The journey was familiar. Everything remained as beautiful as before, yet now both knew what waited beyond the invisible boundary where life suddenly ended.
Several hours later... The vibrant greenery once again gave way to barren earth.
The silence returned.
Even knowing it was coming, the transition remained unsettling. The little traces of life disappeared almost instantly.
The massive entrance to the Doom Cave stood exactly as they remembered.
Neither ruler approached immediately; instead, they stood several dozen meters away, quietly observing it. Minutes passed, but nothing happened. Only the occasional breath of cold air drifted outward.
Atheline slowly exhaled.
"Last chance."
Lilith smiled.
"To turn around?"
He nodded.
"We could spend another month researching."
She laughed softly.
"We both know we’d still end up standing here."
He couldn’t argue with that. After another quiet moment, the two stepped forward together, crossing the threshold.
The change was immediate. Sunlight vanished behind them, and darkness swallowed everything ahead. Lilith activated one of the light crystals.
Soft white light filled the surrounding tunnel. The cave stretched far beyond its reach. The walls consisted of the same black stone veined with crimson crystal they had examined outside.
The air felt cold.
Their footsteps echoed endlessly through the passage. Both listened carefully for any sort of disturbance. For several minutes, nothing, then... A whisper; almost too quiet to notice.
Atheline continued walking. Another whisper followed, then another. Different voices from different directions. None were loud enough to understand.
Lilith frowned slightly.
"It’s beginning."
He nodded.
"I hear it."
Neither allowed themselves to focus on the voices; instead, they concentrated upon each step.
The deeper they ventured, the louder the whispers became. Now they occasionally distinguished words.
"...come..."
"...this way..."
"...help..."
"...Atheline..."
He refused to react. Lilith’s expression remained equally calm, though inside... She also heard her own name. The voices sounded familiar, comforting, almost impossible to place.
She deliberately ignored them. Hours of meditation throughout her life had taught her one invaluable lesson. Not every thought deserved attention, and neither did every voice.
The tunnel gradually descended. The crimson crystals became more numerous. Their faint glow mixed strangely with the white light from Lilith’s crystal.
After another half hour... Atheline suddenly stopped. The beam of light illuminated something lying beside the wall.
Bones, human-sized. They were scattered across the stone floor. Time had long since stripped away clothing, and only fragments of rusted armor remained.
Lilith quietly knelt beside them.
"No corruption or beast damage." She examined one of the skulls. "The bones are intact. They simply..."
She looked toward the darkness ahead.
"...collapsed."
Atheline frowned.
"Madness?"
"Possibly."
Neither lingered; instead, they silently paid their respects before continuing.
The skeletons gradually became more frequent. Some leaned against the walls while others lay where they had fallen. Weapons rested nearby; many remained untouched.
Several skeletons still wore jewelry despite the passing of countless centuries. No one had ever returned to collect anything, and the cave had become their eternal resting place.
A sudden sound shattered the silence.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Atheline instantly nocked an arrow. Lilith’s daggers appeared in both hands. The clicking grew louder and faster, then something enormous dropped from the ceiling. It landed heavily between them and the nearest skeleton.
An enormous spider.
Its body alone stood nearly as tall as a horse; eight crimson eyes reflected the enchanted light.
Its black exoskeleton shimmered with the same crimson veins covering the cave walls, and venom dripped steadily from fangs longer than daggers. The beast released a shrill hiss that echoed throughout the tunnel.
Atheline loosed his arrow instantly. Wind exploded around the shaft and the arrow struck one of the creature’s eyes; instead of killing it... The spider merely staggered backward. Its armored shell had absorbed most of the impact.
"So it’s that durable."
Before either could attack again, more clicking echoed overhead, then another and another.
Lilith looked upward.
The ceiling moved; dozens of gigantic spiders clung to the darkness above. They had remained perfectly motionless until now. The entire colony awakened simultaneously.
"They’ve surrounded us."
Atheline calmly drew another arrow.
"Then we clear a path."
The battle erupted. Spiders descended from every direction. Webs thicker than rope shot through the darkness.
Lilith vanished into the shadows, reappearing beside the nearest beast before her dagger sliced cleanly through one of its legs.
The enormous creature shrieked. Atheline’s arrows flew one after another. Wind-enhanced shafts pierced joints rather than armored shells, crippling each monster before finishing it with precise follow-up attacks.
Despite their strength, the spiders weren’t mindless; they coordinated. Several attacked from the front while others descended silently behind. One lunged unexpectedly from the wall.
Atheline twisted aside.
Its fang grazed his left forearm before Lilith immediately severed its head with a single sweeping strike. He glanced at the wound. Two tiny punctures and nothing more, then... A burning sensation spread through his arm.
"Venom."
Lilith immediately appeared beside him.
"How bad?"
He flexed his fingers.
"It burns..." He paused, assessing himself. "...but I’m still moving."
Without hesitation, she produced an antidote prepared from the fairies’ herbs and handed it to him. He drank it while firing another arrow with his free hand. The burning gradually eased.
"That helped."
Lilith nodded once before disappearing into another shadow to intercept three more charging spiders. Minutes later, the final beast collapsed.
Silence returned once more. The cave floor was littered with the corpses of enormous tarantulas. Atheline wiped a trace of venom from his sleeve.
"They certainly weren’t weak."
Lilith looked deeper into the tunnel.
"No, and judging by the skeletons... They’ve claimed many explorers."
They resumed walking. Not long afterward, the passage divided into two tunnels. The left fork continued downward into complete darkness, and the right passage curved gently, where far fewer spider webs could be seen.
The whispers also seemed slightly clearer from that direction.
Atheline studied both routes before quietly saying, "The right."
Lilith nodded.
"I was thinking the same."
Together they stepped into the right-hand passage. As they continued deeper, the webs gradually disappeared. The spiders became fewer until eventually there were none at all.
Only silence accompanied them once more. Several minutes later, the narrow tunnel suddenly opened without warning.
The two rulers emerged into an enormous underground chamber. Their crystal illuminated row after row of upright stone alcoves.
Inside each one stood a perfectly preserved mummy wrapped in ancient linen, as though peacefully sleeping while waiting for someone to wake them after thousands of years.