The group worked down the ramp in a crouch, boots testing each board before weight went on it.
The air thickened, wet and cold. Elios could feel the sound of their own movement more than he heard it—cloth, leather, the faint catch of iron.
He checked the echo rod in his palm and left it silent. If something was sleeping underground, he didn’t want to disturb it.
At the ramp foot, the roof lifted just enough to stand. The tunnel bent left, then right. Somewhere ahead, water moved without flowing.
The light from Orin’s stormlamp finally found the edge of a vast pool and stopped there, making a black mirror. Beyond it, nothing but darkness. The kind of dark that hates to be named.
“Hold,” Elios said. His voice came back wrong—shorter than it should have, as if something between the walls had eaten the last part.
He touched Orin’s forearm and pressed the lamp lower. Elios knelt and inspected the ground. Fresh signs, sharp as ink.
Men. Wagons.
A trail that ran straight to the water and ended, as if the lake had swallowed everything in a single gulp.
“I’ve heard of miners’ tales about these underlakes,” Orin cleared his throat. “They were said to be mouths into the underworld. The water was dead.”
“We’re Seekers,” Elios cut in, shaking his head. “Rumour is just our opponent to test, not our guide. See the damp ring along the shore? The level has dropped recently. That means tide. And for that, there must be—”
Before he finished, a gush of wind slid past Elios’s neck—not air, exactly, but pressure. Like a door opening in another room.
Then came a voice.
“Help! Help me!”
Elios almost turned by reflex, but survival instinct roared up and stopped him. Old warnings rang clear in his head:
'Never show your back to a predator, never turn your back on an unknown being, and never turn when being called in the dark.'
The voice had sounded pleading, urgent even—but beneath it, he heard a thin thread of malice. Besides, he had been watching the water ahead, and the instant the voice spoke, the lake went abruptly still.
Not calm. Stretched, as if every sound were pulled taut and about to snap.
A chill ran up the length of Elios’s spine.
Without looking, he immediately grabbed Tarth and Orin by the shoulders before they reacted, hard enough to be understood. The voice rose again on the air, keening:
“Help me! It hurts!”
This time, he heard the practiced emptiness in its rhythm. Like an actor reciting lines and waiting for the cue. Elios was almost certain that if he answered the calls, whatever lurking down there would take it as an invitation.
“Eyes forward,” he whispered through his teeth. “Back away, slowly. When I call, run.”
They formed a line and retreated quietly, step by step. The cord brushed Elios’s wrist like a living thing, felt heavier than ever. The lake held itself too still, as if bracing.
The voice came again—closer this time, framed in breath it did not need.
“Take the gold. Spare me.”
Elios didn’t answer. He counted steps. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
Sensing the men weren’t responding as it had expected, the whisper changed its tone.
“This way,” it cooed—soft as a maiden’s inviting laugh.
Elios’s eyelids suddenly sagged.
He felt his thoughts unmoor. The world thinned to mist. For a moment, sleep seemed effortless. The tired body surrendered to the unnatural comfort of the call.
But before the emptiness could take him, he scraped together all the willpower he had, clenched his jaw and bit the tip of his tongue.
Pain anchored him. Blood welled at the corner of his mouth, but the light came back into his eyes.
That wasn’t mere mimicry anymore, Elios realized. Something in the echo itself blurred my mind,
An arachnid weave of illusions. A lullaby from the dark pit.
Tarth and Orin were caught in it as well. Tarth slid a foot toward the dark; Elios’s grip bit his arm and hauled him back into line. Orin tried to shout something, but Elios clamped a hand over his mouth, and the sound died in his throat. Both men jolted like dreamers wrenched awake —breath shuddering, yet unable to stop the shaking in their calves.
Half panicked and half angry, Tarth notched an arrow on his string and drew the bow in a clumsy motion.
A hand—white as bone—shot up from the snow and dug into his ankle.
“Don’t!” A sudden single word shattered what composure remained.
Orin spun and drove his sword at the hand. Elios caught the human shape at the edge of his vision and reached to stop him, but Orin was too fast.
Faster still was the hand: it released Tarth, slipped past the thrust, and flipped neatly on the foible, pinning the tip in snow.
