AN: You guys just smashed that powerstone in matters of minutes... I thought it'd take a few hours, but nope, within 30 minutes, we reached the goal.
Thank you very much for the supports!
Enjoy this chapter, you deserve it
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Levi gasped, his hand slamming against the doorframe to keep from falling. The vision lasted only a heartbeat, but the desperation in that cry echoed through his bones, rattling around in his skull like it was trying to carve itself into his memory forever.
He should leave. Should run. Should listen to every warning he'd been given.
His foot found the second step.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
It wasn't just an absence of light. This was wrongness made manifest, thick and suffocating and alive in ways that darkness shouldn't be. His flashlight beam seemed to die inches from the bulb, swallowed by shadows that moved with purpose, with hunger.
The stairs descended steeply, much deeper than they should given the size of the mound above. Fifteen steps. Twenty. Thirty. The stone walls pressed in on either side, close enough that Levi's shoulders brushed them as he descended. They were ice-cold, and damp with something that definitely wasn't water.
Finally, the stairs opened into a corridor. Stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floor—all carved with the same impossible precision as the basements above. But these stones were older, much older. Some of them had symbols carved into them, similar to the three overlapping circles but more complex, more disturbing. They seemed to writhe when Levi's flashlight beam passed over them.
The corridor branched. Left and right, disappearing into darkness that his light couldn't penetrate. The pull dragged him left, and Levi followed because he no longer felt like he had a choice. The hook in his chest had become a chain, and whatever was at the other end was reeling him in.
The smell was overwhelming down here. Earth and rot and something sweet-sick underneath, like flowers left too long in a vase until they turned to black slime. And under that, something else. Something that smelled like copper and fear and ancient rage.
And there, set into the stone wall like it had grown there organically, was a door.
Wooden planks warped with age and moisture. Small, barely large enough for an adult to crouch through, but it fit him. Levi, with trembling hands, pulled the door open. And there it was. A closet, completely wrong and out of place in this underground darkness.
His tremble got worse, and he felt like he was back at that tree during the night. Unmoving but shaking. Dead inside but so, so alive due to fear. He tried to swallow his saliva, but found nothing. His mouth was dry, drier than sandpaper, as his tongue hurt just by moving around, sticking.
But something about it called to him. Not the pull—that had faded now, its job done by bringing him here. This was something else. Recognition. Like seeing a photograph of a place you'd been to in a dream.
Levi's limb moved without his permission. His hand reached out, fingers extending toward the warped wood. And in the second before he touched it, he saw them.
Names.
VICTOR
ELOISE
MOM
His fingers made contact.
The world exploded into memory and pain.
—"Hide, baby, hide and don't come out no matter what you hear!"—
—A woman's voice, thick with tears she's trying to hold back, shoving small bodies into the storm cellar—
—Darkness, the smell of earth and fear, small hands clutching each other—
—"Mom, don't leave us! Mom, please!"—
—A girl, maybe seven, dark hair in braids coming loose, face streaked with tears and dirt—
—"ELOISE!"—
—The boy, Victor, older by two years, clutching a stuffed rabbit that's losing its stuffing—
—"Stay hidden, take care of her, Victor! Don't you dare come out! Promise me!"—
—"I promise, Mom! I promise!"—
—The mother—Miranda, her name is Miranda—running, her footsteps echoing through stone corridors, upstairs carved from bedrock—
—Screeching from somewhere above, from everywhere, getting closer, getting LOUDER—
—Victor and Eloise pressed together in the dark, holding their breath, counting heartbeats—
—Ten beats. Twenty. Thirty—
—Eloise breaking, the dark too much, the silence too heavy, her small body unable to stay still—
—"Mom! Come back!—"—
—"Eloise, no! Mom said—"—
—"MAMA!"—
—The girl bursting from her place, stumbling through the dark, small hands scrabbling against stone walls—
—Victor reaching after her, fingers brushing her dress, missing by inches—
—"ELOISE, COME BACK!"—
—Small feet running, echoing through dark corridor, fading—
—A scream, high and sharp and cut short—
—Then another scream, and another, then another—
—Then silence—
—Victor alone, pressed into the smallest corner of the corridor, both hands clamped over his mouth to stop the sobs that wanted to tear out of him—
—Hours passing, or days, time meaningless in the absolute dark—
—Emerging finally, muscles cramped, throat dry, stumbling through corridor—
—Finding Eloise's ribbon on the stairs—
—Finding nothing else—
—The boy who stayed hidden, the boy who survived, the boy who obeyed, the boy who let them die alone—
"NO!"
