Their eyes were fixed on him, waiting for a decision they couldn't make themselves. The weight of their gaze pressed against his back like a physical burden.

  "I don't really have a choice, do I?" Riven said, his voice flat. He glanced over his shoulder at the vast chamber beyond the portal. The darkness revealed little, but it was their only option now. "I'll go. See if I can find another way around, something to let you through."

  Lya stepped as close to the barrier as she could, pressing her palm against the invisible wall. "Be careful," she said. Her voice was muffled, as if speaking through thick glass. "Whatever's in there..."

  Aron nodded. "We'll wait here as long as we can." The massive man leaned on his spear, his newly-healed side still causing him to favor his right leg. "But if those creatures return—"

  "I know," Riven cut him off. "Just... stay alive."

  A strange sensation bloomed in his chest as he looked at them—Lya's worried eyes, Aron's stoic nod. People were counting on him. The feeling might have been pride under different circumstances, but here, it drowned beneath waves of apprehension. Every instinct warned him against stepping further into the unknown alone.

  He turned to Lya one last time. Their eyes met, and something passed between them that needed no words. He had spent weeks with her now—fighting, surviving, healing. In that silent exchange was everything they couldn't say aloud.

  Riven turned away, sword gripped tightly in his hand, and stepped deeper into the chamber.

  After he'd moved about twenty paces into the darkness, a sudden sound erupted behind him—a distortion in the air, like energy fluctuating and reshaping itself.

  He spun around, sword raised instinctively.

  The portal had changed. What had been empty space within the obsidian frame was now filled with a curtain of pulsing violet energy. The barrier that had been invisible before now manifested as a wall of rippling power, its surface shifting and writhing like something alive. Through the haze, he could barely make out the silhouettes of Lya and Aron on the other side.

  "Lya?" he called, his voice swallowed by the vastness of the chamber.

  He rushed back toward the portal, reaching out to touch the energy field. His hand met solid resistance—cold and unyielding despite its fluid appearance. He pushed harder, then slammed his fist against it. Nothing. The barrier remained impenetrable.

  "Damn it!"

  He was trapped. The realization hit him like a physical blow. His breathing quickened, each inhale shallow and tight in his chest. His jaw clenched until his teeth ached.

  This wasn't just a detour anymore—this was survival. He needed to find another way out or they all would die, separated on opposite sides of an impassable barrier.

  Riven turned away from the portal and faced the darkness ahead. As his eyes adjusted, details of the chamber emerged. The space was vast—far larger than it had any right to be given how close they were to the surface. The ceiling was lost in shadow, stretching upward into what seemed like infinity.

  Blood-red roots invaded the chamber, some as thick as tree trunks, crawling up the walls toward the unseen ceiling. They twisted and pulsed with subtle movement that might have been a trick of the light—except Riven knew better by now. The roots were alive, growing, feeding on something within the stone itself.

  Golden buds sprouted from the roots at irregular intervals, casting a sickly amber glow that provided just enough light to navigate by. Some of the buds were small, no larger than Riven's fist, while others swelled to the size of a man, their light stronger and more constant.

  After several minutes of careful movement, Riven reached the edge of what appeared to be a cliff. He stopped abruptly, peering over the edge. The chamber didn't simply extend outward—it dropped down into a massive circular pit dozens of meters below. The pit stretched hundreds of meters across, its edges forming a perfect circle as if carved by some vast, precise tool.

  To his right, a natural path wound down the side of the cliff—part stone ledges jutting from the wall, part massive roots forming a makeshift stairway. It was the only way down that he could see.

  Riven glanced back at the portal, now just a distant violet glow behind him.

  The path ahead was clear, even if he didn't like where it led. He had to continue, had to find another way out. Taking a deep breath, he started toward the descent, his hand never leaving the hilt of his sword.

  The path down was treacherous.

  Halfway down, his foot slipped on scarlet liquid pooling atop a root. He caught himself on a neighboring branch, heart hammering and legs dangling over nothing.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He pulled himself back onto the path, breathing hard.

  The rest of the descent was slower, each step placed with deliberate care. When his feet finally touched the floor of the circular area, he allowed himself a moment of relief.

  But as he looked around at his new surroundings, the relief evaporated.

  The ground was a chaotic mesh of roots so dark they bordered on black, twisted like diseased arteries. Between them, the soil wasn't just barren—it was rotting, decomposing from within.

  Roots erupted at chaotic angles—some jutting upward like spears, others coiling along the ground.

  "What is this place?" he muttered, the words swallowed by the oppressive silence.

  He started forward, navigating between the upthrust roots. With each step, the disquiet in his chest grew heavier.

  His breathing grew shallow. The air pressed against his skin, thick and resistant. His free hand had balled into a fist without him noticing, knuckles white.

  The back of his neck prickled, as if something watched from the darkness.

  Every few steps, he found himself fighting the urge to turn back, to climb the treacherous path to the ledge above, to flee this place entirely.

  What the hell is happening here? Why do I feel so... off?

  But he pressed on. The only way out was through.

