Heathcliff Teleports When Scared

The rat did not only know the hidden path.

He was part of how people found it by accident.

Heathcliff panicked around Ash and began teleporting, dragging Morgan through the dungeon's wrong spaces in flashes of fear. Every jump made the tourist cave feel less controlled and more like something old had been left running underneath the attraction. Eventually, the teleporting landed them near a concealed vertical drop.

Below it was a body.

A woman in black robes lay as a skeleton at the bottom, likely Heathcliff's former master. The shape of the story became clear enough to hurt: she had vanished after a teleport, found the hidden passage the wrong way, and died where the dungeon could keep her.

Heathcliff was not a random giant rat.

He was a teleporting survivor. When frightened, he moved with whoever he treated as master, and that ability had once carried someone into a place she never escaped. The hidden path was not only a secret route. It was the afterimage of someone else's failed descent.

For Morgan and the party, the concealed drop became the true entrance.

For Heathcliff, it was memory with teeth.