It's not so simple as running back through a door. Doors close, lock. Two boys run into the dark, and Caius can make dark a thing they can run into, inky black nothing rolling out like a carpet beneath their feet, the pinprick light of somewhere else flickering into being at the tunnel's end — but he isn't the only one with power here.

Teeth gnash into the shadows behind them and come up dripping, ripping free gobs of black that overflow from greying gums. Spindly fingers stretch and lengthen after their heels. Nails break, scramble, pull, and the light begins to spiral impossibly, helplessly farther until—

Gravity tilts. Tunnel begins to slant and pitch into well. And that circle of light they're running toward isn't moving farther away anymore — it's contracting. Shrinking. They won't make it.

"You can make it," says the boy, because belief is real as breathing here, but you, because Caius isn't here to save anyone from their nightmares. He's here to understand. Verify. Test.

A heel skids on invisible gravel. Caius goes down, ragged sleeve slipping out of the other boy's grasp. Falling. But Cedric can make it.