So this is what a blind man's world feels like.
My hand brushed across an icy, hard, yet smooth metal floor. I felt thick dust part beneath my fingertips like soft down… then I found a rough, cold metal railing, and a stone wall that was just as rough and just as cold. Bracing myself against the wall, I rose carefully, then kept one hand on the wall as I shuffled forward step by step.
The only thing that gave me even the slightest comfort was the indicator light on the simple little respirator clipped to my clothes. It was still on, which proved I wasn't blind—this place was just too dark. Unfortunately, that light was dimmer than a firefly. It couldn't illuminate even thirty centimeters ahead.
Suddenly my hand pressed into a recess in the wall, and my fingers touched something round and not quite as cold. I tugged the little lamp on my clothes closer and shone it in—
And instantly found myself staring eye to eye with the hollow black sockets of a skull.
I collapsed onto the floor, shaking all over. Out of the corner of my eye I'd just glimpsed a long row of bones beside it, each set placed into coffin-sized niches carved into the wall. This was a catacomb—one of those European-style underground ossuaries meant to store enormous numbers of remains.
No light at all. A catacomb where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Cold drafts came and went, carrying a low, mournful moan of wind and the faint clink of metal against metal. The air was bone-dry, threaded with a barely-there smell of rust and rot.
My teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Honestly, I hadn't panicked when I fell with the lift earlier. The weightlessness wasn't that intense, and my "rich experience" in this department (every time I dream of being in an elevator, the damn thing inevitably drops) told me that speed was nowhere near freefall. It wasn't enough to kill me. But after I finally climbed out of the elevator when it stopped, I ended up in this pitch-black hell.
What else could I do besides grope forward through a black, sinister catacomb? I wasn't Spider-Man—I couldn't climb back up a vertical elevator shaft. And even if I could, there were plenty of people up there who desperately wanted to kill me…
I forced down the fear clawing at my heart and kept moving slowly, one hand on the wall, one on the railing. Every step I took, I stretched out a foot first to probe for footing, because I'd realized the walls of this damned catacomb were unnaturally tall. Up, down, left, right—endless rows of coffin-sized niches, each holding a skeleton. Emperor knows how many people were sleeping their long sleep in this place…
The walkway beneath my feet felt more like scaffolding or a suspended passageway. Who knew how far down it went? The occasional right-angle turns and sudden stairways up or down made my heart seize every few minutes.
They say when you lose your sight for a while, your other senses sharpen. I can testify that it's true.
Now I could judge the size of the space I was in purely by the volume and direction of the wind's moan. Even when I couldn't see a thing, I could still feel when I passed through some towering hall, a long corridor, and at times smaller rooms like burial chambers. Sometimes I'd keep a hand on the wall and circle something in the middle that felt like a coffin, then find a doorway again and stumble back out… The clinking of something swaying in the wind—maybe metal chandeliers—would approach and recede, recording the distance I'd traveled.
I finally understood, on a deep level, those victims who died in cave exploration accidents.
My heart was always racing, pounding loudly in the darkness and silence. By rights, this low-intensity activity shouldn't have driven it anywhere near that fast. The violent exertion earlier had left me exhausted to the bone, aching everywhere. I desperately wanted to lie down and rest—yet anxiety and fear kept forcing me onward in a limping trudge.
I didn't know whether I'd wander in circles here until I collapsed, only for the church people above to eventually find me and chop me to pieces… or whether I'd get lost in the dark and die here, slowly, of hunger and thirst.
The rough, wool-like formal outfit I wore was grinding my skin raw. A few spots had already started to break out in an allergic rash, itching unbearably. The clothes soaked over my chest and abdomen turned painfully cold whenever the drafts swept over me, making me hunch instinctively, trying to keep my skin away from the fabric.
And my trousers… the combined sensation of wet, cold, sticky, and slick had almost numbed my lower body entirely. For my legs—already trembling and screaming with overworked soreness—that numbness might actually have been a blessing.
Just as I was quietly congratulating myself that this catacomb wasn't packed with traps and mechanisms like certain games, I suddenly heard human sounds.
It was hard to call it footsteps, but it was definitely the sound of flesh contacting stone and metal.
"Who?!" I blurted out in panic.
And immediately wanted to slap myself. Why the hell would I expose myself in the dark?
"We are those who link the fire." A woman's voice came from the darkness, flat and emotionless. The words echoed around me, and I couldn't tell the direction at all. "Why do you trespass in our sanctuary?"
"Uh… sorry?" I stammered. "I'm just lost. I wandered in by mistake…"
After being hunted by zealots upstairs, I'd learned my lesson. Anyone living in a catacomb where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face was absolutely not normal. On someone else's turf: respect first, talk second, then decide whether to run based on how things went.
The air around me stirred abruptly. I felt something move nearby, circling me. A faint scraping sound drifted around my body, but I couldn't see anything, so I didn't dare move an inch.
"How strange… how very strange…" A second voice, older than the first, drifted in. "Your voice is like a human's, your form likewise that of a human—yet you cannot be seen… What, then, are you?"
"I—I'm from outside," I replied haltingly, my mind spinning at full speed. They said they couldn't see me? That was ridiculous—of course they couldn't. It was pitch-black. Who could see anything here?
"Do you have any lighting? Electric lamps, or even torches? If we light it up, then we can see each other…"
"Every person is kindling. All living things bear flame. Why would we need such external tools?" This time the voice was younger—like a little girl of six or seven. "But there is no flame upon you at all. Are you truly human? Or some xenos-made thing?"
I was about to argue when a sharp pain flared in my wrist. I instinctively clutched at it—and my hand came away slick, warm, and sticky. Then I heard liquid dripping onto the floor.
In an instant, extreme terror seized my heart in a crushing grip.
In that split second just now, I had been cut at the wrist by a blade—so cleanly, so silently, that I hadn't even realized it happened.
By sheer luck, the strike didn't seem to have severed my radial artery, or it would have been far more than this amount of blood.
But the real reason terror flooded me was simpler: I couldn't understand why, in the middle of talking, I had suddenly been "given" a cut out of nowhere. And it was obvious the other party moved freely in this darkness, effortlessly. In skill and technique, they were so far beyond me that I had absolutely no ability to resist.
What should I do? What should I say? If I said the wrong thing again, would they just slit my throat? Or drive something through my chest?
"There is blood, there is flesh, there is warmth—pure, yet the flame cannot be seen…" the older voice murmured.
My legs were almost too weak to hold me upright.
"You are born human, yet your ember does not return to the Undying God-Emperor… and yet… you are not his enemy, either."
Another faint disturbance of air, another soft scrape. Whatever had been near me seemed to withdraw, as if it vanished.
"Leave, Unkindled."
My calves trembled violently, and my thoughts turned sluggish and foggy.
"You… you won't kill me?"
"We extinguish only the flame required by the Undying God-Emperor, take its ember-seed, and offer it to him, to sustain his light…" A voice, hard and slightly hoarse. "You are not what the Undying God-Emperor requires. You bear no flame, and thus you are of no concern to us. Yet this is not a place where you should remain. Leave at once."
My spine loosened in waves, relief breaking through fear.
"Then… where is this place, exactly? I can't see the road, and I can't find an exit…"
I tried to make myself as polite and nonthreatening as possible. It wasn't that I wanted to trespass.
It was that I had no idea how to get the hell out—and which way "out" even was.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]