Fantasy – Cosmic Horror – 30 Minute Read

…plink…plink…plink…

The sound, small and insignificant, burrowed into Tai-Ji’s skull. 

Work rotations, sometimes weeks at a time, would go by where that constant percussion of water on stone would fade into the rhythm of daily life. But then–

…plink…

and Tai’s entire world would narrow in on that single maddening sound, which would then echo in the hollows of her mind and relentlessly beat against her sanity until one day, usually without her even realizing it had happened, the drip faded once again into the beat of it all.

This was the never-ending cycle of her life. The worst part was that no one else seemed to notice the sound. Though, even if they did, they would never admit it.

There were, of course, some rooms where Tai heard the dripping less than others. When she crossed the bridges of the Central Cavern, she would occasionally be distracted by the radiating World Tree that hung from the sky or by the stars embedded in the stone around it.

But more often than not, the mundane of normalcy blinded her to those everyday distractions. And when that happened, the roar of the Central Cavern’s waterfall would pull her mind to its opposite — the subtle, yet steady,

…plink…

For most of her life, Tai-Ji lived in dens with very rare and sporadic dripping, but the sound would happen often enough that even as a child, she was curious about where it came from. There was one particular conversation with her mother—Tai must have been younger than ten at the time— that really encapsulated the whole matter.

“Mom, what’s that dripping sound?”

“Water, sweetie.” She was making a dessert, making a show of pouring the molasses from the jar into a mixing bowl.

“Why does water drip all the time?”

“Because that’s what happens when you live in a mountain. Water drips.” The molasses moved like it was reluctant to leave the safety of it’s jar.

“What’s a mountain?”

Mom sighed as she set the jar down. “It’s where we live, Tai.”

Tai could still hear her mother’s patience straining under the weight of her constant questions.

“I know it’s where we live, but what IS a mountain?”

Tai was sure now that her mother had never asked that question. Yet when confronted with it, she hadn’t paused for even a moment to consider it. 

“It is what it is. You ask too many questions, child.” Her mother’s voice was flat, final.

Those words had echoed in Tai’s mind ever since: 

It is what it is.

The phrase was basically the mantra of everyone who lived in the Kingdom Under the Mountain. Those words served as a constant reminder that Tai needed to keep her curiosity in check and keep her questions to herself.

She supposed she did ask too many questions as a child– and, though she hated to admit it, she still had that tendency. Her mother used to equate her constant questioning to playing music with a troupe — ‘You can’t go off on your own playing whatever you want. Just play your part and let others play theirs.’ 

So, after decades of people responding to her questions as if they were absurd or irrelevant or a downright threat to the peace of the Kingdom— Tai-Ji had learned at least one thing— do your best to ignore the drip.

The door scraped closed behind her, and immediately, Tai dropped her bag at the entry of her den. She stepped into the darkness and rubbed the smooth stone orb in the middle of the room. A warm orange hue radiated from the orb, lighting her small apartment.

Looking past her sparse furniture, the few statues she bought at the dwarf burrows, and the ehru leaning against the wall, she saw the only thing she cared about right now— her bed. That flat rectangle of stone covered by blankets and bear fur had been calling for her all day. Now that she was in its presence, it begged for her affection, and she was more than willing to give it.

Everyone worked one shift for every rotation— after all, the Kingdom was a band, a troupe, and everyone must play their part. But since moving, Tai had volunteered to work a second shift. So, she was working fourteen hours a rotation, leaving only seven hours for sleep, pleasure, and anything else she might want or need to do.

It had only been a few weeks, but she was run down and haggard. She could hardly stay awake, let alone think; she didn’t even have the energy to play music. But, in a way, it did work in her favor. Being exhausted left less time and energy for the questions. Who knows what kind of existential crisis the drip would send her into?

But finally, after another grueling day, Tai was home and only two strides from her bed.

She stripped off her clothes, stroked the smooth orb to turn off the light, and crawled naked into bed, cocooning herself in her soft spider silk blanket.

It used to be that she’d lay in bed and stare into the darkness, her mind bogged down with thoughts and arguments, but now she was nearly asleep as her head hit her pillow. But just as sleep began to close in, she heard a soft murmur– a gentle whisper from the dark.

She gasped awake, her stomach lurched, and a cool chill flushed her body.

