Chapter 3
Her hands reach out, desperate to slow her fall, but it is futile. The longer she descends, the darker the light from above becomes.
"I finally got somewhere." The thought passes through her mind, numb and disconnected.
Her body goes limp, as though it has given up, as though the fall is the end of everything. The only thing left is the endless descent into oblivion.
"This world is terrible anyway..." She faintly chuckles to herself as she plummets faster, the darkness swallowing her whole.
The walls of the flesh tunnel around her begin to crack. Through the fissures, she sees glimpses of something new—something different.
"Is that...?" She squints through the cracks, watching the darkness shift.
"A cave!" Hope flickers through her, a tiny spark in the fleshy, slimy dark void.
With the cracks growing larger, she reaches out, desperate to slow her fall. Her fingers dig into the edges of the opening, but as she tries to stop herself, pain shoots through her body.
"AAARGGH!" She screams as the bones in her fingers snap, the agony shooting up her arm.
"FUCK! FUCK!" She grits her teeth, clutching her hands close to her chest, but there is no escape.
She falls faster, the walls around her warping. The cave she saw is slipping away, replaced by something worse.
"This isn't real," her mind protests. "I'm in a dream. A vision. An... illusion!"
A nervous smile stretches across her face, despite the fear growing in her chest. Deep down, she knew this was reality, she just can't make sense of what is happening.
The walls of the cave begin to rot. Holes appear in the rocks, the walls...everywhere—they exude a deep and twisted heaviness, filled with black goo that oozes and leaks a corpse-like stench.
"Why?" she whispers in disbelief.
"I don't want to die. Not yet."
Tears glimmer in her eyes, a purple hue flashing against her red pupils as her heartbeat quickens.
"HELP ME!" she screams, the sound tearing through the dark—desperate to reach
"Anyone...anything!"
That could hear her.
"PLEASE!"
But the only response is the overwhelming silence.
Suddenly, her vision fills with light—faint but hot. The more she fell, the more it grows — it was coming from the floors below her, it looked like a fire burning in the depths of hell.
"Nightmare," is the only word that echoes in her mind.
Across her, the cracked landscape is far worse than she could have imagined. Magma bubbles up from the ground, the heat unbearable, and the remains of dead creatures litter the terrain—corpses ravaged, limbs and carcass hollow—like a broken, fleshy shell cause by something more brutal than she could ever comprehend.
"Where is this? What is this?" Panic swells inside her as her pulse races faster.
The sounds of slithering from above fill the air, joining the chaos around her.
"Something's coming!" she thinks, her eyes darting from side to side.
Then it happens.
The fiery light surrounding her growing, the very air thickening with something unexplainable. There is danger from below, left, right, front, back, and above. She grows speechless in fear of what is to come.
Then, familiar vines—thick, maroon, and pulsating—appear from above, slithering toward her with an enigmatic purpose.
"Vines?" she whispers to herself in confusion—leafless, flowerless, stripped of the life she remembered. Yet they are familiar, as if they have forced themselves through without their true form.
"SAVE ME!" she cries out. The vines spiral around her abdomen, still falling with her, their motion too quick for her to read.
"YES! PULL ME UP!" she pleads, relief flooding through her veins for a moment—until she feels the tugging grow stronger, pulling her faster, deeper into the unknown.
"NO! NO!" she screams, panic rising again.
Her emotions swirl in a haze of fear and anger, but her body can't move fast enough to free herself. The purple glow in her eyes intensifies, the power surging within her, but it isn't enough.
"Get..AWAY!" she yells, thrashing against the vines, but they only tighten.
Her body feels on the brink of breaking as she fights, but nothing changes.
"i can't see... It's dark..."
"— I'm dying" The thoughts creep into her mind, paralyzing her, making the darkness feel even deeper.
But then, something inside starts to stir.
That purple eclipse shining brighter in her eyes.
With one final cry, her voice cracks as she manages to scream,
"STOP!"
