The silence was thick.
No air. No breath. No sound.
Jalen stepped into the crypt like someone entering a coffin with the lid half-shut. The walls were carved from dull gray stone, etched with symbols too faded to read. Dust didn't settle here. Light didn't touch the floor. Every step felt strange; the ground was solid, but his body didn't fully trust it.
Vexa moved beside him, gaze sweeping the room. Her voice didn't rise above a whisper. "There's no echo."
Even Ember, perched low to the ground, didn't growl. His paws made no sound against the tile.
Statues lined the walls—ten of them in total. Cloaked, humanoid figures with blank faces and twitching limbs. Some leaned forward like they were listening. Others slumped like they had been defeated mid-prayer.
And one of them… grinned.
Jalen noticed it last.
"I don't like this," he muttered. "Stone shouldn't twitch."
The moment he said it, the room moved.
The statues sprang to life all at once. They didn't hiss or screech—they didn't even breathe. Just a sudden, violent surge of motion, gray limbs flashing like blades.
"Back!" Jalen shoved Vexa and Ember behind him, diving into the chaos.
One statue launched at him with a spinning kick, another swung with a blade-shaped arm. Jalen ducked, rolled, came up with a hard elbow into one's jaw—but it didn't budge. Another statue grabbed his wrist, twisting it unnaturally, but he wrenched free and slammed his knee into its gut.
Three more dogpiled him.
"Come on then!" he barked, spinning wildly and throwing fists. His hits cracked stone, but they kept coming—silent and tireless, like nightmares given shape.
Vexa reached for her blade but paused as Jalen shouted, "I got it!"
She stepped back, watching in disbelief as Jalen flipped a statue over his back, only to be tackled by two more. "This… is getting… annoying!"
Jalen slammed the last statue into the wall, and the room froze again.
The statues stopped mid-motion, cracked but still upright, their heads tilting toward him in eerie sync. A low hum began to vibrate through the crypt, like the sound of bees swarming behind a stone wall. One by one, the statues' eyes lit up—not red, but a dull, sickly amber.
Then they spoke in perfect unison.
"What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?"
Jalen blinked, chest still rising and falling from the fight. "What?"
The statues didn't explain. They didn't even move. They just stared.
"Is this a trap?" he asked, glancing at Vexa. " 'Cause it feels like a trap. Is it a trap?"
Vexa sighed. "No, it's a riddle. And the answer is 'a human.' It's one of the oldest—"
WHAM.One of the statues suddenly drove a fist straight into Jalen's gut, folding him over like a lawn chair.
He wheezed. "I take it back—it's definitely a trap."
Vexa grimaced as he staggered. "You were supposed to answer, not guess like an idiot."
Jalen coughed, waving her off. "It's the same thing if you say it with confidence."
Another statue stepped forward, eyes bright."If you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you don't have me. What am I?"
Vexa frowned. "That one's… that's a secret, right?"
The statue gave no reaction.
Jalen raised a brow. "Wait, I know this one. It's a—"
WHAM.Another gut punch. He crumpled again.
"Okay, ow—apparently not that," he groaned, holding his ribs.
From the edge of the room, Ember tilted his head.
Jalen glanced at him, still doubled over. "Alright little guy, your turn."
He reached out—only for Ember's fur to erupt into flame. The moment Jalen's hand touched him, his palm lit up like a matchstick.
"SON OF A—!!"
Jalen flailed back, trying to smack the fire off his hand as Ember calmly sat down, licked his paw, and said in a dry, irritated voice—(heardonlyby the reader):
"Don't touch me, moron."
Vexa blinked. "Did he just talk?"
Jalen, still patting smoke off his glove, muttered, "He said it with his eyes."
"I said it with your bad decisions," Ember muttered with a sigh, curling his flaming tail around his legs.
The statues moved again, stepping closer in synchronized rhythm. More riddles spilled from their mouths like a chant:
"What can bring back the dead, make us cry, make us laugh, make us young; is born in an instant, yet lasts a lifetime?""I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?""What is broken every time it's spoken?"
Jalen's face scrunched in frustration. "Memories? Echoes? Aaaagh, I don't know! I didn't major in riddles, okay? You wanna fight—fight! But this quiz show crap is where I tap out!"
From the shadows, laughter began to rise.
Not a chuckle.
Not a snicker.
But a long, dragging, layered sound, like ten people laughing at once in slightly different pitches. It echoed without echoing, overlapping itself like a sound that had no beginning.
It never stopped.
Even when the mouth that made it began to smile.