“Hello?” She called as she shot up and looked around the dark room.

After a long silence, she lay her head down again. 

Already dreaming, I guess.

It wasn’t but a moment before the whispers came again, brushing against her ears like a breath. The voices were unintelligible and spoke no language she recognized. In one moment, they sounded like ordinary whispers, as if people were talking in hushed tones. In the next, the sounds shifted into something far more strange—guttural clicks and elongated vowels that carried a primal, unsettling resonance.

With a thrash of her blankets, she leapt from her bed and rubbed the orb in the center of the room, but it did not illuminate.

There’s nothing there. Even if there were, you wouldn’t want to bother them.

Tai scrambled back into bed, closed her eyes, laid one ear against her pillow, and pressed her hand against her exposed ear, trying to block out the whispers. 

It’s just people from the other shifts walking the halls. She tried reassuring herself.

But her heart was racing her mind. Plugging her ears would not satisfy her curiosity nor quel her fears— it didn’t even silence the voices.

Tai pulled her hand away from her ear and focused, trying to make sense of what they said. In a sense they remained incomprehensible. And yet she could tell that they were calling out to her— telling her to follow them.

“I’m being ridiculous. I’m just exhausted,” Tai-Ji said aloud. But in reality, she was too curious to sleep. She had to confirm that it was just one of the off-shifts walking the halls.

With a heave of exaggerated effort, she swung her legs out of bed, set her feet on the warm stone ground, put on a sleeveless undershirt and underwear, and walked to the door.

I’m just taking a peek, then right back to bed.

Tai slid the door open, which made the usual grinding sound of stone against stone, then stuck her head out. The hallway was empty. 

It was just Tai,

And the whispering voices. 

Mind your own business.

A dull glow of light, impossibly faint, caught her eye. In the middle of the corridor, where only solid rock should have been, a rectangle of hazy luminescence pressed against the deep shadows. It was the faint outline of a doorway where there should only be stone.

It was her mother’s voice that said, “Ignore it. It is what it is. Go back to bed.”

It was her bed that pleaded with her to return to its warm embrace.

It was the next day’s shifts that told her that just by looking out her door, she was already being selfish and inconsiderate of the greater good.

But it was the voice she had silenced for so long, the melody she’d been too afraid to play. Its notes were marcato: “The truth is more important than comfort.”

It was the voice of curiosity.

With her shoulder blades together, Tai stepped out of her door and towards the light.

The doorway where the light came from, the doorway that should not be, led to a dark stairway illuminated only by glowing inscriptions carved into the tunnel’s ceiling and walls. The runes pulsed with a faint rust-colored light, each in its own rhythm.

She began down the stairs at a metronomically consistent pace. The runes were unsettlingly organic and seemed to writhe in her peripheral vision, their shapes subtly shifting as if they were alive, but every time Tai looked directly at them, they were motionless. These markings were of a language she had never seen before and looked like they had been carved with bone rather than sung into the stone.

The voices were still there, still only hushed whispers that passed by and surrounded her. More than once, she whipped around, thinking someone was approaching from behind, only to find nothing but carved runes in the wall and a black void of endless stairs.

Tai stopped walking and considered that perhaps the other voices were right. What would people think if they saw her here?

“Turn back now. Pretend you never saw any of this. Ignore it.” Her mother again.

A new sense of urgency gripped her, and she picked up her speed.

If these stairs go on much longer, I’ll be late to my shift tomorrow. Fear began to be replaced by doubt. A few more steps, and if I don’t see anything I’ll turn back. I’m being irresponsible.

At the thought, Tai saw a glimpse of light in the distance, a beacon of hope that there was an end to this eternal darkness. She quickened her pace to a near run. 

Just a peak and you’re back to bed.

Nearly panting, Tai ran off the final stairs and into an open, well-lit cavern. Her feet were cold; at some point, the stone floor had become steel.

The room was unlike anything she’d ever seen. It was as if two worlds had collided, where two eras of history coexisted– one ancient, though recent enough and advanced enough to be made of stone, and the other even older, nearly prehistoric, with walls and pillars made of steel. 

Tai didn’t count them, but at least half a dozen other doorways were around the room— she couldn’t help but wonder where they led. Short pillars with statues of creatures or animals like she’d never seen before formed a path to a wall with four panels inscribed in different languages.

