Lucian's eyes peeled open, dry and aching.
Same moss-light. Same choking air.
Same cave.
A wave of quiet dread rolled over him, slow and suffocating. No dream. No reset. No hidden camera reveal.
This was real.
"Fuck…" he whispered, the word bouncing off the stone in a hoarse echo. His breath trembled. "Goddammit…"
He sat up slowly, each movement fighting against pain that had settled into his body overnight. His spine felt like it was snapped. His wrists ached. His whole body felt like it had been thrown off a bridge.
He stared at his hands—shaking, bruised, and dirty. The last time he'd looked at them clearly, they were tapping a keyboard in a campus library.
Now?
They were all he had.
Lucian exhaled sharply, forcing the panic down before it could climb into his throat again. "Okay," he muttered. "You're here. You're alive. You're stuck. So move."
His stomach growled—loud, angry, hollow. He grimaced. "Great. Starving already."
He scanned the dim walls, eyes locking on the glowing moss patches. They gave off that same eerie green light, soft and pulsing faintly almost like a dying glow stick . It wasn't much—but it was something.
"…No way that tastes good."
Still, he pulled himself over to the nearest patch and pinched a tuft between his fingers. Slimy. Warm. Faintly sticky.
He hesitated. Then shoved it in his mouth.
"Pttt—God, this is awful" he gagged, spitting a chunk out. "Tastes like wet socks and batter acid."
But he chewed through it anyway. One handful. Then another. His body needed something, and this disgusting excuse for cave salad was all it had to offer.
Swallowing was a a disgusting battle, but he won.
"Alright… food, check," he muttered, trying to ignore the dryness in his throat. "Next… water, if I don't have that I'm dead like any other human who needs it"
He stood, listening. Then he heard it.
Drip.
A faint, rhythmic dripping. Water hitting stone somewhere beyond the glow of the moss.
His heart jumped. "There."
He stumbled toward the sound. Slow at first, then faster. His feet slipped on slick rock, but he didn't stop. His throat burned.
Drip.
The sound grew louder. Clearer.
And then—there it was.
A shallow basin carved into the stone, half-hidden behind jagged rocks. Water pooled there in tiny ripples, fed by a steady drip from above.
Lucian dropped to his knees like it was holy. "Holy—shit—I knew it!" he laughed, voice cracking.
He pressed his lips to the stone and drank.
Cold. Clean. Real.
It hit his throat like he had a ice cube stuck inside, shocking and glorious. He didn't stop until he was full, gasping afterward like a drowning person breathing air again.
He sat back, chest rising and falling. For the first time since waking in the cave, something like hope cracked through the isolation.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay. Still alive. Still in hell. But I'm not dying. Not yet."
He glanced around the cave again, wiping water from his lips. The moss glowed faintly on the walls. The shadows stretched endlessly in every direction. No doors. No exits.
But also no monsters, which was amazing.
No noises that didn't come from him.
Just… silence.
Lucian stood slowly, stretching his sore limbs. "I've got food. I've got water. No sign of anything trying to eat me yet…"
He tapped the stone wall with his knuckles and listened.
Solid. No hollows. No echoes of something outside to exploit, nothing but pure endless rock.
A prison, maybe—but not a death sentence. Not yet.
"Still. This is gonna suck," he muttered. "Might as well keep moving."
Lucian worked out.
He did push-ups until his arms trembled. Squats until his knees screamed. Shadow-boxed the air, his form terrible but at least kept his mind off of the loneliness eating at him.
He paced the circle of moss-light again and again. It wasn't about strength. It was control. Routine. A rhythm to fight the stillness making him slowly feel like he was losing his mind.
"Can't lose it," he muttered between breaths. "Just one day at a time."
At some point, he picked up a sharp rock and scratched two lines into the stone wall.
Time blurred.
Lucian kept his routine.
Moss for food. The same bitter, warm slime every time.
Water from the same dripping cold pool.
Workout. Rest. Repeat.
When he wasn't moving, he counted the tiny markings in the stone, made up names for the moss patches, buddy and earl, or stared at his own hand and tried to remember what a computer keyboard felt like.
He carved lines for each day. After a while, he stopped counting out loud.
The cave stayed unchanged.
And yet, something began to shift.
One night—maybe day fourteen , maybe not—Lucian lay curled against the moss wall, too tired to move, his mind was all over the place to sleep. The silence was heavier than usual. As if the cave itself was listening.
That's when he felt it.
A pulse.
Faint. Like the cave it self was alive and breathing.
It wasn't sound. It wasn't movement.
It was a vibration.
He pressed his palm against the wall, it felt like heartbeat. It was subtle—barely there—but unmistakable. Like the rock beneath him was… humming.
His skin tingled and so did his body.
"What… is that?"
It wasn't the drip of water. It wasn't his heartbeat.
It was something deeper. Resonating.
Alive.
He closed his eyes and pressed both hands to the wall. The hum lingered. Slow. Rhythmic.
Then it faded.
Gone.
Lucian sat in the dark, staring into nothing, any thinking of his now miserable life.
The cave no longer felt dead.
It felt dormant.
That night, he dreamed again.
If it could even be called a dream.
There was no floor beneath him, no air, no sky. Just infinite white, pulsing softly with a noise similar to a lightbulb humming.
The void-like place surrounded him—limitless, soundless, almost alive.
Lucian floated there, his eyes widening in shock.
The silence wasn't empty. It was watching.
Then—something shifted.
A figure emerged in the void, impossibly still, like she just summoned her own existence.
A woman.
She stood barefoot against the void, her form silhouetted in impossible contrast. Her hair was long, snow-white, trailing behind her down to her waist.
Her eyes were a glacial blue—sharp, cold, and unreadable.
A sheer black gown clung to her body, slit high on both legs and adorned with thin gold accents that caught the weird light in the void. Her face, half obscured by a black blusher veil, left only her piercing eyes visible—unmoving, unblinking, making Lucian feel even more uncomfortable.
She did not speak.
She simply watched him.
No breath. No sound.
Lucian couldn't move. Couldn't think.
The pulse returned—stronger now. Not in the air, but within him it almost feeling alive in a way
The deep throb of pressure and vibration spreading and becoming clearer.
Like the void was breathing him in.
She tilted her head slightly—curious? Maybe Disappointed? It was impossible to tell.
Then she was gone, vanishing without a single trace.
Like she'd never existed in the first place .
The pulse dispersed in an instant and his surroundings shattered like glass.
Lucian woke with a jolt, gasping in disbelief and panic.
Sweat drenched his hoodie. His hands trembled. The walls of the cave pulsed faintly again—just once.