The silence in the mountain temple wasn't just an absence of sound. It was a presence in itself. Thick, watchful. The kind of quiet that made you whisper even when you were alone.
Lucian stood at the back of the chamber, one hand lightly brushing the jagged stone wall. Every fiber of him was tense, alert, not just his ears, but his skin, his breath, the way the floor felt beneath his boots. He couldn't see the bones scattered across the floor, but the air told their story. Musty, brittle scent like sun-bleached parchment, tinged with the metallic sting of dried blood.
Too many lives had ended here.
He could sense the weight of them, their memories tangled into the very stones. It was as if the walls remembered the dying screams and refused to forget.
The stillness of the temple pressed down on them like a weighted hand. The air inside was dry and still, as if no wind had dared cross its threshold in centuries. Bones littered the chamber. Piles of them, some ancient and brittle, others disturbingly fresh. Skulls grinned up from the dust, half-sunken into the cracked tiles. Ribs curled like withered leaves.
Lucian stood still as the others slowly explored. Though blindfolded, he turned his head with uncanny precision, pausing whenever a boot scuffed bone or a hand brushed stone. His breathing was calm but shallow, nostrils flaring slightly. Lucian tilted his head.
"There's something odd about the placement of these bones." Karla suddenly said.
"What do you mean?" someone asked.
"These bones…" She paused, her voice low and brittle. "Some of them were arranged. Layered. Like an altar and there's blood here. Old. Dry. Lots of it. And some of these bones are to small to belong to adults. Some belong to children of varying ages." Kaela said softly, crouching near a toppled brazier. "It seems that this place was used to make sacrifices but in a grotesque and rather disheartening way.
Garrick kicked a femur aside with a snort. "You're telling me this place used to be a monastery? What kind of god did this monks even serve that required such demented altars and sacrifices."
Lucian didn't speak. He didn't have to. The mountain was speaking now. Through the cold. Through the bones. Through the rhythm of the silence itself. He only affirmed to himself to stay away from anything that had to deal with religion. If the monks that proclaimed themselves to be absolutely selfless we're capable of these kind of acts then what was left for humanity.
A hush fell over the group as Joran's voice cut across the room. "The tunnel goes deeper."
Lucian tilted his head. The air beyond the archway exhaled against his skin—a long, slow breath. Cool and damp. Deeper meant older. And older meant worse.
"Now we're going down a spooky tunnel in a creepy temple in the Ghost Mountains." Lucian said quietly.
"What could possibly go wrong?". Tavian's carefree voice responded to him.
The tunnel narrowed as they moved forward, the walls tightening like a throat ready to swallow. Torches hissed in the damp air, and every footfall echoed too loudly, as if they weren't alone.The stone walls were dry and close, and the smell of age and ash grew stronger. Every step they took seemed louder in the hush. The corridor sloped downward. Faint carvings lined the walls, half-erased by time. Symbols Lucian couldn't see,Faint carvings lined the walls, half-erased by time. Symbols Lucian couldn't see, they weren't ornamental, they told stories. Warnings. Instructions. Perhaps even confessions. But he felt them under his fingers. Grooved. Precise. A breath of wind passed through them suddenly from deeper in. Not a natural breeze. This was colder, damper, like the breath of something old exhaling.The others began to talk less. The occasional jokes and banter exchange fell flat. Even Garrick stayed quiet.
Then came the chains.
Clink. Clink. Cla-chunk.
Faint at first. A rhythmic metallic sound, dragging through the stone, like something massive was shifting its weight just out of sight. The sound wasn't loud, it didn't have to be. It crawled under the skin and rattled inside the chest. They all went on alert and held their weapons in deathly grips.
They paused and waited for a beast or monster to suddenly spring up on them but there was nothing after few minutes had passed. Only the sounds of rattling chains sounding down the tunnel in the direction they were headed.
Lucian slowed, nostrils flaring. A prickling sensation on his skin as he heard voices. They sounded like prayers of numerous voices. But it quickly disappeared like a figment of his imagination. "Hear that?"
"The chains?" Kaela asked, her voice barely audible.
He nodded. "Yeah." He could've sworn he heard something else apart from the sound of chains. Or was this place finally getting to him. 'Am I going to die from going mad.' He said to himself internally. He had imagined dying to hunger and beasts but never to madness.
They pressed on, deeper into the bowels of the mountain. The chains grew louder, not faster, just heavier. A slow, deliberate clatter. Like a prisoner pacing the same cell for centuries. There was no vibration. No wind. Only the steady sound of steel grinding against time.
When they emerged from the passage, the group halted as one.
Before them, a wide ledge jutted into a basin of mist. The mountain opened its jaws here, vast and unmoving, and directly ahead stood a towering cliff wall, smooth as if carved by an inhuman hand. It rose up and up, lost to the white ceiling of fog above.
Unlike the rough stone of the tunnel, this surface was unnaturally polished. And etched with images and words.
Garrick approached slowly. "What the hell…"
Kaela's torchlight cast long shadows across the symbols: towering humanoid figures bowed in chains, rivers of blood flowing upward into a lake in the sky, mouths open in silent screams. Some of the lines twisted into script-like carvings, curling around images like vines growing over bones.
Lucian stepped forward but didn't touch it. He could feel the cold shivers running down his spine. The cliff wall emitted a frigid air that felt completely wrong. It was not cold like wind, but something more baleful like the stench of death. A hush fell again, punctuated only by the steady rattle of chains echoing behind the cliff, as if something lay just behind it…waiting.
Kaela exhaled. "Gods..."
"It's a warning," muttered Vael, one of Joran's scouts.
"Or a prayer," added Tavian. "Depending on who carved it."
Lucian stood back from the base of the cliff, his fingers twitching slightly. The air against his skin was colder here, more hostile. Not wind. Not temperature. But intent. "What does it say?"
"It's a seal," Kaela said softly. "Look at the chains carved into the base."
Lucian turned toward her voice. "What do the words say?"
"The language it's written in seems to be from the Ancient Era."
Before she could finish, the Ironbrand named Kellan stepped closer, his voice sounding out like someone that was hypnotized.
"To the Blood-Taken, bound beneath skyless stone,
Let no path lead down.
Let no tongue speak their names.
Let no chains break.
Let no prayers rise."
"No, stop him before he finishes." Kaela shouted as she broke into a mad dash towards Kellan
But it came too late.
He laid his hand on the center glyph. "All hail Krearen. Blood of the Eternal Night."
There was a hiss, then a deep, vibrating groan as if the cliff had drawn in a breath.
Then, all at once—
BOOM.
The wall split from the center outward, like a cracked eggshell, and from it burst a wave of red mist thick, hot, and screaming. It washed over Kellan, swallowing him whole. One second he was there, the next…
Only blood.
The others staggered backward in horror. Kaela screamed at the expedition team to back away. Garrick shouted curses, his weapon already drawn. The mist didn't move like smoke, it pulsed, like muscle, like breath. It rained red, splattering against the stone with wet, meaty splashes.
Lucian choked on the copper taste in the air. He crouched low, dagger drawn, even though it wouldn't help against something like this. He was fighting against a very strong urge to turn tail and run.
"Fall back!" Joran roared.
But the wall wasn't done. The symbols glowed brighter, and beneath the blood mist, a second pulse of chain-rattling thunder sounded out.
Something was in the crack between the wall.
It was waking.