One was written in elfish, Tai’s native language, though an outdated version of that. The second was an archaic dwarfish, which, again, she could mostly read but contained several words that she was unfamiliar with. The other two were written in foreign runes of languages that were clearly evil. 

What was unbelievable about these was not just the foreboding and eerie feeling that eminatted from them, but the fact that they were not sung in stone but rather were sung into steel. Tai knew of noone alive who had that skill.

She stepped back and read the message.

From the journal of Captain Waylong Grace

I write this as I prepare to walk with my final friend to the Pit. I go willingly to meet the children of the gods. 

For ages, our need to understand all things kept us striving. At first, this did not harm us, but the more we learned, the more we began to trust in our own power and our own intelligence. We inherited knowledge but disregarded how that knowledge came to be. We took every failing of knowledge to mean that those who came before us knew nothing. And so we thought we knew better. It was this constant feeding of our hubris that was eventually our downfall. 

We disbanded the belief in something beyond ourselves. In doing so, we provoked the true gods. Nature needed to prove its dominance. Between the sun, the planet, and their bastard children, we have been put in our rightful place— on our knees before the gods.

Day and night, for as long as there have been Sapient peoples, theists have peddled ideas of beings that have power beyond our imagination, of places other than here and now. They touched some things with an amount of accuracy, but they did little but cover the truth in a blanket of bland optimism. In the chain of their understanding, they filled missing links with ideas and theologies that were like soft clay rather than truths like hardened steel.

Perhaps the people feared the dread that comes with glimpsing Them.  

Perhaps it was more comfortable to live with the belief that they were in the right— that they would be welcomed and comforted in god’s warm embrace while others were burned alive by the very same presence.

But if they had seen what we have and touched what is here, they would know the truth— there is something beyond us. The gods are real. They are not good. They are not evil. They simply do not care. And in their not caring, they will devour us.

– Captain Waylong Grace 

Tai read the message multiple times, back and forth between the flowing Elvish and sharp-lined Dwarvish, but reading the other language did little to answer her questions.

Sun, moon, day, and night… these words were foreign, yet a chilling undercurrent of meaning seeped through the unfamiliar language.

Tai stifled a yawn and looked around to make sure no one saw. Rather embarrassing yawning at a time like this. You’re in an ancient room with a warning of vast, indifferent cosmic powers utterly beyond comprehension, having been led here by disembodied voices —

It was then that she realized that the voices had gone.

It’s time to go back. You may get more than a talking-to if they find you here. Besides, my feet are freezing.

She looked down at her cold feet to see she was standing on a pattern carved into the steel ground. The carving was a thick, black line that snaked across the floor. Her gaze had followed it midway up the wall when she realized she was not looking at a simple line but a tentacle whose sinuous curve seemed to writhe even as it lay still. The tentacle twisted up the wall, joining others that branched and intertwined until they converged on the ceiling. There, the metal warped and bulged into a grotesque parody of a face with a mouth, a gaping maw filled not just with teeth but an endless, swirling darkness. 

The dark shape had countless points of cold light flickering across its formless body and all around its tentacles. They were not exactly eyes… but Tai couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

She knew it was only a carving, but she couldn’t help but take an involuntary step back. A cold dread settled in her stomach. I shouldn’t be here. What if they found out I saw this?

She turned to run back up the stairs, to sprint back to her den, slide under the shield of her spider silk blanket, and forget everything she had seen.

But there was no escape.

Standing in the doorway were two men in long red robes and faces covered.

Her breath hitched in her throat. Desperately, she tried to turn and run to one of the open doorways, but her legs had turned to lead, heavy with primal resistance.

A muffled yet strangely familiar voice came from behind her.

“You have heard the whispers,” the gentle voice said.

Slowly, Tai turned to see that a third robed person had appeared behind her.

“Then you have been called. Come.”

The masked person turned down the hallway. Noiselessly, the other two pressed against Tai’s back. They would grab her if she tried to flee.

But she could not resist.

She did not feel like she had any sense of autonomy. It was as if she were an outside observer, detached from whatever was happening.

They robed people led her to an elevator that shifted as they stepped on. One of them pulled the lever and the floor heaved before it descended. The iron chains groaned in a rhythmic, CLANK— clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk — CLANK — clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk.

