Elena Vasquez
The tunnel was a throat, and we were swallowed whole, the darkness closing around us like the jaws of some ancient beast that had waited centuries for prey. I came to on my knees, the concrete biting into my skin with a cold, unrelenting cruelty, Marco’s hands gripping my shoulders so tightly I could feel the tremor in his fingers, his face inches from mine, eyes wide and wild with a terror that mirrored the storm raging inside my own chest. The Heartstone… no, the shard, the fractured remnant of what had once been a relic and was now a parasite lodged in my sternum, cracked and leaking light like blood seeping from a mortal wound. The glow painted the abandoned subway station in a sickly, pulsating red, shadows writhing on the cracked tiles and graffiti-scarred walls like l
