The cave pressed in closer the farther Ash went. Each step seemed heavier, as though the ground itself resisted him, trying to hold his boots in place. The torchlight flickered with every breath of air, but there was no wind. It was as if the flame struggled to live against something unseen. Like the darkness was trying to consume the light.
Ash kept glancing back over his shoulder, half-expecting to see the cave mouth still faintly glowing behind him. But the light had long since disappeared and only black stone and jagged shadows stretched behind him now seeming to never end.
"Should've brought more torches," he muttered, his voice sounding muffled. The words didn't echo properly anymore. They just died in the stale air.
He tightened his grip on the torch. "This game is doing way too good of a job."
The whispers came again.
Still not in recognizable words, just sounds, like breathing stretched into syllables. A thousand voices murmuring from somewhere too far and too close all at once.
Ash froze. His heart thundered in his chest, and sweat prickled his skin despite the chill.
"Not real," he whispered. "Just sound design. Just a scripted event."
But when he pulled up his stats, the truth hit harder than he wanted to admit.
Name: Ashfall
Race: ???
Class: Classless
Level: 1
HP: 50/50
XP: 0%
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Agility: 5
Intelligence: 7
Charisma: 4
Corruption: 4%
The number had climbed again.
Ash closed the panel quickly, as if that could stop it. But his chest tightened, and not just from fear. The whispers sank into his bones. He could feel them, like cold fingers brushing his ribs, tickling the back of his skull.
"What the hell does corruption even do?" His voice cracked slightly. "Is this permanent? Temporary? Some stupid debuff mechanic? Why hasn't the game explained any of this?!"
There was no answer, only the faint scrape of stone shifting somewhere deep in the tunnels.
He pressed forward, choosing the left-hand path — the one glowing faintly silver. At least the strange light promised some visibility.
The tunnel sloped downward. Every few feet, the walls changed. The stone wasn't natural anymore; it looked carved. Long gouges marred the surfaces, as though clawed by something too big to fit through the passage.
Ash trailed his fingers over one of the gouges. The grooves were deep, sharp enough to slice his skin if he wasn't careful. These weren't the pretty decorative carvings and they were definitely not made by anything remotely close to human.
His stomach twisted.
"Definitely not tutorial content," he whispered.
The whispers grew louder.
The silver glow ahead revealed itself to be a patch of moss clinging to the walls. It shimmered faintly, pulsing in rhythm with some unseen heartbeat. The torchlight made it recoil, dimming as though it didn't like being watched.
Ash leaned closer, curiosity prickling past his fear. The moss wasn't moss at all. It was more like thin strands that looked like veins glowing faintly beneath the surface of the rock. It made it seem as if the cave itself was alive.
The whispers throbbed in time with the glow.
His corruption ticked upward again.
Corruption: 5%
Ash recoiled, nearly dropping the torch. "Okay. Nope. Not touching that."
Still, the path led straight through the glowing patch. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to walk past, torch held high. The light hissed faintly as it neared the strands, and the whispers grew louder, sharper, filling his skull until he thought his head would split.
When he finally left the glowing moss behind, the whispers dulled— but they didn't vanish.
The tunnel widened into another cavern. This one was smaller, circular, its walls slick with moisture. Bones littered the ground here too, but unlike the broken piles in the entrance chamber, these were arranged.
Carefully.
Ash stopped dead. Skulls lined the far wall, stacked neatly in rows. Femurs jutted from the dirt like stakes. A ribcage hung from the ceiling on a length of sinew, swaying faintly though there was no wind.
He gagged, bile rising in his throat.
"This is way too detailed," he whispered, his voice shaking. "What kind of sick dev team designed this?"
The corruption bar pulsed again, and when he dared glance at it, the number had crept upward.
Corruption: 6%
His breath came too fast, chest heaving.
Stop looking. Stop thinking about it. Just move.
But his boots felt glued to the stone.
The skulls seemed to grin at him in the shifting light, empty sockets following him no matter where he moved.
He shook his head hard, forcing himself to turn toward the next tunnel.
The whispers didn't fade. They crawled deeper into his head, shaping themselves into half-formed words. He thought he heard his name once, whispered in a dozen voices at once.
"Ash…"
He spun, torchlight flaring across the cavern. Nothing. Just bones.
His skin crawled. His chest ached. Every breath tasted of rust and decay.
He opened his stats again, desperate for something grounding.
Corruption: 7%
The number mocked him. Slowly, steadily, climbing higher every minute.
I need to get out. Just turn back, reset, log out if I have to. This isn't fun anymore.
But when he looked behind him, the tunnel seemed darker than before. Like the shadows themselves had thickened, ready to swallow him if he tried to turn around.
It seems there is no going back.
His hands shook. His heart hammered. His vision blurred around the edges.
It's just a game. Remember it is just a game. A very gruesome, very detailed game, but none the less just a game.
The sides of the tunnel pressed in until they were against his shoulders. He ducked low, squeezing through a jagged crack.
And froze.
The cavern beyond was vast — the largest yet. The ceiling was lost in shadows and the floor was uneven, strewn with boulders and collapsed rubble. Pools of stagnant water glimmered faintly, reflecting his torchlight in broken shards. Sending even more shadows to dance around.
But it wasn't the size of the chamber that made him stop.
It was the sound.
The whispers were gone.
Silence pressed in, heavier than before. His ears rang with the absence of it.
And then, from the far side of the cavern, came the sound of stone grinding.
Slow. Heavy. Like something massive shifting after a long sleep.
Ash's torch trembled in his grip. His throat went dry.
"Boss fight," he whispered. His voice cracked. "It's a boss fight, isn't it?"
A shadow moved.
Huge. Crawling. Wrong.
The sound came again — stone grinding against stone.
And then two pinpricks of pale light opened in the dark. Eyes.
Ash staggered back a step, torchlight flaring. His stats flashed in the corner of his vision.
Corruption: 8%
The creature shifted fully into view.
Its body was twisted, humanoid only in the sense that it stood on two feet. Skin like stretched leather clung to bones that jutted too sharply. Its limbs were too long, fingers ending in black claws that scraped grooves into the stone. Its chest heaved with every breath, each exhale rattling like broken glass.
And its face — its face was nothing but a skull, jaw unhinged too wide, the whispers pouring from its hollow throat.
Ash's blood ran cold.
The torch shook in his hand.
The thing turned towards him and those glowing eyes locked with his.