Elijah gripped Dune's arm with an unexpected force, dragging him toward the darkened water. Dune's eyes widened in a mixture of confusion and frustration as he felt the cold rush of water rising higher, surrounding his feet.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Dune yelped, but Elijah didn't answer.
With a grunt, Elijah shoved him forward into the water, and Dune, still struggling to heal his hands with Neba, fell into the frigid depths. His healing was slow, his hands still raw from the brutal fight, and his body felt as though it were dragging a weight with each movement. The pain didn't subside, but he forced himself to push through it. He wasn't ready to drown here, not yet.
Elijah glanced over at Dune, and his usual smirk turned into something more serious.
He swam faster as the tunnel below them began to narrow, water sloshing around their bodies. It felt like they were diving deeper into something unknown.
The water cleared slightly as they reached the end of the tunnel. The two of them burst out into an air pocket, gasping for breath. They stood up, their clothes heavy with water, dripping down their faces as they surveyed their surroundings.
Dune's gaze met Elijah's, but it wasn't the sense of victory or relief that filled his chest. There was an odd feeling in the air, a weight, a coldness that didn't belong to the physical environment.
He looked around, eyes narrowing as his breath caught in his throat. This place... it feels wrong.
They stood in the middle of another cave, but this one wasn't like the others they had crossed through. The air here felt thick, as though something ancient and restless lingered in the dark corners.
The only source of light was a soft, eerie glow emanating from a cluster of crystals embedded in the walls. The dim light barely illuminated the cavern, and shadows seemed to stretch unnaturally long, as if reaching for them.
Dune slowly took a step forward, his boots scraping against the cold, uneven floor. He squinted at the walls, the dark corners, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. The sight before them was something neither of them could have predicted.
Skeletons.
Everywhere. Dozens of them. Littered across the cave floor like discarded remnants of a forgotten past. Some were still half-clad in ragged clothes, and others were little more than decayed bones, picked clean and scattered in eerie patterns. Dune took a careful step forward, instinctively reaching for his weapon, but he didn't draw it. What the hell is this place?
Elijah stood still for a moment, surveying the room, his face unreadable. "I don't like this," he muttered, his voice low and strained.
Dune moved toward one of the skeletons. It was old, so old that the bones had taken on a chalky, brittle texture. His fingers brushed against the dried bones of a woman, and his brow furrowed as he noticed the ring still on her finger, glinting faintly in the glow of the crystals.
A blue ring. Dune crouched, examining the hand more closely. It looks like Deleyna's ring… he whispered, his voice filled with an odd sense of dread.
Elijah's eyes narrowed as he surveyed the scattered remains, counting with a grim expression. "Seventy-six," he said flatly.
"Seventy-six bodies... all wearing the same ring."
Dune's breath hitched in his throat. "All of them?"
"Yeah," Elijah answered nonchalantly, but there was something in his tone, an edge of unease he rarely let show. "All of them. And from the looks of it, none of them died at the same time. There's no sign of trauma. No broken bones. Nothing to indicate violence."
The words hung in the air, but it didn't make the situation any less perplexing. "So what... how did they die?" Dune wondered aloud, his voice tense with confusion. "And why are they also wearing the same outfits?"
Elijah took another slow step forward, his eyes scanning the bodies for more clues. "They're all women," he added, his voice flat, almost matter-of-fact. "I don't know what that means, but... it's the truth."
Dune's chest tightened. Every part of him screamed to leave, to run back the way they came, but his curiosity held him fast. "What the hell happened here...?"
He didn't have time to wonder long before their eyes landed on something else, something carved into the stone at the far end of the room. A slab, simple but significant.
"Key of Freedom," Dune read aloud. His voice was hesitant as if the words themselves felt ominous. "Is this inheritance called the Key of Freedom?"
He stared at the platform in front of him. Next to the slate was an empty circle-shaped hole, the faintest remnants of something once placed there now gone. His gut twisted.
"Seems like someone already took it," he muttered.
"How could they have already taken it?" Elijah asked, his voice laced with frustration. "If they passed Leviathan's question... then how did they get away from her? If there was no core, why did she even protect this place?"
"Doesn't make sense," Dune replied, shaking his head, confused by the entire situation. His gaze wandered back to the skeletons, wondering just how deep the mystery went.
Suddenly, the air shifted. A quiet, almost sorrowful voice broke through the thick, unsettling silence.
"I don't want to die…"
Both Dune and Elijah spun around, eyes wide with shock. The voice was female, soft but desperate, and as they turned, their gazes locked onto the crawling figure emerging from the shadows.
A woman.
Her body was pale, sickly, and deeply wounded, her form dragging across the cold floor with desperate movements. She wore a tattered brown dress, and her hair was matted and tangled, her face twisted with agony. "I didn't do anything wrong…" she repeated in a hoarse, cracked voice, her breath ragged. "I didn't... I didn't—"
Dune's pulse quickened as his eyes met hers, and he took an instinctual step back. This wasn't right. Her movements were unnatural. Something was terribly wrong here.
