Six Eyes in the Dark

Thane didn't sleep.

Not because he couldn't.

Because something might be watching.

The six pale eyes didn't blink. They didn't flicker. They didn't glow like the eyes of a beast. They were still... too still. Not a mindless predator's gaze, but something calculating. Something that measured its surroundings before choosing whether to move.

Or whether to strike.

And it had seen him.

That was the problem.

He didn't think it was a hallucination. Not this time. He'd eaten. He'd rested. His mind wasn't clouded like before. He felt alert. He felt... studied.

Like prey.

But if it had wanted to kill him, it could have.

So why hadn't it?

He didn't have an answer. The silence didn't offer one either.

The tunnel ahead was steep, winding deeper through stone carved by things older than language. The walls grew smoother. Not worn by nature, but shaped—purposefully. He saw grooves along the floors now. Not scratches. Not claw marks. Patterns. Too even. Too repetitive.

He didn't understand them.

But he understood they weren't random.

The dungeon wasn't chaos.

It had structure.

And the thing with six eyes? That wasn't chaos either.

That was design.

Thane's breathing slowed as he reached the next chamber, wider than the last, this one ringed with stone columns. They stretched up into the dark, their tops lost in the ceiling. Unlike before, this room had no water, no moss, no movement. Just dust, silence, and memory.

And in the center... bones.

He walked toward them slowly.

A pile, maybe four feet high. Not just one skeleton. Dozens. Tiny bones, long bones, thick ones. Some human-shaped. Some clearly not. All bleached, all brittle, all abandoned.

There were no scraps of clothing. No gear. No weapons.

Just bones.

And on the ground beside the pile, in careful arrangement... another handprint. Carved into the stone, just like the first one. Smaller this time.

Above it, only one mark.

Not the same rune as before.

A different one.

Fresh.

The grooves hadn't worn. The dust around it was disturbed.

Thane knelt, tracing his fingers over the mark. It wasn't glowing. Wasn't humming. But he felt... something. A low vibration beneath his palm. Like the stone remembered what had touched it.

He stared at the handprint.

Then glanced toward the shadows above the pillars.

Nothing moved.

But he could feel it again.

The pressure.

Soft this time. Almost... curious.

He didn't summon his status screen. He didn't ready a Firebolt. His mana was still recovering, sitting just below half.

Instead, he sat down.

And waited.

Minutes passed.

Then something moved.

From behind one of the pillars, smooth and soundless, it dropped.

The six-eyed figure.

It landed without a sound. Its limbs were too long. Its skin the color of burnt ash. No mouth. No nose. Just a head shaped like a smooth stone and six pale orbs across where eyes might be.

It didn't advance.

It didn't posture or growl.

It stood across from him, hands open.

And it waited.

Thane rose to his feet slowly.

He didn't speak.

He wasn't sure it would understand words.

So instead... he mimicked it.

He opened his hands.

The thing tilted its head.

No sound came from it. But the pressure in the air shifted... like the tension in a rope being pulled taut.

Then, without warning, it crouched.

In one smooth motion, it drew a long line in the dirt between them with one clawed finger. Then another. Then a third. A triangle.

Inside the triangle, it carved two intersecting circles.

Then it stepped back.

And looked at him.

Thane stared at the pattern. The shapes meant nothing to him. Not yet.

But the figure expected something.

He knelt.

And copied it.

Triangle.

Circle.

Circle again.

His hands weren't as precise, but he mirrored it as best he could.

When he finished, the creature tilted its head again.

Then it raised a hand and pointed—not at him, but to the far wall of the chamber.

He turned.

There, carved just above the bone pile, was a message.

He couldn't read it.

But it glowed.

Dimly.

The same glow as his status screen.

Not magic. Not quite.

System-light.

A different language. Older, maybe.

But as he looked at it... the glow sharpened.

And then, one by one, the symbols began to shift.

Letters.

English.

He blinked.

And read.

"You are not the first."

"But you are the first with the flame."

"The Archive watches."

His breath caught.

Not from fear.

From validation.

He wasn't hallucinating. He wasn't alone. This was real.

And whatever the Archive was... it had seen his fire.

He turned back to the creature.

It hadn't moved.

Then, slowly, it touched its chest.

Clawed fingers to its ribs.

And tapped once.

Then twice.

Then stopped.

It gestured at him.

Then pointed at the pattern in the dirt.

Then... at the bones.

Thane's eyes narrowed.

This was a test.

He didn't understand the full language, but he understood the moment.

The creature had watched.

It wanted to see more.

Maybe it couldn't use fire.

Maybe no one here could.

Maybe he was the only one.

He took a step back.

The creature mirrored it.

Then, without sound, it leapt—high, impossibly high—back to the pillar's top.

And vanished into the dark.

Gone.

But not forgotten.

Thane stared at the mark it left.

The triangle with the circles.

His hand twitched.

Then the screen opened.

[STATUS]

🧍 Name: Thane

🧬 Race: Human

🌍 Origin: Unknown Plane

❤️ Vitality: 4

💪 Strength: 3

⚡ Agility: 5

🧠 Intelligence: 6

🔥 Mana: 3 (21/30)

🔁 Passive:  Law of Absolute Repetition (Active)

🎒 Skills:  

[Firebolt – Untrained]   

• Level: 1   

• EXP: 22 / 100   

• Mana Cost: 10  

[Poison Resistance – Lv. 2] (Passive)   

• EXP: 4 / 25

• Level: 1

• EXP: 30 / 100

He stared at the flame icon beside Firebolt.

He'd been saving his mana.

But not anymore.

He walked to the open space between the pillars, turned toward the mark on the wall... and raised his hand.

"Firebolt."

The flame shot forward, hotter than before, and struck the stone just above the glowing message.

The heat licked the rune.

The glow intensified for a moment... then steadied.

He cast again.

Firebolt.

The mana dropped to 1.

The room smelled of ash.

The bones did not stir. The creature did not return.

But Thane had drawn a line.

He didn't understand the Archive.

He didn't know why it watched.

But he knew this much:

If it was waiting for someone who could burn, who could adapt, who could endure...

Then it had found him.