The cabin was a caricature of a shelter. Up close, its decay was obscene: windows smashed to pieces, the door hanging from a single rusty hinge, the roof sunken as if a giant hand had crushed it.
"Does someone really live here?" asked Alex, unable to hide his skepticism.
"Live, to call it living..." Emi squinted, studying the structure. "But there's something here. And that something smells like trouble."
With a cautious push, the door gave way with a prolonged screech that tore through the alley's silence. The interior greeted them with a blast of stale air, dust, and rotten wood. Broken furniture, spiderwebs thick as curtains, floor covered in debris. No trace of life.
"Is this a joke?" Emi scanned the darkness, frustrated. "There's nothing."
Alex didn't reply. He crouched, his fingers tracing the dusty floor. There, barely visible, were drag marks. Fresh. They led in a straight line to the darkest corner of the room.
"Someone was here," he murmured, his voice low but clear in the silence. "And they took something. Or someone."
Emi didn't need more. She extended her palm upward. With a whisper of energy, a small sphere of golden light was born in her hand, growing until it illuminated the room with an unnatural warmth.
The light danced over the walls, the furniture, the floor... and then, it stopped.
In the corner, where the marks ended, the dust emitted a faint bluish glow, perfectly outlining a rectangle on the floor. A hidden trapdoor.
"Aha!" Emi's face lit up with a triumphant smile. "I knew it smelled like a trap. See, Alex?"
Alex approached. It wasn't just a trapdoor. The edges were sealed with a dark, sticky substance that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Containment magic. Or a warning.
"Emi, this..."
"What? 'It's a trap'? Of course it's a trap!" She was already kneeling, her fingers searching for a groove. "But it's our trap now."
"That makes no sense," Alex grumbled, but his eyes didn't leave the opening she began to lift.
A metallic screech, and then... darkness. A blackness so dense it seemed to swallow the light from Emi's sphere. From the depths rose a smell: damp earth, mold, and something else, sweetish and nauseating.
"Ready for the fun part?" asked Emi, her smile a white flash in the gloom.
Alex could only let out a sigh that sounded like definitive resignation. There was no choice. There never had been.
They descended a worn stone staircase, their steps echoing in the narrow passage. The air grew heavy, cold, and laden with moisture. After a dozen steps, the staircase opened into an underground cavern.
It wasn't a simple basement.
It was a desecrated sanctuary.
Smoking torches stuck in the walls illuminated a vaulted space. But the light offered no comfort. It revealed symbols carved by fire and knife into the rock: spirals that induced vertigo, serpentine tongues, eyes that seemed to follow them. At the far end, an altar of black stone emitted a pulsating red glow, like a corrupt heart beating in the darkness.
"This... isn't just a hideout," murmured Alex, a shiver of cold running down his back.
"It's a cultist nest," concluded Emi, her voice momentarily losing its playful tone. Her eyes scrutinized the symbols. "The same ones the guild mentioned. And they're doing something. Something bad."
That's when they heard the footsteps.
Several pairs of feet, dragging and striking the stone with a monotonous rhythm, approached from a side tunnel.
Without thinking, Emi clenched her fist. The sphere of light vanished, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the faint glow of the altar. They crouched behind a rock formation, Alex's heart hammering in his ears.
They appeared.
Hooded figures in robes black as the night itself. Their faces were hidden behind smooth, featureless masks that faintly reflected the torchlight. They advanced in a gloomy procession. And they weren't alone.
Among them, dragged by chains that scraped against the floor, were people. Villagers with mouths gagged, eyes wide with pure terror. One, two, five... at least eight captives.
"The missing ones..." Emi's voice was a thread of contained rage.
The cultists led the prisoners before the red altar. One of the hooded figures, taller than the rest, raised gloved hands. A guttural incantation, in a language that twisted the air, began to rise.
Alex felt the power accumulate. A heavy, oppressive energy that weighed on his chest.
"Emi..." he whispered, a warning.
She was already moving.
"The plan is simple," she said, and in her eyes the golden light of her power already sparkled, charging, intensifying. "We stop them. All of them."
"And plan B?" asked Alex, though he already knew the answer.
"Plan B is to win harder!" That was her only reply before she exploded into motion.
A blinding flash of pure sunlight burst in the center of the cavern, bathing everything in white for an eternal instant. The cultists screamed, blinded.
"LET THEM GO RIGHT NOW!!" Emi's shout reverberated against the walls, laden with an authority that brooked no argument.
In that instant, unseen by anyone else, Alex extended his will. He activated his ability. A subtle, invisible flow of energy streamed from him toward Emi. It wasn't a boost of raw strength, but an optimization: her reflexes would sharpen to the limit, her senses would capture every enemy movement, her already formidable power would find a more efficient channel.
"Like always..." Alex murmured to himself, slipping into the shadow of a column, ready to move, to support, to be the invisible support in the storm of light Emi was about to unleash. "You drag me straight into the heart of the problem."
The cultists, recovering, began to surround her. Their black robes blended with the gloom. From the altar, the red glow intensified, and the tall figure raised a ritual obsidian dagger.
The battle, silent and lethal until a second ago, was about to begin.
Thanks for reading
The next CHAPTER: The Demon of the Cave