The meadow was quiet. For once, actually quiet.
Noah sat alone at the top of the hill, the strange spiral trees behind him swaying in the artificial wind. The grass beneath him pulsed gently with green bioluminescence, soft light rising and falling like a heartbeat. It painted the rocks in a faint glow and traced its way across Ariela's skin.
She sat beside him, shoulder brushing his. Her head tilted slightly in his direction—not quite resting against him, not quite distant either. Just… there. A real presence. One that didn't ask anything from him.
He hadn't said a word in some time. Not because he didn't have anything to say, but because—for once—no one was asking. No endless questions. No interruptions. No one looking to him for answers. She was just listening. Breathing. Existing.
It was strange. Unnerving, in a quiet sort of way. The Goddess of Life, usually bright and too full of warmth, was sitting silently beside the one god who preferred the company of stillness. But he didn't move away. He didn't ask her to leave.
Ariela shifted, dragging her fingers slowly through the glowing grass, watching how the light pooled around her knuckles. Her eyes stayed on the ground, but the way her body leaned toward the glow made it easy to read her face—focused, curious, calm. She looked at the world like it was still worth discovering.
Noah glanced sideways, only to find her already turning. Their eyes met for a breath too long.
He looked away first.
They didn't speak.
But she didn't leave.
And for now, that was enough.
Then—
SWOOOSH.
A high-pitched hum ripped through the air, followed by a heavy detonation as part of the cavern ceiling shattered inward. Dust exploded outward. From the breach, a spiraling tendril of shadow dropped like a spear, drilling straight through the light.
Chunks of dirt and stone slammed into the ground. Green light scattered across the meadow. Birds that hadn't existed a moment ago screamed and vanished just as fast.
Ariela shrieked as the shockwave slammed into them. She lost her balance and tumbled away from his side.
Noah coughed, eyes squinting through the haze and shattered canopy above. The air was thick with falling dust and fractured silence.
And then he saw it.
Floating above the meadow, boots still hissing from the heat of reentry, coat trailing like a banner torn from some forgotten war—
Evodil.
Grinning.
"This district's got terrible ventilation."
Noah rose slowly, brushing the dust from his coat with practiced calm, doing his best to pretend he hadn't been—just seconds ago—almost at peace.
Ariela remained behind him, crouched low and tense. Her hands trembled faintly at her sides as she peeked over his shoulder, watching Evodil like he might detonate again just for effect.
Evodil drifted down from the sky in a slow, effortless glide. His coat hung behind him like smoke, still rippling with leftover heat. When his boots finally touched the grass, the glowing meadow barely reacted.
He took in the spiraling trees, the pulsing ground, and the light bleeding softly over the stones.
"This is it, huh?" he said, glancing sideways at Noah. "The place you've been sneaking off to."
Noah gave a short nod, brushing dust from his sleeve. His other hand hovered near his waist, fingers twitching with quiet preparation—ready to raise a barrier if he had to.
Evodil's gaze shifted again. "You build it?"
Noah shook his head. "She did."
That earned a raised brow.
Evodil finally spotted her. She stood just behind Noah, unmoving, stiff as stone. She didn't meet his eyes. Her posture wasn't defensive, exactly—but she looked like someone expecting lightning to strike if she blinked wrong.
He tilted his head slightly. "Is she scared of me, or is this one of those divine aura clashes where someone starts glowing and another person faints?"
Noah exhaled and stepped aside, nodding toward her with a stiff gesture.
"Ariela, this is Evodil. My brother."
She gave a shallow nod. Still no eye contact.
Evodil blinked once, then twice—at her, then at Noah.
"She know I don't bite unless I'm asked to?"
Noah didn't answer. But the slight twitch at the edge of his jaw said more than words.
Evodil yawned, stretching his arms over his head like he'd just ruined a nap and didn't regret a damn thing.
"Alright," he said, scanning the trees again with bored detachment. "I'll cut to it. Remember that dream I had? The one with the eye, the screaming, the cosmic horror show—"
"And the coffee," Noah muttered.
Evodil's grin widened. "Exactly. The one that had me thinking you spiked my morning brew."
