Chainlit Descent

The frame catches the pause, not the pursuit. Boots halt at the edge of the steps where moisture films the stone and gathers light into a trembling ladder. Chains hang slack but listening. On the left wall, the words Where Vojta? grind through soot and lime, rubbed in haste, not carved—an appeal that knew it might be overwritten. The arch ahead wears a crown of small skulls, a ledger of mouths closed. I logged the glow first, the way firelight pools and recedes, rehearsing an exit that is not taken. Rewind the minute and the quiet thickens. The pack’s straps bite down, fur dampened by the cold breath from below. A stair curls upward behind, promising shelter; forward, the corridor narrows and warms, falsely hospitable. Someone knelt here earlier—wax stubs guttered, scratches scored across the floor, a childish figurine left upright as if guarding a boundary. It reads like a sanctuary pretending to be a trap, or the reverse. Noted at 02:17, margin smudged. We searched the lower rooms twice. The writing stayed. Vojta did not.