Lucas lay there a moment, letting the silence settle over him. The air had changed. It was no longer cold and stale like previously, but dry and warm, scented faintly of dust and minerals.
He checked his hands and saw them bloody. Climbing the wall at such speeds to escape meant he couldn't take the time to be careful; he had clung to sharp points, cutting his hands open just to escape what was behind him.
He rose slowly, still not daring to look back down the hole, as his instincts still warned of the danger, and took in his surroundings.
The chamber was vast. The ceiling had collapsed in parts, allowing fractured shafts of golden light to stream through, casting a light on the geometric patterns of the floor. Dust swirled in those beams, dancing to a soundless song. Vines dangled from the broken ceiling, but they were dry, brittle, long since petrified into place. The walls weren't the smooth, plain stone of the previous tunnels. Here, they bore age, and from what he could see, there was something carved onto these stones.
It was a ruin. A temple, maybe. But he guessed one not built for the gods of Olympus. These walls gave a feeling of being older than the ones dedicated to the gods; he had entered during his travels, temples that the gods brought when moving from Greece. Reliefs lined the corridor ahead, carvings sunk deep into the stone, weathered and blurry in parts, but in others, the colour, while dim, was still discernible.
He paused at the first mural. Moving his hand across it to clear the dust and get a better view.
A swirling chaos of lines, stars, spirals, and many other shapes, some of which even Lucas strangely didn't know. Within this strange coalescence of shapes, Lucas could make out a vague outline of...something. It wasn't exactly a direct outline, but rather a negative space that resembled a vague human form.
He moved on.
The next mural was better kept; it showed a woman rising from the earth, her legs entwined with the earth, her arms outstretched, turning into roots that dug deep into the earth, where they gradually grew into a forest atop the earth. Tears rained down from her eyes, forming rivers where animals were pictured, drinking from the water. Yet, while she was crying, her eyes gazed lovingly at her creations.
He passed another relief. At first glance, it seemed to be a dome of stars unfurling across the sky, but when Lucas looked closer saw it wasn't a dome. It was a man with wide, cruel eyes that stretched across the heavens, limbs bent to form the firmament, and overlooked the earth. His shape was vast, almost formless, but the power in the carving was palpable, with sharp lines that formed the constellations etched into his body.
Next came a panel of a crown of crustacean claws. Beneath the crown stirred something titanic. A face half-hidden in the currents, rising from the sea, their eyes closed as if dreaming. Lucas soon realised it wasn't the head hidden beneath the waves, but the waves were, in fact, this head's beard, and the being's hair resembled a mountain of wet seaweed.
And then, a wall of darkness.
The carving was unlike the others. There were two figures to be found here. One held a feminine form with no features, but the outline was vague, almost blending into the black of the mural, with only small clusters of what seemed like stars within this outline.
The other figure was more masculine, but had no features either; in fact, it was just a silhouette in the darkness, making it hard to see unless Lucas was paying close attention.
Lucas stood still for a long time.
No god he had ever met, or read of, felt like these figures. He was thinking they could be titans, but no names came to mind.
A sound broke the stillness of the cave, causing Lucas to withdraw from his thoughts.
A faint sound.
It wasn't natural. It was a single note, bright and wavering, that echoed off the walls.
A flute.
The melody continued, meandering and quiet, carrying through the ruin like wind through reeds. He didn't question why; his feet moved on their own, drawing him to the sound.
The murals on the wall ended. The chamber narrowed into a twisting corridor, its edges lined with remnants of statues, aged by time and were covered in dust. He could make out some of those he passed; one was a centaur, but its head had fallen into the ground, shattered. Another seemed to be a winged horse, a pegasus, with its expression seemingly eroded over time. Some, however, were too broken to figure out; even the humanoid statues had fallen and couldn't be understood.
The flute never stopped, but grew louder with each step he took.
He passed a broken fountain in the shape of a stag. A tree whose bark had fossilized into marble. A plinth bearing a cracked mask.
His steps grew slower.
The hallway gave way to a wide rotunda, the ceiling adorned with blurry mosaics of nature: packs hunting, beasts relaxing by the river, dryads dancing through the trees with satyrs following behind, playing flutes. Roots had claimed the stone walls here, splitting them, clutching columns like skeletal fingers.
The floor was cracked brick, moss and weed growing from it, all which was nurtured by a little pond being formed by a small waterfall that came from a small hole in the ceiling, less like it was an intended feature and more like it place was beginning to fall apart, but the smell wasn't one of stillness and time but one that smelled of the wilderness.
That's when Lucas saw the origin of the flute. On an old marble block that seemed to have been used as a bed, there was a figure with its back turned to Lucas, beside which lay what seemed like a porcelain mask.