The sound was distant. Muffled. Like she was listening through layers of cotton stuffed in her ears.

The robed men said nothing— didn’t so much as move. They just stood on either side of her like ominous statues.

Finally, they reached the bottom and stepped off the elevator, down some stairs, and into what Tai could only assume, but could not fully see, was a vast hall.

The air was heavy with a lingering rotting stench that twisted Tai’s face along with her stomach.

At the bottom of the stairs, a crowd of fifty or more red-robed people stood waiting around a platform. On the platform was an altar that looked to be made of copper that had been worn green after centuries, or perhaps thousands of years, of oxidation.

Tai was pushed to join the group of robed figures.

I should have worn more clothes. It was more than a little embarrassing to stick out so much. What she wouldn’t give to be able to hide behind a mask.

But at least she wasn’t the only one. Another woman in the crowd was not wearing a red robe. Though she was more covered in her white nightgown than Tai, at least Tai wasn’t the only one to stick out for what she was wearing.

The woman’s resemblance to Tai was uncanny – the long braid that fell halfway down her back, the same tone of dark blue skin, the same curve of her hips. She looked so like Tai in so many ways that Tai half expected the woman to turn and be her mother. But the woman did not turn. Her gaze was fixed on the copper platform. 

Near the platform came the sound of rattling metal and the frantic squeaking of a caged bat.

Then, as if following some signal that Tai did not see, the throng of robed figures around her started chanting in unison.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez.”

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez.”

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez.”

They murmured it over and over again. Their low, unified voice raised the hairs on Tai’s arms. She looked to the door where she had come from, but there were too many of them between her and her escape, and frankly, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to muster the will to try for it.

Tai looked again for the other woman, but she was not where she had been. She was making her way through the crowd of red-robed figures to the copper platform. The woman climbed up, stood atop the altar, and faced the crowd with her arms outstretched and her eyes closed. A too-wide smile broke her face.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez.” The woman joined in the chant.

The chants were steady and rhythmic. 

Two robed figures ripped her clothes off. The woman stood blissfully naked before the crowd.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!” 

The chanting grew louder, and the bat’s screech grew with it. But then, again in unison, the chant stopped as abruptly as it started.

Beyond the glow of the flames, an immense cavern yawned, swallowed by a suffocating darkness. On other side of the crowd there were stairs that led to the open cavern. Midway up them a pool of viscous purple-black substance oozed and bubbled.

A robed figure walked to the edge of those stairs that led into the great abyss, then stretched out a long pole with a tiny cup on the end. The small cup hissed as it scooped the black and purple substance, but when they lifted it, it did not drip like water, nor did it cling to the edges of the cup like…like…well it was much like mud, but it reminded Tai of something else but she couldn’t figure out what.

Slowly, steadily, the robed figure backed away from the pool, keeping the long pole away from the crowd until they poured the tiny amount of the black and purple ooze into a hole at the base of the copper platform. 

Time came to crawl.

The silence was deafening to the point her heartbeat was a drum in her ears, growing louder and faster with each passing moment.

She expected to feel afraid, but she just…was. Every inhale brought a wave of nausea. A chill coursed through her and her knee began to bounce. She knew the steel floor was cold, but she couldn’t feel it. 

The naked elf on top of the copper platform opened her eyes and broke the silence.

“I go willingly to meet the children of the gods!” She yelled.

A quote from the writings in steel.

At that declaration, the chanting began again with new vigor.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

She lay on the copper altar, arms and legs splayed open and willing to receive whatever was to come.

A robed figure ripped the caged bat from its prison. The bat squealed in terror as it was placed over the woman’s chest and held down by its wings.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

The animal’s screams were desperate.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

Tai’s whole body began to shake as if suddenly dropped into ice.

“Vhrahkk azz’voth XZyrr’thal kreez!”

The last robed figure on the altar pulled out a knife as long as a forearm and raised it high.

“VHRHKK AZZ’VOTH XYRR’THAL KREEZ!”

The chants became frantic.

“VHRHKK AZZ’VOTH XYRR’THAL KREEZ!”

Tai couldn’t breathe.

“VHRHKK AZZ’VOTH XYRR’THAL KREEZ!”

The robed figure plunged the blade down, driving the knife through the bat and the woman’s chest. 

