We stand there in the oppressive silence, the only light the occasional, distant spark from a dying wire. The wooden door is a dark, weathered rectangle in the gloom. It feels wrong, out of place. A flimsy barrier in a world of stone and steel.
"Aren't you coming?" I ask, my throat dry.
He shakes his head, a slight, almost imperceptible motion in the gloom. "I'm not going up."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to," he says. His tone is final. A dismissal. He's already decided. He turns away from me, toward the deeper darkness of the tunnel we just came through. "This is where we part ways."
He's leaving me.
Just like that.
After he dragged me here, after he helped me solve the puzzle, after he told me what was behind the steel door, he's just... leaving.
"Why?" The question is a raw, desperate plea. "Why bring me here if you're just going to leave?"
"Because you wanted to go." He stood in the hall, not turning back, not walking away. "...Don't stop. This place is quicksand. If you stop, you'll never start again." he says, and then he adds, "My purpose..."
He stopped.
For a long moment he stares into the darkness.
I'm about to try to speak again, but he cuts me off.
"I don't remember having a wish. That crazy doctor's lost more than me. But there's no point going to the end if I can't remember."
His blue eyes...
Look the most human I've seen since I woke up here.
"Don't stop. Or it will take away that feeling." He says.
And he's gone. The sound of the gravel he shifts in the dark gets more and more distant, until all I'm left with is the occasional sparking wire, and my own unsteady breathing.
I'm alone.
The silence that descends is heavier than before, a tangible pressure against my eardrums. The stranger's presence, however unnerving, had been a shield. Now it's gone, and I'm exposed.
I turn back to the door. The wood is rough and splintered under my fingers. There's no knob, no handle, nothing to grip. Just the small, sliding panel. I slide it open. Peering through the grille, I see nothing but darkness. The air that comes through is stale and smells of rust and something else... something vaguely sweet, like overripe fruit.
There's no going back. The tunnel behind me leads to a man who's given up, to a doctor who plays God, to a monster in the dark. To the end. The door ahead is the only way forward.
I push against it.
It doesn't budge.
I lean my whole weight against it, shoving with my shoulder. The wood groans, but it holds. My frustration, the cold, hard knot of it in my chest, tightens. I'm not going to be stopped by a stupid door.
I take a step back, my bare feet planted on the cold, gritty floor. I raise my pipe. It feels heavier than before, more solid. More... real. The strength I felt after leveling up, it's not just a number. It's in my arms, in my legs. A thrumming potential.
I swing.
The pipe connects with the center of the door with a satisfying CRACK. Wood splinters. I hit it again, and again, a desperate, rhythmic pounding. Each impact sends a jolt up my arms, but I don't stop. The image of my husband's face, of the knife, flashes in my mind. I'm not hitting a door. I'm hitting him. I'm hitting the helplessness, the fear, the betrayal.
The pipe swings over my shoulder, slamming into the ground.
The impact goes through my whole body.
I think.
That I might scream. A deep, guttural sound rips from my throat, raw and animalistic. I put everything I have into the next swing.
The door crashes open, swinging inward on a single, broken hinge, splintering and spraying into the room beyond. The sweet, cloying smell washes over me, strong enough to make my stomach turn.
A blue flicker pulses in the air before my face.
FLOOR: 2
LEVEL: 2
EXP: 100/200
GOAL: REACH FLOOR 100 TO RETURN.
REWARD: ONE WISH.
I step through the shattered doorway, my pipe held high, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
And I freeze.
The room is a greenhouse. Or, it was. Now it's a tomb. The glass panels of the ceiling are mostly shattered, allowing a dim, grey, sourceless light to filter through, illuminating a scene of stunning, horrific decay.
Huge, monstrous plants sprawl throughout the space, their forms twisted and grotesque. Vines as thick as my arm hang from the rusted metal framework of the ceiling, some bearing enormous, bell-shaped flowers that pulse with a soft, sickly bioluminescence. Others are covered in vicious-looking thorns the size of my thumb. The ground is a carpet of moss and rotting vegetation, spongy and damp under my bare feet. The sweet, cloying smell is almost overwhelming, the scent of a garden that died a long, slow death.
In the center of the room stands a single, massive tree-like structure, its trunk a gnarled, black wood, its branches twisted into impossible angles. And hanging from those branches...
Are bodies.
Dozens of them.
They're wrapped in the same thick vines that creep across the floor, cocooned in a shroud of leaves and blossoms. They hang at different heights, some low enough for me to touch, others lost in the gloom of the ceiling. They don't look like real bodies. They look like strange, pale fruit, waiting to be harvested.
The sheer, still silence of the place is broken by a single, sound.
A single drop of water falls from the ceiling, landing on a giant, pulsing flower.
I take a step forward, my bare feet sinking slightly into the damp, spongy moss. The air is thick and humid, making it hard to breathe. My rage from the door is gone, replaced by a cold, creeping dread.
I'm not alone here.
I can feel it. A presence.
I look up at the bodies hanging from the tree. They're all still. Too still. I force myself to look closer at one, a figure hanging just a few feet away. It's wrapped in a shroud of leaves, but I can see a hint of pale, waxy skin, the curve of a cheekbone. A human face.
Then, its eyelids flutter open.
They are not human eyes. They are huge, black, and multifaceted, like a spider's. They fix on me, and the thing twitches, a slow, languid movement.
The bodies are not bodies. They're cocoons.
And something is about to hatch.
...A something I don't want to be here for when it does.