The beam stopped wavering. The red glow spread from the point of contact in an expanding circle, turning solid rock soft and workable. Blair’s face locked into pure concentration, droplets of sweat forming across her forehead despite the burns ravaging her left side. Her jaw could have been carved from iron.

The centipede smashed through something below us. Stone gave way with a sound like a building collapsing, and the entire crevasse shook. The walls ground together, rock scraping against rock in a chorus that sounded like the world breaking itself in half. Dust and debris rained down on us from above.

My ribs screamed. The rope bit into my shoulders. Blair’s weight pulled at the harness with renewed force as whatever the centipede had destroyed sent fresh vibrations up the wall.

"Any day now would be fantastic."

"Shut up."

The stone above us cracked. Not the earth-shattering collapse I’d been bracing for, but something more controlled. A fracture running through weakened rock, splitting where Blair had somehow read the thermal patterns underneath the surface. Pieces broke loose on the far side of the gap and fell away, tumbling down through empty air into whatever darkness waited beyond the crevasse.

The passage opened. Not by much, maybe another foot of clearance, but enough.

"Go," Blair said.

I didn’t argue. I wedged myself into the gap and climbed, scraping through the narrow passage on sheer determination and the knowledge that the alternative was becoming centipede food. The rock was still warm from Blair’s heat treatment, almost comfortable against my damaged ribs.

I emerged into a cave. Actual cave, with a ceiling that rose twenty feet overhead and walls that spread wide enough to contain a small house. Bioluminescent moss covered the surfaces in patches, casting everything in pale blue light that made the space feel like the inside of an aquarium.

I twisted around and shoved my arm back through the gap. "Your hand."

Blair’s fingers found mine. Her palm burned hot enough that my skin protested immediately, but I locked my grip and set my feet against the cave floor. She squeezed through the passage with her shoulders scraping stone, more fabric tearing from her tactical suit, and then she tumbled out and we both hit the cave floor in a tangle of limbs and desperate breathing.

The centipede screamed below. The sound bounced up through the crevasse and filled the cave with fury, but it couldn’t reach us anymore. The gap was too narrow, the stone too thick, the monster too big to follow.

We’d actually made it.

I spent about thirty seconds flat on my back, staring at the glowing moss on the ceiling and processing the fact that I was still breathing. My mana read seven percent. My health status occupied the uncomfortable space between "moderate concern" and "you should absolutely see a doctor." Everything hurt in ways I hadn’t known were possible, joints and muscles I didn’t remember having all registering their complaints simultaneously.

Blair lay next to me with her breathing slowly evening out from ragged gasps to something more controlled. Her red hair sprawled across the stone in a messy tangle. Her ice-blue eyes studied the same ceiling I was looking at.

"Monroe."

"Yeah."

"Thank you for not dying."

"I’m pretty invested in that outcome myself."

She laughed. Just a small sound, exhausted and surprised and nothing like the cruel amusement she used as a weapon at the academy. This laugh was real. Almost fragile. Like something she’d forgotten she could do.

The centipede hit the crevasse again and the cave shuddered around us.

Cracks spread across the ceiling. Dust rained down in streams that turned the bioluminescent light hazy and obscured. The stone above us groaned with the kind of structural protest that meant imminent collapse.

My fingers closed around Blair’s wrist for the second time today, and I pulled us both upright. The cave’s far opening showed another passage cutting deeper into whatever bizarre geology existed inside Void Gates. We sprinted.

Behind us, the ceiling collapsed in sequence. Massive stone slabs crashed down where we’d just been standing, each impact destabilizing the sections around it. The destruction spread through the cavern like dominoes, a chain reaction of architectural failure that chased our heels.

A crack in the wall materialized ahead, maybe two feet high, running horizontally into darkness. Too small to stand. Barely enough room to squeeze through. The only shelter available as the entire cave tried to crush us.

I pushed Blair toward the gap and threw myself after her.

We slammed together in the cramped space as the world came apart. Stone smashed against the opening. Dust flooded every available surface. The noise transcended sound and became something physical, a pressure wave that beat against my skull and made my teeth ache and turned thought into a luxury I couldn’t afford.

The bombardment continued for what felt like hours and was probably thirty seconds. Each impact sent vibrations through the stone we’d pressed ourselves against. Each crack and boom promised that the next hit would be the one that sealed us in permanently.

My body covered Blair’s. Not by choice, just by necessity. The space was too small for any other configuration. My chest compressed against hers. My face ended up somewhere near her shoulder. Her arms wrapped around my back, fingers digging into the fabric of my hunter gear.

We stayed like that, locked together and trying not to move while the Gate did its best to murder us through blunt force trauma and burial.

Then silence.

Complete and total silence, broken only by our breathing and the settling of debris outside our improvised shelter.

The crevasse we’d crawled into was approximately the size of a coffin built for two people who really liked each other. The ceiling pressed down maybe eighteen inches above the floor. The walls squeezed in on both sides until my shoulders touched stone no matter which way I turned.

And Blair Davenport was directly beneath me.