The fissure was tighter than it looked on the map.
Alex Thorne wedged his shoulders through the crack and exhaled hard to make himself smaller. Cold water trickled down the back of his neck from whatever storm had flooded this section days ago. The stone squeezed his ribs hard enough to make breathing shallow. His helmet lamp carved a thin beam through the wet darkness and caught floating droplets like tiny stars.
He was grinning anyway.
''Okay, you beautiful bastards,'' he said. His voice bounced off the rock, bright despite the squeeze.
''If you're watching this and already writing my obituary, chill. I've heard 'this guy's gonna die' like a thousand times. Spoiler: still breathing.''
He twisted the GoPro on his helmet so the lens got a better angle of the passage. One million subscribers didn't stick around for calm walks. They wanted the adrenaline, the slips, the moments he laughed while everything tried to kill him.
With one last grunt he popped free.
The chamber opened up fast. Wider. Taller. Ceiling gone in shadow. Stalactites hung down like rows of fangs. Shallow black pools dotted the floor. The air smelled like wet rock and something faint and metallic he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Alex let out a low whistle.
''Holy hell. Look at this place. Untouched. Nobody's been here in… I don't even want to guess how long.''
He panned the light across the walls. ''Check out those flowstone sheets. That's thousands of years of dripping water going 'screw you, I'm making art.'''
He laughed. The sound echoed back happy and easy.
Then he spotted the bat.
It thrashed in a shallow puddle near the far wall. Wings slapped the water uselessly. One wing bent at a wrong angle.
''Hey, little dude.'' Alex crouched, careful not to splash. He reached in slowly and scooped the small body up. The bat went still almost right away, as if it knew he wasn't going to hurt it.
''Did y'all know that bats are actually pretty decent swimmers? Not this little fella though, the wing seems to be a toast. Rough day, huh?''
He carried it to a dry ledge higher up and set it down gently.
''Rest up. You'll be fine.'' He gave a small two-finger salute. ''Tell your friends the giant with the flashlight says what's up.''
He glanced at his phone out of habit. No signal, of course.
''Mia's gonna laugh when I tell her I almost adopted a bat,'' he said to the lens. ''She'll say I'm turning into a Disney princess.''
He stood, rolled his shoulders, checked his wrist display. Battery good. Air good. Time good.
Then every light died.
Helmet lamp. Backup flashlight on his chest rig. Even the tiny red recording dot on the GoPro blinked out.
Black.
Total black. The kind where you cannot even see your own body. Hundreds of feet underground, where not even a speck of sunlight can penetrate.
Alex blinked hard a few times. Nothing changed.
''Okay,'' he said to the dead camera. ''Power glitch? Water in the connections? Universe pulling a prank?'' He fished spare batteries from his pocket and swapped them quickly, but carefully. He's done it a thousand times by now, the darkness plays little role in the process.
Still nothing.
He gave a short, tight laugh. ''Alright, fine. You win this round.''
No panic yet. He'd been in worse spots. Caves liked to play games.
He reached out and trailed his fingers along the wall, feeling his way back the way he came. But...the rock felt off. Smoother in places it shouldn't be. Jagged where it had been smooth before. He stopped.
''This isn't right.''
He kept going anyway. Ten steps. Twenty. The passage should have pinched tight again. It didn't. It kept opening wider. The ceiling pulled away into nothing.
His breathing sounded too loud in his ears.
''Mia's gonna kill me if I don't text by tonight,'' he muttered. ''She'll have Search and Rescue out here before I even miss dinner. Dramatic as hell. It's kinda cute.''
He talked. He moved. He told himself it was fine.
Until he saw the red light.
A dull crimson glow ahead, low to the ground. Not bright. Not friendly. Just there.
Everything else had gone dead quiet.
No water drips. No bat wings. No echo of his boots.
Just that red glow.
Alex stopped.
His heart kicked hard against his ribs. ''That's… probably some other explorer's flashlight. Dropped it and bailed. Right?''
He took one step forward.
The air turned colder with every step, like walking into a meat locker. His breath fogged in front of his face even though the helmet lamp was gone.
The whispers started.
Not loud. Not words. Just pressure inside his skull. Overlapping sighs. Breathing that wasn't his.
He froze.
'I need to turn around.'
He thought to himself, but his legs didn't move.
He tried again. Nothing.
His pulse slammed so hard he tasted metal in his mouth.
'Run.'
He screamed the word inside his head, yet his feet stayed planted.
Then they took a step forward anyway.
''No,'' he whispered. ''No, no, no, come on...!''
But his body kept walking. Slow. Heavy. Like the air itself had hooks in him.
His heart was a drum in his throat now.
The red glow sharpened into shape: a low stone altar slick with moisture. Dark red veins ran through it like old blood. Thick black vines curled around the base, glistening wet even though there was no water nearby the altar itself.
On top of the altar sat one book.
The cover looked wrong.
Too dark. Too smooth. The edges didn't bounce the red light back, they seemed to consume it.
Alex's hand lifted toward the cover. He hadn't told it to.
'Don't.'
He screamed the word in his skull so loud it echoed inside him.
His fingers kept moving.
''Okay… if this is how I go out,'' he muttered through clenched teeth,'' at least the thumbnail will be fire.''
His hand brushed the cover.
Silence.
The whispers vanished.
One heartbeat of perfect quiet.
Then he opened it.
The pages crawled with symbols that twisted and hurt to stare at. Curling lines. Shifting shapes. Refusing to hold still. Foreign. Ancient. Wrong.
And inside his mind something spoke.
Not words at first. Just pressure. Like cold fingers pushing against the inside of his skull from behind his eyes. Then syllables formed. Wet. Alive. Cutting straight into his thoughts.
He understood them even though he shouldn't.
Every sound felt like it was carving space inside him.
Alex's knees buckled.
The book slipped from his fingers and hit the stone with a dull thump.
The altar seemed to tilt sideways.
''What the hell was that…?''
His voice cracked and came out small.
Darkness rushed up from everywhere at once.
He collapsed.
Eyes rolled back.
Somewhere on the floor in the black, the GoPro kept rolling silently.
.
.
.
The End