I didn't hesitate.

Not outwardly, at least.

"We're going in," I said.

The words echoed through the vast glass chamber, carried by stone and silence alike. For a brief, fragile moment, nothing happened, no roar of disapproval from the cave, no sudden collapse, no unseen thing lunging from the walls to punish my arrogance.

Just my voice, hanging there.

Then the reactions came.

Annalise sighed first, long and weary, the sound of someone who had already known this was coming the moment she saw the tablet. Her fingers twitched, phantom strings tightening around nothing, as if bracing for the cave to pull back.

Nora followed, quieter but no less resigned. She pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded in that way she got when she'd already run through every possible outcome and disliked all of them. "Figures," she muttered.

Kent's response was… complicated.

He let out a short, breathless laugh, the kind that sat halfway between excitement and terror. His grip tightened on his weapon, knuckles whitening. "Well," he said, forcing a grin, "beats getting eaten out there, right?"

Don't blame me for thinking like that. What would you think if you saw a chicken dancing on top of a bear? Confused right? That's exactly what I'm feeling right now, and yes, I did in fact compare him to a dancing chicken.

You really thought he was the bear? No, I'm the bear.

Xavier snorted, sharp and humorless, but there was a glint in his eyes. Adrenaline. Fear. Something close to anticipation. "I was getting bored," he said, though the tension in his shoulders betrayed him. What a stupidly optimistic bastard.

Liam didn't react at all.

He simply adjusted the strap on his pack, expression flat, gaze already drifting down the single path ahead as if the decision had changed nothing for him. Yeah, I hope this guy is the first to get eaten by unimaginable horrors. It would be a wonderful sight to see, and yes, he's a ludicrous bastard

Page mirrored him, indifferent, unreadable, eyes lingering on the glass walls with unsettling focus, like she was trying to see something beneath their surface.

Spoiler alert, the walls were actually made of steel... yeah, that was a lie, they are glass, but there isn't anything below them.

Then.

Lillith stepped forward.

The sound of her boots against stone was measured. Controlled. Her purple hair caught the fractured light, strands glowing faintly as she stopped directly in front of me. Her eyes—sharp, bright, furious—locked onto mine.

She didn't shout.

That somehow made it worse.

Why was I scared of her when I could easily overpower her? A question for you, when your mom beats you up with a slipper, do you fight back?

If you do, then you either have a shitty mom, or you'd better be prepared to die a painful death, you emotionless bastard. Well, there you have it, the answer, she's like a very angry older sister. Someone you don't bark at, no matter the temptations.

"Why," she asked, her voice tightly restrained, every syllable clipped and precise, "are you doing something this stupid?"

I opened my mouth.

She didn't let me speak.

She turned sharply and pointed at the stone tablet, finger trembling just slightly. "That," she said, "is a list of rules. Rules that explicitly warn us not to do exactly what you just decided we're going to do."

She looked back at me, disbelief cracking through her composure. "It literally tells us this place kills people for existing wrong. And your solution is to walk deeper into it?"

Her eyes burned.

"Explain. Now."

I raised my hands slowly, palms out, not in surrender, but in a universal please don't explode gesture yet.

"Lillith," I said gently.

A drop of glistening water dripped from my face, falling to the ground.

Trying to please a ticking time bomb was very nerve-racking, hence the sweat.

Despite my best attempt to calm her down, she didn't soften.

I took a breath.

Then another.

I wanted to talk one more time, because third time's the charm and whatnot, but the look she gave me left me with no other choice, so I started talking.

"First," I said, "you're right. This cave is horrifying. It's unnatural, hostile, and very clearly capable of killing us for reasons we won't understand until it's already too late."

She folded her arms, unimpressed.

"But," I continued, "outside? Outside, we have a confirmed Gemini-stage abomination actively hunting us, multiple Jötunn roaming the area, which, mind you, might even reach the Apollo stage, beings capable of killing us in an instand, one moment we would be trying to run away and the next we would have to explain to the gods why we were running, so not exactly the best choice, and there's also the Entity tracking our movements."

