One Question Per Soul

Anaxarete's heels struck the stone like gunshots in the dark. "I'm going to throw that laughing brat into a cauldron," she hissed. The blackness around them wasn't just absence of light—it was hunger. There was a living thing pressing against their skin, damp and suffocating.

"Killian!" she barked. "Light this place up already!"

A flicker of gold sputtered in Killian's palm before guttering out. "I should be shining like a goddamn supernova," he snapped, his usual musical cadence sharp with unease. "But something's drinking the light."

Behind them, Jazz's chuckle slithered through the dark—low, rasping, the sound of a blade being drawn from a corpse.

"Not the time, Jazz," Anaxarete growled. "What's causing it to be absorbed? Magic? Void fog?"

"It's not magic," Chrono cut in, uncharacteristically grave. "It's the darkness itself. Knight-vampire—"

"I can't see," Jasper growled. "But I can hear..."

A pause. Then—

Breathing.

Not theirs.

Something vast.