Two brothers were out late one afternoon. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy of ancient firs and reached the pines below, painting the forest floor with slanted bars of ephemeral gold. Dust motes swirled lazily in the thick, warm shafts of light, smelling faintly of pine needles and damp earth. Below the whispering giants, the undergrowth was a riot of ferns, moss-covered rocks, and tangled thickets. Dry leaves, crisp and brittle from weeks without rain, crackled underfoot as the brothers moved.

  One confidently, noisily, snapping twigs with disregard; the other more hesitant, eyes constantly flicking, not just scanning for game, but studying the shifting shadows between trees, listening for sounds that didn't belong. The air grew cooler here, deeper in the woods, carrying the scent of decay and wildness.

  “See that ridge?” the younger one said, his voice echoing slightly in the sudden quiet. Little did he know that was the Rigale ridge a druid was currently on with his beloved wolf. The younger brother pushed through a screen of low-hanging cedar branches, a wide, triumphant grin splitting his face. He stumbled slightly but caught himself, not losing his momentum. “We’re way deeper than we’ve ever gone. Told you I could find the valley trail from here.”

  Rigal, the older brother, followed, stepping carefully over a gnarled root. His brow was furrowed, a familiar line of worry etched between his eyes. His bow hung loosely in one hand, the polished wood smooth against his skin, the string slack but ready; an extension of himself. “Yeah,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder, back the way they’d come, where the light was already fading faster. “And we should’ve turned back yesterday. The light’s going, Milo. You think Mom isn’t losing her mind by now?”

  Milo scoffed, brushing aside a large fern with the confidence of someone who felt utterly at home, despite Rigal’s anxiety. “Relax, Rigal. We’re gonna bring back an elk. A big one. Prime meat. She’ll forgive us anything for fresh steaks after a week of hardtack.”

  “She’ll ground us into the ground for worrying her sick. Elk or no elk.” Rigal’s tone was tight, edged with frustration.

  “Not if we show up with proof we weren’t just messing around. We were hunting,” Milo countered, his voice losing a little of its bravado but not his certainty.

  Rigal exhaled a slow, tight sound, his jaw clenching. “You’re an idiot, Milo.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a right idiot.” Milo’s grin returned, wider this time, proud of his twisted logic. He stopped suddenly, holding up a hand. His demeanour shifted, becoming sharp and focused. “Listen.”

  Rigal stopped too, instantly alert, listening. The forest sounds seemed to fade; a heightened sense of quiet anticipation settled over them. The rustling leaves and the distant call of a jay seemed muted, swallowed by the sudden stillness.

  “You hear that?” Milo whispered, pointing towards the crest of a small, pine-dotted rise ahead. “No… look.” He pointed down at the soft earth near a thicket of huckleberry bushes. “See those tracks? Right here. Fresh. Big. Elk. That’s not yesterday’s sign. That elk’s close. Just over that, in the next meadow, even.”

  A new tension settled between them, different from the familiar friction of their arguments. This was the electric stillness of the hunt. Rigal knelt quickly, examining the tracks, his earlier frustration momentarily forgotten, replaced by the hunter's focused intensity. They were fresh. He looked up at Milo, a flicker of grudging respect in his eyes, quickly masked by his usual caution. “Alright. Quiet now. And follow my lead.”

  They moved differently now, the casual noise of their travel replaced by deliberate steps, testing the ground before bearing weight. They crept towards the ridge, using the sparse pines for cover, the dry leaves forgotten under their careful tread. Rigal took the lead, his movements were fluid, silent, born of countless hours in these woods, though never quite this deep. Milo followed, trying to mimic his brother's stealth, but his eagerness made him a fraction too quick, his breath a little too loud.

  They crested the ridge and stopped. Both boys froze, melting into the shadows of the trees as if they were part of the forest itself.

