Deep Underground
The darkness was absolute.
Not the darkness of night, where stars provided comfort and moonlight offered hope. This was the darkness of the deep—where light was an intrusion, an anomaly, a thing that didn't belong.
They had fled into it anyway. What choice did they have?
Above, the world burned. Demons swept through the broken alliance lines like fire through dry wheat. Valorheim and Karthia—enemies for generations—had united too late. The demon horde cared nothing for their ancient hatreds. It consumed them equally.
And now the survivors had run into the only place demons wouldn't follow.
The Progenitor ruins.
Ancient. Forbidden. Filled with warnings carved in languages older than human civilization.
*DANGER* *TURN BACK* *WHAT SLEEPS BELOW MUST NOT WAKE*
They ignored the warnings. What choice did they have?
Behind them: certain death.
Before them: possible survival.
Between them: only darkness, and whatever waited within it.
***
Cael stood at the threshold.
One hundred and twelve soldiers behind him. Valorheim and Karthian both, united by desperation. Some were wounded. All were afraid.
The tunnel mouth gaped before them like a wound in the earth. Cold air drifted from its depths—air that hadn't touched sunlight in ten thousand years.
"Last chance to turn back," someone muttered.
No one turned back.
Because behind them, the sky was red with demon fire, and the screams of the dying carried on the wind.
Cael stepped forward. Into the dark.
The others followed.
They didn't know what waited below.
They didn't know the cost that would be demanded.
They only knew that down here, in the deep places of the world, something slumbered. Something the Progenitors had sealed away eons ago. Something that made demons look like a minor inconvenience.
And they were about to wake it up.
***
But all of that came later.
First, there was only the descent.
Into darkness.
Into the hollow deep.
Where everything they believed would be tested.
And most of them would die.
Not all at once. Not quickly.
But inevitably.
Because the deep demanded payment.
And the deep always collected.
Join the Discussion