The unfamiliar odor h!t me harder now, shàrp and acrid, cùtt!ng through the stillness. It wasn’t just ash. It was something alive, something festering. A low, guttural growl resonated from the end of the hallway.
I turned slowly, dread coiling in my stomach like a living thing.. and surely, those creatures in my belly were fully grown by then.
There shadows at the far end of the hall rippled, pooling into a shifting mass that seemed to breathe. Eyes—dozens of them—opened within the darkness, glowing a sickly yellow, unblinking as they fixed on me.
"Jimmy, why are you doing this to me? What offence did I do you." I muttered, the word catching in my thròat like a cúrse. He’d always been there, lurking at the edges of this nightmare, the part we never talked about. The *reason* we’d made the vow in the first place.
The thing moved closer, its form hulking and grotesque. It's limbs jutted out at impossible angles with blIood drippingout of it...