Story 1072: The Eye Beneath the Earth

In the rust-bitten mining town of Vandle’s Hollow, silence reigned—not the peaceful kind, but the strained hush of breath held too long. Beneath the cracked soil, something watched.

The survivors of the Eldritch Bloom—a group of weary scavengers led by former geologist Dr. Lena Bane—had come to Vandle’s Hollow chasing whispers: tales of a living cavern, a place where the earth pulsated like flesh and time slowed to a crawl.

They were hunting shelter. What they found was the Eye Beneath the Earth.

It started at the edge of the quarry.

No wind. No birdsong. Just a constant low hum, like a monstrous heartbeat echoing from the mine’s belly. Bane, once a woman of science, could feel the tremors not in the ground, but in her skull—a pressure behind the eyes, a pull in the teeth.

“It’s not seismic,” she whispered, examining the strata. “It’s… conscious.”

They descended.