Samuel kept crawling.
His arms trembled with every movement now. More than once, his body simply gave out beneath him, leaving him collapsed against the cold stone with his forehead pressed to the rock. Only after several long seconds could he force himself to rise again.
His hands were raw. Fine dust clung to the torn skin of his palms, mixing with blood until it felt like coarse sandpaper. His knees burned with every inch he dragged himself across the rough ground. His trousers had long since been shredded. The skin beneath was little more than scraped, bloodied flesh.
Still, he crawled on.
Not because he still had the strength...
...but because stopping meant thinking again.
And that was the last thing he wanted.
The current of air had grown noticeably stronger. It brushed coolly across his dust-covered face, slowly carrying away the stale smell of the narrow tunnels. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the air smelled of more than cold stone.
There was something fresh in it.
Samuel lifted his head ever so slightly.
The tunnel ahead was beginning to widen.
At first, he barely noticed. Only when his shoulders stopped scraping relentlessly against the rock did he realize he could breathe more freely again. A few more meters, and the ceiling rose as well.
He no longer had to keep his head bowed.
Slowly, he pushed himself onto his knees.
His muscles protested instantly. His back and shoulders throbbed from being hunched over for so long. When he finally managed to stand, a sharp pain shot through both legs. For a moment, he had to brace himself against the stone wall to keep from falling.
His entire body was coated in a thin layer of gray dust. Wherever his clothes had torn open, the dust clung directly to the exposed wounds. The blood had long since dried, leaving dark crusts along his arms.
Even his hair felt rough.
Samuel slowly wiped a hand across his face. Pale streaks appeared wherever his fingers brushed away the dust as he drew a deep breath.
For the first time...
...the air felt light.
The tunnel stretched onward for several more meters before curving out of sight.
Samuel tightened his grip on the knife.
Not out of courage...
Out of habit.
Slowly, he placed one foot in front of the other.
The ground became level.
The breeze grew stronger.
One more step.
Then another.
As Samuel rounded the corner, his pupils widened instantly.
He froze.
His mind needed several long seconds just to comprehend what he was looking at.
No...
Before him, another cavern did not open.
A world did.
The darkness of the tunnel ended abruptly, giving way to a colossal underground chamber.
Slowly, Samuel raised his head.
Higher.
Higher still.
And even then...
...the ceiling disappeared somewhere into the darkness above.
Only scattered rock formations were faintly outlined against a weak, distant light.
The cavern was so unimaginably vast that it felt less like the inside of a mountain...
...and more like its own sky.
Samuel felt his heart begin to race again.
Not from fear.
From awe.
His gaze drifted slowly across the immense cavern, over shattered rock formations, deep chasms, and gigantic slabs of stone that looked as though entire mountains had been ripped from the ceiling and hurled to the ground.
Then his eyes stopped.
At first, he mistook the massive shape rising at the far end of the cavern—nearly merging with the darkness—for another cliff face.
But the longer he stared...
...the more he began to recognize lines.
Straight lines.
Sharp edges.
Towering pillars.
His breath caught.
That wasn't a mountain.
It was a structure.
A structure of such overwhelming scale that his mind struggled to grasp it.
Samuel took an unconscious step forward.
His eyes slowly climbed the colossal walls.
Massive pillars supported enormous facades that stretched hundreds of meters into the darkness above.
Towers rose toward heights where Samuel could no longer even distinguish the cavern ceiling.
Some had collapsed.
Others still stood defiantly, despite the deep fractures that split their stonework from top to bottom.
The structure resembled neither a castle...
...nor a fortress...
...nor a temple.
And yet...
...it somehow resembled all of them at once.
A single ray of light descended from a barely visible opening high in the cavern ceiling.
Golden.
Warm.
It cut through the darkness like a blade...
...and fell directly upon the colossal entrance of the structure.
Not beside it.
Not in front of it.
Exactly at its center.
The rest of the immense complex remained shrouded in half-light.
Only the gateway was touched by the sun.
A shiver ran across Samuel's arms.
"That... can't be a coincidence."
Slowly, his gaze continued onward.
A staircase led up to the entrance.
Or at least, that was what he first believed.
Only after several seconds did he realize there were far more steps than he had initially seen.
They rose toward the gigantic gate in endless rows—
so countless that, from this distance, they appeared almost like a single sloping surface.
Samuel stared at them in silence.
"Why..."
"...would anyone ever walk up there?"
His eyes lifted again.
The gate itself was beyond comprehension.
The largest building in his village could have passed through it with room to spare—
perhaps several of them.
Samuel tried to imagine who could possibly have needed a doorway of such proportions.
