The Walls That Listen

No sound of footsteps lay there.

But the silence it left was worse.

Breath shallow, muscles tight, we were frozen in the corridor. The air was more than cold; it was heavy.

Something watching.

Something listening.

…

I clenched the hilt of my sword and peered into the darkness in front of me. Nothing moved.

The hall loomed on and on, the same over and over, the very stronghold shifting around us.

Asura stood still as stone, dagger drawn with a sharp glass gaze. She hadn't moved, hadn't said a word.

She was waiting.

Listening.

The others shifted uneasily. The recruit next to me gulped.

"Did you hear that?" his voice barely a whisper.

The problem was, we all had.

…..

I forced myself to breathe. This was a ruin. An abandoned place.

But why did it seem like it crazy wasn't finished with us?

As we descended, the walls felt more… off.

Like they had been moved.

Shifted.

Not crumbling—but rebuilt.

Someone — or something — had made this place livable again.

…..

We kept moving.

One hallway led to a slew of others, winding, infinite. The armor in the stronghold was like a maze, every corridor indistinguishable from the next.

Then, we saw it.

A single door.

Heavy. Unbroken. Unlike anything else in the ruins.

I stepped up to run my fingers over the wood.

It was warm.

A door inside a frozen ruin.

Fresh. Used.

And etched on the surface — a name.

Not mine.

Not Asura's.

But one that I gulped at, my breath catching in my throat.

Aldric.

….

Ser Aldric was among our field knights. The one who sent us here.

His name shouldn't be here.

Shouldn't be on a ruin that was supposed to be forgotten.

Asura fingered the letters lightly, then stepped back.

I exhaled slowly. "What does this mean?"

She didn't answer right away.

And, "It means we weren't the first ones sent here."

Something twisted in my gut.

And that they never returned.

Something is Breathing

The silence stretched.

The torches we'd lit flickered a little, the flames wavering as if the air had changed.

I stepped back from the door.

Then—I heard it.

A slow, drawn-out inhale.

Not from behind the door.

Not from behind us.

From all around us.

As if the stronghold itself just needed to catch its breath.

The End of the Waiting

We weren't alone.

We never had been.

And the thing that had been waiting — that had been listening — had finally chosen to move.

...

The stronghold breathed.

Not as a living thing does, not with lungs, not with heat. But with something more profound, something invisible.

The walls did not move. The air did not shift. But I felt it. We all felt it.

A slow, silent inhale.

Like something was just waiting for us to make the next move.

...

I swallowed hard, eyeing the name across the engraved wooden door.

Aldric.

The name shouldn't be here. It didn't belong.

She ran her fingers along the wood, slow and measured. She didn't say anything, but I could see she was thinking the same thing.

This wasn't a coincidence.

The door was too intact. The engraving was too fresh. The stronghold had been neglected for decades but this appeared to have been carved yesterday.

The other knights behind us began shifting, whispering beneath their breath. They weren't just unnerved.

They were afraid.

The Weight of the Unseen

I exhaled slowly, struggling to keep my voice even. "Does that mean Aldric was here?"

No one answered.

For none of us wanted to say what we were all thinking.

If Aldric had ever been here — if this place ever had him — then why had no one spoken his name since?

Why had he fallen out of history?

Asura's Warning

Asura tilted her head, and finally spoke, a quiet voice, but serrated with some edge. "We need to be careful."

One of the recruits scoffed, his bravado buckling under the pressure of nerves. "We've been careful. "That hasn't slowed anything down."

Asura gazed at him, her eyes a knife. "Then be quieter."

The knight bit back his words, glancing away.

The others followed suit.

Nobody wanted to admit it, but we were already trapped. Not physically, not yet.

But the instant we'd crossed the threshold, this place had stolen a piece of us.

Something Moves

Then, when the silence stretched too thin —

A sound.

Soft. Slow.

Not footsteps. Not breathing.

A dragging sound, across the stone.

From the corridor behind us.

The closest knight to the door cursed and drew his sword. One reached for his torch, holding it up high, the flame swinging in the darkness.

I clutched my own sword tighter, my pulse pounding in my ears.

We were being followed.

….

I turned my head slightly, enough to see some motion in the absolute darkness.

Not a figure.

Not a person.

Something else.

It wasn't fully visible. It wasn't even fully there.

Just a shift in the air. A distortion.

Here the torchlight refused to go.

My stomach tightened. "We need to move."

Asura gave a single nod, already heading for the door.

The others hesitated, eyes locked on the thing behind us. They were waiting for it to crystallize, to turn into something summable.

It never did.

Because it didn't have to.

The stronghold itself had swallowed us whole.

Inside the Forgotten Room

I took hold of the heavy iron handle and shoved it. The cold resisted with a groan as the door pushed open, the hinges giving way.

It was dark inside, light spilling only from the torches we carried. The air was thicker here, chillier.

And yet—

There was a table.

A long, wooden table, dust- and time-free.

And someone had been sitting in it.

One chair was pushed back.

A cup, half full, sat near the edge.

The ink on the parchment next to it had hardly dried.

As if someone had just stood up and walked out.

I swallowed. "This place isn't empty."

Asura strode forward to the parchment. Her nails grazed the underside, raising it just the barest inch.

Then—she froze.

Her breath caught, for a fraction of a second.

And as she spoke, her voice was lower than before. "Alarion. Look."

I stepped closer.

And reading what had been written on the page.

A Message That Had No Business Being Sent

The ink was a deep black, the strokes graceful, and measured.

It wasn't a letter. It wasn't a journal.

It was a single sentence.

A warning.

Welcome to the Forgotten.

My blood ran cold.

The words weren't faded. They weren't old.

They had been written for us.

And just as I realized —

The candle next to the parchment quivered.

Then, slowly, deliberately—

The chair that had been pulled back scooted itself forward.

Like someone had just sat down again.