The Marsh narrowed to a corridor of bone-white pillars, every surface lacquered with a varnish of venom. Each breath clawed at her lungs; the chitin mask had gone soft, the edges curling in and burning her cheeks with each inhale. Warnings flooded the UI:

  GAUNTLET DURABILITY: 20%

  MASK: NEAR FAILURE

  She switched out the mask, but it barely helped. Every muscle in her arms screamed as she pulled herself up the last rise, boots slipping on a paste of curd and blood.

  Then she saw the heart.

  It was a clearing, maybe thirty meters across, but the ground here had collapsed into a crater lined with webbing. The web was not delicate; each strand was thick as a human thigh, slicked with a syrupy liquid that steamed where it touched air. At the center: a mound of silk, fused and pulsing, throbbing with the rhythm of something very much alive.

  From the heart, tendrils radiated outward, each one running to a smaller mound perched at the edge of the crater. The mounds pulsed, too, but less regularly—a hive of smaller organs feeding the central beast. The effect was surgical, obscene.

  She crouched at the lip, scanning. The fear gauge was pegged at red, but she forced herself to steady.

  Stewart’s voice was all business: “Map the perimeter first. Identify choke points. Plan your escape route before engaging.”

  She moved clockwise, staying just outside the nearest mound’s reach. The ground here was so soft she left holes with every step, but she kept her weight low, arms spread for balance. The gauntlets hissed as acid dripped on them, eating away at the hard shell.

  At the south side, she saw the first major weakness: a fault line in the webbing, where two strands overlapped but hadn’t fused. She marked it, then kept going.

  At the west edge, the venom pooled. It gathered in slow, boiling puddles, then overflowed, sending trickles down the crater wall. Where the venom hit old curd, it sizzled, carving channels that deepened over time. She dipped a sampler rod, then recoiled as the rod dissolved in less than a second.

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  “Do not step in the puddles,” Stewart said. “You won’t make it three meters.”

  She marked the puddles on her minimap, then pressed on.

  At the north, she found the second weakness: a collapsed section of webbing, where something had chewed through from below. The hole was wide enough to crawl through, if she had to.

  She finished the circuit and paused to catch her breath. The gauntlets were at 9%. The mask stung her eyes with every breath.

  She looked for the best point to strike, but the heart kept pulsing, as if daring her to try.

  Stewart’s advice: “Don’t get clever. Document the flows. Get out.”

  She pulled a camera from her kit—a battered thing, barely holding together—and took a sweep of the crater, focusing on the flows of venom, the pulses in the mounds, the points of failure in the web.

  Then the world shifted.

  A shadow flickered at the edge of her vision. She turned, but saw nothing. The UI picked it up a second later: a faint, irregular movement along the crater’s rim. She watched, breath held, as the shadow resolved into a shimmer—a distortion that moved only when she did.

  Then it stepped into the light.

  The spore-wraith.

  It was not a body, not really. Just a sheath of membrane, stretched over a skeleton of silk and empty space. It walked on two legs, but each step reconfigured its own anatomy, as if it was learning how to be alive. Its head was a blank oval, studded with holes that wept black and yellow fluid. Its arms were too long, hands trailing threads that twitched and spasmed with each motion.

  It stopped, turned toward her, and sniffed the air.

  Stewart’s voice snapped: “Don’t run. It tracks motion. Slow, deliberate steps backward.”

  She obeyed, taking a half-step, then another. The wraith watched, arms going slack.

  Another step, slower this time.

  The wraith tilted its head, then retreated, dissolving into the spore cloud.

  Muffet exhaled, lungs raw. The fear gauge backed off by a hair.

  She finished her documentation, then backed away from the crater, keeping her movements measured and slow. Each step cost her a layer of gauntlet, until by the edge of the clearing, she was bare-handed, the skin on her fingers already blistered.

  She paused at the lip, looking back one last time.

  The heart pulsed, silk gleaming in the weak light. At the top of the mound, the Spider watched, its body folded in on itself, eyes reflecting every angle of the clearing.

  She raised her sampler in a silent salute, then turned and ran—slow at first, then faster, until the Marsh and the heart and the Spider were all behind her.

  At the first safe spot, she collapsed, pack to the dirt, breath coming in ragged gasps.

  The UI chimed: DATA UPLOADED. ANALYSIS PENDING.

  She grinned, despite the pain.

  Stewart’s voice, softer than she’d ever heard: “You made it, Norris. Still alive.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her ruined hand and laughed.

  For now, it was enough.

  But she was already thinking of the next run.