He couldn't.
Everything about this place defied his understanding of the world.
The windows were set so impossibly high that even the tallest trees would never have reached them.
They stretched across the enormous facades in endless rows.
Balconies jutted from the walls.
Yet nowhere could he see stairways or paths leading to them.
The columns were wider than entire houses.
It wasn't merely large.
It was something that could never have been built for humans...
...or at least, that was what Samuel believed in that moment.
He couldn't tear his eyes away from the colossal structure.
At first glance, he knew it had to be ancient.
Not because of moss.
Not because of creeping plants.
Not even because so much of it had collapsed.
It was the way it stood.
It did not feel like an ordinary ruin.
It felt like the remnant of an age that had long since vanished from the world itself.
Cracks several meters long split the immense walls.
Entire towers had broken apart, leaning crookedly against the main structure.
Others had collapsed completely, their enormous stone blocks scattered across the cavern floor.
And yet...
...the destruction had robbed the monument of none of its overwhelming presence.
Even in this broken state, it radiated a majesty Samuel could not explain.
Something about it felt wrong.
Not threatening.
Not evil.
Rather...
...it was the sheer scale and power of this place that overwhelmed him.
The structure felt imposing.
Ancient.
As though it belonged to a reality that had almost nothing in common with his own.
As if something like this...
...was never meant to exist.
His gaze drifted slowly across the vast plaza before it.
It too was impossibly immense.
The ground consisted of gigantic stone slabs, their seams still clearly visible even from this distance.
Over countless ages, rubble and earth had gathered between them.
A few scattered plants had forced their way through the narrow cracks.
Yet they looked tiny.
Lost.
As though even they were not permitted to claim this place.
Samuel narrowed his eyes.
Several enormous stone masses lay before the entrance.
At first, he assumed they were boulders.
Only after several moments did he realize...
...they weren't.
They were heads.
Or...
...at least, they had once been.
The faces had been shattered beyond recognition.
Noses were missing.
Entire halves of the heads had broken away.
Yet even these broken fragments were larger than houses.
Several dozen meters away lay one of the stone fingers from one of those statues.
Samuel's gaze lingered on it.
Just...
...one finger.
And yet it was longer than every wagon in Gustov's caravan put together.
Samuel felt his breathing grow shallow.
"What..."
"...were they depicting?"
No answer came.
The longer he looked...
...the more questions emerged.
Why were the gates so enormous?
Who was ever meant to climb those stairs?
Why were the windows so impossibly high?
Why did everything appear both extravagantly magnificent...
...and utterly devoid of life?
Everything seemed to have a purpose.
Yet that purpose lay completely beyond anything he understood about ordinary temples.
Suddenly, Samuel noticed something stretching across the ground before him.
A crack.
No.
There were many.
They ran through the entire cavern like colossal scars.
Some were only a few meters wide.
Others had swallowed entire sections of the stone plaza.
Slowly, Samuel stepped closer to the edge of the tunnel and carefully leaned forward.
The nearest fissure lay perhaps fifty meters away.
It cut across the ground in a perfectly straight line.
He couldn't see the bottom.
His eyes followed its path.
It passed directly beneath one of the colossal pillars.
The pillar hadn't collapsed.
It had been severed.
As though something had cleaved through the entire temple...
...and the earth beneath it...
...with a single, unimaginable strike.
Instantly, Samuel remembered the landscape outside.
The mountains.
The chasms.
The craters.
Suddenly...
...they no longer seemed random.
They looked exactly the same.
The same fractures.
The same impossible wounds carved into the earth.
Slowly, Samuel raised his eyes toward the colossal structure once more.
"Did..."
"...did all of this happen at the same time?"
The thought alone sent a chill racing down his spine.
How powerful would something have to be...
...to destroy not only a structure of this magnitude...
...but an entire landscape as well?
Samuel swallowed.
He didn't even want to imagine the force that would have been required.
His gaze drifted back to the entrance.
The golden light still rested precisely upon the gigantic gate.
It barely seemed to move.
It almost looked as though the sun had chosen this one place alone...
...while the rest of the vast cavern remained hidden in twilight.
Only now did Samuel notice more buildings—
or rather...
what remained of them.
They clung to the enormous central structure, appearing almost small beside it.
And yet he knew...
...even these lesser buildings were larger than anything he had ever seen.
Bridges stretched between towering spires.
Many had collapsed.
Others simply ended in empty air.
Enormous plazas.
Broad avenues.
Colossal halls lined with pillars.
They spread out before him in every direction.
Yet nowhere...
...not a single trace of life.
No animals.
No birds.