Noah nodded once, dry and unreadable. "I remember."
Evodil stepped forward and clapped a hand on Noah's shoulder. It was light, but casual in a way that reeked of ownership.
"Good. Because I'm gonna look around and see if this place has anything to do with it."
Ariela's eyes narrowed. Her hands curled slightly into fists, the motion small but pointed.
Noah didn't react. He'd long since learned not to.
Evodil stepped past them without waiting, eyes already sweeping the strange landscape like it owed him something. The spiral trees. The stones. The pulsing grass. Every corner of the meadow got the same cold scrutiny—like he was expecting it to blink first.
"Don't wait up," he said, flicking a hand lazily over his shoulder. His coat unraveled behind him, threads of shadow splitting into tendrils that curled outward, sniffing at the glowing grass like they were searching for something buried.
And then he walked.
Into the trees. Into the dark.
The spirals swallowed him quickly, and the shifting shadows filled in behind him like they'd been waiting. His coat dragged across the grass one last time—and then vanished.
The light stopped following him.
Noah stood still, arms folded, staring after the space where Evodil had disappeared. He didn't move. Didn't blink. He just watched, like if he stared hard enough, the shadows might give his brother back.
Ariela shifted beside him. He didn't glance at her, but he felt it—tight hesitation, soft breath, the moment before a question.
When he finally turned his head toward her, she flinched. Just a little. Not fear—surprise. As if she'd forgotten he was still standing there, and not part of whatever had just walked into the dark.
She spoke quietly.
"Who… is he? Really?"
Noah didn't answer right away. His eyes drifted back to the trees, where the shadows hadn't quite settled.
"I don't know," he said, barely louder than a breath. "Not anymore."
Ariela tilted her head, confused. "But he's your brother."
"Yeah."
The word hung in the air, empty.
She waited. Hoping for more. But Noah just exhaled through his nose, the sound tight and tired.
"He's changed since the dream," he said after a long pause. "Not in any big way. Just… off. He didn't even bother messing with James. Didn't show up uninvited, didn't crash any meetings, didn't sneak into the Citadel just to mock Jasper's knife collection."
Ariela raised a brow. "He's done that?"
"Twice," Noah muttered.
Her eyes flicked back to the tree line.
"And now?"
Now there was silence again.
Noah's gaze was hard, like he could feel something crawling just beneath the ground. "Now he's back. Still not cracking jokes. Not playing around."
He paused, voice dropping low.
"But he's calm."
She looked at him, unsure. "Isn't that a good thing?"
Noah finally turned away from the shadows.
"No," he said. "It's worse."
Meanwhile, Evodil moved through the dark, his steps steady and unhurried.
Behind him, the spiral trees thinned out. Their light faded. In their place, jagged stone walls rose like broken ribs, layers of shale twisting upward in angles too sharp to be natural. The grass underfoot gave way to cracked earth and brittle roots that clawed up from the stone—plants that had no right growing where there was no sun.
He didn't stop to look at any of it. He already understood what this was.
Noah hadn't exaggerated.
This wasn't a cavern.
This was hollow earth. An entire subterranean world, buried and forgotten.
He clicked his tongue once. Quiet. Then raised a hand and summoned the blade.
Crypt Blade unfolded into his grip with a slow stretch of shadow. It was solid, dull-edged, and heavy—no glow, no hum, just cold metal and function. He didn't admire it. He didn't need to. It was sharp enough. And it would come back if he dropped it.
That was enough.
The air shifted as he walked. The temperature dropped. The light changed. It filtered in from nowhere now—no sun, no source. Just a pale glow clinging to the stone like it didn't know where else to go. Sounds followed—quiet at first. Distant.
Clicks. Echoes. Something slick moving over stone.
He didn't hesitate.
The first wave came fast—lizards, small and blind, their bodies slithering through cracks in the rock. They skittered toward him, jaws open. He stepped around one, drove the blade through another, and kept walking.
The next were spiders. Bigger. Their legs scraped the ceiling, spears of bone and hair and chitin. He didn't flinch. When one lunged, he cut it down in a single motion. Another followed. He cleaved it in half, sidestepping the fall.