  There, in the dappled clearing below, bathed in the shifting sunlight that felt like a spotlight, a bull elk stood broadside, magnificent and utterly unaware. Its rack was impressive, a dark, heavy crown against the green. It pawed at the ground near a patch of clover and then raised its head slowly, massive nostrils flaring, tasting the wind. It was a creature of raw power and ancient grace, a living monument to the wild.

  Rigal’s mind worked instantly: range, wind direction, escape routes, the angle of the shot. He began to subtly shift his weight, planning his approach, drawing his bowstring back slowly, muscles tightening, his focus absolute.

  But Milo was already moving. He didn’t ask, didn’t wait. He didn’t creep closer or find better cover. He simply drew his bow from right where he stood behind Rigal, a little too fast, a little too jerky, the movement shattering the careful silence. He aimed with a quick, almost casual motion, and loosed the arrow.

  Thwip.

  The sound was deceptively small, swallowed instantly by the sudden, violent reaction it caused. The arrow struck the elk’s flank. High, not clean, and definitely not in the vital zone Rigal would have targeted. The beast bellowed, a sound of shock and pain that tore through the quiet woods, reared onto its hind legs in a display of enraged power, then crashed back down and thundered off into the brush, snapping branches and tearing through the undergrowth in a panic-fueled flight.

  “Hell yeah!” Milo shouted, breaking cover and pumping his fists in the air, his face flushed with adrenaline and triumph. “Told you! Told you I could do it!”

  Rigal dropped his bow slightly, the tension draining from his muscles, replaced by a cold wave of dread and fury. He cursed, low and venomous. “Damn it, Milo! You just wounded it! That shot was trash! High and back!”

  “It hit, didn’t it?” Milo snapped back, his earlier triumph already turning brittle under Rigal’s sharp criticism. He was already moving, scrambling towards where the elk had disappeared, his eyes fixed on the trembling branches. “C’mon! This is the part where the real hunting begins!”

  Rigal stood there for a beat, the sound of the elk’s crashing flight fading into the normal forest sounds. He stared at the trembling branches, then down at the ground where the elk had stood, spotting the dark smear of blood on the bright green leaves. Too little blood, too high up. He took a deep, shaky breath, the scent of pine and damp earth now mixed with something metallic. His gut tightened into a cold knot. He glanced back up the ridge, towards the setting sun, painting the sky unseen beyond the dense trees.

  Then he took a deep breath and followed, his pace grim and determined, his eyes scanning the ground ahead for signs. Milo was already disappearing into the thicket, calling back impatiently.

  They were in too deep now. Deeper than the woods they knew. And not just in the woods. They were in a chase, with dwindling light, after a wounded animal, miles from home, and the easy confidence of the afternoon had just shattered like glass.

  The blood trail was easy enough to follow at first: thick droplets spattered across damp earth and withered undergrowth, smearing crimson streaks on smooth grey stones, staining broken fern stems a vivid, terrible red. The pair moved with a new, grim focus, the earlier banter silenced by the urgency of the task. Rigal kept his eyes fixed on the ground, calling out directions in a low voice, noting how the elk favoured its left side, how its steps were becoming more frantic, longer. Milo, less practiced in tracking, pushed ahead impatiently, occasionally calling back, "See any sign?" or "Still heading this way?"

  But even as the trail remained clear, the character of the forest began to change. The sun was beginning to dip lower behind the thick trees, painting the upper branches with a last, desperate light, but down on the forest floor, the shadows stretched impossibly long, pooling in hollows and under bushes. The air grew colder, losing the day's warmth faster than it should have. The familiar sounds of the woods; the rustle of squirrels, the distant chirping of birds, and the buzz of insects began to fade, giving way to an unnatural quiet that pressed in on their ears.