No insects.
Not even plants.
The entire cavern lay wrapped in an almost unnatural silence.
Only somewhere far away...
...the faint murmur of flowing water echoed through the darkness.
Samuel felt his stomach slowly tighten.
He couldn't even explain why.
This place didn't feel hostile.
And somehow...
...that made it even more unsettling.
It was too quiet.
Too empty.
Too completely abandoned.
As though nothing here had died...
...or fled...
...but had simply...
...vanished.
His eyes returned once more to the enormous gate.
For a brief moment...
...curiosity stirred within him.
"Maybe..."
The thought died instantly.
His body remembered faster than his mind.
The ravine.
The panic.
The narrow cave.
The fall.
His fingers began trembling involuntarily.
No.
Not again.
He had escaped death by the narrowest of margins.
He would not willingly enter a place whose purpose he couldn't even begin to understand.
Slowly, Samuel lowered himself behind a gigantic broken stone pillar lying near the edge of the cavern.
From there, he could still see the temple...
...while remaining hidden deep within the shadows.
He waited.
One minute.
Then another.
His eyes never stopped roaming across the ruins.
Again and again he thought he caught movement.
But every time...
...it was only the flicker of sunlight...
...or a shadow dancing between the shattered walls.
Nothing moved.
And yet...
Samuel couldn't shake the feeling.
The feeling...
...that this place was watching him.
Samuel remained perfectly still.
His gaze wandered ceaselessly across the immense complex.
He wasn't even sure what he was looking for.
Movement.
Smoke.
Any sign...
...that this place was not completely abandoned.
But nothing happened.
The silence was almost more oppressive than the darkness of the cave had been.
Even the wind seemed reluctant to move here.
Only the narrow shaft of light pouring through the opening high above gave the ruins even the faintest illusion of life.
Tiny specks of dust drifted lazily through the golden beam, making it seem almost tangible.
It looked like a single ray of sunlight...
...that had somehow found the exact same path...
...for countless years.
Samuel followed it with his eyes.
It began somewhere high above among the barely visible rocks of the cavern ceiling.
Then it fell straight downward.
Not onto the plaza.
Not onto the colossal staircase.
Not onto one of the shattered pillars.
It struck the enormous entrance...
...with perfect precision.
Samuel frowned.
"Why..."
"...there?"
He couldn't believe something like that was merely coincidence.
Maybe it was.
Maybe it wasn't.
He didn't know.
And that uncertainty unsettled him more than anything else.
His eyes drifted across the towering walls once again.
The longer he looked...
...the more details emerged.
The facades weren't smooth.
They were completely covered in reliefs.
From this distance, Samuel couldn't make out what they depicted.
He saw only endless lines...
...shapes...
...figures...
...stretching across entire walls.
Some reached over multiple stories.
Others disappeared behind collapsed sections of masonry.
It almost seemed...
...as though the entire structure was telling a story.
A story...
...that no one could read anymore.
Then Samuel noticed something else.
There were no roofs.
At least...
...not complete ones.
Most had collapsed.
Others extended all the way into the cavern ceiling itself.
Slowly, he looked upward.
The ceiling was closed.
Except...
...for the opening through which the solitary beam of light descended.
He turned his eyes back toward the temple.
"How..."
"...was something like this even built?"
Not down here.
Not at all.
The columns alone had to weigh more than entire mountains.
How had anyone raised them?
How had anyone constructed walls of this magnitude?
And above all...
Why?
Samuel tried to imagine people walking through those halls.
The image collapsed almost instantly.
A human would have looked no larger than a child upon those gigantic stairways.
The entrance alone could have swallowed dozens of houses standing side by side.
Even the windows...
...didn't look like windows.
They looked...
...like gates.
Everything about this place had been built for beings of a scale Samuel simply couldn't comprehend.
He swallowed.
For the first time...
...a thought crossed his mind.
Perhaps it wasn't only the structure that had been larger than anything he knew.
Perhaps...
...its builders had been as well.
The thought drew his gaze back to the colossal broken heads lying before the temple.
Were they statues...
...made in someone's likeness?
Or...
He stopped himself.
He didn't want to finish that thought.
Slowly, Samuel straightened a little more.
His eyes settled on one of the gigantic pillars.
It hadn't simply fallen over.
Its upper half was gone.
Not collapsed.
Not broken.
Gone.
Samuel scanned the ground.
Nowhere could he find the missing section.
Not even rubble.
It was as though someone had simply torn the upper half...
...out of existence.
The same was true for entire walls.
Some ended abruptly...
...in empty air.
Not because of time.
Not because of decay.
Something...
