The sound returned—a slow, bone-deep thud echoing through the stone like a heartbeat.
Once.
Twice.
Then silence.
Kieran stopped in his tracks, breath held. The girl had already gone still. Her hand rested on the wall, fingers spread, feeling.
"It's changing again," she said.
The walls trembled—not violently, but with the subtle, skin-crawling certainty of something alive. Stone cracked quietly, corridors rearranged themselves just out of sight. A passage that led forward a moment ago now bent sideways into shadow.
Kieran's skin prickled.
"How big is this place?" he asked, barely above a whisper.
"There's no map. The field doesn't just move—it listens. Learns."
"Learns what?"
"Fear. Patterns. Weakness."
A distant scream cut through the fog. Short. Choked. Then gone.
Neither of them moved toward it.
They kept walking.
This time, the girl let Kieran move beside her. The silence between them wasn't hostile—it was the silence of caution, of people who knew too much could be a trap.
They came to a large archway veiled in tangled roots, and the girl drew her blade again.
"You go first," she said.
Kieran raised a brow. "Why me?"
"To see if it eats you."
He stared at her. Her face gave nothing away.
"I'm kidding," she added. "Sort of."
Kieran rolled his eyes and stepped forward—slow, careful. The vines around the arch pulsed faintly, as if breathing. But they didn't move. Not yet.
Beyond the arch lay a new section of the field—wide, circular, with a broken statue in the center. Once, it must have stood tall and proud. Now it was fractured, crumbling, half-buried in moss. Something about its face—or the pieces left of it—stirred unease in Kieran.
Eyes gouged out. Mouth sealed shut.
A warning? Or a punishment?
The girl crouched beside one of the fallen chunks, tracing her fingers across a faint engraving.
"This place is older than the academy," she murmured. "They built the school around it—not the other way around."
"How do you know that?"
"I read."
He gave her a look. "You read about this?"
She stood. "You'd be surprised what they bury in the restricted sections of the library."
Before Kieran could press further, a low groan echoed through the circle. The fog thickened, curling downward like a waterfall. Shapes emerged—not walking, but dragging.
Figures.
At least six.
Students.
All limping. Eyes unfocused. Movements twitchy, jerky—wrong.
Kieran instinctively stepped back. "What's wrong with them?"
"Trapped too long," the girl said, already gripping her blade. "Some parts of the field don't kill you. They... hollow you."
"Are they dead?"
"They're not human anymore."
One of the twisted students turned its head toward Kieran. Its mouth hung open, jaw loose. Something black dripped from its lips—thick, like oil.
They moved as one.
"Run," she said.
They did.
Down another corridor, under fallen beams, past slanted halls that smelled of ash. The corrupted students followed in silence, feet scraping like nails on stone.
Kieran stumbled over a root and nearly fell—the girl caught him by the collar and yanked him upright.
"No slowing down. Not now."
"How do we stop them?"
"We don't. We get out of this sector."
She pulled him through a narrow crevice, barely wide enough for them to squeeze through. Behind them, the corrupted forms slammed against the walls, shrieking—too wide to fit.
They kept moving until the screams faded.
Only when the sound was gone did they slow. Kieran collapsed onto a cracked ledge, gasping.
"What were they?"
"Failures," she said quietly. "The field leaves echoes. Some are stronger than others."
Kieran stared at the fog. It never stopped moving. "How many more echoes are waiting for us?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she looked up—to the sky beyond the broken ceiling. Somewhere far above, a jagged silhouette rose: the tower, barely visible through the shifting mist.
"We're getting close," she said.
But Kieran wasn't sure that was a good thing.