Depth of the Forgotten
The stone beneath Eliana's feet groaned like old bone, each step like a drumbeat of descent, a funereal march deeper into something ancient and rotten. The air was thick—not just with moisture, but with the weight of unseen eyes, of stories sealed behind flesh-wrapped walls. These were no longer tunnels. They were arteries of something living. Something sleeping. Or worse, watching.
She felt it. The deep hum beneath her skin, the subtle vibration of an earth not dead, but breathing.
The walls were slick, but not with water. Veins of coagulated gore laced the cracks in the rock, whispering of battles fought long before her birth. Glyphs scrawled in blood and ash marked the stone like tattoos on a corpse, half-erased, but not forgotten. Symbols of hunger. Of rituals. Of gods buried in bone.
Silence clung to everything. But it wasn't peace. It was the silence of a held breath, the hush before a scream.
She moved forward, breath shallow, heart steady only by force of will. Her muscles throbbed with exhaustion—her recent battles branding her bones with the memory of pain—but she welcomed it. It reminded her she still felt. That she still was. In a place where feeling was a luxury the dead had long since abandoned.
And yet, with every step, she diminished.
It was not a matter of strength. Her limbs were iron. Her instincts sharp. She had survived the flesh pits, the slaughter trenches, the endless trials of blood and ash. But here—here—she was not powerful.
She was newborn.
The creatures that slithered and stalked these depths were not goblins. Not anymore. They had peeled back their mortal forms, replacing sinew with hunger, will with doctrine. Warriors forged in torment, sculpted by mutation and purpose. A hobgoblin passed her, its body like cracked obsidian, ribs extruding outward in pulsating patterns, as if its heart had given up hiding and instead learned to armor itself. Another figure hunched beneath its own mass—an orc with molten veins, each breath trailing embers, eyes smoldering like dying stars.
They moved with the gravity of ancient horrors—beings shaped by eras of agony, their silence more damning than any snarl. None spoke. None acknowledged her with voice.
Only stares.
Frozen. Measuring. Cruel.
Predators don't greet. They assess.
She felt their eyes graze across her like blades—not with curiosity, but calculation. A tally of her scars. A weighing of her posture. Every twitch a possible weakness. Every breath a wager.
Her spine locked straight. Her pace slowed—not timid, but deliberate. She became a knife in motion. Not daring to blink too slow, not daring to breathe too fast. She understood now—this place didn't reward power.
It devoured it.
You didn't earn respect here.
You survived long enough to steal it.
And even then, only if they were too tired to kill you.
Something skittered above—clawed limbs clicking against stone like teeth chattering in reverse. She didn't look. Looking could be misread. A challenge. Or worse—a plea.
The path narrowed. The stone turned darker, damp with something that smelled like iron and rotting flowers. A sweet, putrid mix. The scent of offerings long since consumed.
And somewhere in the dark, something breathed her name.
Not in word.
In recognition.
The Weight of Watching
A narrow bridge of splintered stone and mossed bone stretched across a yawning chasm, so wide and so deep it could have been the mouth of some ancient, buried god. Eliana stepped onto it without hesitation—not because she lacked fear, but because she no longer trusted what her fear wanted. Below her, something moved. Not a beast. Not a thing. A presence. Massive. Thoughtless. Breathing in geologic time. It shifted with a sound like stone grinding through wet flesh, echoing up through the void in waves that trembled in her teeth.
No eyes. No form. Only weight. Old as extinction.
She didn't pause. Pausing was permission. She crossed with her spine locked, eyes forward, mouth dry, each step a prayer to nothing. The bridge swayed, cracked underfoot. Her heart knocked against her ribs like a prisoner begging to be let out.
Halfway across, the wind died.
Silence bloomed.
Something from below exhaled, and the bridge groaned beneath her, not from strain—but recognition. As though it had tasted her scent and was considering whether to remember her.
She did not run. She did not breathe.
She moved.
When she reached the far side, the tunnel mouth swallowed her with a breathless hush. And there, waiting in the dark, was the chamber.
Not a room.
A tomb.
The stone opened into a cathedral of silence—circular, immense, lit only by the pale phosphorescence leaking from cracks in the ceiling like wounds in the world. Along the walls stood statues, towering and patient. But these were not idols. Not gods. Not even legends.
Beasts.
Frozen in poses of mid-slaughter. Fangs sculpted with such violence they seemed ready to slice the breath from your throat. Claws sunk into the floor. Spines curled like whips. Each statue carved with such obscene detail that Eliana's skin crawled just looking at them. But it was their eyes—hollow, empty, yet somehow aware. Like they had never truly stopped seeing.
The chamber was still. Not quiet. Still. As if noise itself had been strangled at the threshold.
She stepped forward, slow and cautious. And then—something shifted.
Not in front of her.
Behind.
A shadow. Wrong in its movement. It didn't echo her steps. It didn't belong to her. It didn't blink. It didn't breathe. It watched.
She turned, swift as a blade.
