Chronicles of Chaos & Destiny
Chapter 3
Echoes
The tunnel stretched endlessly, damp air clinging to their lungs. The glow of moss lit the walls in a sickly green, casting the team's shadows long and uneven.
Each step echoed too loudly, as if the tunnel itself were listening.
Éloise pressed close to the wall, running her hand across strange carvings. Circles interlocked with jagged lines, symbols that pulsed faintly.
"These aren't just markings. They're seals. Whoever built this… wanted something kept inside."
Étienne leaned over her shoulder. "Or maybe they were just really bored cavemen."
Camille shushed him, her chair leg raised like a weapon.
"If the cavemen knew Latin and geometry, Étienne, then yes very bored cavemen."
Lucien knelt near a cracked piece of machinery embedded in the wall. Rusted gears jutted out of stone, still faintly humming. He brushed away dust and whispered.
"This isn't ancient. It's connected to the Experiments. Someone was building down here long before the lab above collapsed."
The whispers started again.
Soft. Familiar.
Éloise froze. The voice wasn't random it was her own.
"Lucien… don't trust them."
Her blood ran cold.
Camille gripped her arm.
"Tell me you didn't just hear yourself talking from behind us."
Étienne swallowed hard.
"Nope. Didn't hear it. Refuse to hear it. My brain has officially logged off."
The air grew heavier. The whispers multiplied Lucien's voice, Camille's, Étienne's all overlapping, taunting, laughing.
Then they saw it: a chamber at the end of the tunnel, sealed by a massive stone door. Blood-red markings stretched across its surface, glowing faintly as if alive.
Lucien stepped forward. "This is it. The core of the Experiments."
The markings pulsed harder, reacting to their presence.
Éloise reached out and the stone door cracked open by itself, groaning as if it hadn't moved in centuries.
A wave of cold air rushed out, snuffing their lantern.
From the darkness within, a figure stepped forward. Cloaked, face hidden, but undeniably human.
"Finally," the stranger said, voice smooth but broken, like multiple tones at once. "You've come."
The team froze.
Étienne raised a shaky hand.
"Uh… anyone else thinking we should've stayed with the shadow pigeon upstairs?"
The figure lifted its hood.
Half of their face was human. The other half scarred, twisted, and flickering like living shadow.
Lucien tightened his grip on his blade. "You're… one of them."
The figure smiled. "No. I'm the first."
Whispers of the Forgotten
The tunnels twisted endlessly, stone walls damp with centuries of secrets. Every step echoed like a drumbeat of fate, pressing on the group's nerves.
"Anyone else feel like this place is staring at us?" Étienne whispered, his flashlight flickering.
"Non, it's just your paranoia,"
Lucien replied, smirking though his own grip on his weapon tightened.
Camille trailed her fingers along the wall, her usually calm face strained.
"These aren't just tunnels. They're burial passages. Look the carvings."
Symbols of spirals, suns crossed with daggers, and fractured halos stretched across the stone. Some were smeared with what looked like dried blood.
Juliette leaned closer, curiosity sparking.
"These look… like warnings. Or maybe instructions."
Before anyone could answer, a chilling breeze swept past them though the tunnels had no openings. The lamps flickered, plunging them briefly into darkness.
Then came the voices.
Soft. Whispers. Hundreds of them. Layered, overlapping, as though the dead themselves leaned close to murmur their grievances.
"Leave… leave before the Cycle consumes you…"
"Eternal… never ends… never dies…"
Étienne froze. "Tell me I'm not the only one hearing this."
"You're not," Margot muttered, pressing her hands against her ears.
"But they're not just whispers. They're… memories. Someone made sure we'd hear them."
Adrien stepped forward, eyes narrowed.
"These tunnels are designed to test us. The shadows weren't the only guardians. The real trap is knowledge."
Suddenly, the ground trembled. A section of the wall cracked, stone sliding away to reveal an ancient chamber. Inside: rows of skeletal remains chained to the floor, each skull branded with the same spiral mark Camille had traced.
Juliette gagged. "Mon dieu… what did they do to these people?"
Lucien, uncharacteristically serious, muttered,
"They experimented… and failed. Eternal Experiments weren't just about power. They were about breaking mortality itself."
And then, one of the skeletons twitched. Chains rattled.
Its hollow sockets glowed faintly blue.
"…Hungry…" the voice rasped not through its mouth, but
The Crypt Awakens
The crypt roared alive with the sound of rattling chains, the clatter of bones, and the unholy whisper of voices echoing in every corner.
Dozens of skeletal guardians surged forward, their branded skulls glowing like lanterns of despair.
Adrien stepped to the front, blades drawn. "Form a circle! Don't let them break us apart!"
Lucien snorted, cracking his knuckles. "Finally, something I don't have to pretend to be afraid of."
He smashed his fist straight through one skull, only to watch it knit back together with a hiss of blue fire.
"Yeah… about that," Étienne muttered, ducking as skeletal fingers scraped for his throat. "They don't exactly stay down."
Margot's eyes darted across the chamber, scanning the runes.
"Wait the chains. The chains are the key! They're not just bindings they're seals."
Camille caught on instantly.
"Break the bones, they rise again. Break the seals, and they rest forever."
Adrien barked the order, voice sharp as steel. "Target the chains!"
The group shifted tactics. Juliette, small but fierce, swung her iron rod to smash the glowing shackles. Each broken chain sent the skeleton crumbling into lifeless dust, its whispers silenced.
But the fight was brutal. Shadows twisted between the undead, turning the battle into a storm of confusion. For every skeleton that fell, another seemed to crawl free from the walls.
