CHAPTER 1434: STORY 1434: THE WAITING BELOW

The silence was worse than the noise. Mira felt it in her throat, a pressure that made swallowing feel dangerous, as if the air itself had weight. Even their footsteps seemed smothered, each sound clipped short.

They moved quickly through the broken arcade, past collapsed market stalls where wooden beams jutted like the ribs of long-dead animals. Elena kept glancing over her shoulder, her jaw tight. Every time her eyes flicked toward the plaza, Mira caught the faint pulse of red light reflecting in them.

“Don’t look back,” Elena muttered. “It’s like a snake—it freezes before it strikes.”

Mira wanted to believe it was just her companion’s paranoia, but she’d felt it too: the sense that the silence wasn’t absence—it was focus.

They slipped into a narrow street lined with shattered windows. Inside the buildings, shapes shifted in the dim—shadows that moved without bodies, drifting along the walls. Mira tried not to stare, but one of them paused mid-slide and turned toward her. Its outline swelled, pressing outward from the plaster like something trapped behind paper.

The voice in her head was faint now, but still there.

Child of the wound... the gate stirs.

Mira clenched her teeth. “It’s talking again.”

“Then stop listening,” Elena snapped, though her tone wasn’t cruel—just desperate.

They reached a fork in the street. To the left, the cobblestones were buckled and cracked, steaming faintly. To the right, the road dipped under an old stone bridge where the shadows pooled thickest.

Before they could decide, the first tremor hit.

It wasn’t like the earlier ones—this was sharp, fast, a shudder that came from directly beneath them. A deep crack echoed down the street, followed by a wet, dragging sound.

From the direction of the plaza came a slow, rhythmic pounding. It was too heavy to be footsteps, too deliberate to be random collapse. Each beat sent a ripple through the ground, shaking dust from the eaves above them.

Elena grabbed Mira’s sleeve. “We take the bridge—cover might give us a chance.”

They sprinted toward the shadowed archway. The pounding grew louder. Somewhere behind them, stone split with a deafening snap. A gust of hot air chased them, carrying the metallic stink of scorched earth.

Under the bridge, the darkness was almost tangible. Mira’s eyes adjusted just enough to see that the far end was blocked by rubble—no way through.

“We’ll climb over,” Elena said, already scrambling up the pile.

Mira followed, but halfway up, her foot slipped into a gap between two stones. Something cold closed around her ankle.

She froze.

It wasn’t a hand—it was smaller. Multiple thin digits, jointed in too many places, wrapping in perfect unison. They tightened with a smooth, mechanical precision, pulling her downward into the rubble.

“Mira!” Elena reached down, grabbing her arm, but the grip from below was stronger, colder.

Then came the voice again—no longer faint.

The gate is hungry.

The rubble shifted beneath her. And somewhere far below, the waiting ended.