Eron staggered to a stop, lungs burning, throat dry. Sweat clung to his skin, and his legs ached with every step he had taken through the endless tunnel. His chest heaved, every breath scraping his throat raw. With no exit in sight and panic clawing at his thoughts, he leaned his back against the nearest wall and slowly slid down to sit on the damp ground.
His gasps echoed faintly in the stillness, bouncing off stone that felt alive. For a moment, he closed his eyes, willing his pulse to slow, but when he opened them again, he froze.
The cave wasn't dark anymore.
Light shimmered faintly across the walls. At first he thought it was the glowing symbols again, but no—it was the moss. Patches of it clung to cracks in the rock, and each strand glowed with a soft blue-green luminescence. It wasn't steady. It pulsed.
The glow brightened, dimmed, and brightened again, like a slow heartbeat. As one patch faded, another flared. The rhythm wasn't random. It was synchronized, as if the moss was breathing with the cave.
Eron pushed himself upright, his exhaustion fading beneath wonder. The more he looked, the less it felt like he was underground. The moss speckled the walls and ceiling in clusters, and when they pulsed together, it was as though he stood in the middle of a night sky. The stone vanished into shadow. The moss became stars. He wasn't in a tunnel anymore. He was drifting in space.
"Moss...? That glows? I've never..."
His voice trailed away.
He stepped closer to one of the glowing patches. Up close, the strands looked like threads of glass, delicate but alive, pulsing faintly with light that seemed to run through them like blood. When he held his hand near, he felt a soft thrum against his skin, as though the moss was humming faintly.
His hiker's instinct kicked in. Almost without thinking, he dug into his pack and pulled out a small glass vial. With the edge of his pocketknife, he scraped a bit of the moss into it. The sample came away like wet silk, still glowing faintly even when sealed in the glass. Inside the vial, it looked like a fragment of the night sky trapped in his hand.
He capped it carefully and slipped it back into his pack, though a part of him wondered if carrying it was safe. The glow inside the glass seemed to beat faintly, like it still lived.
Then the sound came.
Footsteps.
At first he thought it was an echo of his own movements, but he hadn't moved. These were heavier. Deliberate. Distant, yet growing closer with each beat of the moss-light.
Eron stiffened. His grip tightened on the flashlight. His ears strained against the rhythm of his heart. The steps were steady, not hurried, not panicked. Whoever—or whatever—was approaching knew exactly where it was going.
From the far side of the glowing tunnel, a figure emerged.
It was tall, cloaked in layered cloth that shimmered like brittle parchment, catching the moss-light in strange folds. A metallic mask covered its face, its surface etched with faint, unreadable grooves. In one hand it carried a lantern.
The light it emitted wasn't flame. It pulsed softly, in rhythm with the moss. A steady throb of starlight, like the lantern itself was a fragment of the same cosmic fabric surrounding them.
The figure paused.
"...You are not permitted."
The words vibrated through the air, not like sound, but like the cave itself was speaking. Eron felt them in his ribs more than in his ears.
"No human should step through the Time Tunnel unanchored."
Eron's body froze. His legs twitched with the urge to run, but his chest was locked tight, breath caught. The figure's presence pressed on him like gravity. The lantern's pulse throbbed in his skull, syncing with his own heartbeat until he couldn't tell which was which.
The being tilted its head. Not curious. Calculating.
"That naughty brat... she opened another gate," it murmured, almost to itself. The voice carried no anger, only weary inevitability.
Then its masked gaze fell fully on Eron.
"Do you not understand where you stand, mortal? Once one steps into the Time Tunnel, there is no returning."
The moss pulsed brighter at its words, the cave shimmering like a galaxy alive with stars. The tunnel itself seemed to lean closer, listening.
"When the tunnel closes, the coordinates refresh. The entry point is erased. A new anchor is chosen, and the old path is lost."
The lantern flickered, then steadied, its glow rippling outward.
"You have crossed a line meant only for the Warden and its chosen few. The threads of time are not so kind to trespassers."
Eron's throat went dry. His gaze flicked to the moss glowing like stars across the ceiling, then back to the Warden. His pack felt heavy where the vial pressed against it, a stolen fragment of the cave's strange life.
"You're saying I can't go back? That this tunnel—this place—erased the way home?"
His voice cracked, raw.
It was too much. The symbols. The twisting cave. The moss that pulsed like stars. And now a masked being telling him he was trapped in something called a Time Tunnel.
"No. That can't be. There has to be a way back. There always is."
The words rang hollow, swallowed by the glow around him.
The Warden did not move. The lantern pulsed steadily, a heart that would never falter.
It only watched.