Then came the serpents. Thick as pillars. One tried to coil around him, slow and suffocating. He didn't let it finish.
And deeper still, the air shifted again. Squids this time—floating on nothing, their limbs twitching as if pulled by different laws entirely. They hovered toward him, silent and slow.
He didn't care what they were.
If it moved at him, it died.
This wasn't sightseeing. It wasn't curiosity.
He was hunting.
And he wasn't leaving without answers.
They came fast.
No warning. No sound. Just the dry scrape of clawed limbs on stone and the soft tap-tap-tap of something too light to weigh this much.
The darkness in front of him shifted—then broke.
Eyes. At least a dozen. Too round, too still, reflecting light that didn't exist in this place. The kind of eyes that didn't blink because they didn't need to. Their gaze didn't search—it settled. Like they'd already decided where he'd fall.
Then the bodies followed.
Spiders. Not the kind that lived in corners.
Each one the size of a tree. Their legs stabbed into the stone with sharp clicks, moving too fast for their size, too quiet for their weight. Their bodies glistened in the low light—wet, pitch-black, and pulsing slightly, like the skin didn't quite fit.
They didn't hiss. They didn't shriek.
They just came.
Evodil didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
The first lunged, limbs wide, jaws dripping some foul liquid that hissed when it hit the ground. He stepped forward and drove Crypt Blade through its abdomen in one motion. The impact sounded like metal cracking a rotten melon. The spider let out a violent twitch and collapsed, its legs curling inward in a sharp, unnatural spasm.
The second shot from the right—faster. Evodil turned with it and swung wide. The blade carved through the creature's middle, splitting it clean in half. Its front legs kept moving for a moment before collapsing in a pile of twitching meat.
The third dropped from above. No warning. Just a silent fall and a mouth full of bone-white fangs.
He snapped his fingers.
The thing detonated mid-air—flesh, limbs, and ash raining down in a circle around him like black snow.
But they didn't stop.
More poured in from the walls, the cracks, the ceiling. Dozens. Maybe more. The skittering filled every corner of the cavern, too many legs hitting stone, too many eyes reflecting what shouldn't be there. Some of them moved backwards—impossibly fast. Others clung to the walls with twitching limbs, still as statues until they leapt.
Evodil kept moving.
Some burned—his shadows lashing out and swallowing them whole. Others were cleaved apart by clean swings, Crypt Blade flashing dull silver as it cracked open their chitin like old armor. A few vanished completely—dragged screaming into the void beneath his coat, gone before they hit the floor.
When it was over, the silence returned.
Evodil stood in the center of it all—surrounded by a ring of corpses, their bodies still twitching as death rippled through their nerves. The ground steamed with a mix of ichor and smoke. Legs still jerked in random spasms. One twitching mandible opened and closed slowly, like it hadn't accepted it was dead.
He exhaled, steady. No satisfaction. Just quiet.
He flicked his wrist once, knocking the blood from Crypt Blade.
Then stared down at the pile.
One of the spiders let out a wet, final hiss as something inside it deflated.
Evodil tilted his head.
"…Think Noah could use these for something," he muttered. "Spider silk cloak? Arachnid stew?"
He stared for a second longer. One of the legs twitched violently and then stopped.
He shrugged.
"Eh. Too crunchy."
He turned without another glance at the remains, stepped over a twitching leg, and walked deeper into the dark.
The shift was subtle at first.
No sudden drop in temperature. No loud warning.
But the further he moved, the more the air began to feel... slow.
Not heavy. Not thick. Just—delayed. Every breath took a second too long to fill his lungs. Every step felt like it landed a beat late. It was like the atmosphere itself had forgotten how time worked.
He kept walking.
His limbs started dragging—not from fatigue. He knew exhaustion. This wasn't it. This was something else. Like the ground didn't want to be walked on. Like he wasn't supposed to be here.
He clenched his jaw and forced his pace to stay even.
No hesitation. No second thoughts.
He wasn't here to rest. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let a cursed pocket of stale air slow him down.
Then—finally—he saw it.
