And The Walls Kept Tumbling Down Novels & Stories

Only fuel locked in the engine that kept me formed. The room shuddered. A tile trembled and broke. The crack ran in a clean line from the door to the far wall. Memory dust drifted up like powder. It smelled like old chalk and old sweat. The storage room did not feel like a room anymore. It felt like a picture peeling off a wet wall. “Not now,” I said. The words stuck in my throat like glass. “Not now, please.” The crumbling spread faster. Chunks of ceiling fell through the air and disappeared before they hit the ground. The walls started folding in on themselves. The void beneath the floor crept closer, eating away at the concrete in slow, inexorable waves.

They wouldn't be hidden any longer. It seemed like the walls were old and we were going to fall at any minute. They creaked as they shifted, cracking further down each day until eventually, there wouldn't be anything left to hold them together. The walls would crumble down and there wouldn't be anyone left to repair or restore them.

You can hear windows break and walls crack as they rip it to the core. "Move faster. Move faster!" We are nearing the last floor now, and I can see as the men are now starting to filter out the building towards the street. They are moving much faster now than they did before. Then another shock. I feel as the building rocks yet another time, but I hear something else…it is starting to crumble. "It is coming down. Move out. It is coming down. Move faster."

The journey was a tough one. We ducked through collapsing walls, jumped over pits that opened out of nowhere, and followed the one path the mountain allowed us to see. The walls closed in at one point. A section above began to groan and crumble. “MOVE!” Ferris screamed, grabbing my arm and pushing me forward just as a slab of ceiling came crashing down where I’d been. My knees shook. I couldn’t breathe again. Then his arms wrapped around me from behind.

As the room fell still and silent again, they waited a long moment, then began to slowly get up. Looking around the room, a sense of dismay filled them all. Large chunks of the ceiling had caved, and streams of dust stopped and started in various places, making the whole thing look unstable, and worse, he saw that the stairs were blocked by several large pieces of fallen concrete. He swore loudly, and the others turned to follow his gaze, adding their own choice words at the situation they now find themselves in.

I snickered. "Fall back!" Mr W ordered his men. "Mr W, we-" "I said fall back, Deli!!" Mr W snapped. They probably weren't far gone when an explosion shook the basement, and the tremor made the pillars lose whatever structural integrity they had left. The whole place was coming down -----

I found the situation a bit dangerous, but since Teppi was speaking, it wasn't polite to interrupt. "The situation is… when we first started, I thought the hard topsoil would be enough. But now that the perimeter walls are built, the weight is starting to press down, causing the east side to sink faster than the west. You might not see it with the naked eye yet, but the mortar joints at the corners are starting to show signs of cracking." Teppi stepped outside and pointed at the corners of the walls. Before I could follow him, the world went dark. My entire body surged with stinging pain, and I was pinned down somewhere in the ruins.

Lena's POV The walls came alive. Not in any way that had ever felt safe or warm. The magic woven into every brick, every beam, every carefully placed seal, ripped free from its moorings and turned outward. Like a body rejecting itself. Like everything I had built, deciding all at once that I was the enemy. A section of ceiling collapsed without warning. Three of my regulars dove clear. One did not make it in time and went down hard under the debris. Mal screamed something from the east corridor and her fire went out like a candle pinched between fingers.

Her world collapsed. And the tunnel lights began shutting off one by one…

Hit the limestone. It hissed. The wall started to bubble. To dissolve. The pressure on my back changed. Shifted. The ceiling wasn’t dropping straight down anymore. It was tilting. Toward the weak wall. “NOW!” Dominic roared. I didn’t think. I moved. Threw myself sideways as the section I’d been holding collapsed. Hit the ground rolling, bones snapping, shifting mid-roll. Human. Naked. Bleeding. Broken. The ceiling crashed down where I’d been. Where we’d been.