heartbeat.

She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, clawing at the slick, moss-covered flagstones of the cellar floor. The rough stone tore the skin of her palms

...connecting with something dense and sickeningly yielding.

A wet, bubbling screech echoed from the depths, and the freezing pressure around her ankles slackened. She didn't waste a

suffocating blackness of the cistern.

The stench of rot and wet earth billowed up from the dark, clogging her throat. She kicked out blindly with her free leg, her heel

The cold at her ankles tightened, a numbing pressure like bands of dry ice squeezing through her boots. It was dragging her backward, inch by agonizing inch, toward the suffocating

...someone who knew the alternative was a nameless grave beneath the damp flagstones.

The rusted bracket groaned under her weight, flakes of orange corrosion showering her upturned face.