Reversal

You spin on your heel and bolt back the way you came, lantern swinging wild shadows across the walls. But the tunnel has changed. The slope you climbed down is now rising the wrong direction. Your footprints in the dust point the opposite way they should.

Each step feels heavier — not with effort, but with meaning, as though you're walking into a sentence someone is still writing. The air thickens. Somewhere ahead — or behind, you can't tell — you hear a faint, familiar sound. Maybe breathing. Maybe your own.

The lantern flickers. The walls seem to lean in, listening.