There was nothing there. No wind. No shift. Just the memory of something that had been.
Still, the feeling did not fade. It thickened.
Like being watched not with curiosity, but with expectation.
The statues loomed taller now, somehow closer. She saw fresh gouges in their stone flesh, and for a heartbeat, she could swear she saw one twitch—stone lips parting, revealing rows of teeth like shattered glass.
But no sound followed.
No words. No threats.
Only invitation.
Or a dare.
Her breath coiled in her throat, hot and useless. Her feet moved of their own accord. Forward. Deeper. The only sound was the scrape of her boots on stone and the heartbeat that had risen to live behind her eyes.
Eliana didn't speak. There was no room for voice here. Not in this place where silence had claws.
She didn't challenge the dark.
She didn't announce her presence.
She moved like something pretending it had never bled.
Because in this place, even a drop would be enough to summon teeth.
Communion of Beasts
The market came next—but calling it that was a kindness. This was no place of commerce. It was a cathedral of transaction carved from madness. Civilization worn like a peeled face over slaughter. The air stank of old blood and newer sacrifice, acrid smoke rising from forges fed not with coal, but flesh—bones grinding beneath anvils, sinew stretched across gearworks. The heat didn't burn. It spoiled.
Voices barked and hissed in tongues long mutilated, as if every syllable had been dragged screaming through a throat of knives. Each trade was a wound. Each deal, a ritual.
She saw an ogre—twelve feet tall, bloated with tumors that pulsed like unborn things—tear off his own arm and toss it onto a counter carved from spinal discs. The vendor, a twisted creature of coils and sockets, offered a bone staff that whispered with every twitch. It did not speak language. It wept memory. And the ogre grinned, cradling it like a newborn.
Eliana moved among them like a ghost with skin. Not unseen. Merely… unimportant.
No one stopped her. Not out of mercy. But because to look at her too long would be like staring at a stillborn thing. She was not part of the communion yet. Not predator, not prey—just meat without context. A body without a story. The dead walk lighter than the feared, but heavier than the forgotten.
She passed a goblin with no lips, its teeth chiseled into runes, its eyes sewn shut with cursed thread. It danced, violently, spasmodically, until its legs cracked backward with wet snaps. And still it danced—until it collapsed, twitching in filth. The vendor behind it cackled and handed a vial of thick, violet fluid to a customer who drank it and began to sob. The pain had gone, but the memories remained. That was the price.
One stall sold screams. Bottled. Labeled. "Last Breath of a Child." "Whimper of a Betrayed King." "The Wordless Cry of a Dying God."
She kept walking.
And then she saw it.
A merchant shaped like hunger itself. No eyes. Just folds of pale, wet flesh stretched across a thousand twitching mouths. Some mouths whispered. Others chanted. One laughed—endlessly, hollowly. The rest breathed in rhythm, a pulsing song of starvation. Teeth the color of ash. Gums raw with prayer.
Eliana stared too long.
One of the tongues shot out like a whip, slapping the air near her face, tasting the tremble in her breath.
It recoiled, shivering.
"Fresh," it hissed in a voice that sounded like a nail driven into wood.
The mouths smiled in unison. A ripple of interest passed through the shrouded crowd—brief, but real.
She moved on. Head down. Muscles tight.
But the word lingered in the air behind her like a scent. Fresh.
Not ready.
Not ripened.
Not yet meant for this place.
She wasn't part of the communion.
Not yet.
But they had seen her now.
And hunger remembers.
The Bleeding Silence
The world narrowed until it became a mouth. A tunnel, spiraling endlessly downward like the esophagus of some ancient, buried god, swallowed Eliana whole. The air clung to her skin like breath not her own. Hot. Wet. Decaying. Every inch deeper stripped away something unnamed inside her.
The walls were no longer stone—they had become something else. Grown, not carved. Fleshy folds layered over black rock, slick with a mucus that smelled of copper and rot. The walls pulsed. They twitched. Veins slithered like worms just beneath the surface. She tried not to breathe too deeply, but the tunnel breathed for her. In. Out. In. Out. A rhythm she couldn't escape. A heartbeat that wasn't hers echoed in her chest. Too loud. Too slow. Too steady.
Then—drip.
Something warm splattered on her shoulder.
She looked.
Red.
Thick.
Still wet.
Blood.
She reached up—fingers trembling, slow, as if afraid they'd brush not liquid but something alive—and touched it.
And then it moved.
Above her, unfolding from the ceiling like wet origami torn from its mold, came a shape. Humanoid—but only just. Limbs too long. Joints where joints should not be. Fingers that split into smaller fingers, twitching with compulsive hunger. Its skin was translucent, stretched tight over wiry muscles that pulsed in rhythm with the tunnel's breath. It had no eyes, but it saw her. Its face—wrong. Too smooth. Too calm. A parody of humanity rendered in twitching meat. Then its mouth opened. Not down. Not wide. Sideways. The jaw split like wet parchment, revealing teeth—not rows, but layers, stacked like needles in a bone garden. It smiled.
