The patterned bas-relief tile twisted under his feet. Each image connected to the next. Intricate cephalopod shapes carved into black marble. The biggest lines no wider than his pinky, the smallest the size of threads. The carved images crept their way up the bottom of the wall before new ones took over.

Where the reaching tentacles ended bones began. Carved into the grey stone walls were scenes of death. Mountains of skulls, skeletons, and flesh. These, like the tiles, moved. His each step sent bones tumbling down the hills. A skull rolled along the bottom of the wall, pushed by ocean creatures and flesh. Above the macabre scenes were clouds.

The top of the wall was an undefined border, moving like the ocean’s shore. In and out, up and down. Now short enough for him to reach, now receding and too high to touch. But he kept his hands to himself. He dared not reach into the sleeping beast’s chest of clouds that rose and fell.

Below him the fall ended in an abyss, pure darkness with a pinprick of light at its center. But the center moved with his view. A wave rolled along the floor and threw him into the wall. He took a step, his foot crunched on bones. His next step landed on a deformed mass. The flesh recoiled from touch.

On either side of him the walls were of a moving ocean scene. Octopi the size of cities worked their way through coral reefs. He was climbed a hill of bones, slipping. Ahead great gates were opening. The sound of grinding rusted metal so loud he felt he was inside the noise.

The pinprick of light was still there. No matter how fast he went he couldn’t escape it. Was it bigger now? It seemed to have grown, or maybe he only imagined that. For some reason that struck him as something he wished to avoid. If asked he couldn’t have said why.

But if you asked about any of it, he couldn’t give you a sensible answer.