Elios saw her then: a woman, face leeched pale by the cold, age frozen out of it. Only the eyes proved life–the look of someone who had held a mortal decision for too long and finally chosen. No terror left.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Orin gaped, but before he could speak, she rasped in low voice.
“Stay put,” her accent bent the vowels north. “The voice won’t get your mind the second time.”
That was when Elios noticed the dried streak of blood remained on the upper side of her neck. It seemed that in haste, the woman had chosen to damage her own eardrum.
“Once you recover, it loses its charm on you,” the woman continued. “Or your mind just gets used to it. I’m not sure.”
Her voice was sanded and dry— either by the cold or by too much screaming. She switched to hand signs and shaped the words with her lips:
‘It can hear us.’
Nobody spoke a word, but they chose to trust her nonetheless. The woman slowly crawled up from the drift, snow breaking and sliding from her shoulders. If this cover was her work, it was done well. Beneath it, her body rose — lean, lithe and well-balanced, like a leopard.
Elios caught himself staring for too long, then swore inwardly at the timing of the thought. He offered his hand. She ignored it and stood up on her own, unsteady but stubborn, eyes locked on the darkness.
The low voice came back, higher now, forming a harmony choir. They all felt it passing, but this time, no one was affected.
Orin mouthed. ‘What is it?’
The woman only shook her head. She had no answer either.
Squinting against the lamplight, she took a shard of mirror from her sleeve and tilted it until the reflected beam sliced the pool at an angle Elios hadn’t thought to try.
The dark shuddered. The voice cut off mid-breath, pretending like it had never been there.
So it is playing hide and seek with us, Elios understood.
‘Move,’ he ordered with his hand signs.
Unexpectedly, the woman followed without any question. They edged backwards, eyes fixed on the black plate of water. Snow hissed under their boots.
CRACK!
A loud crisp sound broke the silence. Orin fell when his foot landed on a weak board. It broke and took him to mid-thigh. Elios grabbed his collar and heaved.
Behind them, the lake flexed. The water dimpled, as if a great lung drew in. A ripple crossed the surface and then stopped halfway, frozen in place, trembling. Beneath that thin skin, something turned.
No more games.
A low moan rolled out, so deep it skipped the ear and went straight to the gut. The sound rattled even the snow on the ground. Orin flinched and nearly dropped his stormlamp.
“Run!" Elios’s shout was drowned by the noise, but nobody needed it either. They pivoted as one and ran.
The moan stopped.
They climbed the ramp into the tunnel, a narrow throat of timber and frost. Tarth led, Orin half-limping, the woman between them, one hand on the wall, mirror shard tucked to her palm. Behind them, the water growled. They didn’t hear it, but the tremor under their feet didn’t lie.
Elios risked a glance. A shape passed under the water—no more than a shadow—but its girth implied a size that was hard to comprehend.
A single limb breached like a blackened root and slammed itself against the shore, cracking the stones beneath it. The ends frayed—not claws, not quite tendrils—testing the air for prey. Twice the limb swiped at them, and twice they narrowly dodged it.
This can’t go on.
Elios—who stayed last in the line — drew a twist of bitter powder, and flung it wide. The wind caught it and made an invisible wall that tasted of rust, spice and wormwood.
He wasn’t sure the trick would work—not entirely. But if his hunch was right, this type of groping thing usually had more senses than just its touch.
And sure enough, the thing slowed. Not stopped, just... hesitated. The movement lost its certainty, its hunger.
The great limb wavered before the dust cloud, swaying as if confused, tasting the air.
A seam split along its hide and opened into a yellow eye. It looked half human, half serpent, big as a plate.
The woman tapped Tarth’s shoulder and jerked her chin. He understood, raised his bow, and loosed three arrows in a breath. Against a thing like this, he wouldn’t gamble on a single perfect shot. The second shaft punched into the eye.
The limb recoiled, jerking back with a wet shudder. They surged up the slope to seize the moment.
But then, something flew screaming past their heads with frightening speed. A boulder twice the size of a barrel slammed into the upper wall, snapped a brace, and the tunnel’s mouth sagged.
Clever beast.
Behind them, a second limb broke the water — slick with melt and old silt— dragging what looked like a wagon’s frame, then swung it in a perfect arc and loosed it at just the right angle.
