Zac moved forward, a solitary figure swallowed by a darkness that seemed to have substance, a weight. The Shroud on his shoulders was a cold presence, a burden reminding him of his own shame with every step. Hunger and thirst had become constant companions, tendrils of pain twisting his stomach and parching his throat, reducing him to a mere bundle of primary needs and terror. The narrow tunnel he had been navigating for an eternity was finally starting to widen, but this change brought no relief, only a new form of apprehension.
'I don't know how long I've been walking,' he thought, his own inner voice weary and toneless. 'Hours? Days? Time has no meaning here. Only the darkness persists, unchanging.'
His footsteps, which had previously echoed on the bare rock in a solitary and depressing cadence, suddenly became muffled. The sound was stifled, as if he were walking on a thick carpet of moss or ash. A strange smell, sweetish and nauseating, floated in the stagnant air. It was the smell of spoiled meat, mixed with a sickly, almost floral scent that turned his stomach.
He stopped, all his senses on alert. He had no source of light. Feeling the air before him, he bent down and placed a trembling hand on the ground. It wasn't stone. It was a fibrous, slightly elastic surface, covered in a fine layer of dust that stuck to his fingers. Uneasy, he stood up and continued forward, with a growing apprehension that knotted his insides. Each step was quieter than the last, as if the world itself were holding its breath. He felt thick, white cords of some kind under his boots, which crackled softly under his weight with a dry, unpleasant sound.
Suddenly, his foot got stuck.
"What the..." he breathed, his breath catching.
He pulled. His foot was stuck to the ground, as if caught in a vise of tar. Panicked, he tried to free it, but as he put weight on his other leg to break free, it too got stuck, sinking into the sticky substance with a repulsive sucking sound. He was trapped.
He looked down, his eyes painfully adjusting to the near-total darkness. He could now make out the nature of what was holding him. Threads. Thousands of white threads, thick as a finger, glistening with a sticky substance. They crisscrossed in a complex and deadly network. A spiderweb.
"No... no, no, no!"
Pure, primal terror overwhelmed his weariness. He struggled, pulling with all his might, but every movement was a fatal mistake. His arm got tangled in a mass of threads while trying to find purchase. Trying to straighten up, his back stuck to another bundle. The Shroud itself, far from protecting him, adhered to the web with a supernatural greed, immobilizing him even more. He was like a trapped fly, each struggle, each spasm of panic only tightening the embrace of his silken tomb.
He stopped moving, his heart hammering against his ribs, a mad drum in the dead silence. He listened. The silence was absolute. Too absolute.
Then, he felt it. A vibration.
Faint, barely perceptible at first, running through the taut threads of the web with an unsettling regularity. A vibration that didn't come from him. Something had felt his movements. Something was approaching.
He looked up toward the cave ceiling, an inky void above him. A black spot detached itself from it, outlined against an even deeper darkness. It was descending. Slowly. Silently. At the end of a silk thread as thick as a rope.
The silence was total, except for the faint rustling of the descending creature, a sound that seemed to devour all others.
It reached Zac's level, swinging gently a few meters from him. It was a spider. The size of a large dog, its body was an oily black that seemed to drink the faint ambient light. Its legs, thin and disproportionately long, were bristling with stiff setae that quivered in unison. And its eyes... multiple eyes, a cluster of black, empty, pupilless orbs that stared at him without hatred, without hunger, just with the cold, absolute indifference of a predator.
Zac was paralyzed by terror. This was no mere beast. It was a nightmare born from the depths of the earth, a cursed creature like Shelob, an incarnation of patient and relentless predation.
The creature did not hurry. It moved across the web with terrifying ease, its legs stepping delicately on the threads without ever sticking, approaching him with calculated slowness. Zac could now smell its odor, that sweet and sickening stench emanating from its chitinous body. He closed his eyes, a whisper escaping his lips, a prayer with no recipient.
"Please..."
The creature was now in front of him. He could hear the faint clicking of its chelicerae, its venom fangs, which knocked gently against each other, producing a dry, mineral sound.
Without a sound, without a cry of aggression, one of the fangs sank into his neck.
The pain was an icy burn, an electric shock that spread instantly throughout his body. His muscles seized up in a final spasm. He tried to scream, but his throat was paralyzed, his lungs frozen. He could no longer move. He could no longer breathe. He was a prisoner in his own body, a statue of flesh and terror.
His eyes remained wide open, staring at the horror. The spider withdrew its fang and began its work. With methodical efficiency, devoid of all passion, it began to circle him, secreting streams of thick silk that enveloped him. He watched the world disappear behind a white, sticky veil, layer after layer, the faint light of the cave fading to total darkness.
'Alive... I'm still alive...' was his last lucid thought, a thought that brought no comfort, only a new dimension of dread. 'It... it's saving me for later...'
He was entirely wrapped in a silk cocoon. Darkness returned, but it was a confined, suffocating darkness. He was alone with the icy pain of the venom paralyzing his limbs, the slow suffocation, and the absolute terror of his powerlessness.
His heart, fighting the poison, beat slower and slower. One beat. Another. A final twitch, faint and desperate.
Then, nothingness.