I lowered my hands.

"Our chances out there are basically zero."

She opened her mouth again, but I pressed on before she could interrupt.

"Second, direction. This cave gives us something the outside doesn't: a path. One way forward. No guessing, no wandering in circles until we starve or get noticed. As long as we follow the rules, we at least know where we're going."

Her jaw tightened.

"Third—shelter. Whatever else this place is, it's sealed. Those things didn't follow us inside. That alone buys us time. Time to rest, to think, to plan."

I hesitated, just a fraction.

Then delivered the lie.

"And fourth," I said carefully, "this place might lead us back."

Silence.

I could feel every eye on me now.

"We all heard what the tablet says," I continued, forcing my voice to stay steady. "This place might be a converging zone, a point where the two worlds might touch, a potential way back home to our wonderful planet. To our home."

I had fed the rest of the group the same lie I told Nora, and they had believed it. How could they not? Belle was known as the strongest human alive; if anyone could sense a planet, it would be her.

Even though I hated lying to them, but I had to; it's not like I could explain that I read about their lives in a fucking book.

"If there's any chance, any chance at all, that this cave connects to something like that, then walking away would be the stupid choice."

Lillith stared at me.

Searching.

Probing.

I held her gaze and didn't flinch.

"The odds of dying in here," I finished quietly, "are lower than the odds of dying out there. And if we're going to risk everything anyway… we should do it somewhere that might give us a way home."

The cave remained silent.

Lillith's shoulders slowly lowered. Her annoyance didn't vanish, but it dulled, reshaped into something heavier. Reluctant acceptance.

She looked away first.

"…I hate this," she said.

"I know," I replied.

She exhaled sharply through her nose. "You're still an idiot."

"Also true."

After a moment, she nodded once. "Fine. But if this place kills us, I'm haunting you."

"Deal."

With that, the argument ended, not because she agreed, but because there was nothing left to argue about.

We moved.

Together.

The first steps were the hardest.

The glass walls began to change almost immediately, their fractured colors paling, turning whiter, milkier, as if leached of hue. The light from our sources diffused strangely, bending around us instead of illuminating ahead.

Then the fog appeared.

At first, it was barely there, a thin veil drifting just above the ground, brushing our boots. With every step forward, it thickened, curling upward, softening the edges of everything it touched.

I walked beside Nora, close enough that I could hear her breathing.

"This place," she murmured, eyes scanning the walls, "is absolutely going to murder us."

"Probably," I agreed.

She shot me a look. "You say that too casually."

"Coping mechanism."

She huffed, then hesitated. "Sebastian?"

"Yeah?"

"…Do you find Page even a little creepy?"

I blinked.

Ah.

That question.

I chose my response very carefully.

"I think," I said slowly, "that in a world where spider-goat-monkey hybrids exist, our definition of 'creepy' needs constant revision."

She stared at me.

I continued, "What do you think?"

Silence.

I waited.

One second.

Two.

The fog thickened.

Three.

"Nora?" I asked, glancing sideways. "You just gonna ignore me now?"

No response.

I frowned and turned my head.

She wasn't there.

My heart skipped.

I spun fully.

The path behind me was empty.

No Nora.

No Annalise.

No Xavier, Kent, Lillith, Liam, Page.

Just me.

The fog closed in.

That was when it hit me.

I hadn't heard footsteps in a while.

Hadn't heard breathing.

Hadn't heard anything but my own.

The cave hadn't separated us loudly.

It hadn't dragged anyone screaming into the dark.

It had simply… removed them.

One by one.

Quietly.

Efficiently.

I stood alone in the glass corridor, fog swallowing the world, and understood with sickening clarity that I had made a mistake.

I could almost hear the narrator saying, "It was at this moment he knew, he fucked up."

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