Suddenly, her gaze snapped up, and her eyes widened with terror. "I'm not a mistake... I should live! Please!" Her voice now had a deeper, almost guttural tone, the words spilling out in jagged waves.
Both Dune and Elijah took a collective step back. The woman's body blurred, her form flickering in the air like a mirage, before she appeared a few steps closer, the flesh on her body decaying rapidly. Her skin darkened, her body shriveling as her eyes glowed with a haunting light. She was no longer human.
Her transformation was grotesque. What was once a desperate woman became little more than a skeletal figure, crumbling as if time had decided to speed up around her.
The decomposition was swift, like watching a corpse decompose in seconds. Her form fell, crumpling onto the cold stone floor, and her body turned into a pile of bones, collapsing in a heap.
Dune's throat went dry, his instincts screaming at him to run.
Elijah barely whispered, "Let's get the hell out of here."
Without another word, they both turned and sprinted toward the only tunnel visible in the cave. The air felt suffocating, and the echo of their footsteps reverberated off the stone walls, like a hollow reminder that they were not alone in this place.
"I don't ever want to remember this," Elijah muttered, his voice tense and shaky.
Dune's heart was racing, his breaths shallow. He didn't know what that thing was or what had just happened, but something told him it was far from over. The darkness that hung in this cave was far deeper than he could comprehend.
The air felt cold as they ran, and Dune couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that they were still being watched.
As Dune and Elijah sprinted down the dark, winding tunnel, the air grew thicker, almost suffocating, with each step. The cave seemed to pulsate around them, its walls breathing, its shadows shifting like living things.
Dune's breath came out in quick gasps, his muscles aching, but it wasn't just the physical strain that gnawed at him. There was something deeper, something unsettling in the air, something that didn't belong.
Figures flickered in and out of existence, like ghosts caught between dimensions. Women, dressed in tattered, ancient robes, floated in the corners of his vision. Their eyes glowed unnaturally, staring straight through him, their mouths moving as if they were whispering words he couldn't understand. Their faces contorted with agony, their bodies writhing, twisted in ways that made Dune's stomach turn.
He could see their skeletal hands reaching out toward him, their fingers elongated and sharp. And then they were gone, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared, replaced by strange, insect-like creatures.
Tall and gaunt, their faces were masked with distorted, grotesque expressions, but their eyes were cold, empty. They scuttled across the tunnel's walls, their limbs clicking and scraping against the stone like a swarm of locusts.
"Elijah…" Dune gasped, his heart pounding in his chest. "Are you seeing this?"
But Elijah didn't seem to care. He was too focused on running, his face a mask of determination. His eyes were wild, scanning ahead, not looking at any of the strange creatures that appeared and vanished in their path.
"Just keep running, Dune!" Elijah shouted over his shoulder, his voice sharp with urgency. "Don't look back! We have to get out of here now!"
Dune's thoughts were in chaos, but Elijah's command snapped him back to reality. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, his legs screaming in protest as they dashed forward through the dark tunnel.
Finally, they saw it, a faint sliver of light ahead. A way out.
Elijah screamed something incoherent, his words swallowed by the echoing darkness. Without hesitation, he jumped, his feet propelling him out of the tunnel, into the unknown. Dune followed, diving into the light with a final surge of energy, the weight of the oppressive air lifting as he broke free.
Both of them landed hard on the ground, rolling to a stop on the soft, wet earth. They gasped for breath, their chests heaving as the tension of the cave was replaced by the cool, fresh air of the outside world.
Dune blinked, looking around. The strange, suffocating darkness of the cave was gone, replaced by the calm, open space of a forest. The trees loomed high above them, their branches swaying in the breeze. There was no sign of the cave. No trace of the twisted figures, the decaying woman, or the horrors they had left behind.
Elijah, in stark contrast to Dune's confusion, let out a loud, triumphant laugh. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky, grinning wildly. "Hell yeah!" he yelled, his voice full of glee. "We're out! We're alive! We made it!"
He threw his hands up in the air, then, in an exaggerated motion, he kneeled down and kissed the grass beneath him, as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
"I missed you so much, my love," Elijah joked, laughing to himself, his voice light and carefree, as though nothing had just happened.
Dune, still on the ground, panted heavily. His mind was racing, trying to process what had just occurred. What had they really just been through? The cave, the creatures, the woman that turned into a skeleton, all of it felt like a fever dream, too surreal to be real. But it was real, wasn't it?
He exhaled a long breath, wiping the sweat from his brow. "What the hell was that?" he muttered under his breath. It was hard to believe that just moments ago, they'd been in the heart of that madness.
As the two of them sat there, catching their breath, the world seemed to settle. The forest was calm, the air fresh, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Dune could almost believe they were safe. But somewhere, deep down, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was far from over.