Ren stood alone in the hollow dark, broken dagger trembling faintly in his hand.
It was a stupid idea to hold onto it. There was no reason to hold such a useless weapon.
But letting it go would feel like dropping the last piece of himself he still understood.
"I shouldn't be here alone," He thought again, louder this time in the silence of his mind.
The altar waited ahead, blackened by time or ash or memory. Behind it, the wall had caved in slightly, revealing a jagged split in the stone floor—more than a crack.
A hole
A collapsed section of the chapel that had broken long ago and been forgotten.
There was something that drew his attention to it.
Not the Mother.
Not some voice.
Just an instinct.
Ren stepped past the altar and crouched at the edge of the break. Dust drifted in the still air, and beneath the rubble was a hollow space. The cold rising from it wasn't the kind of cold you feel on your skin. It was the kind that filled your chest when you breathed.
He peered over the ledge.
A narrow stone passage wound downward—a collapsed staircase that tunneled into the darkness. But ahead was a faint light that pulsed somewhere far below, bluish and soft.
Ren looked back toward the chapel door, half-expecting it to creak open. To see Eva standing there, arms folded, eyes closed but seeing right through him.
But there was only silence.
Only the windless dark.
This wasn't in the plan.
His fingers found the edge of the broken entryway, and he slowly began his descent, stepping carefully between crumbled pieces of tile and stone. The walls here were carved roughly at first. Symbols and handprints. As if someone had made this passageway in desperation, clawing their way deeper to get away from something.
Or to reach something.
The stone corridor eventually narrowed, compressing him between two close walls that wept with moisture. Moss clung to every crack. Water trickled from somewhere above, pattering softly like rainfall inside a tomb. He had one hand on the wall to steady himself. The light ahead grew stronger.
Pale.
Lunar.
After what felt like an hour—but may have only been minutes—the corridor opened.
And Ren stepped through into something…impossible.
A vast underground space yawned before him.
Not a chamber.
Not a cave.
A world
The ceiling stretched high above him in a sweeping arc of stone and crystal, glimmering with threads of silver and violet. Waterfalls poured from impossible heights, tumbling from cracks in the rock as though the heavens themselves had fractured. They fell in slow, graceful sheets into a wide basin of water far below, glowing faintly with bioluminescent light.
But none of it compared to what hovered above it all.
A full white moon.
Perfect and round.
Not a hole in the ceiling.
Not a reflection.
A moon, hanging still in the air as if someone had taken a piece of the sky and buried it here underground. It wasn't bright. It didn't need to be. Its presence was enough.
The entire chamber bathed in its light, painting the waterfalls in ghostwhite and turning the mossy stone into shimmering emerald.
Ren stood at the precipice, barely able to breathe.
A narrow stone path extended from where he stood, winding down toward the water's edge, hugging the curve of the cavern wall like a forgotten pilgrimage trail.
He whispered to himself without realizing.
"…What is this place? It's...beautiful."
His voice vanished instantly, swallowed by the space.
No echo
No response
He started down the path. Each step was cautious, his balance careful on the slick stone. The way spiraled down slowly, giving him full view of the underground expanse. There were no creatures here. No sign of the Mother. No bones or battle scars or symbols of decay.
Ren stopped halfway down the slope, where a wide platform jutted out like a balcony. The view from here was breathtaking. He could see the water far below now, smooth and still, like a mirror held up to the glowing moon. A soft mist rose from the basin where the waterfalls met the surface, curling like smoke through the air.
Ren sat down on the edge of the platform and stared up to the full moon.
He didn't know what this place meant.
But it felt like something sacred had been left here long ago.
"I don't belong here," He said aloud and honestly. "I don't know what this place is, or why it's here…but I know it's not meant for someone like me."
He looked down at the broken dagger in his hands.
"Everything I've done here. Every time I've fought, killed, broken something I couldn't fix—I told myself it was for something else...someone else." He paused, throat tightening. "I acted like I had all the answers. Like walking into the chapel alone made me brave. Courageous. But I was just afraid. Afraid of asking her to stay. Afraid of needing her."
He leaned back on his palms, eyes lifting to the pale moon above.
"And now I'm sitting here alone...In front of something that doesn't care who I used to be. Or how many times I've come back. It feels nice..."
He smiled, bitter and small.
"She would've loved this place..."
For a moment, he imagined her beside him. Eva, sitting still with her eyes closed, listening to the sound of the water far below. Breathing in the stillness. Feeling the same awe he felt now. He sat there for a long time, letting the quiet wrap around him like a shroud.
Then, a faint sound came from his side.
For a moment, lower down near the basin on a shallow ledge, he thought he saw her.
Silhouetted by the soft moonlight. A dark, ghostly figure swaying like smoke.
But when he blinked, there was nothing there.
As he stood up from the ledge, he took a final breath of the fresh air.
But then—
A voice behind him, gentle and true, spoke out.
"This place is really pretty, Ren..."