Elios seized the woman by the waist and yanked her aside as the wreck smashed the beam where she’d stood. Snow, rocks and rotten timber avalanched in a choking rush, sealing the top of the slope.
“No,” Elios murmured.
He skidded, dropped to his knees and clawed at the rubble with all his strength. It didn’t budge. Tarth and Orin threw their weight beside him, pushing.
Nothing moved. The passage held shut like a clenched jaw.
Orin cursed out loud. Tarth spun and sent an arrow after the limb’s shadow — a desperate shot fired out of anger. Elios looked around for a heaver and found none. The woman caught him by the sleeve and shook her head.
“Don’t waste it. This pile is now under the weight of the whole place.”
Elios returned a nod, then looked at her, surprised. “No more silence?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she pointed toward the blackness above the lake. There—along the huge, dark limb—were not one or two, but a scatter of eyes: large and small, different shades, all wide and fixed on them. “It sees us now.”
“The voices ceased when that thing rose,” Tarth spoke, breath hitching in his throat.
“Nine eyes,” Orin counted and chuckled bitterly. “No wonder its aim was that good.”
The limb moved. An ebony appendage, slow and deliberate, dragging its bulk across the shore, leaving a trace of black goo on the ground. The stingy cloud made it hesitate, but even that wouldn’t last long.
Elios felt his gut tighten, cold and coiling. But then something snagged in his mind.
“No,” he said, more to himself than to them. “Things that belong to the deep never rely on sight to hunt.”
He paused, thoughts racing in his head.
“We heard the voices first because they were its sharpest tool,” he went on. “A lurer, not a chaser. Eyes aren’t needed.”
“Then what the hell are those for? To scare us?” Tarth asked, a thread of doubt shown in his voice.
“It got impatient when we ran,” the woman caught on quickly. “Out of its element, it had to fall back on... lesser tricks.”
“Eyes don’t mean it sees like we do, Tarth. Some see motion only, some see …” Elios’s eyes dropped to the stormlamp at Orin’s boots—its light flickering wildly. “That.”
As if to test his own theory, Elios grabbed a torch—its flame coughing smoke—and hurled it into the dark, far beyond the choking cloud of bitter dust.
Every eye turned.
The moment it landed, the massive tendril surged forward—no hesitation, no delay—lunging toward the torch with terrifying speed.
Elios let out a long, quiet breath.
“Heat-bound,” he concluded.
Orin muttered, almost a prayer:
“Then we can blind it.”
A flicker of hope sparked, and Orin moved—sharper now, purpose flooding back into his limbs. He dropped to a knee beside the stormlamp and began tearing it apart, hands fast but careful. The glass came free with a snap. He reached into the base, fingers finding the warm metal of the fuel core.
It was still almost full.
Exchanging a glance with Elios, he tipped it forward, letting the kerosene spill over a pile of rotted timbers and warped planks stacked nearby.
“The dust is fading,” the woman called. “It’s waiting to strike.”
“Let it,” Elios said without looking back. “We have enough time to build something big.”
Tarth drew a fiery line on the wall with his torch. The fire caught fast. Elios followed with his last pocket of powder that burst into a sour flare. It crawled along the boards, hungry for pitch, for sap, for anything that had a taste of oil.
A bloom of red and orange roared to life, licking up the old wood in an instant, spitting smoke and heat into the air.
“Get ready. When it moves, we run,” Elios whispered, his heart pounding wild. “Stick to the trail—if this was indeed a smuggler’s route, the slope’s got to lead somewhere.”
The cloud of dust finally dissolved. The group unconsciously took a few steps back, waiting for the result of their wager.
The creature’s limb curiously reached for the fire, trying to grab on the nonexistent body. The flame fervently kissed back. The limb recoiled with a twitch like a severed wire, tendons writhing, the scorched tip steaming.
Burned. Whatever it felt, it wasn’t pain it understood. Not yet.
Then came another limb—thicker, heavier. It hammered down against the flame like a fallen tower.
The earth buckled. The slope shuddered beneath their feet. Ahead, the black lake heaved, waves slapping the stone with a sound like wet thunder.
“Now!” Elios shouted over the noise.
They scrambled up the incline, boots slipping on the half-buried path—an old track, mostly lost beneath snowmelt and rotting leaves, but still there if one knew how to see it.