The fall finally began to shallow.
Not gently—nothing here did—but the rush of air shifted, pressure changing as the abyss widened into something closer to a floor than a fleshy vine.
Don and Starboy dropped side by side, bodies angled forward as they tore through the last stretch.
Vines lashed out from the walls, thicker here, heavier—one final span stretched from one end of the expanse to the other, corded and dense, pulsing faintly as it flexed.
Don didn't hesitate.
He clipped it with his shoulder first, tearing a channel through the surface, then finished it with a brutal follow-up—BOOM~—his fist ripping straight through the core.
The structure burst apart, green fluid spraying outward as the vine snapped and recoiled, chunks peeling away and falling with them.
Above, the chamber rumbled.
The drowned echo of Elliot's voice carried down through the shaft, broken by fresh collapses—as more stone tore loose and followed them.
Chunks of rock began to rain down.