  Then, the fog. It didn't drift in on a breeze; it simply was. It licked at their boots first, a cold, damp touch that climbed their legs like icy fingers. It wasn’t the thin mist that rose from a stream or pond after a cool night, either. This fog was heavy, still, clinging stubbornly to the ground like a shroud. It drank the colour from everything, turning the vibrant green of the undergrowth and the warm browns of the earth into muted, ghostly shades of grey. It didn't just obscure sight; it choked out sound, muffling their footsteps, swallowing the snap of twigs. Even the sparse, fading birdsong had vanished completely.

  Rigal slowed his steps, every instinct screaming at him to stop. He held up a hand, peering into the swirling grey. “Hold up, Milo.”

  His younger brother didn’t slow down. He was already ten paces ahead, a shadowy figure barely visible through the gloom, his voice muffled but still carrying that annoying note of certainty. “We’re close! The trail’s right here. I felt it move through this fog bank.” He sounded keyed up, adrenaline still high from the chase.

  “No,” Rigal said again, stopping outright, the hairs on his arms prickling despite the effort of the hike. “Something’s not right. Feel that?” He scanned the trees around them, their shapes blurred and distorted by the fog. The fog wasn’t moving; there was no wind, no current. It just was, like a damp, cold blanket nailed in place around them. The air felt heavy and charged, putting a strange pressure on his skin. The forest here didn’t feel alive; it felt… clean. He felt a weird energy in the air, something unfamiliar.

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  Milo paused, turning back just long enough for Rigal to see the outline of his impatient figure. “Feel what? The fog? Yeah, it’s cold. Means we’re getting deeper in.”

  “No, not the fog,” Rigal insisted, his voice low and urgent. “The air. The pressure. And the quiet. Everything’s… off. Dead silent.” He gestured vaguely. “This isn't natural fog, Milo. It's just here.”

  Then they saw it through the shifting grey veils.

  The blood trail, still starkly visible against the muted ground, led directly into a narrow groove between two large stones, impossibly tall and crooked, like broken teeth jutting from the earth. Vines as thick as a man's arm draped over the entry, heavy and dark. Just beyond them, blackness. Not just shade from the rocks: absolute dark. Cave-dark, but somehow denser, hungrier.

  Rigal felt a jolt of pure, primal fear. He reached out instinctively, catching his brother’s arm in a tight grip. “Milo. We’re not going in there.”

  “Are you kidding me?” The younger brother wrenched his arm free, his eyes wide and bright even in the dim light. “The trail goes in there! The elk ran in there! It’s cornered! This is perfect!” His voice was louder now, crackling with excitement.

  “We don’t need it that bad!” Rigal retorted, the words tumbling out in his haste. “Milo, look at this place! It’s wrong. We leave it. We go home. Now. We’ll tell Mom the fog rolled in. Anything. We don’t go in there.”

  But Milo wasn't listening. He was already slipping between the monstrous stones, bow held out ahead of him, steps bold and unhesitating, drawn by the lure of the easy kill, or maybe something else entirely.

  “Damn it, Milo!” Rigal hissed, torn between leaving and the primal need not to abandon his brother. He took one last, desperate look at the oppressive stones, the unnatural fog, the yawning blackness beyond, and then followed, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

  The air inside was instantly colder, thicker, smelling faintly of damp earth and something else, something mineral and strange. The walls weren’t rock, not quite. They were stone cold beneath their boots, and the narrow hallway curved downward into the earth, but it was too smooth. Too deliberate. Not carved by water or time, but made. Patterns traced the edges of the hallway, half-worn carvings that looked like language, intricate knotwork and unfamiliar geometries that twisted the eye. Rigal dragged his hand along the wall; it felt unnaturally slick. This wasn’t natural rock, not an organic cave.

  And then it opened.

  They stepped from the constricting hallway into a vast chamber beneath the earth, the ceiling so high it was unseen, lost in a pale golden light that had no source they could find. It was like being inside a memory of sunlight. It was soft and warm, but utterly false, a ghostly echo of the world outside. Plants grew here; vines that trailed from unseen heights and clumps of ivory-coloured moss that draped over carved stone walkways and strange, low pedestals. The air was fresh and overly clean; it vibrated faintly, a low hum that seemed to resonate in their cores, like a breath held too long in a vast, still space.

