The steady thump of her footfalls began to echo. The sound rang like drums in the back of her ears, too loud, too fast, and she realized it had been nearly a minute since she’d last breathed, but each inhale made her chest hurt until she wanted to cry from it.

Again and again the path split, twisted, reconverged. She couldn’t find an exit.

A dark thought invaded her mind, that perhaps there was no other exit. That this stretch of tunnels was isolated from the others. That the only way in and out was through the hole she’d fallen down.

And now that she’d left it, she didn’t know how to find her way back.

She checked her phone’s battery. Forty percent.

How long will that last? How long do I have before I’m left blind down here?

The panic choked her, and she doubled over, trying to get air in, trying not to retch. As she waited for the emotions to slow and ebb, the echoes from her footfalls played in loops before fading out entirely.

Margot blinked, and her eyes burned from dirt and unshed tears. The echoes hadn’t sounded natural. They shouldn’t have lasted for so long.

Still crouched, she twisted, shining the light around her shoulder. It caught over the twining tendrils of roots shooting out of the soil and…

Hair?

No, she told herself, turning to face the path ahead again, her pulse running like a flood, tearing her sense of control away with every violent tug. No, that hadn’t been dirt-clogged hair flowing out between the stones embedded in the wall. It was roots. It had to be.

She was moving again, and it took a second for the echoes to return. They dragged behind her, heavy, not quite in tune with her own pace. They overlapped.

Her steps became longer, faster, as her heart threatened to tear through her chest. She could barely see the path ahead of her; the light zigzagged violently, flashing across walls and floor indiscriminately.

The tunnel turned, and Margot’s shoulder grazed crumbling stone as she reacted a half second too late. She didn’t slow. The echoes, the footsteps that didn’t quite mimic her own, were growing louder. Closer. She didn’t dare shine the light behind herself again.

The path tilted upward. Ahead, she caught a whisper of light. Her labored breaths snagged in her throat. She broke into a full sprint, and so did the echoes, loping closer, the ragged gasp of breaths right at her back—

She crossed her arms ahead of herself a second before she hit the trapdoor. It burst open from the force, doors shuddering as they slammed into the dirt, and Margot exploded through, her mouth open in a gasping, silent cry.

Her adrenaline was spent. She collapsed to her knees, forearms braced on the earth, a persistent ringing in her ears.