The air hung thick and cloying, saturated with the sickly sweet scent of decaying insects and the sharp, metallic tang of spider silk. Elias gripped his crudely fashioned iron sword, the edges already nicked and dulled from countless encounters with the hairy horrors of the second floor. Sarah, standing beside him, notched an arrow onto her bowstring, her face grim but determined. The cavern before them pulsed with a grotesque life, a living tapestry of webs spun so densely they seemed to solidify into walls.