“Does the fact that we ended up here and now with little hope mean that everything that came before was meaningless?” he calls after me. “The rise and fall of empires? The families and wars and loss and growth and knowledge and striving for something better? Is it always about the end and not about the beginning? Is it always about the conclusion and not about the path to it?”

He’s looking for meaning where there is none. He should have learned this by now. “I’m tired of paths,” I shout past the edge of my lantern light. I glance behind me at the endless tunnels beckoning. “Sometimes they lead nowhere.”

My words are drowned by a massive shattering sound, glass splintering against the platform like icicles. I press myself against the wall, far enough into the tunnel that the shards merely scatter at my feet.

Ox, still standing by the curve of the platform, drops into a crouch, throwing his arms over his head as chunks of broken lead latticework crash in from the ceiling. The old windows arching across the station buckle and break, allowing a wash of moans to roll over us. There’s a massive grating sound of metal on metal before something gives and bodies begin to fall.

The first few land with sickening thuds. Their bones crunch, puncturing skin with sharp gleaming fractures of white. Yet, oblivious to the almost complete destruction of their bodies, they’re still desperate for Ox.

I retreat back along the tracks as the dead crawl forward, leg bones scraping over the concrete with a horrible high-pitched scratch, fingers swiping the air.

Ox’s eyes meet mine for a helpless moment as bodies rain around him. One fractures its thighbone, another splits its head and lies motionless. They just keep coming. More and more, falling on one another, piling up so that those on the bottom cushion the landing of those on the top. They roll and writhe until they find their footing and start to stumble forward.

The sound of so many Unconsecrated becomes deafening.

I turn and run. The last thing I see is Ox standing there, the dead a downpour between us. Already the Unconsecrated move after me, filling the tunnels like water, flooding behind me.

I don’t stop running. If anyone deserved to die it was Ox, but still, to see him there with so many dead—they’d have pulled him apart.

I shake my head, trying to erase the thought, and instead focus on what to do next. I can’t just keep running randomly through the tunnels. The Unconsecrated will continue to pile up behind me, their numbers becoming a tidal wave that will drown me if I don’t stay ahead of them.

If I accidentally hit a dead end or double back … I’ll be in the same situation as Ox. It’s too much of a risk.