  It felt good to be in here, but dangerous.

  The elk was gone. No sound of it, not even the echo of its panicked flight. And down here, on the smooth, carved floor, there was no blood now. The trail had vanished.

  Rigal stopped dead on the threshold between the hall and the chamber, his boots scraping softly on the strange stone. He felt exposed and vulnerable, every nerve ending screaming danger. “This is a dungeon,” he said, his voice barely a whisper in the vast quiet. “This isn’t a cave. We’re not supposed to be here, Milo.”

  “You don’t know that,” Milo’s voice was full of awe, completely oblivious to Rigal’s terror. He was already spinning slowly, his eyes wide, marvelling at the chamber, at the strange light and the unearthly plants. “Maybe it’s just… old ruins or something! Nobody’s found this before, Rigal! It’s amazing! We’re the first!”

  “We need to leave,” Rigal said, stepping back slightly towards the entrance they’d come through. His voice was firm now, edged with desperation. “Now. Before—”

  But the younger brother was already stepping forward again, deeper into the chamber, his bow forgotten for a moment, his eyes lit with a fire Rigal hadn’t seen before. Not just excitement, but a consuming wonder that seemed to erase all caution.

  Rigal looked once more at the strange, patterned carvings on the walls, at the source-less, artificial sunlight that filled the enormous space, at the unnatural stillness and the low, persistent hum. Every fibre of his being urged him to turn and run back into the cold, natural darkness of the hallway. But he looked at Milo, already moving away, and he couldn't.

  He took a step forward, into the false light, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against the oppressive silence. Somewhere ahead, maybe, the elk’s trail waited, but Rigal knew with chilling certainty that something else was waiting too. Something that had been waiting for a while.

  The chamber continued to stretch far wider than Rigal first thought, a vast, echoing space that felt less like a natural cavern carved by water and more like something hollowed out, deliberately shaped. It wasn’t just a cavern. It was something else entirely, something made. The floor beneath their boots shifted from the familiar, rough-hewn stone of the entryway to a strange, smooth black surface that absorbed the light rather than reflected it. It felt hard, cold, and unnaturally uniform. Rigal crouched down instinctively, his fingers brushing tentatively across the material. It wasn't quite rock, lacking the grit and texture of natural stone. It wasn't metal either, or wood.

  Something in between.

  Something that felt utterly alien under his touch.

  “What… what is this?” he murmured, the question barely audible in the vast, humming quiet.

  Ahead, scattered across the floor and rising out of the ivory-coloured moss like skeletal fossils half-unearthed, were strange, disturbing objects. Twisted poles of some dark, brittle material jutted at odd angles. Jagged husks of deeply rusted metal lay scattered like the remains of colossal, broken insects. Shapes he couldn’t name, couldn’t even begin to categorize, lay or stood in silent, unsettling disorder. They had four wheels, but they weren’t made from wood, but some black material.

  Rigal stared ahead, eyes tracking over the looping path that seemed to trace the inner perimeter of the chamber. The path itself was paved with the strange, black material as the center floor, but it was cracked and fissured in places, pushed apart by the unnatural roots of the pale plants and the sheer, patient force of time that seemed to hang heavy in this space.

  At the far end of the loop, beneath a canopy of luminous, golden-glowing moss, stood a single square building. It wasn’t integrated into the cavern wall; it jutted out of it abruptly, unnervingly, like it had been dropped there with surgical precision. Not built organically from the stone. Placed.

  He read the sign placed about the door: Vendetta Heights Elementary School.

  A cold certainty settled deep in Rigal’s gut, chilling him more than the air. His breath hitched. “Is this… a dungeon?” he whispered, the word feeling inadequate yet terrifyingly accurate. “It must be. Why else would there be a school here?”

