The sinkhole was a trash heap of abandoned remains. Eyes were etched deep into the walls as far up as she could see, as though the monster slept here under its own watch. Above her, the shadow swirled like a cloud of bats, all pupil, wide and dark. She slid her long fingers into the carved grooves and began to climb. Her overlong arms and legs quivered under the stone weight of her growing bone armor. They gave, and she plummeted back to the bottom, snapping more protrusions.

She sucked more marrow from her freshly broken digits, and her strength increased—the pain faded further. The fragments continued to drive back the shadow. The marrow from the jar smeared across her chest made her itch again, and she felt more stretching, more calcium armor growing with a deep bass rumble deep in her core. She began to climb again. When she weakened, her body growing too heavy even for her strengthened hands, she put a finger in her mouth and bit down, breaking it off with her teeth and sucking at it, drawing more strength, more ammunition against the monster. When her fingers were stumps just long enough to press into the grooves of the stone, she broke away pieces from her face—thick wings of bone from her eyes and jaw, till her head was free again but for the jagged edges of broken bone at the tattered eruption points, her face a mask of ivory needles.

She reached the top and slithered back through the opening into the catacomb chamber. Her lantern was there, the monster no longer between her and the exit. The exposed nerves in her body sang with pain again in the open air of the chamber.

The beast emerged from a crack in the rocks. Its gaze buckled her knees and dropped her to the cave floor as she turned to face it. It bubbled up through the narrow vent, its vision multiplying as it filled the cavern.

Ashley’s bones bled from fragile, ragged fractures. There was nothing left to throw. Her bones weren’t growing fast enough.

She edged to the cave wall and reached into an alcove, running her fingers over the ritual skeletons till she felt the familiar curve of a skull, a jar. She pried it out of the jaw and brought it to her mouth. The neck of the jar shattered between her teeth and she drove her tongue into the opening, lapping at the gritty paste inside. Her body quaked. She screamed as bones burst from her, jutting from her hands, feet, and face. The shadow lurched, and she pitched an alcove bone at the monster. It hesitated, rushed forward.