A shape up ahead. Not carved. Not natural. Just... there. Rising out of the nothing like it had always been waiting.
He stepped closer. His boots ground over brittle stone—and bone, by the sound of it—but he didn't look down.
The thing loomed in front of him.
A stalagmite.
Massive.
No, that word didn't work here. "Massive" was something you could scale. This? This wasn't meant to be measured. It stabbed from the floor to the unseen ceiling far above, like some ancient hand had slammed a spike into the world and left it there to rot.
It didn't look built. Or grown.
It looked inserted.
And around it—ruins. Collapsed and crawling with things that didn't belong. Moss, fungus, cracks that didn't follow the shape of the stone. The structure around the spike might've once been a dome. Or a temple. Or a prison.
None of those fit.
Evodil narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. Crypt Blade dragged behind him across the stone with a quiet scrape—less like he was holding it, more like it was following on its own.
The place didn't feel ancient.
It felt misplaced.
Like it had been pulled in from another story. Something colder. Wronger. A part of the world that shouldn't have survived whatever tore it out of its original home.
He stopped walking.
And for the first time in a long while, Evodil didn't speak.
Something was off.
He could feel it—not in his bones, not in some prophetic sense. He felt it in the way his shadows twitched. Not in response to movement. Not warning him of danger. They just... pulsed. Slight. Uneven. Like they were uncomfortable.
He didn't go in.
That alone said enough. Evodil was not the type to wait. Normally he would've kicked whatever door was left standing and made some half-serious joke while a curse tore through his bloodstream.
But not here.
This place made him pause.
So instead, he circled the ruin. Let the structure show its shape. Let it breathe.
The walls were slumped and split, warped by time or heat or pressure—maybe all three. Thick vines crawled along their sides, black and glossy like wet ropes. Shadow-fungus bloomed along the edges in slow, sticky patches, the kind that didn't belong on anything still alive.
But underneath it all—there was detail.
Symbols. Lines. Cut deep into the stone. Not decorative. Not clean. They'd been carved in haste, like someone had needed to say something before it was too late.
He brushed moss away with his hand. The stone beneath was cold and dry.
The mural stared back at him.
The carving wasn't intricate. No fine technique. Just sharp tools and desperation. But it told something—maybe a story, maybe a warning.
One figure repeated over and over. Towering. Thin. Motionless. Arms too long. Limbs too sharp. And a third eye—always the third eye—staring dead ahead.
Its body looked forged, like armor welded to flesh, but the halo above its head was smooth, round, almost delicate.
Metal and divinity. Machine and god.
Across from it were smaller figures. Human shapes. Some warped, others broken. All facing toward it. All beneath it.
No dialogue. No names. Just impressions. Power. Stillness. Watching.
Evodil frowned slightly.
"Great," he muttered. "More modern art. Is this the 'divine surveillance' phase?"
He stepped back and looked toward the final panel.
The same figure stood over a dome—one shaped uncannily like the structure he now circled. Its eyes were closed. Arms at its sides. Perfectly still.
No judgment. No action.
Just presence.
Evodil said nothing this time.
He waved a hand, and Crypt Blade dissolved into smoke.
If there was a trap, it wasn't sprung yet. And for now, that was enough.
He stepped inside.
The change was immediate.
The air was different. Cooler. Heavier. Not suffocating—just old. The kind of air that hadn't been disturbed in centuries, maybe longer. Like the building itself had been holding its breath until someone opened the door.
The floor stretched out before him—cracked stone, uneven and dry, broken by time and silence. Patches of moss clung to the ground in dull clusters. The ceiling had collapsed in places, jagged wounds overhead letting thin streaks of dead light slip through.
But there was no wind. No sound. Nothing alive.
Only ruin.
Tables lay broken beneath the dust. Some half-buried under debris, others cracked and leaning like they'd been caught mid-collapse. Chairs lay in pieces—wood splintered, rusted metal twisted into unrecognizable shapes. Whatever this place had once been, no one had touched it in a very long time.
Evodil moved slowly, eyes scanning the walls without urgency. He wasn't looking for threats now. Just… answers.
The murals here were different. Smaller. Fragmented. Not scenes, but symbols.
