Aira's breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps as she ran—each inhale a searing blade carving into her throat. The cold, fetid air of the underground corridors curled into her lungs like smoke from a long-dead fire. Behind her, the boots thundered—not just a sound, but a presence, pounding in rhythm with the panic in her chest.
They were close.
Too close.
She dared not look back. She couldn't. Fear had locked her gaze forward, where the dark swallowed everything beyond the dying reach of the torches. The upper levels were lost, crawling with guards like maggots on rot. Her only hope now was not up, but down—down into the ancient veins of this decaying place.
Into the forgotten dark.
Her bare feet slapped against slick stone, and she turned sharply into a barely lit hallway, where mold kissed the walls and shadows breathed in the corners. The corridor sloped downward like a throat, ready to swallow her whole.
The air shifted.
Colder. Heavier.
A silence that wasn't silence, but the absence of everything—no rats, no dripping water. Only the faint thud of her heartbeat and the echo of her own fleeing soul.
This wasn't just a dungeon.
This was a place the world had buried, chained shut, and pretended never existed.
This was a wound in the earth.
The Forgotten Ones
With each step deeper, the torches failed her. First dimming. Then sputtering. Until only a faint, flickering halo clung to the corridor like a dying breath. Aira's pace slowed, her instincts screaming.
She was not alone.
She could feel them.
Not watching—but aware.
A tension in the air, like an unseen eye pressed just above her shoulder, breathing with her, waiting.
Then came the sound.
A single chain.
Rattling.
Metal against stone—slow. Deliberate.
Aira froze, every muscle locked. She turned her head like it weighed a thousand stones. And there they were.
Cells.
Iron bars thick with rust, almost bleeding down the stone.
Most were sealed. Some broken.
And within… them.
Not prisoners.
Remnants.
Figures slumped in corners, limbs bent in unnatural ways—twisted like puppets left too long in the rain. Their skin was pale, gray, some cracked, peeling like bark from a dead tree. Their eyes, if they still had them, were dull marbles—some blank, others wide open, twitching, twitching, always twitching.
One man crouched, his back arched, as though in the final moments of some terrible transformation. His arms curled in on themselves, fingers blackened, nails long and broken.
His eyes met hers.
And he smiled.
His teeth—wrong. Too many. Too wet.
Aira flinched away, bile rising, but there was no time for horror. Not now.
She forced her feet forward, trying not to hear the soft whimpers echoing around her. A girl—not older than ten—sat against one cell's wall, her head bowed, whispering to herself.
Words Aira couldn't understand.
Words she was certain were not meant for human ears.
Graveyard of the Living
This wasn't a prison.
This was a graveyard where the bodies still breathed.
Still suffered.
Still dreamed.
Or maybe the dreams were all that was left.
The corridor twisted again—stone giving way to dirt, then back to stone again. The air had weight now, like a dead man's breath. Torches flickered behind her. Shouts echoed—closer. The guards.
They were hunting her through hell.
And hell was listening.
She ran.
Past the cells.
Past the things that remembered being people.
And then—
She slipped.
Her foot met something wet. Sticky.
She landed hard, a cry tearing from her lips.
The torchlight caught the floor.
And the floor stared back.
Bodies.
Not just bones—fresh.
Eyes open in death. Mouths frozen mid-scream. Some with hands outstretched, as if trying to crawl free even after the end. Aira scrambled back, choking on her breath.
One face she recognized.
A merchant from the upper levels. The one who'd given her bread once.
Now his face was half-missing.
She tore her gaze away. No time. No grief. Just survival.
Escape or Die
Voices echoed louder. Boots. Metal.
Laughter.
They were toying with her now. Hunting her like a game.
But she was not prey.
Not anymore.
She pushed forward, lungs searing, feet slipping in the gore as she ran. The corridor twisted again—like intestines wrapped around themselves.
And then—
A crack.
A breath of air. Foul, but different.
A tunnel.
Aira didn't hesitate. She threw herself toward it, half-running, half-crawling, the stone tearing at her hands and knees.
She slipped through just as torchlight spilled behind her, a guard's shout echoing through the corridor like thunder—
But she was already gone.
Gone into the veins beneath the dungeon. Into a tunnel older than the prison itself. Carved not by tools, but by something else. Something that scraped, not cut. Something that gnawed.
The silence there was worse.
It had teeth.
She didn't stop running until her legs gave out.
Didn't look back until she could no longer hear the laughter of the living—
Or the whispers of the damned.