They ran.

Alaric felt the weight of Seraphine's hand gripping his sleeve as they fled through the darkened tunnels, her breaths ragged and close to his ear. The echo of Rowan's footsteps bounced off the walls, his silhouette barely visible ahead in the trembling light cast by Seraphine's pendant. Behind them, the figure of the missing student faded into shadow, his frozen scream burned into Alaric's mind.

The tunnel felt endless. They twisted through narrow passageways, blindly following Rowan, who moved with a frantic urgency that seemed to pull them deeper into the labyrinthine corridors beneath Vortemar. Finally, when they reached a section of tunnel bathed in faint moonlight from a crumbling window high above, Rowan slowed, panting as he doubled over, his hands on his knees.

Alaric leaned against the stone wall, his heart racing, his mind reeling. "What… what was that?"

Rowan's face was ashen. "That was Wilfred… one of the students who disappeared last month." His voice was rough, barely holding back the fear.

Seraphine's gaze drifted back toward the tunnel they had come from, her eyes wide, unblinking. "I've seen that look before," she murmured. "That look of horror—like they've seen something… something they can't unsee."

"What do you mean?" Alaric asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Seraphine closed her eyes, her voice soft. "Back at the orphanage, there was a boy who claimed to see things—things that no one else could see. The night before he vanished, I caught him staring out into the woods, his eyes… hollow, empty. I'd never seen anyone look that way before… until tonight."

Her words sent a chill through Alaric. Seraphine had always been attuned to things most people ignored or dismissed as figments of imagination. But tonight, her insight felt less like intuition and more like an echo of a dark truth buried within these walls.

Rowan's eyes darted to Seraphine's pendant, which flickered like a heartbeat in the dark. "Your necklace," he said, swallowing hard. "It started glowing right before we saw him. Do you think it… do you think it sensed something?"

Seraphine hesitated, fingers tightening around the crystal as if it might vanish if she let go. "I don't know," she whispered, her voice laced with something close to fear. "I found it in the old chapel during my first week here. The moment I touched it, I felt… connected, somehow. As if something—someone—was reaching out to me."

A heavy silence settled over them as her words lingered in the stale air.

Rowan broke it with a nervous laugh, though his eyes betrayed his unease. "Well, if your necklace can help us find more answers, I say we keep going. Better than wandering in the dark."

Alaric shook his head, clenching his fists. "I don't know, Rowan. This feels… wrong. We're not supposed to be down here. The professors—"

Rowan interrupted, his voice tense. "And do you think the professors are telling us the truth? They haven't lifted a finger to find any of the missing students. We can't trust them, Alaric."

Alaric looked away, his mind flashing back to the cold, indifferent glances of the professors whenever a student disappeared. It was as though the vanished had simply been erased from memory. No investigations. No explanations.

Just silence.

Seraphine straightened, her eyes gleaming in the dim light. "I agree with Rowan," she said softly. "But if we go deeper, we need to be prepared for whatever's down there."

As if to punctuate her warning, a faint sound drifted through the tunnel—a whisper. Alaric stiffened, his skin prickling. He glanced around, his eyes narrowing as he tried to pinpoint the source, but the tunnel stretched into darkness on either side. The whispering grew louder, like distant voices overlapping, whispering words he couldn't understand.

Seraphine shivered, clutching her pendant tighter. "They're coming from The Maw."

Rowan gave her a questioning look. "The what?"

She hesitated before explaining. "There's an old legend about the tunnels beneath Vortemar. They say the tunnels were built on cursed ground, a place where the dead linger, trapped between worlds. The Maw is supposed to be the heart of it—a place where those who enter are never the same… if they come back at all."

Alaric glanced at Rowan, seeing the flicker of doubt in his friend's eyes. Rowan opened his mouth, but no words came. It was as if even he could sense that they were standing on the edge of something that should have remained buried.

But before any of them could speak, a shuffling noise came from behind them. All three turned as one, peering into the gloom.

A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness—a tall, imposing figure cloaked in black robes. His face was obscured by a hood, but they could feel his gaze burning into them, eyes hidden yet piercing. The man's voice, deep and hollow, reverberated off the walls.

"What are you three doing down here?" His tone was calm, but it carried an unmistakable edge of menace.

Rowan instinctively took a step back. Alaric felt his pulse quicken, but he forced himself to meet the figure's gaze, refusing to be cowed.

"We… we got lost," he stammered, trying to keep his voice steady.

The figure laughed softly, a sound that seemed to slither into Alaric's ears. "Lost? In forbidden tunnels? I suggest you return to your dorms before you find yourselves truly lost."

Alaric swallowed, nodding slowly. "Yes, sir."

But just as he turned to leave, Seraphine whispered, almost to herself, "I've seen you before. In my visions."

The figure went still, the laughter dying in his throat. Slowly, he turned his head to Seraphine, and though his face was hidden, Alaric sensed an intense curiosity radiating from him.

"Oh?" The figure's voice softened, though it retained its unnerving calm. "You should be careful with such visions, child. Sometimes they show you more than you wish to see."

With that, he turned, his cloak swirling around him as he vanished into the darkness, leaving them in uneasy silence.

Rowan let out a shaky breath. "What the hell was that?"

Seraphine's face was pale, her grip on her pendant so tight her knuckles had gone white. "He knows… he knows about the Maw," she whispered, her voice trembling.

Alaric looked at her, his own fear mirrored in her eyes. "We need to go back," he said. "If we keep going, we might not make it out."

Rowan hesitated, but eventually nodded. "Fine. But tomorrow, we're coming back, and we're going to find answers. There's something down here they don't want us to see."

As they made their way back to the dormitories, Alaric couldn't shake the feeling that they were already entangled in something beyond their control—a darkness that clung to them like a shadow, whispering secrets they couldn't yet understand.

And, as he closed his eyes that night, he thought he heard the faintest echo of that same haunting voice, calling his name from the depths of The Maw.