Lucas stirred.
A slow breath escaped his lips, cold and shallow. His eyes cracked open, adjusting to the dim glow that painted the ceiling above in soft violet hues. The last thing he remembered was collapsing… outside? Or inside?
He was lying on smooth, dark stone—cool against his skin. It hummed faintly, as if vibrating with a pulse too deep to hear.
He blinked again.
The ceiling rose high above him, covered in dark, jagged patterns—like roots, or scars etched by time itself. They shimmered faintly, veins of energy pulsing through the cracks like the heartbeat of the structure.
He pushed himself up with effort. Muscles ached. His throat was dry, his limbs stiff. But something was different.
He was still tired. But not dying.
His armor was still wrapped around his torso, cracked and stained. His skin was marked with faint lines of dried blood and dirt, but the burning agony of survival had faded into a quiet numbness.
The room around him was vast.
The walls were curved, seamless, made of that same obsidian-black stone. The light came from narrow fissures along the edges of the floor and ceiling, glowing in soft, unnatural purples. No torches. No crystals. Just… light, leaking from the stone itself.
No furniture. No symbols.
Just a single hallway leading out, and a spiral staircase that twisted up into the darkness.
Lucas stared at it for a long moment.
He didn't know where he was.
But there was only one way to find out.
The staircase creaked faintly beneath his feet.
Not because it was unstable—it was made of the same dark stone as the rest of the tower, fused and seamless—but because everything here seemed to react to sound. Every step echoed too far, too long, like the walls were listening.
Lucas ascended slowly, one hand brushing the inner wall for balance. The spiral twisted tightly, coiling around a thick central pillar that extended both above and below into shadow. The air grew colder with each step, yet never stale. Clean. Too clean.
Small plants clung to the edges of the walls—thin, black-stemmed things with leaves like knives. They grew without sunlight, pulsing faintly like the walls themselves. One brushed against his fingers, and he pulled back.
They were cold. Slick.
Alive.
He moved on.
The first room he found was through an archway, carved without doors. Just an opening.
Inside: stone floor, a cracked table, a bench grown over with moss. The walls were smooth. Empty. The dust lay undisturbed.
No signs of life. No tools. No corpses. Just... abandonment.
He continued upward.
The second room was much the same. A different layout. A shattered shelf. Scraps of cloth long decayed.
The third had a single pedestal in the center, worn down to a lump. Nothing atop it. Nothing around it. Just silence.
Lucas's footsteps slowed.
Everything looked like it had once been used, but never inhabited. Like a place built for something that never came.
The higher he climbed, the more the rooms repeated—slight changes in shape or size, but always the same emptiness.
He stopped near what felt like the tenth or twelfth floor.
Stared at the corridor ahead.
And turned around.
Lucas descended in silence.
Step by step, he retraced the spiral down to the ground floor, passing the rooms again. Each one just as lifeless, just as still. He kept his eyes ahead, no longer curious—just moving, focused now on what lay beneath.
Back in the main chamber, he stopped.
The staircase didn't end at the floor.
It continued downward, curving into a wide hole in the stone. There was no railing. No markings. Just a dark descent spiraling into the unknown.
He stepped onto the first stair.
And began to descend.
The air shifted.
Colder.
The light dimmed as he went deeper, the glow in the cracks turning from violet to a dull blue. The temperature dropped with each floor passed, and soon, his breath began to fog. The stone underfoot glistened faintly with moisture.
The walls changed.
No longer smooth—they twisted, curved, warped.
Crude carvings emerged. At first, just scratches. Then patterns. Then shapes.
Figures.
Faces.
Twisted. Screaming. Melting into the walls like they had been trapped inside.
Lucas slowed his pace, running his hand over one.
It was cold. Too cold.
The further he went, the more chaotic the carvings became. Some depicted creatures with too many limbs, others humanoids with masks, and one, several floors down, showed a massive being with a curved blade held high.
The shape was unmistakable.
A scythe.
He moved past it without stopping.
The staircase was still going.
Still descending.
Still tightening around him.
He had no idea how many steps he had taken.
Hundreds. Maybe more.
Lucas couldn't feel his legs anymore. His body moved on its own, mechanical, numb. Every breath left his lips as a faint cloud in the freezing air. The cold had burrowed deep into his bones, but still—he kept going.
The final stretch of the staircase was dusted with a faint layer of frost. Not ice. Not snow. Something else—frozen ash, clinging to the edges of the black stone.
The silence down here was absolute.
No echo.
His footsteps didn't bounce anymore. Only a soft shuffle, as if the darkness swallowed sound before it could escape.
And then… he saw it.
The staircase ended at a wide, uneven platform, made of massive black slabs.
And in the center of that vast underground chamber, flanked by crooked pillars, stood a door.
Enormous.
Taller than any wall he had seen. Carved directly into the stone, its surface was covered in spirals, hooked symbols, and coiling chains that disappeared into the walls.
At its center was the carving of a closed eye, surrounded by a ring of etched links—like a lock without a key.
No handle.
No latch.
Just presence.
Lucas stepped closer.
And he felt it.
A pressure in his chest. Not pain. Not fear. Something deeper. As if his heartbeat wasn't entirely his anymore. As if something on the other side of the door was… listening.
Waiting.
He reached out.
His fingers hovered inches from the stone.
And then…
he stopped