...had removed them.
Once again, Samuel felt that strange tightening in his chest.
It wasn't fear.
It was something else.
A feeling...
...he couldn't even put into words.
This place wasn't merely ancient.
It had once been...
...important.
Not important to a city.
Not to a kingdom.
But...
...to the world.
Samuel didn't know why he thought that.
He had no proof.
And yet everything about this place felt as though something had once existed here...
...something far greater than anything still living today.
The thought sent a shiver through him.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment.
"I can't think about this right now."
Not now.
Not here.
He had no answers.
And he wasn't going to find them.
His curiosity pulled at him like an invisible rope, drawing him toward the colossal staircase.
He wanted to know what lay beyond those gates.
He wanted to know why this place had been built.
He wanted to know who had once lived here.
But every wound on his body reminded him how narrowly he had escaped death.
His left arm throbbed.
His knees burned.
His back was covered in raw abrasions.
And deep inside...
...the panic from the cave still hadn't faded.
He could still feel it.
Like a shadow.
Waiting...
...to swallow him once again.
Samuel let out a slow breath.
"No."
His fingers tightened around the knife's hilt.
"I didn't come here to find answers."
"I have to survive."
That thought was simpler.
More tangible.
Slowly, he forced his gaze away from the colossal temple and began searching the edge of the cavern instead.
Only then did he notice the narrow glow to his right.
Between several collapsed boulders, a natural fissure climbed upward through the rock.
Light wasn't the only thing coming from it.
He could hear something.
Very faintly.
A steady murmur.
Water.
Samuel stopped and listened.
Yes.
Without a doubt.
Running water.
His heartbeat steadied ever so slightly.
Where there was water...
...there might also be a way out.
One last time, he looked back over his shoulder.
The golden beam of sunlight still rested upon the enormous gate.
The temple stood motionless in the middle of the vast cavern.
Majestic.
Abandoned.
And filled with questions.
Samuel turned away.
Not because his curiosity had vanished.
But because his fear was greater.
He waited one final moment.
His eyes clung stubbornly to the immense ruin.
Although it stood completely still before him...
...he couldn't shake the feeling that he might lose sight of it at any second.
As though the temple would disappear...
...the moment he looked away.
He didn't know why he felt that way.
Perhaps because the entire place seemed like a dream.
Too vast.
Too silent.
Too impossible.
Slowly, he stepped out from behind the shattered pillar.
Every movement was deliberate.
He placed his left foot carefully upon the stone floor.
Then his right.
He stopped.
Nothing.
Not even the faintest sound answered him.
Samuel exhaled.
"Just to the exit."
"Not to the temple."
He repeated the words to himself several times...
...as though he needed the reminder.
Keeping close to the edge of the enormous cavern, he moved forward.
Whenever a fallen pillar or gigantic boulder offered cover, Samuel used it.
Again and again, he stopped...
...and glanced back toward the temple.
He couldn't shake the feeling...
...that he was being watched.
But no matter how long he waited...
...nothing moved.
With every step, another detail of the complex revealed itself.
Fragments of unimaginable structures lay scattered across the ground.
Some were carved from finely worked white stone that still shimmered faintly despite its age.
Others were almost black...
...swallowing the light completely.
Broad roads ran between them.
Or at least...
...they must once have been roads.
They were so wide that Samuel couldn't imagine why anyone would ever have needed them.
Every single one...
...without exception...
...led toward the temple.
Not one led away from it.
Not one ended anywhere else.
Everything seemed to have revolved around that single place.
Samuel came to a halt.
"Was there..."
"...once a city here?"
His gaze slowly swept across the colossal chamber.
The longer he looked...
...the stranger it became.
No.
It wasn't a city.
A city would have looked different.
It would have had houses.
Homes.
Workshops.
Narrow streets.
Perhaps lights glowing behind windows.
Signs of people who had lived...
worked...
laughed...
...here.
But none of that existed.
Instead...
Only monumental structures rose before him.
Built on a scale that Samuel could barely comprehend.
Immense halls supported by endless rows of columns disappeared into the darkness.
Broad bridges connected gigantic stone platforms.
Endless stairways climbed toward plazas vast enough to hold entire crowds.
Everything about this place was oversized.
It felt as though it had never been built for humans.
Or...
Samuel cut the thought short.
He didn't want to know what the alternative might mean.
So he continued walking.
Slowly.
Carefully.
One step at a time.
The exit gradually drew closer.
With every meter, the world around him began to change.
Only now did Samuel truly notice the enormous wound carved into the mountainside.
The rock hadn't simply broken away.
It had been ripped open...
