The stone door had barely finished groaning apart when Ragna lifted a hand sharply, the signal that meant stop even without words. Mimi almost stepped forward anyway, but Ragna caught her wrist and leaned in close.
"Light off," she whispered.
Mimi blinked, confused for a breath, then obeyed. The beam snapped into darkness, and the world felt twice as large and twice as dangerous. The three of them stood silent, breathing in the dark like it had weight.
Ragna tilted her head, eyes narrow. "Listen."
For a moment, nothing.
Cold air, stone floor under their palms, the memory of crawling still on their knees.
Then it came. Very faint, like breath on the other side of a dream.
Whispering.
Not one voice. Not clearly two. Soft strings of sound slipping over each other, too faint to understand, too constant to ignore. It was not wind. It was not echoes from the tunnel. It sounded like people.
Neera's voice cracked into the quiet, barely audible. "Tell me that is not voices."
Mimi slowly backed up until her shoulder brushed Neera's. "It sounds like ghosts. Or cult people. Or a murderer convention."
Ragna lowered into a crouch, calm but alert, the way a cat watches an open doorway. "If there is someone inside, we need to move quietly. No sudden noises."
Mimi swallowed, eyes wide with equal parts fear and thrill. "So we are sneaking into a dark hole with possibly alive whispering strangers. Fantastic life choices."
Neera was already assessing the room with her eyes, brain sprinting faster than her pulse. "Footsteps will echo. We should reduce noise as much as possible. Shoes off."
Mimi stared at her like she had suggested ritual sacrifice. "Barefoot underground. I love tetanus."
Neera pointed firmly at her heels. "Do you want to click through a mysterious death cave like a tap dancing horse."
Mimi considered, sighed dramatically, and began to unbuckle her shoes. "Fine. Horse mode off."
Ragna pulled hers off without complaint, though she winced when her bandaged knees grazed the cold stone. Neera slipped out of her own, neatly aligning the pairs beside the door as if tidiness mattered at the edge of an abyss.
Three girls, barefoot now, breathing slow and careful.
The whispers continued. Low. Indistinct. Almost curious.
Mimi leaned closer to the entrance, voice barely a breath. "What if it is one person talking to himself. Or planning murder. Or reciting Shakespeare. That would be worse honestly."
Ragna nodded quietly. "We go together."
Neera swallowed hard and stepped forward, flashlight still off so the darkness felt like something they had to push aside with courage alone.
The stone swallowed their sound.
Their toes curled against the cold floor.
The whispering waited deeper inside.
The tunnel swallowed them whole. They moved with slow careful steps, breaths kept tight in their chests, trying to be silent enough to blend with the stone.
For a moment, it worked.
Three shadows in a black corridor, soundless as ghosts.
Then someone's stomach snarled like an angry dog.
The noise echoed through the chamber, loud enough to feel physical, bouncing off every surface until even the darkness sounded surprised. All three froze, toes curling on the floor.
The whispering stopped.
Nothing.
Only the thud of three confused heartbeats and the taste of fear turning electric.
Mimi mouthed an apology too slow to matter.
Ragna inhaled sharply.
Neera stiffened like a cat about to bolt.
Then something hit them.
Two shapes dropped from above or maybe rushed from the dark, impossible to see, impossible to predict. One slammed into Ragna, knocking her flat with a grunt as a weight pinned her by the shoulders. The other collided with Mimi and sent her sprawling, hair flying, flashlight nearly skidding away.
A voice rang out, sharp and furious, right over Ragna's head.
"Confess your sins."
Ragna stared up into the shadows, bewildered.
"Sins. I-I... My hair is red, I do not think that counts."
A giggle bubbled up from the second attacker.
"Forgive me God for I have sinned, I ate a cookie when no one was looking", Mimi wheezed, pinned and ridiculous, which somehow made the moment even worse.
Neera fumbled, panic punching through her logic as she grabbed the flashlight. She clicked it on with a shaking thumb and swung the beam toward them.
The scene lit up like a sudden photograph.
Two girls their age. Not monsters. Not murderers. Just girls.
One with long brown hair, sitting on top of Ragna like she was performing an exorcism with a twig raised like holy authority. The other with soft pastel pink curls, perched on Mimi with both hands pressing her shoulders to the ground, smiling like she had been waiting her whole life to jump a stranger.
The brown haired one froze at the light, twig trembling. The pink one blinked dramatically, then winked at her partner in crime with zero shame.
"I have to agree with her, Nozomi. Hair color is not a sin."
Nozomi, apparently the brown haired crusader, slapped her own forehead soundly.
"This is not the time to joke, Midori, I was actually terrified."
She scrambled off of Ragna so fast her shoes skidded. Midori hopped off Mimi with a small twirl like she was dismounting a pony in a circus. Both girls backed up, embarrassed, rubbing the back of their necks with sheepish half smiles.
