The arms of darkness opened up and let the fighters in before slowly closing around them, consuming them. While the darkness did put up a fight its main goal was to draw the fighters deeper inside where they couldn't escape... where they couldn't make out the dark from the rest of the world.
Vance and Shima would find themselves swallowed by absence of light with only the sound of distant (but sometimes sporadically alarmingly close) wailing from the people who had been struck and were living in their own personal nightmares. If the boys saw any evidence of the victims it was only the bare outlines of their twisted, horrified, and vacant faces in the shadows.
The darkness was alive and it chose to keep a bubble of shadow around them without taking them just yet. There was something about a predator that felt unstoppable, it liked to play with the food that put up a fight.
So Vance and Shima would find themselves able to fight their way forward... but was forward really in front of them anymore? were they headed towards the center or had they been turned all around? Eventually they would get tired and darkness would close in on them and take the light it is owed.