The laughter dripped down the walls like syrup—slow, sticky, unending. It didn't echo. It saturated. As if the sound wasn't bouncing off the crypt's stone but soaking into it.
Jalen squinted, turning in a slow circle. "I know that stupid laugh."
Ember snarled. "He's back."
Vexa drew her blade. "Where is he?"
The statues all turned at once—heads snapping toward the far wall like puppets pulled by the same invisible string. And there, pressed against the stone like a reflection trapped in ice, was the Smiling Man.
He didn't move.
Just smiled.
Wide, frozen, unnatural. His lips never twitched. But the sound still came.
He was laughing.
Even while perfectly still.
"Coward!" Jalen snarled, storming toward the wall, his eyes starting to glow gold. "You think this is scary? Hiding behind riddles and dead eyes like some discount ghost clown? Come down here so I can rip that smug-ass grin off your face and shove it so far up your—!"
He stopped only because Ember growled louder than him.
Vexa blinked. "That's… not the divine composure I expected from you. Your aura is leaking."
"Oh, I'm past composure," Jalen growled. "I'm this close to snapping and giving everyone in this crypt a reason to fear daylight."
Ember padded up beside him, his tail flaring slightly and igniting."Yeah, you tell him, genius."
He let out a deep, rumbling growl that matched Jalen's rising fury.
Together, the two of them stared up and shouted at the grinning shape on the wall.
"COME OUT, YOU CREEPY STONE-LOVING LAUGHING LEECH!"
The laughter grew.
Then, calmly, from nowhere, a voice like silk dragged through filth:
"Truly unbecoming… for the God of Freedom."
The statues turned again—this time to face Ember. But instead of riddles, they asked only one:
"What do you call the girl who stayed… and the boy who didn't?"
Jalen froze.
His fists clenched, and the glow in his eyes dimmed.
"…What did you just say?"
The statues didn't repeat it.
They didn't have to.
Jalen's throat tightened. "Rhea… and Stix…"
He looked at Vexa. "We haven't seen them since we got split."
Before she could respond, the walls twisted and pulsed.
And from them, like a curtain peeled back from inside out, the Smiling Man stepped into the room.
Like he was unfolding from a part of the room no one had noticed.
He stood tall—his translucent body stretching in impossible directions before snapping back into shape. His smile never faded. His mouth didn't move. But they still heard his words:
"You didn't think they were safe, did you?"
Jalen launched forward without thinking, fist cocked back, divine fire flickering across his knuckles. His aura was expanding, creating a pressure that crushed everything around him.
The Smiling Man didn't move.
And Jalen's punch passed cleanly through him, like he wasn't even there.
But something else broke instead.
Every single statue in the crypt exploded, shattering into jagged chunks of glowing amber that tumbled to the floor like bones in a cave-in.
Jalen stood amidst the ruin, stunned.
The Smiling Man finally turned his head.
And grinned wider.
The Smiling Man's head twisted unnaturally toward Jalen—his neck bending too far, vertebrae crackling like splintering ice. The smile on his face twitched once, and that alone made the temperature drop.
He raised one hand. Not to strike.
To choose.
His translucent fingers hovered… and then pointed—first at Ember, then at Vexa.
"No," Jalen growled, stepping forward, fists still ablaze. "You're not touching them."
The Smiling Man tilted his head, mock confusion written across his grinless grin.
"You already did."
With a flick of his fingers—so casual it felt like an afterthought—the ground beneath Vexa and Ember cracked. A surge of black light spiraled upward like inverted lightning, twisting them both off their feet.
"JALEN!" Vexa shouted, reaching for him as her body was lifted, weightless.
"Let go," Ember said simply—"He'll come back."
And then they were gone.
Sucked into a sliver of void so thin it looked like a paper cut in reality. Their bodies collided midair with Kullen and Nathan, the four of them crashing together somewhere in the dark.
Jalen was alone.
Dust hung in the air where they'd stood. The stone still crackled, faintly alive. The crypt was broken—statues shattered, riddles dead, silence creeping back in.
Only one thing remained.
Him.
And the Smiling Man.
Jalen stood tall, blood trickling from his knuckles, fire still burning along his arms.
The Smiling Man's smile didn't widen.
It simply... was.
They stared at each other.
No more riddles.
No more laughter.
Just the waiting silence between two forces about to collide.
Jalen stepped forward to land a blow, but the Smiling Man melted into black sludge, hissing as it hit the ground—gone in a heartbeat, leaving Jalen alone with only the echo of his own breath.