Ragna sat up slowly, hair mussed, pride bruised, knees still aching. Mimi rolled to her feet and dusted herself off like getting tackled was just cardio. Neera exhaled a breath she never realized she was holding.
Nozomi practically leapt forward to help Ragna up, apologizing so fast her words tangled.
"I am so sorry, I thought you were intruders, I should not have tackled you, that was reckless, I sincerely apologize, please do not curse my ancestors."
Ragna, who had literally been the one sat on, stared at her with an expression halfway between startled and unsure how to handle that much guilt. After a moment, she raised one hand and gave Nozomi the most awkward shoulder pat ever delivered by human hands.
"It is fine, I did not die."
Nozomi brightened like forgiveness had washed her soul clean.
Midori, meanwhile, bowed with a flourish so dramatic Mimi nearly clapped. "I am Midori, and this is Nozomi. We were playing catch."
Nozomi snapped her head toward her. "We were not. You stole offerings from the shrine again. I was trying to catch you and reclaim the rice cakes."
Midori gasped with highly offended elegance. "I landed gracefully in this place."
"You fell through rotten wood," Nozomi corrected, voice flat. "There was nothing graceful. You screamed like a feral bird on fire."
Midori turned away with her nose in the air. "I prefer to remember it differently."
Nozomi nodded as if practice had taught her to accept this.
She continued. "I jumped in after her to help but the passage was vertical and too far up to climb. We had no way back, so we went forward. We found this door and eventually solved the cipher. It was a lot of trying and crying, mostly her."
Midori shrugged. "A girl can be emotional."
Neera stepped a little closer, brain already working. "The cipher was locked again when we arrived. So the door must reset after someone passes through. It was not coincidence that we found it closed."
All five girls nodded in unspoken agreement that this was both incredible and very inconvenient.
Now it was their turn to explain.
Which went about how chaos always does.
Three sets of eyes looked at each other, silently hoping someone else would speak, when Mimi inhaled dramatically.
"We broke into a shed with a rock, dug for treasure, and then opened a trapdoor."
Nozomi lifted the twig slowly as if Mimi had confessed to arson. "You what."
Ragna jumped in before twig violence could resume. "We were swinging, then we landed, then we thought there were Victorian dolls under the ground."
Midori blinked. "Victorian dolls were your first theory?"
Mimi whispered loudly. "They judge you silently."
Nozomi stared at all three of them as if she was trying to understand the evolution of questionable ideas.
Neera closed her eyes like she needed divine patience. Then she began explaining everything in the correct order. The swings, the hollow sound, the shed, the rock, the digging, the metal, the trapdoor, the ladder, the tunnel, the crawling, the bare feet, the door. Mimi occasionally chimed in with details that did not help, like the possibility of cursed cheese treasure, and Ragna corrected small things like how hard the rung snapped.
Nozomi listened with full focus, nodding like she was taking notes in her head. Midori on the other hand kept glancing between them with wide entertained eyes, and at some point began nibbling lightly on the twig she had been holding as if it were a snack.
Neera paused, staring. "Midori, please do not eat bark."
Midori blinked, mouth still on twig. "Instinct."
The conversation circled itself like curious birds, each girl tossing out theories brighter and more ridiculous than the last. Eventually, after enough speculation to power a conspiracy forum, the group drifted toward something like consensus.
Ragna folded her arms. "It could be a bunker. The structure is too intentional, too reinforced, and too hidden for anything casual."
Neera gave a small nod. "It fits. A fallout shelter or war base. Thick walls, a secured entry, no natural light, air that feels filtered."
Nozomi tapped the floor with her foot, thoughtful. "Food storage perhaps. Supplies for emergencies. It reminds me of underground shelters during historical conflicts."
Midori stuck her hand up like the teacher called on her. "If this is a bunker, then we could grow things here. Like potatoes. Or strawberries. Or cheese crops."
Neera looked at her for a very long second. "Cheese does not grow, Midori."
Nozomi backed her up with gentle certainty. "And plants need sunlight, or at least controlled lighting. There is no sun here. They would rot."
Midori puffed out her cheeks, ready to defend agriculture with her life. "But what if we built mirrors. Or, like, glow worms. Or a photosynthesis disco ball."
Mimi gasped. "Glow worms that farm potatoes. Peak innovation."
Neera opened her mouth to respond, probably planning to crush every worm powered farming dream in the room with gentle academic accuracy.
Then the lights came on.
A click.
A hum.
A violent flood of white that swallowed the darkness whole.
All five girls flinched.
Hands flew to faces.
Eyes squeezed shut against the sudden brightness that seared into retinas like a camera flash at point blank.
The sudden light had completely blinded them for a moment, and then...