Once Betrayed Never Forgotten

Chapter 46: An Ancient Evil Awakens

As the little boy pulls Mircea along, I follow close behind with Luka right on my taill. We’re on a one–way journey into the heart of darkness, where the tunnels have turned dark and dingy, but there’s no turning back. Every other escape route has crumbled away, closing in behind us,

I don’t need to look at Luka to hear his voice in my head, through the telepathic connection we share.

“I don’t like this,” he says. “Something’s not right. The tunnels collapsing like that, twice in a row… I feel like we’re rats in a maze, and someone’s moving around the walls.”

I nod, sharing his unease. The relentless closing of the tunnels feels orchestrated, calculated. It’s as if the labyrinth itself is conspiring against us. But now, with every other option blocked, we’re placing our hopes on the underground lake the little boy is leading us towards. If it’s the path be used to fall into the cave system, it could also be our way out. We have to hope for that glimmer of possibility.

The tunnel grows narrower and lower, forcing us to stoop down and then crawl on our hands and knees. Behind me, I sense Luka shifting into his woll form. It’s a practical choice, making it easier for him to navigate the confined space. He nishes ahead, a silver blur, investigating what lies beyond.

“Be careful,” I caution him through our mental bond.

“you k

know I will be,” he replies as his presence grows fainter and more distant

Mircea, the little boy, and I continue to crawl along the tunnel. My knees ache, then start to scrape against the rough floor, and soon they’re bleeding. Each movement sends a jolt of pain through my body. I long to stand up, to straighten out, to leave behind the claustrophobic crawl.

How much longer, kid?” I ask the bay, hoping for some reassurance.

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there! It will be over soon, I promise,” the little boy says, his voice strangely upbeat and excited despite the miserable situation we’re in.

Gradually, the ceiling of the tunnel rises, and it becomes wider and taller. At last, I can stand up again. My joints creak with protest, and I feel a welcome connection with Luka, as if he waits for us ahead.

Finally, we reach a vast, cavernous space. As my eyes adjust to the dimness, Fm left in awe. In front of us les an underground Lake, vast and foreboding. The lake stretches out before us, as immense as a football field, surrounded by dark rock walls glistening with moss and ferns. It seems bottomless, the surface mirror–like in its stillness

The cool, damp air clings to my skin as we stand at the edge of the underground lake. The water stretches out before us, its black surface seeming to absorb the feeble light of Mircea’s magical ball of flames, giving the lake an eerie, bottomless quality. The sound of dripping water echoes through the subterranean cavern. I feel a growing unease creeping over me.

號

The cave above the lake is high and spacious, adorned with stalactites hanging from its ceiling. A crack allows a thin stream of illumination to filter down, like a hidden vein of light. Is it starlight, moonlight, or sunlight? It’s hard to say. But it’s a glimmer of hope, our possible escape route.

The lake has an aura of secrecy, of ancient power that predates time itself. It feels strange, prehistoric, almost mystical, and I can’t help but wonder what secrets it holds beneath its enigmatic surface. This is the underground, a realm hidden from the world above, a daunting abyss.

The water’s surface is broken in places by a ring of ripples radiating outwards

“Fish,” Luka explains, sensing my curiosity as I peer at the lake, trying to catch a glimpse of what lies beneath the surface. “That’s probably how our little friend survived down in the cave for so long. The boy would have needed to eat something,”

I strain my eyes and I can vaguely make out a flash of something whitish, almost transparent, shimmering beneath the water, a glimpse of fins or a tail, gone in an instant. My skin crawls at the thought of weird freakish pale eyeless fish living in the lake’s depths, blindly living out their lives in the dark.

*What now?” I ask, gazing up at the distant light above the lake. “You think there’s a way up there?”

If only one of us could fly… if only Aleksandr was here…………

For just one moment, I allow myself to remember how safe and secure I felt wrapped up in his strong arms after he rescued me from Tatiana and the other guests at my mom’s wedding to Konstantin – how he held me tight against his muscular chest as we soared high above the world, his hat–like wings riding the wind.

I’d do anything to feel that safe again.

Chapter 46. An Ancient Evil Awakens.

“Arianna, he’s not coming, Luka says, his voice coming out in a low, frustrated growl. “You ran away from him for a reason, remember? Give up on Aleksandr. He’ll only hurt you, or worse… I’m the one who’ll keep you safe from now on. Ok?”

He turns to face me, still in his majestic wolf form. His silver eyes are hard, serious and determined as he waits for my reply,

We exchange a weighty look and I nod, accepting his protection as my anxiety mounts with each passing second.

Just a few feet away, Mireta is standing on the lake’s shore, staring into the watery abyss. Her expression is hollow, tired and worn–out. Not terrified, exactly – more like… accepting. Like a rat that has stopped struggling once it is already clamped tight in the jaws of a stake, resigned to its hopeles Tate.

The little boy, surprisingly, is skipping around on the surface of the shore, gizzling in the throes of some strange, secretive game. I approach him, before kneeling down to get on his level

“Hey kid, what now?” I ask as gently as possible. “Where do we go?”

“Nowhere!” The boy giggles, smiling widely. “The only place you’re going, in IN MY BELLY!”

The boy screams again, and his high pitched cry sends the ground shaking and the walls of the cave trembling. Behind me, there is a crashing roar, and I turn around just in time to see the passageway we just exited now cave in, obstructed by a rock slide of falling boulders, Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

My heart hammering against my ribs, I turn back to face the smiling boy, my thoughts slow and muddled as I struggle to make sense of the situation. In a split second, the boy runs into the lake, plunging off the shore into its depths. He disappears beneath the dark glassy surface, and the water begins to move, roiling and churning, a furious tempest. For one stupid moment, while my brain is still playing catch up, some protective motherly instinct almost makes me jump into the lake to save the little boy from drowning he is surely too young to swim… but then things start to click into place. How does a six year old child survive all alone for months in an underground cave? How did he survive the fall in the first place? How did he find us in the pitch dark, in this vast subterranean labyrinth?

I see glimpses of movement beneath the waves, the boy’s tiny, frail body twisting and contorting in the maelstrom. His skin ripples and scales em shimmering under the dim light as he thrashes wildly about in the water.

“GET BACK!” Luka shouts at me through our mental bond as he positions himself on the shoreline between me and the lake, snarling with his hackles raised, while Mircea just watches on blankly.

“Oh, the boy was a mask…” she murmurs softly, almost to herself as he begins to laugh, an awful, hollow sound. She slumps down on the shore, giving up.

A knot of dread tightens in my chest as the boy’s small body elongates and swells, disappearing once again beneath the dark waves. What emerges is something out of my darkest nightmares. A giant, scaly, pitch–black serpent writhes in the churning lake. Two sets of amphibious gills with fanning fins open and close on either side of the scaly neck, and the stench of rotten fish and decay assaults my nostrils. The stench of death.

There’s something unspeakably evil, ancient, prehistoric even about the creature as it uncoils itself, raising its gargantuan head out of the water. The head alone is the size of a minibus, and worst of all–it has no eyes.

It stares blindly at us, tasting the air with a forked tongue. The creatures gaping maw reveals rows of razor–s

r–sharp teeth, gleaming like ivory daggers.

“So, friends, welcome to my home,” the serpent hisses. “I’m glad I could convince you to follow me here, it’s been so long since I’ve had a decent meal.”

Chapter Comments

3 Dagum adults, 2 acutely aware of the dangerous supernatural that lurks and it took them that long before realizing that the little boy wasn’t just a little boy at all. smh.

VILA ALLI S |

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