Eryshae

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Sam

Cellar

The stones whispered as they stepped through. Cool air rose from the tunnel's throat, wet and mineral, touched with the faint, metallic tang of old blood. The passage angled downward at a slow, deliberate pitch, its bricks moss-slick and warped from the pressure of years.

Sam moved first. As they descended, the bark along his arms thickened, layer upon layer spiraling out like growth rings awakened. It climbed his throat, his shoulders, his chest. In moments, it had covered him entirely, an armor of living wood carved in patterns older than language. Bioluminescent veins flared to life beneath the surface, pulsing in gentle rhythm with the amber light deep in his chest.

Vael followed close behind, her boots silent against the damp stone. He paused, lifting one hand. From his palm, vines curled outward and coiled in tight spirals until, from the center, a sunflower bloomed, broad and bold despite the shadows, its center aglow with a faint, amber light.

Sam turned to her with a half-smile, quiet and steady. "For luck," he said. Vael's brows lifted, touched with disbelief and something softer. She lowered her head just slightly. Sam reached out and tucked the glowing flower behind her ear, the petals fitting neatly against her green hair. The light shimmered against her cheekbone.

It didn't clash. It matched. "Thank you," she whispered. He nodded once, then turned back to the passage. Extending his hands to the brick walls, he let his vines slither down ahead of them. They spread like water, snaking over stones, under cracks, brushing every edge and corner with cautious intent. His mind followed them, listening.

Feeling. Stone. Water. Mold. And then, movement. A faint resistance. Something… set. "Trap," he murmured. Vael stilled. Sam leaned down, one vine tapping the pressure point in the stone ahead, barely visible. He guided the root gently around it, brushing the trigger without releasing it. "Pressure plate. I'll mark it, since we wouldn't want a boulder to come crashing down, now would we."

From his fingertips, a tiny bud bloomed and left behind a single glowing seedpod, clinging like a firefly to the wall beside the trap. They stepped past it. The tunnel began to open. The walls curved outward. The floor dipped. Water reached their ankles, dark and frigid. It smelled ancient. Sam inhaled slowly, steadying himself.

And then,

"You two are slow," came a voice behind them.

Sam froze. Malrick stood just above the slope, one shoulder leaning casually against the wall. His cane tapped lightly at the stone, though his boots remained oddly dry. "How long are you going to stand there?" Sam asked, his voice low. Malrick shrugged. "Long enough to appreciate the flower," he said, nodding toward Vael. "Charming touch, by the way. Very poetic." Sam narrowed his eyes. "You didn't trip the pressure plate?"

"Please," Malrick said with a smile too thin to be kind. "I have a nose for old traps. Comes with the territory." Vael glanced between them, then turned her focus forward. "Then keep up. Quietly."

"Wouldn't dream of interrupting your… picnic," Malrick replied, but his eyes flicked to the tunnel ahead, the shadows shifting. Together, they pressed onward. The ceiling vanished into pitch, lost in creeping shadows above the reach of their light. Shapes loomed on either side, piles of forgotten crates, bones tangled with roots, twisted branches coiled around the remnants of lanterns that hadn't been lit in decades.

Something skittered just beyond the reach of Sam's glow. Neither of them spoke. Every step into the hollow echoed. The water thickened. And then they saw it, emerging from the shadows like a wound stitched into the earth:

The ritual chamber.

Circular. Sunken.

Half-submerged in marsh runoff and rainwater. Broken columns rimmed the outer edges, their surfaces etched with symbols worn smooth by time. In the center, raised on a crumbling stone dais, sat a low altar, slick with moss, cracked by roots. "Vael," Sam murmured. And the heartbeat in his chest began to glow a little brighter. Vael stepped forward, her gaze drawn to the walls.

Symbols.

Hundreds of them.

Some etched in stone, others drawn in ash or scratched with rusted blade. They spiraled in curling repetitions, crude yet deliberate, crawling up the sides of the chamber like a forgotten language still desperate to be read. "Nemereth," she whispered. Sam turned, eyes tracing the same patterns. The name coiled like rot beneath his tongue.

He nodded once. "The Queen of Envy." A shuffling sound behind them, mud against stone, and Malrick emerged into the light. He had gone silent earlier, his usual mutterings drowned by whatever had stirred in this place. But now his voice returned, hushed but sharp, like a blade whispered against skin.

"You should not speak her name aloud here." Vael glanced back, brow furrowed. "You recognize these symbols?" Malrick's eyes were already on the walls, wide with something like awe. Or horror.

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"They're not just symbols. They represent the essence of that Eldritch horror. Old ones. This was no chapel. It was a sacrifical chamber." Vael turned to him.

"For drawing her gaze. Reflecting her hunger back into the world." His voice lowered, almost reverent. "Nemereth doesn't take worship. She feeds on it. On longing. On coveting what was never meant to be yours." Vael moved closer to the nearest pillar, running her fingers just shy of the carvings. The grooves pulsed faintly under Sam's light, like the walls remembered pain. "They worshiped her here," she said. "Or feared her."

"Both," Malrick said. "That's her price. Worship becomes envy. Fear becomes desire. It's all the same to her." Sam stepped into the center of the chamber. The water rippled around his calves. Vines curled from his skin like lazy smoke, sensing every shift beneath the surface. He mounted the dais slowly.

The altar was worse up close. Covered in moss and what could only be old blood stains. Something about it made his jaw lock. "People died here," he muttered. "Willingly," Malrick added. "Envy makes martyrs out of fools."

Sam stepped closer. The glow in his chest burned brighter, pulsing through the skin like a second heartbeat. Amber light shimmered faintly across the waterlogged stone, scattering shadows as he mounted the crumbling steps of the dais.