“VHRHKK AZZ’VOTH XYRR’THAL KREEZ!”

The three figures jumped back from the copper altar. The chant died as the crowd watched the black substance slowly move up through a path in the copper platform and disappear under the altar. 

Black and purple began to ooze out of the open wounds of the bat and woman. Tendrils slowly wrapped up the knife that pinned the bat against her chest, while it stretched across her body.

Inching.

Squeezing.

Expanding.

After a few silent moments, the woman was engulfed, the worm-like tentacles hugged the woman.

The robed crowd watched in silence; they seemed unphased by this horror as if they were comfortable with it– as if this was a regular occurrence for these twisted people.

Then again, Tai was just as silent. She tried to understand what was happening, but she could not hold on to any thought as they slipped away from her mind.

A bubbling, boiling sound came from the woman.

The black tar pulsed against the woman’s skin, raising boils that burst with a wet, popping sound, like rotten fruit squishing underfoot. Beneath the surface, something moved. A sickening crack echoed through the chamber as bone snapped. Like stepping on a bed of snail shells or breaking a bundle of carrots, the woman’s bones broke one after another. Her limbs twisted at unnatural angles, splitting what flesh was visible. The woman heaved and then slammed against the altar, a sickening splat echoing through the chamber.

Tai did not feel any particular way, but like testing a child’s knee reflex, she winced and gasped at the sight, the acrid stench filling her mouth. She covered her mouth and nose but watched unblinking, captivated by whatever strange horror she could not escape.

The woman on the altar suddenly began twitching. It was more than the shifting of the tendrils that was causing the woman to move. A shudder ran through the black mass, a ripple across its surface followed by several more violent jolts. Then, a single, distorted hand, black and slick, reached up, fingers shaking. 

Slowly, the woman stood shakily at first, like she was walking for the first time after an injury. Her form was no longer recognizable. Her skin was a slick, oily black, stretched tight over newly formed protrusions. The lump where the knife was pulsed rhythmically, a grotesque parody of a heartbeat. Where her face had been was a flat layer of skin. 

Then she stretched, and her arms and shoulders and legs popped, making her grow larger than she had been.

The blank flap of skin split vertically down the middle of her face, opening like a book made of skin. One giant eye sat in its center– all-seeing. As the eye blinked, it reopened as a gaping mouth with too many teeth, and more eyes blinked open on the inside of the creature’s flap of skin. Then two more pops, one shoulder after the other, the hideous creature stretched the wings on her back. The black slime slowly dripped like— 

Molasses. That’s what it reminds me of. The thought of something so sweet made the rotting stench all the more putrid, but it all still felt as if none of this was really happening, as if she were seeing through someone else’s eyes. 

The dozen of the creature’s black eyes turned and looked around the room. Creaking in its movements, the creature turned towards the open darkness from which the man with the pole had retrieved the dark seed.

You should probably back up. Tai wanted to tell the throng of people who stood between the creature and the depths, but she could hardly think let alone speak. And as if they could hear the voice in her mind, the crowd parted, clearing a pathway for the beast.

But one did not step far back enough.

The creature stopped and snapped its long wings out to the side. With a great flap down, a robed figure was slashed from nose to navel by the sharp end of the wings. It happened too fast for them to even cry out in agony. 

It is what it is.

The creature, apathetic to the pain and death that it had just caused, pumped its massive wings and lifted above the robed crowd. It flew past the stairs and disappeared into the dark depths of the open cavern. 

The flames and stones seemed to grow brighter as the darkness left their presence.

It seemed this part of the nightmare was over, but Tai wondered what that meant for her now.

The sound came first, followed almost instantly by the worsening of the stench.

Tai had a chill in her jaw and resisted the sour taste of bile that came to her mouth and dropped back down.

The ground rumbled, and the sound of a thick, slow boiling came with the Mountain’s growl. Tai looked to the stairs that led to the abyss. The dark substance looked like worms writhing in thick and boiling mud. 

The flames flickered and dimmed. Her gaze was drawn deeper into the abyss. Then, within that darkness, points of light ignited. They were not like stars embedded in the Mountain ceiling but like cold, sentient embers spread across a vast, unseen void. They blinked open and shut, not in unison, but in a chaotic, arrhythmic pattern, each flicker a glimpse into an unfathomable depth. 