A circle split neatly down the middle.
A string of eyes drawn in a perfect line.
A shape that could have been a star—or maybe a gear. It depended on how long you stared at it.
Old banners clung to the walls above. The fabric hung limp, colorless, barely held together. When he passed one and brushed it with his fingers, it crumbled instantly—scattering like ash.
He stepped around what might've once been a reception desk. Half of it had collapsed. The stone nameplate had no letters left—just smooth erosion. A rusted lamp leaned against the wall nearby, bulb long gone. Shelves lined the far side of the room, most of them cracked in half, their contents buried beneath layers of fallen stone and time.
No blood. No bones. No battle damage.
No story of violence. Just silence.
Whatever ended this place hadn't come screaming. It had just… stopped.
Evodil stepped over a fallen pillar without looking down.
He kept going.
Room after room, stone after stone. Broken shelves. Dead banners. Symbols half-eaten by rot. He scanned it all. Not aimlessly—just methodically. Focused.
He didn't need everything to make sense. Just one piece. Something to anchor the dream that haunted him. A clue. A thread.
But nothing spoke to him.
Everything was ancient. Possibly important. But it all felt disconnected.
Then he saw it.
A corridor.
His steps slowed.
It stretched straight out from the far wall, wide and quiet, disappearing into the dark.
And it absolutely should not have been there.
He remembered the dome outside—circled it himself. It had been seamless. A perfect ring of ruin and overgrowth. There had been no hallway. No exit. No hint of any tunnel leading deeper.
But now?
Here it was. As if it had always been there.
The floor was smooth. Unbroken. The archway clean—no moss, no collapse, no decay. The lights along the walls were dull and cold, lined in regular intervals like someone had placed them yesterday. Every one of them dead—but none broken.
The air shifted.
Colder. Drier. Still.
Evodil didn't say anything.
He just stood at the threshold for a moment.
There wasn't fear in him. Not quite instinct either. Just… a weight. A quiet signal in the back of his mind that told him:
You're not supposed to be here.
He went in anyway.
His boots echoed softly as he walked, each step tapping against stone with a rhythm that didn't quite bounce back. Behind him, the faint glow from the dome flickered once—and vanished.
The shadows closed in like a door being shut.
The dark deepened the further he went. Not simple darkness. Not just the absence of light.
This was wrong.
The black here had weight. It swallowed sound. His coat didn't rustle. His steps didn't echo. The air was still, but not dead—it just refused to move. And worse, his shadows barely responded. They clung close to his legs, slow, reluctant. As if they'd recognized something he hadn't.
Evodil exhaled through his nose and glanced over his shoulder.
No glow. No entrance. Just pitch.
No retreat.
"Great," he muttered. "God of shadows, trapped in the dark. Very poetic."
He stopped.
Didn't draw his weapon. Didn't shift his stance.
He just stood there for a few seconds. Thinking.
That's when the light buzzed on.
Soft. Mechanical. A dim purple bulb flickered to life directly above him, dangling from a frayed wire that swayed gently in air that shouldn't have existed. No ceiling. No socket. Just… a bulb.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Then slowly turned.
The exit was there again. Ten steps away. Clean. Open. Like it had never vanished.
He turned back forward.
Rubble. Stone. Broken floor.
And a table.
Wooden. Old. Unremarkable. The kind of thing you'd find in a backroom or a basement. No carvings. No markings. Just a plain, four-legged table sitting alone in the dark.
On top of it?
A single deck of poker cards. Neatly stacked. Waiting.
Evodil didn't move for a long moment.
He stared. At the table. At the cards.
No one had set them there recently. But it didn't feel abandoned either. It looked like someone had just stepped away. Just long enough for him to show up.
He sighed.
"…Right," he said. "This seems normal."
He walked to the table. Looked down at the deck.
Nothing had tried to bite him. Nothing screamed. No whispers in the dark.
Just a table. Just cards.
He reached out and ran a finger along the top card's edge.
"What the hell," he muttered. "Didn't find anything else down here anyway."
He pulled out a chair, sat down.
"Might as well play a game of solitaire."