The massive doors began to open the moment he touched them.
Just a slight contact, barely a brush of his fingertips against the ancient wood, and they moved. Such heavy-looking doors, reinforced with iron bands thicker than his arm, opened on their own free will as if he'd passed some sort of test. As if whatever lay beyond had been waiting specifically for him to arrive.
Whatever was beyond this door was something old. Ancient. Something that had been lying dormant for thousands of years, perhaps longer.
When the doors fully opened, there was only darkness.
Even his light crystals seemed to pale in comparison, their blue glow barely penetrating a few feet before being swallowed completely. This was darkness that consumed light itself. Darkness that had substance and weight, pressing against him like a living thing.
The air was stale and smelled of old things. Dust that had settled for centuries. Stone that hadn't felt living breath in millennia. Decay so ancient it had become something else entirely, something beyond rot.
Benny could feel it immediately. His hair follicles stood on end, his body's primal warning system screaming at him to turn around and run. The danger here was beyond anything he'd encountered before. Beyond death. Beyond understanding.
Fear consumed him, threatening to root him in place at the threshold.
But his power, the Will of the Weak, activated without conscious thought. It steeled his resolve. Calmed his panicking mind. Forced his body to function despite every instinct telling him to flee.
He looked at his mini-map, searching for information about where he was.
And there, written in an ancient and lost language that somehow he could still read, was the name of this place.
[Bathala's Rest]
The Crypt and Mausoleum of the Fallen God
A god who no longer existed. For reasons unknown, lost to time and history, this deity had fallen. And this place was their tomb. A monument to divine death.
Right now, he was being welcomed inside it. Or perhaps he was being invited to become part of it. Another sacrifice to the fallen god. Another offering left in the darkness.
The door behind him closed with a heavy thud that echoed through the vast space. He didn't even notice at first, too hyper-fixated on what lay ahead, too focused on the oppressive presence that filled this place.
But there was nothing visible. Not an echo. Just pure, maddening silence.
No life existed here. It was as if all living things had been snuffed out before they could take root. Usually, even in the most remote places, life could be heard. The beating of a heart. The skittering of insects. The movement of air through lungs. But here, it was different. Devoid of anything organic or breathing.
Right now, only his own breathing and heartbeat could be heard in the silence. And both were erratic, racing with fear and adrenaline.
---
Benny began to walk, exploring the space cautiously.
He couldn't tell how tall or how large this place was. The darkness was too absolute, his light too weak. But he could feel the vastness of it. The way the sound didn't echo suggested enormous space, or perhaps walls that absorbed everything.
He started at the edges, keeping one hand on the wall as he walked. Using the door as his reference point, he made a full circuit around the perimeter. Counting his steps. Mapping the shape in his mind.
When he completed that first revolution, he moved slightly inward. Made another circuit. Another revolution around the space, this time closer to the center.
He repeated this process methodically. Each circuit bringing him closer to whatever occupied the middle of this massive chamber. It felt like it took ages, though his internal time sense had become unreliable in this place.
After what might have been hours, he reached a certain area where his light crystals finally revealed something.
A massive sarcophagus lay in the center of the chamber.
At first, he couldn't tell what it was. Just a vague shape, enormous and rectangular, carved from stone so dark it seemed to absorb his light. But the more he circled it, studying it from different angles, the more certain he became.
It was indeed a coffin. A god's coffin. Bathala's final resting place.
The craftsmanship was extraordinary even in this dim light. Intricate carvings covered every surface, depicting scenes he couldn't fully make out. Battles. Triumphs. The rise and fall of something vast and powerful. The entire history of a divine being recorded in stone.
---
Benny was not one to pray to deities or gods. He wasn't a believer in such things, or at least he hadn't spent much time thinking about them. He'd been too busy trying to survive every passing day, relying on his own skills and determination.
But he'd realized something since receiving the powers he now held. Gods existed. They operated beyond the understanding of the mortal realm, far beyond what normal eyes could perceive. And the more he used his World System abilities, the more he understood how minuscule a mortal man truly was in the grand scheme of things.
But that philosophical understanding was one thing. Standing before the tomb of an actual god was something else entirely.
No one would build such an elaborate coffin for a mortal man. The scale alone made that impossible. The artistry. The power radiating from the stone itself. No, this was reserved for something divine. Something that had once shaped reality itself before falling to whatever fate claimed gods.
His feet had grown tired from the endless circling. His mind had become weary from the oppressive atmosphere. Sleep and exhaustion began to wash over him in waves, pulling at his consciousness.
He decided he needed to rest. To get some shut-eye before continuing his exploration. It should be safe, he reasoned. There was nothing here that resembled life besides himself. Just stone and darkness and the lingering presence of something long dead.
He moved away from the coffin, back toward the doorway where he'd entered. That felt like the safest spot, the most defensible position. His back to the door, facing inward, able to see anything approaching.
He sat down, propping himself against the door with his sword across his lap. His light crystals dimmed as exhaustion took over. His breathing slowed. His eyes closed despite his best efforts to stay alert.
Sleep consumed him within minutes, pulling him down into unconsciousness with irresistible force.
---
When Benny was fully asleep, unaware and vulnerable, the darkness in the chamber began to move.
The massive coffin trembled. Just slightly at first, barely perceptible. Then more violently, as if something inside was waking up. Stirring after an eternity of slumber.
The stone lid opened with a grinding sound that should have woken Benny but somehow didn't. As if the noise existed on a frequency his sleeping mind couldn't perceive.
From the gap, something slipped out. An entity of enormous proportions, moving through shadow like it was water. Its form was indistinct, constantly shifting, impossible to focus on directly. It flowed more than walked, gliding across the stone floor without sound.
Its eyes opened. They glowed with ethereal light at first, the kind of luminescence you might associate with divinity. Beautiful and terrible at the same time. The light of something that had once been worshipped, once been prayed to, once been considered holy.
But then the eyes closed. And when they opened again, everything had changed.
The divine glow was gone. What replaced it were eyes of pure crimson. Red glowing orbs that contained nothing holy, nothing divine. Only hunger. Only malice. Only an evil so old and deep it had become fundamental to existence itself.
Whoever had coined the phrase "if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes back to you" must have seen eyes like these. Eyes that didn't just look at you but through you. Into you. Stripping away every layer until nothing remained but the raw essence of your soul.
And right now, those same eyes were looking at Benny with such intense focus that the air itself seemed to warp around his sleeping form.
Then, in the darkness beneath those eyes, a smile appeared. Not a mouth exactly. Just the suggestion of one. A demonic grin that spoke of ancient evils and terrible plans.
An entity that had once been a god. That had fallen. That had been imprisoned in this tomb for reasons lost to history. That had been sleeping for thousands of years, waiting for someone, anyone, to open that door and give it the opportunity it needed.
The opportunity to escape. To corrupt. To spread once more across a world that thought it had been rid of this evil.
The fallen god studied the sleeping human. This weak, pathetic creature who'd somehow survived the disposal pit and the spirit passage. Who'd been brave enough or foolish enough to open the sealed tomb.
Perfect. This one would do nicely.
The entity began to move closer to Benny's sleeping form, its smile growing wider, its red eyes glowing brighter with anticipation.
The god had awakened. And nothing good would come of it.