
but the void pressed against him like an invisible hand over his face,
forcing his lungs to collapse empty around Neol's limp body.
Damian felt the oxygen vanish before the others did.
The flame in his palm flickered—
thinned—
then went out in a single, pathetic sputter,
snuffed like a match in a hurricane.
No air.
No heat.
No fire.
The dark pressed in.
The walls kept contracting—
harder, faster—
the tube of flesh narrowing toward a single closing aperture,
its folds grinding against each other with wet, suffocating force.
Pressure screamed in their skulls.
Damian's vision blurred at the edges.
A high, synthetic ringing filled their ears as blood vessels strained.
Their chests convulsed—
instinct screaming to inhale—
but there was nothing left to breathe.
The world reduced to one sensation:
crushing, silent, total suffocation.
And then—
everything froze at the brink of collapse.