"Mon dieu, how many of them are there?!" Juliette cried.
"Too many," Adrien answered grimly, striking two in a single arc.
"But that means whatever they're guarding is important."
The ground trembled again, louder than before. From the far end of the chamber, a colossal skeletal figure rose its body covered in dozens of spiral brands, its chains thicker than iron trees.
It opened its jaw, unleashing a roar that shook the walls.
Étienne paled. "…Nope. Nope. Absolutely not. That's cheating."
Lucien grinned despite the danger. "Finally. A challenge."
Margot, however, had gone completely still, her eyes wide.
"That's not just a guardian. That's a failed subject. One of the first Eternal Experiments… they tried to turn a human into an immortal vessel."
The giant's burning sockets locked on them.
Adrien stepped forward, determination cutting through the terror.
"Then this is no longer just survival. This is proof of what awaits us if we fail. We finish this together."
The team braced as the colossal skeleton surged forward, each step shaking centuries of dust into the air.
Juliette tightened her grip on her weapon and muttered, "I swear, if I die here, I'm haunting all of you."
Camille smirked, even as fear flashed in her eyes. "At least you'll fit right in."
And then the battle for the crypt's heart began.
The Bone Titan's Secret
The Bone Titan's roar thundered through the crypt, shaking ancient dust from the ceiling as chains rattled like war drums.
It swung its massive arm, a pillar of bone and shadow crashing toward the team. Adrien barely managed to block, his blades sparking as the force hurled him against the wall.
"Okay ow," Adrien grunted, staggering back up. "That thing hits like a cathedral falling on your face."
Lucien dove in, fists glowing with raw energy. He punched through the Titan's ribs, sending shards scattering only for them to whirl back into place with a sickening snap.
"They're reforming faster than I can break them!" he shouted.
Margot's sharp eyes scanned the glowing brands seared into the Titan's bones. "The runes it's not just sealing energy. It's… coding."
Étienne ducked under a skeletal swipe, nearly tripping on a loose stone. "I'm sorry, did you just say coding? As in, someone hacked this bone monster?"
"Yes," Margot hissed. "Whoever created it used runes like programming lines. It's not just undead it's engineered."
Juliette hurled her rod, cracking a chain loose from the Titan's arm. It bellowed in pain, staggering back.
"Less talking, more smashing!"
Camille suddenly gasped, pointing to the Titan's chest. Embedded deep within its ribcage glowed a crystal heart, pulsing like a machine.
"That's the core. Break it, and the construct collapses."
Adrien gritted his teeth, lifting his blades. "Then let's end this."
They launched a coordinated attack Lucien hammering at the ribs, Juliette knocking chains free, Adrien slashing at runes while Camille covered with precision strikes. Étienne, against every instinct of self preservation, scrambled up the Titan's back, clutching a half broken lantern.
"This is either going to be brilliant," Étienne muttered, "or the dumbest obituary ever written."
He smashed the lantern into the glowing heart. The light inside flickered violently, cracks spreading like lightning through the Titan's bones.
The beast let out one final roar before exploding into a storm of ash and shards.
The team collapsed, panting, their weapons trembling in exhausted hands.
Silence fell until the crypt's far wall split open, revealing a hidden chamber.
Inside, lit by eerie blue flames, stood a row of glass cylinders. Within them floated human forms, their eyes closed, their skin etched with glowing runes. Some looked young. Some old. All were alive barely.
Margot's voice cracked. "My God… they weren't just experimenting on corpses. They were trying to perfect immortality."
Adrien clenched his fists. "And failed turning people into monsters."
But then one of the figures inside the glass stirred. Its eyes opened, glowing like the Titan's runes.
And it smiled.
The Awakened
The air in the crypt thickened as the figure's eyes glowed brighter, a cold blue light that cut through the shadows. The others remained still in their glass prisons, unmoving, but this one pressed a hand against the cylinder's inner wall.
The glass cracked with a sharp snap.
"Uh," Étienne whispered, inching back. "I vote we put it back to sleep. Does anyone second that?"
The crack widened, glowing veins crawling across the cylinder until it shattered outward in a spray of shards. The figure stepped onto the stone floor, barefoot, pale skin laced with faint runes that pulsed like veins of light.
Adrien immediately raised his blades. "Stay back."
The figure tilted its head, studying them. Its voice was soft, almost melodic, but carried a weight that made the crypt seem smaller.
"You freed me."
Lucien narrowed his eyes. "We didn't mean to. Who what are you?"
The figure gave a faint smile. "I am Subject XIII… the last success of the Eternal Experiments. The one they called… the Prototype."
Margot stepped forward despite herself, her scholar's instinct overriding her fear. "You're… stable. Unlike the shadows. Unlike the Titan."
"Yes," Subject XIII replied.
"I was designed not to fail. They wanted a being beyond human limits. Stronger. Smarter. Eternal."
Camille's jaw tightened. "And how many people had to die for them to make you?"
The smile faltered. Subject XIII's gaze darkened. "Too many."
For a long moment, silence reigned until Juliette spun her rod nervously and muttered, "Well, at least he talks instead of trying to rip our heads off. That's progress."
But then, as if answering her, the other glass cylinders began to hiss. One by one, cracks formed in their surfaces.
Subject XIII's eyes widened in alarm.
"No… they weren't ready. If they wake now"
The glass exploded across the chamber.
Half formed beings, some twisted, some shrieking, tumbled out. Their runes flared violently, their bodies spasming between flesh and shadow.
Adrien cursed under his breath. "Of course. Couldn't just be one."
Subject XIII raised his hand, blue light surging. "If you want to live fight with me!"
And then the chamber erupted into chaos.