The second floor kept trying to tear itself apart around them.
What had looked manageable from below turned vicious the moment the walls started opening everywhere at once. Without the pale flame dragging the Soul Beasts toward a single point, the room lost all order. Glassbrood Spiders dropped where they pleased. Night Walkers slipped through broken seams in the white stone and lunged at whatever was nearest.
The front ranks tried to hold, the people behind them tried not to climb over each other, and the ones with no real experience learned very quickly that numbers did not mean much when panic spread faster than commands.
Neo moved through the mess with Gravebite in hand, cutting where the line threatened to buckle. A spider caught one man in the calf and left him screaming on the floor while venom spread through the veins in his leg like black ink beneath skin.