Levi ripped his hand away, but the memories kept coming, flooding through him like water through a broken dam. He stumbled backward, hit the stone wall, and slid down it until he was sitting in the dirt.
Victor's guilt was a living thing, crushing and absolute. It pressed down on Levi's chest until he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only feel the weight of surviving when everyone you love dies. The weight of being a good boy, of following the rules, of staying hidden while your sister and mother are torn apart.
The weight of knowing that if you'd just been braver, faster, stronger- if you'd just run after them, maybe you could have saved them. Or at least died with them. At least not been alone.
Tears streamed down Levi's face. Not his tears. Victor's or Miranda's or something else's. But maybe his too, because wasn't it the same? Hadn't he made the same choice? Stayed in the metaphorical closet while others died? Trapped people in a barn? Left Boyd in the forest?
Survived when he had no right to?
"I'm sorry," Levi choked out, to Eloise, to Miranda, to everyone he'd killed in that barn. "I'm so sorry."
Levi forced himself to his feet. His legs shook. His whole body shook. But he had to get out. Had to get above ground, into the light, away from this place of another nightmare and ancient hunger.
He stumbled through the corridor, barely seeing where he was going. Up the stone stairs, one hand on the wall for balance.
When he finally burst through the doors into sunlight, he made it exactly three steps before his legs gave out completely. He collapsed onto the overgrown grass, gasping for air that tasted clean and alive and wrong because how could anything be clean in a place like this?
Cold sweat soaked through his shirt. His hands were ice-cold despite the sun. And in his mind, the memories played on loop- the scream, the silence, the guilt that never ended. He wasn't sure whose it was. But it wasn't his, and it sure as heck wasn't Victor's. A family that had hidden in the dark and died in pieces. A boy who'd survived and carried that survival like a curse.
Behind him, the storm cellar doors hung open like a mouth waiting to swallow the next person who dared to search for answers in the dark.
And somewhere, in the ruins nearby or in the forest beyond or in the town itself, he felt something watch him and waited and was pleased.
Instead of horror or fear, Levi growled. Even with his mind in pieces and slowly recovering from the memories that assaulted him, he promised himself that he'd kill every single one of those smiling monsters.
Levi pushed himself up on all fours and the world tilted. For a long second he only had the grass under his palms and the taste of metal in his mouth. His muscles moved but without the firmness he expected; they felt like borrowed limbs, the ones you get from a dream that isn't quite yours. Sweat ran into his eyes and blurred the sun into a smear. He blinked it away and tried to stand.
Each step was a negotiation. He walked five paces and then his knees buckled and the ground took him down like a slow mercy. He hauled himself up again. He walked three more steps and fell, hands scraping on grit he didn't remember was there. The pain cut through the other things- noise, the scream, the memory- so briefly it felt like proof that something or someone was trying to get control over his body. He pushed back up.
His breaths came in shallow, rationed pulls. Sometimes his vision tunneled; sometimes it made the world too bright, like a stage light on painted cardboard. He kept walking because stopping felt like letting the scream crawl back in. Motion was a small defense against the dark that had tasted him.
He fell again. This time, he stayed down for a few breaths, forehead on the grass, the earth cold and honest.
When he tried to stand, a shadow stepped into his periphery: tall, steady. He looked, and the shape filled more of his vision until it resolved into a man. The man was taller than Levi expected. He carried himself with a quiet that meant he had been carrying quiet for a long time. Levi's throat worked. Recognition hit like something physical- sharp and exact.
Victor.
The name crawled inside his head as if he were a long-time friend.