  As he neared the far wall, the roots grew thicker, more gnarled. The golden buds were fewer, many shriveled or blackened

  At last, Riven reached the far wall. He stopped, his back to the circular chamber, facing the curved stone that marked the boundary of this strange place.

  Here, at last, he might find a passage, a doorway, some means of escape that would allow him to circle back to Lya and Aron.

  Slowly, fighting every instinct that screamed at him to keep his gaze lowered, Riven raised his eyes.

  The moment his head tilted back, the quality of the air changed. It grew instantly colder, more dense, pressing against his skin like oil and coating his throat with each breath.

  The smell hit him before his vision fully adjusted—a stench of decay so ancient it had transcended mere putrefaction and become something else entirely.

  And then he saw it.

  Rising from the base of the wall, what might once have been a tree stood, massive and vile. Its trunk was colossal, wider than any structure Riven had ever seen, ascending endlessly into the void above—so high that its summit was lost in shadow, as if it pierced through the ceiling of the world itself and continued beyond.

  But this was no tree, not anymore. Its bark was black and viscous, weeping with thick rivulets of something dark and oily that seeped from deep fissures in its surface. The substance accumulated at the base in stagnant pools that reeked of infection.

  Its branches extended outward, skeletal and twisted, corroded by something far worse than time. They didn't merely appear dead—they looked violated, soiled by a corruption that radiated from every surface, every crack, every dripping wound in the massive trunk.

  And embedded in the tree—fused with it, as if the two had grown together in some abominable symbiosis—was something that defied all comprehension.

  A body.

  Titanic. Monstrous. Broken beyond all recognition.

  It wasn't simply dead—death was too small a word for what Riven beheld. This was ruin on a scale his mind struggled to process. The corpse was so massive that his eyes could barely grasp it as a whole—limbs that could have crushed entire city blocks, a torso wide as a public square, rising over a hundred meters into the darkness above.

  And it was corrupted.

  Black, putrid flesh clung to exposed bone in sagging, suppurating sheets. The skin—if such a term could even apply to this abomination—was mottled with bruise-purple, and the sickly yellow of ancient infection. It pulsed faintly, as if something still moved beneath the surface, though the thing was clearly, impossibly dead.

  Massive spikes of black obsidian jutted from the carcass at grotesque angles, impaling it, nailing it to the tree in an obscene crucifixion. The spikes were enormous—as thick as ancient pillars, as sharp as guillotine blades—and they pulsed with the same corruption that soaked the bark, as if they fed on the decomposition, drinking it in.

  Every instinct in Riven's body screamed at him to run.

  This wasn't the reasoned fear of a predator, a threat he might fight—this was something deeper, more primitive. A rejection so fundamental it felt as if his very soul was trying to tear itself from his body just to escape the sight before him.

  His breathing came in short, shallow gasps. His hands trembled violently, the sword nearly slipping from his grasp. Cold sweat beaded on his skin despite the chill in the air. His legs tensed, muscles coiling to flee, but he remained rooted to the spot.

  He wanted to look away.

  He couldn't.

  Something about the carcass held him, like a hook planted in his mind. His eyes traced the contours of the ruined form even as his thoughts screamed at him to stop, to close his eyes, to forget he had ever seen this thing.

  Looking too long gave him the sensation that something was breaking inside his mind. He tried to focus, to make sense of what he was seeing, but the pieces wouldn't connect. Like staring at a word until it stopped looking like a word at all.

  What remained of the head was a nightmare. The skull was split down the center—the left half still somewhat intact, a grotesque parody of what might once have been a face, while the right side had simply vanished. Leaving a gaping void where bone and brain should have been.

  The scale was sickening. Riven felt like an insect staring at a mountain.

  The longer he stared, the harder it became to remember why he was here. What he was looking for. Who was waiting for him. The details slipped away, one by one, until only the corpse remained.

  His sword felt like a toy in his hand. A child's plaything. His body—his arms, his legs, his breath—all of it suddenly seemed laughable. Fragile. Meaningless.

  He was nothing.

  And yet, he couldn't look away.

  He didn't understand what it was. Couldn't name it.

  But his body knew.

  His knees wanted to buckle. The same instinct that made animals flee before earthquakes, that made birds go silent before storms.

  Whatever this had been—it shouldn't have been able to die. And now, it was nothing but ruin and corruption.

  Suddenly, the walls of the vast space trembled. The floor itself shook with a deep vibration, as if the earth itself was responding.

  Every instinct in Riven's being screamed danger. Death. ABSOLUTE DANGER.

  His eyes dropped to the ground automatically, as if bowing naturally. It wasn't a conscious choice. His body reacted on its own, head lowered, gaze to the floor.

  Then, the trembling stopped. Silence fell again. But it wasn't the same.

  The air felt even heavier, more oppressive. As if something had changed.

  He waited a few seconds, his heart hammering violently in his chest.

  Then, slowly, he raised his head. With excruciating caution, he lifted his gaze.

  And he saw it.

  The remaining eye in the titanic corpse.

  Open.

  Glowing with absolute violet.