Without emotion. Without cruelty. Without purpose.
And then it crawled. Not fell. Not dropped. Crawled—sideways across the ceiling, silent as regret, trailing a smear of black fluid that hissed as it touched the wall-flesh.
It moved directly above her.
And it watched.
Its head twisted too far. A snap—quiet, like knuckles cracking under pressure. And the thing stared down. Not with hate. Not with recognition. But with hunger so old it had forgotten what eating meant.
Behind her, the whispers began.
Soft. Slurred. Slithering.
She turned, slow as a corpse rising in molasses.
Shapes blinked into existence at the edges of her vision. Not by stepping forward—but by being noticed. Thin silhouettes emerged from holes that hadn't existed a breath before. No footsteps. No breath. Just presence. One crawled out of the floor. Another peeled from the wall like wet paper. Each one different. Each one wrong.
One had no face, only a mirror of skin reflecting her expression.
Another had too many eyes and no mouth, its hands sewn shut with twitching thread.
Another wept from the holes in its chest, blood pooling in its footprints, though it made no sound.
Eliana stood still.
Heart hammering. Sweat cold down her back. Her legs screamed to run. Her gut twisted to kill. But this wasn't a battlefield. It wasn't even a hunt.
It was a summoning.
They did not strike. Not yet.
This was not an ambush.
It was an invitation.
The thing above her grinned wider—jaw unhinging like a jaw should not—and began to whisper.
Not in words. Not in sound.
In feeling.
A pressure inside her skull, like fingers digging behind her eyes. Images—not memories. Promises. Visions of what she could become. Forms not bound by shape. Bodies of smoke and violence. Tongues that licked power from the bones of gods. Evolution stripped of morality. Ascension soaked in suffering.
They weren't asking her.
They were welcoming her.
The silence around her bled into her thoughts, thick and suffocating.
She was in the presence of something that had forgotten what fear was. That had consumed fear so thoroughly it could only wear it like a mask.
And it had chosen to see her.
The invitation lingered in the air, thick and pulsing.
She did not speak.
She could not speak.
But she did not kneel.
And the creatures—these abominations, these sins made flesh—they did not vanish.
They waited.
The First Gate
Eliana's hand hovered at the hilt of her blade, but it did not draw it. Not yet. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, a frantic drumbeat that filled her head. Sweat slicked her skin, but it was the cold sweat of terror. The air had thickened, pressing down on her, suffocating her. And yet—she stood still.
The creature above her dropped to the floor with no more sound than a thought. Its body—lanky, deformed, a twisted monument to evolution gone wrong—slithered across the stone, its wet, black eyes never leaving hers. It was watching her. Not as prey. Not even as a threat. But something else—something darker.
Recognition.
It tilted its head, slow, calculating, as if it were seeing her not as she was, but as what she could become. A hunger flickered in its gaze, but not one of desperation. This was the hunger of a collector, of a being who knew that power, like death, was an inevitability. And she… she was a potential.
A seed waiting to bloom into something unrecognizable.
The silence that followed the creature's stillness hung in the air like smoke—thick, heavy, choking.
Then, slowly, the creature dropped to its knees. The action was not one of submission. No, it was an invitation. The bend of its limbs was a gesture of reverence, but not to her—to what she could become. It recognized her, acknowledged her as something other—not the broken, not the weak, but something that could be forged into a force to reckon with.
The world seemed to hold its breath. The tunnel, the flesh-covered walls, the writhing veins—they waited.
Eliana's muscles screamed at her to strike, to cut, to kill, but she forced herself to remain motionless. She understood now. These creatures were not here to end her life. They were gatekeepers. Born of agony. Bound by transformation. Their existence was not simply survival—it was evolution, shaped by suffering. Their role was to guard the path that led to the next stage of life. A stage she had already longed for, dreamed of, clawed towards.
This wasn't an enemy.
It was a test.
Her mouth was dry as she swallowed, but she kept her gaze locked on the creature, never once faltering. Then, slowly—just barely—she bowed her head. Not a full bow. No gesture of submission. It was the tiniest of movements, a flicker of respect. The creatures saw it. They acknowledged it.
And then, in the deafening silence that followed, they stepped aside.
The path opened.
It wasn't carved. It wasn't built. It was torn open. Flesh splitting like cloth, the stone walls giving way with the terrible sound of something ancient being shredded—a wound in the very bones of the earth. The corridor ahead yawned open, dark, impossibly deep, swallowing the light that dared to venture too close.
Eliana stepped forward. Her body screamed for her to hesitate, but she did not stop. She did not waver.
She walked into the darkness.
As she crossed the threshold, the air shifted. It grew colder. Darker. The whisper of her footsteps was the only sound in the silence that stretched around her, a crushing, all-consuming quiet. Her breath was tight in her lungs, trapped between the weight of fear and the hunger for something more.
And then, as she disappeared into the blackness, she whispered to herself, the words barely audible over the thrum of her pulse:
"Power is the price. And I'm ready to pay in full."