Control
The ancient forest hums with unseen energy as you step forward, the path ahead illuminated by shifting beams of sunlight piercing the dense canopy. Moss-covered stones crackle faintly underfoot, their surfaces etched with glowing runes that pulse in rhythm with your heartbeat. A low mist coils around your ankles, parting reluctantly as you move toward the crumbling archway ahead—its stone frame choked by vines, yet radiating a warmth that draws you closer. Your grip tightens on the relic in your palm as whispers skitter through the air, half-formed words in a forgotten tongue. Shadows ripple at the edge of your vision, shapes darting between trees too swiftly to track. The archway’s keystone flares suddenly, casting jagged light across symbols carved into the earth—a warning, a welcome, or both. Somewhere beyond the arch, a hollow echo resonates like a bell struck centuries ago, its sound frayed by time but urgent, insistent. Your breath fogs in the abruptly chilled air as you cross the threshold, the ground shuddering beneath you. Rotating pillars snap into alignment overhead, their movements precise, mechanical—alien against the wildness of the forest. Ahead, a staircase spirals into blackness, each step lit by a ghostly blue flame that ignites the moment your foot leaves the stone. The relic grows heavier, hotter, its engravings now mirroring the patterns flickering to life on the walls. You descend.
description
The air hangs thick with the stench of damp earth and rusted iron as you claw your way awake in the pitch-black bowels of a forgotten mine. Your flickering lantern casts jagged shadows across collapsed tunnels and skeletal remains half-buried in silt—reminders of those who never escaped. Whispers coil through the darkness, echoing like trapped souls between splintered support beams and the jagged teeth of abandoned pickaxes. Every creak of decaying wood, every drip of black water, hums with a malice that claws at your sanity. Solve twisted puzzles etched into the walls by desperate hands. Decipher cryptic clues scrawled in coal dust and blood. Outwit the *thing* that slithers just beyond the lantern’s reach, its guttural breaths syncing with your panicked heartbeat. Manipulate rusted machinery to reroute flooded passages, evade collapsing shafts, and ignite dormant explosives—but hurry. The mine shifts, alive and hungry, sealing exits as fast as you uncover them. Trust nothing. Distrust the faint glow ahead—is it moonlight or a lure? Unearth grim secrets buried in ore carts and rotted journals, but tread lightly: some truths are better left entombed. Escape demands more than wit. It demands sacrifice. What will you abandon to survive? Your light? Your memories? Or will the mine claim another soul to feed its endless, gnawing dark?