The vines freezes.
For a brief moment, everything is still. And then, with a jolt, she is flung downward, her body crashing against the fleshed tube, knocking her out.
--
"It's hot..." she groans, blinking her eyes open. The light that shines through is unfamiliar, sharp, disgusting.
"Where am I?" Her breath catches as she slowly looks around.
She is no longer falling through the tube but suspended over a new level—the same hellish nightmare she saw before —constricted against its ceiling by the vines.
This place...it isn't just dark. It is wrong.
She is stuck on the ceiling, vines still wrapped around her like ropes, holding her in place. Below her, a nightmarish terrain sprawls out, filled with grotesque creatures and bizarre formations.
The entire level is alive, or at least it seems that way. Eyes—countless eyes—blinking, wide, unblinking, all over the rocks and walls. Teeth, jagged and broken, gleam in the twisted shadows, while strands of thick, wiry hair snake across the rocks like living roots. Fingers—pale and bent at odd angles—protrude from the stone, twitching as though they are searching for something, someone, to grasp.
The very ground seems to pulse, the red meat like-terrain akin to the emptiness of a vast desert only composed of organic yet inorganic matter — fleshy ridges, bone-like protrusions, and pulsating glowing veins running like cracks in the earth. Toes, fingers, teeth, and hands scatter across the floor in strange, chaotic clusters, their movements synchronized as if the entire landscape is breathing.
Dead monsters, two headed red beasts, three headed canines, massive abominations scattered across without any one of them living in sight.
Then she sees it,
"It's looking at me!" her mind screams.
But no. She quickly realizes it isn't alive in any conventional sense. The eyes, the teeth, the fingers—they aren't focused on anything. They are part of the environment, embedded into the rock itself, as though the landscape has been made from these grotesque parts.
"It's as if this place is alive," she thinks, her spine tingling with fear.
Her arms strain against the vines, but they won't budge. Her chest tightens as she clutches her broken fingers close.
"Damnit! Let me go!" she yells, thrashing against them. But to her surprise, they slowly lessen their grip on her.
"No! That's not what I—"
Before she can finish, the vines drop her downward, sending her hurtling toward the floor.
"AAARRGGHH!" she screams, but the vines stop her just in time, jerking her to a stop mere inches from the ground.
Her body jerks, arms and leg flailing, the vines let her off on her elbow and knees.
"What the hell…?" she whispers, completely bewildered, whilst standing back up.
She tries to gather her thoughts, but all she can feel is the terror rising within her again.
Her eyes scan the place, and that's when she sees it:
A tower—no, something worse—its surface alive with movement, like a carpet of folds and ripples of worm-like flesh engulfing the building and a single massive eyeball overlooking the fleshy terrain.
Her breath hitches as the massive eyeball stares down at her from the tower's peak. Its lidless gaze doesn't follow her, yet she feels exposed, as though the cavern itself has chosen her.
"Disgusting," she mutters, forcing down the bile in her throat.
But the longer she stares, the harder it becomes to look away. Visions flicker across her mind—like her reflection, but twisted, uncanny, familiar yet wrong.
A pale figure crucified in firelight—her long hair burning a green flame—a vision that feels older than memory.
And a shadow, formless, shifting, watching just as intently, reflected in the eye's gaze.
She staggers back, shaking her head. "It's not real… it's just this place messing with me."
The eyeball pulses once, a ripple spreading through the wall like a heartbeat. And in the silence that follows, two words echo from nowhere, not sound but thought:
"Two sides." The thought blooms from inside her, as if the cavern has only reminded her of a truth already living in her bones.
Her chest tightens as she clutches her broken fingers close. She spins, searching for the source, but there is nothing—only the vines twitching above, the meat-like walls breathing around her, and the unblinking eye that refuses to close.
She presses her back to a rock, lightly sobbing to herself, "I just need to get out. That's all. Out…"