...as though an invisible force had split the mountain itself.
A natural passage climbed upward through the opening.
And there...
...was light.
Sunlight streamed through the cleft, bathing the gray stone in a warm glow.
Plants had forced their way between the rocks.
Thin vines clung stubbornly to the stone while small green leaves swayed gently in the breeze.
Green.
After so much gray...
...the color seemed almost unreal.
Like a memory...
...of a world Samuel had long believed lost.
He felt the tension slowly leaving his shoulders.
Out there...
...there was sky.
Fresh air.
Life.
A faint spark of hope began to grow within him.
Samuel quickened his pace slightly, though he remained cautious.
He still placed every footstep with care, avoiding unnecessary noise while listening intently to the cavern's silence.
The slope of loose rubble leading toward the opening proved far more treacherous than it had appeared from below.
Small stones slipped beneath his boots, clattering into the darkness.
The incline was steep.
Unstable.
Littered with jagged edges.
Several times he nearly lost his footing, barely catching himself with his hands.
A sharp sting shot through his fingers.
The wounds he'd already suffered tore open once more.
Blood mixed with dust and dirt.
Still...
...he didn't stop.
He clenched his teeth...
...and continued climbing.
With every step, the light grew brighter.
The sound he had heard earlier also became clearer.
At first, it had been little more than a whisper.
Then...
...a distant rushing.
Now he recognized it immediately.
Water.
Wild.
Untamed.
Powerful.
Alive.
He couldn't remember the last time he had heard a sound...
...that wasn't accompanied by fear...
...loneliness...
...or death.
But this sound...
...kept him moving.
One more grip.
One more step.
His fingers wrapped around a thick root protruding between the rocks.
It held.
With the last of his strength, Samuel pulled himself upward.
The final meters felt like a struggle against the mountain itself.
Again and again the ground crumbled beneath him.
Loose stones broke free and thundered back into the endless darkness below.
Each time...
...Samuel froze.
Holding his breath.
Waiting for voices.
For footsteps.
For anything...
...that would tell him he wasn't alone.
But nothing came.
Only the fading echo of falling rocks drifted through the depths.
At last...
...he reached the edge.
And then...
...the light struck him.
Not gradually.
Not gently.
It hit him with overwhelming force.
Instinctively, Samuel threw his left arm over his face and squeezed his eyes shut.
Even through his eyelids, the brightness burned painfully.
After so long in darkness...
...it felt as though the sun itself was trying to force him back into the shadows.
He stood motionless.
For a moment...
...he did nothing except breathe.
Deeply.
Slowly.
The air was warm.
Humid.
It smelled of things Samuel had almost forgotten.
Grass.
Earth.
Running water.
Not ancient dust.
Not cold stone.
Not the suffocating silence that had surrounded him since he awakened.
Slowly...
...Samuel opened his eyes.
At first...
...he saw only white.
A sea of light.
But little by little...
...the colors returned.
Shapes emerged.
Shadows became cliffs.
Sounds became a landscape.
Before him stretched a narrow gorge.
Towering rock walls rose on either side, disappearing high above into the sky.
Between them flowed a broad river, its waters crashing over pale stones with untamed force.
Spray burst into the air...
...catching the sunlight like countless tiny stars.
Thick grass covered the riverbank.
Bushes and young trees had rooted themselves among the rocks...
...as though even they had refused to abandon this harsh place entirely.
Above it all...
...an endless blue sky arched overhead.
White clouds drifted lazily across it.
Samuel stepped fully out of the cave.
The sun settled warmly upon his face.
The wind swept through his dust-covered hair.
For one brief moment...
...he closed his eyes.
For the first time since his fall...
...breathing felt easy again.
The crushing confines of the cave were behind him.
The oppressive silence...
...gone.
Only the mighty roar of the river remained.
Slowly, Samuel lowered his arm.
His thoughts began to settle once more.
The fear hadn't disappeared.
Neither had the temple.
He knew this place would haunt him.
Not only the colossal structure.
Not only the darkness.
But above all...
...the questions he had left behind.
What had this place once been?
Who had built it?
And why had he found it?
But those answers...
...would have to wait.
For now...
...there was only one step after another.
Samuel looked along the river.
First in one direction.
Then the other.
The gorge stretched endlessly between the jagged cliffs.
And somewhere beyond them...
...lay the unknown world waiting for him.
He didn't know what awaited him there.
Perhaps danger.
Perhaps more mysteries.
Perhaps something even worse than everything he had endured so far.
But for the first time in a very long while...
...he was no longer standing in complete darkness.
Samuel drew a deep breath.
And kept walking.