  His brother didn’t answer. Milo was already jogging forward along the black path, his bow slung carelessly across his shoulder, completely oblivious to Rigal’s growing terror. He was focused only on the missing elk, on the hunt, on the prize.

  “Hey—Milo! Wait up!” Rigal called after him, his voice tight with panic.

  But the younger hunter didn’t slow. He stepped onto the looped path, a low whistle of wonder escaping his lips, spinning slowly in a place like a tourist in a museum, drinking it all in. “Man, this place is wild,” he breathed, his voice echoing slightly. “Can you imagine? Bet we’re the first people to see it in a hundred years… maybe more.”

  “Milo, something’s wrong here!” Rigal’s voice rose, tinged with desperation. He started walking faster, trying to catch up. “We need to go. This isn’t natural, it’s made. It feels… dead. Listen to your core. The mana here is the cleanest I have ever felt. It feels…”

  Before he could finish the word, a sound tore through the unnatural quiet of the cavern. A deep, guttural grunt, the frantic shuffle of hooves on the broken ground, the snap of unseen branches.

  The elk.

  It crashed through the trees on the far side of the chamber, its eyes wide and wild with pain and terror, its magnificent rack catching the false light. Blood still ran freely down its flank from Milo's earlier shot, its breath ragged and steaming in heavy bursts. It didn't charge towards them, towards the exit. It charged blindly, desperately, toward the center of the loop, toward the middle of the chamber, driven by pain or instinct or something else entirely.

  The younger hunter raised his arms, his face alight with renewed excitement. “It’s still alive! We got it! It came right to us!”

  The elk galloped onto the cracked black stone of the path. Then the ground gave way beneath it with a sudden, sharp crack. A deafening WHUMP echoed through the chamber as the stone fractured and crumbled. The animal let out one final, terrible, panicked scream. A sound of pure agony and abrupt cessation, before vanishing into the absolute dark of the newly opened pit.

  They heard the impact seconds later, a sickening thud from far below.

  A jagged, gaping pit lay open now in the center of the loop. Rigal’s eyes scanned the rubble around the hole. He saw pieces of old wood, some splintered timber, shards of something that looked like faded yellow paint, and even what appeared to be fragments of metal signs. He thought he saw lettering. Black on white, partially obscured, some kind of warning or label; but he couldn’t read it from where he stood.

  Milo whooped a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph that felt horribly out of place. He practically skipped forward, oblivious to the chilling implications, peering down into the newly formed abyss. “We bagged it! Unbelievable! That’s what I’m talking about!”

  A notification of experience flashed in their HUDs, but they ignored them.

  Then, the silence fell again. Not the soft, humming quiet of the chamber before, but an absolute, immediate silence, like a heavy curtain had dropped over the world, swallowing all sound, all echo, all breath.

  Rigal’s skin prickled with a terror that went deeper than the pit itself. The hairs on his neck rose, standing on end. Every survival instinct shrieked at him. “…Do you hear that?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

  Milo straightened from peering into the pit, his grin still wide. “Hear what, man? The elk’s down. We got it. Told you this was a good idea! Come help me check—”

  Clink.

  A soft, unnatural scrap of metal against stone. Distinct. Unmistakable. Then another. Clink. Scrape. Closer now. The sound seemed to come from within the shadows near the black odd stone circle. Rigal thought it might have come from one of those odd vehicle-shaped creations. Or maybe from the entrance to the loop.

  Rigal’s breath caught in his throat, strangling him. His eyes darted wildly, searching. “Milo. Stop. Wait. Something is coming.”

  He reached out desperately, his hand shaking, and grabbed his brother’s arm, pulling him back.

  But something else was already pulling from below, from the edge of the pit, from the oppressive darkness that had just swallowed the elk. It was a sudden, violent tug, strong and swift, ripping Milo from Rigal’s grasp with horrifying ease.