She wanted to look away, to flee, but she still felt she had no will of her own.

Then, a deeper sense took hold, a chilling certainty that these were not sets of eyes of individual beings but facets of something singular, vast, and utterly alien. A presence that dwarfed the cavern, dwarfed the Mountain, dwarfed even her understanding of existence.

This was not thousands of creatures, but, rather, one — one great Being whose presence weighed on Tai’s shoulders, nearly forcing her to her knees as it did to the throng of robed figures around her. A Presence that took the oxygen out of the room and weighed on her brain so she could think of nothing besides its oppressive vastness.

A low clicking sound came from the depths, like the gears of some great machine slowly turning. 

The whispers returned, louder now than they had been before.

Somewhere in the crowd, a woman screamed. Another, a man, started laughing. His hysterical cackle was filled with fear, the terrifying presence seemed to have snapped his mind. The entirety of the robed crowd prostrated themselves, worshiping the great presence. 

Either the tempo quicked or slowed dramatically, she wasn’t sure, but it felt like every instrument played its own tune in its own time signature. It was utter chaos.

It didn’t happen in a crescendo of courage, but somehow, enough sense and enough control returned to her body. Tai spun on her heels, whipped around, and ran to the elevator shaft she had come from. 

With an unnecessary effort, she heaved the lever. With a shift, the elevator lurched and then started to rise. 

CLANK— clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk — CLANK — clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk

Her whole body shook – the sound of the chains was terrifyingly similar to what she heard from the depths. Screams of pain or terror, or maybe just more broken minds came from below; she could not know— nor did she care.

Perhaps she should have waited for them, but she didn’t— nay— couldn’t. In the effort to save herself, she may have damned them. 

Maybe you are as selfish and incosiderate of the greater good as they say. 

But she was not safe yet. Eyes appeared in the shadows around her; the whispers were now louder — full voices and animal noises in her ears, but she still could not understand their ancient primal tongue.

Tai fell to her knees, empty and exhausted, her face drawn her shoulders weighed down.

She regretted giving in to her questions.

She regretted going down those stairs.

She regretted leaving her room.

Breath came in short bursts, never quite filling her lungs. Her shaking was uncontrollable.

She tried to scream out and demand the creature tell her what it wanted. But a weight sat on her chest. Try as she might, no sound came out.

After what felt like an eternity, the elevator slammed to a stop at the top with a clang and a jolt. With shaking legs, Tai ran to the room with the well lit four steel tablets. She hesitated, hoping the light would hold the darkness at bay. 

It did not. 

Tenticles reached from the darkness she had just lift. Reaching, slapping, gripping for a hold in the room. 

Run.

Must run.

Past the messages sung in steel.

Past the statues of otherworldly creatures.

Run. 

She saw a the door she had first come to.

Nowhere else to run.

Must leave the light.

She plunged once more into the darkness.

She panted; her legs were numb; whether from the cold or terror did not matter. They felt disconnected. They may give way at any moment.

Jamming her toe into the stair she toppled over. Too fast. She couldn’t catch herself. Her nose crunched against the edge of the stair. 

Up!

The darkness was all around her.

Tears streamed down her face. Blood dripped down her throat as she breathed through her nose. Her lungs burned, each breath a ragged gasp. The darkness pressed in, a suffocating weight.

She didn’t think; she ran.

Her foot slipped but her hands caught her this time. She scrambled up the stairs on fours. The darkness reach out behind her, just missing her feet. 

The voices became more distant, but she did not relent or slow down for fear that she was surrounded.

The shadows shifted, swirled in her peripheral vision.

Don’t look.

The stairs seemed to have no end.

She stepped too hard, hyper extending her knee. She’d expected another step, but there was none.

Tai put her hand against the wall and groped her way to her room, afraid someone would she she had been down there. 

When she slammed the door and ran behind her stone bed. Wrapping her blanket around herself she wept.

They know you saw.

Nothing will ever be the same.

She waited. Breath held tight in her chest. Watching for any movement. Listening for any sound.

But there was only silence.

It was a silence pregnant with anticipation.

A silence that hinted at something vast and unknowable lurking just beyond the edge of her perception. 

A silence interrupted by a steady

…plink…plink…plink…