The ash wall solidified in seconds.
It wasn't loose powder; it was a writhing, pressurized barrier of gray soot that packed itself tight against the cavern opening, sealing them inside.
"Step back!" Daniel shouted.
He lunged forward, driving his blade into the wall of ash.
The steel sunk in up to the hilt, but it felt like stabbing heavy wet clay. When he pulled the weapon back, the slit instantly sealed itself, the ash humming with a low, menacing vibration.
Behind them, the clicking sound grew louder.
Click.
Click.
The skeleton's joints were snapping into place.
The black liquid seeping from its eyes had reached its chin, dripping onto the leather-bound journal Daniel still gripped in his left hand. Where the fluid touched the paper, the parchment hissed and dissolved into black smoke.
"Daniel, the floor!" Lily yelled.
She backed up against the sealed entrance, her sword raised in a defensive guard.
The stone ground beneath them was softening.
The black fluid dripping from the throne was spreading outward in rapid, spider-web veins across the cavern floor. Wherever the veins reached, the solid rock turned to a viscous, tar-like sludge.
The cavern wasn't just collapsing. It was digesting them.
The armored corpse of Commander Vance stood up.
It was taller than a normal man, its spine unnaturally elongated as the black liquid filled the gaps between its vertebrae.
The empty sockets of its skull locked onto Daniel.
"Student..."
The voice didn't come from the skull's jaw. It echoed directly from the stone walls around them, heavy and scraping, like tectonic plates grinding together.
"...why do you carry... the dead?"
Daniel didn't waste his breath answering.
He shoved the ruined journal into his pack and gripped his sword with both hands.
"Lily, the throne!" Daniel called out, his eyes never leaving the commander's rising form. "The veins are spreading from the base of the seat. If we destroy the anchor, the floor might hold!"
"I'm on it!"
Lily leaped across the widening cracks of black sludge, her boots barely grazing the solid stone before she launched herself toward the jagged rock throne.
The commander moved to intercept her, but Daniel was faster.
He closed the distance, bringing his blade down in a heavy, horizontal arc aimed at the creature's neck.
The strike was true.
But the moment the steel met the black-liquid-soaked bone, it didn't cut.
The liquid climbed up Daniel's blade like living ink, freezing the metal instantly. The cold surged up the hilt, numbing his hands and threatening to lock his fingers to the grip.
Daniel let go of the sword just in time.
He rolled backward across the dissolving floor as the commander's heavy, armored fist smashed into the ground where he had just stood.
The impact shattered the stone, sending a spray of burning black mud into the air.
"Daniel!" Lily screamed.
She was at the throne.
She drove her blade deep into the cracked base of the black rock.
The stone shrieked.
A pulse of dark energy rippled through the cavern, throwing Lily backward onto the sludge.
The black veins on the floor violently contracted, pulling back toward the throne like severed nerves. The ground beneath Daniel's feet hardened once more, but the wall of ash at the entrance remained as solid as iron.
The commander stiffened, his hollow gaze shifting from Daniel to Lily.
He raised his rusted, gold-trimmed sword.
"The mountain..." the grinding voice echoed, "...demands its tax."