Each step seemed to stir the room, like breath exhaled from unseen lungs. The altar loomed, slick with decay. Moss clung like scabs across the stone, but beneath the green were stains. Dark. Faded. Familiar.

Something in the back of his mind twitched. A shape. A sound. A woman screaming with no mouth. He reached out.

"Don't," Malrick said.

The voice hit like a lash, firm, cold, and sudden.

Sam flinched. He hadn't heard the man approach, but there he was now, half-shadowed by the pillars, cloak soaked and clinging like oil to his frame. His eyes were fixed on the altar, not Sam. Not Vael. "I've seen circles like this before," Malrick murmured. "In the deep south. In what's left of the Sunken Cities. This one is older."

Sam lowered his hand. Malrick's gaze cut to him. "Nemereth doesn't take kindly to trespassers. And she remembers those who bleed where she was worshipped." Vael stood frozen near the wall, her fingers just above the glyphs.

"What is this place?" she asked. Malrick's face was grim. "A site of Offering. Long before the City-States were established. Long before the records and Guardians. When the world still made room for Eldritch that demanded entrails."

His words hung in the air like mildew. Sam's amber glow flickered, dimmed. He took a step back from the altar, and the water lapped against the stone like something exhaling. "I wasn't going to touch it," he muttered.

"You were," Malrick replied. "But you stopped. That's what matters." Before Sam could ask, a piercing scream rang out from above, shattering, shrill, and scared…

Unmistakably human.

All three froze.

Another scream, louder. It echoed down through the cellar door leading up to the kitchen. Sam's blood turned to ice. "Upstairs," Vael said, already moving. Malrick was right behind her, muttering under his breath, "Malarkey, all of it, godsdamned malarkey…"

They stormed up the stairs, boots pounding, past shelves of root vegetables and cured meat, bursting through the door into the kitchen. Miss Winthrop stood by the stove, her mouth open in a wordless, continuing wail. Her hands were clutched to her chest, and she was shaking violently.

At her feet lay the cook. Sprawled unnaturally. Eyes wide. Still. Her neck bent at an unnatural angle and her wrists were slit. The scream finally cut off as Miss Winthrop gasped for breath and pointed a trembling hand at the body. "She, she was just, she was just cutting the bread." Mrs. Winthrop starts to collapse.

Sam moved quickly to check for signs of life, taking a breath as he saw Mrs. Winthrop's chest rise and fall. Vael, pale and silent, drew closer but didn't touch anything. Malrick's eyes darted across the room, scanning every shadow like they might leap out and bite him. "Malarkey," he said again, but this time, it sounded less like a curse and more like a prayer.

Vael knelt beside the cook's lifeless body, one hand over her mouth. Blood pooled across the stone like spilled ink. The scream still rang in the air, echoing off the kitchen walls. "Vael," Sam said, steadying his breath. "Find her son, the stable boy. Get him out of here. He shouldn't see this."

Her eyes met his, shocked, wide, but she nodded and bolted for the stables, her emerald-green braid whipping behind her. Sam turned to Malrick. "Search her. Anything odd, anything off, find it." Malrick's mouth worked as if to argue, but he knelt beside the body without a word, muttering, "Bloody ma..." under his breath.

Mrs. Winthrop was still collapsed on the ground; screaming, thin and shrill, her hands clawing at her face, her back pressed against the pantry door. Without hesitation, Sam crossed the kitchen and gently lifted her into his arms. She weighed no more than a bundled quilt, her voice cracking into sobs as her head collapsed against his shoulder.

He carried her through the hall, up the main staircase, the old wood groaning beneath his steps. She didn't protest, only shivered. Reaching the Yellow Room, Sam set his shoulder against the locked door. With a solid crack, it gave way, swinging inward on creaking hinges.

He stepped inside. The Yellow Room was a sunlit chamber even in overcast weather, its pale golden wallpaper patterned with climbing marigolds and curling vines. An ornate rug, once vibrant, had faded with age beneath polished wooden floors, and lace curtains hung at the windows like cobwebs of sunlight. A brass bedframe stood at the room's center, draped in a quilt the color of dried wheat, while narrow bookshelves lined one wall, many of their contents gone or gathering dust. The scent of lavender lingered faintly beneath the sharper, older tang of mothballs and time. A fire still smoldered in the hearth, casting flickers across the canary wallpaper. A vanity with an ornate hand mirror sat untouched, a brush abandoned on its surface. There was a scent of lavender and beeswax polish in the air, clinging like memory.

Sam laid her down gently on the thick featherbed, tucking the coverlet over her trembling frame. She stared up at him, lips still moving but forming no sound. A tear slid down her cheek.

"You're safe," Sam said, his voice low. "You're safe now." Just as Sam tucked the covers gently beneath Mrs. Winthrop's chin, her shuddering breaths quieted. Her eyes rolled back, and with a soft gasp, she slumped against the pillows, unconscious.

Sam leaned in, checking her pulse, still there, steady. His amber heart, still glowing faintly beneath his shirt, pulsed once, then dimmed. A deep breath left his lungs as he straightened. The Yellow Room was quiet now, its floral curtains billowing slightly in the breeze from a half-cracked window.

Then came the sound. A creak behind him, floorboard or hinge, too soft to be wind. He turned, but too late. A thump followed. Pain cracked through the back of his skull. White light flashed across his vision as his knees buckled. In the moment before the dark claimed him, he saw only a blur, a glint of light, like a reflection. A solid object swinging in from the left. No face. No voice. Just the whisper of movement and the heavy, closing dark.

Then silence.