I woke in a cold sweat that day, but I can’t rightly say if I was waking from a dream or crawling back from something much darker. It’s all a haze, but the taste of that cursed potion still burns my tongue, and the memory of what followed sticks like a blade in my mind.
After I drank the mambo’s brew, Elias and I found ourselves standing on an island that seemed like it had been pulled straight out of the cosmos—stars burning above us, but not like any I’ve known. They shimmered in colors I’ve never seen, casting strange shadows on the ground below. In front of us stood a door, glowing with a light so blinding it might have been forged from a thousand suns. We had no choice but to move towards it—something in the light pulled us forward, tugging at our souls. The next thing I knew, we were thrown into a cavern that twisted and turned like some demented serpent.
Days passed in that place—at least, I think they did. There was no sun, no stars, no way to measure time. Only corridors and doorways, endless in their number. Our voices echoed down the stone halls, bouncing back at us like the whispers of ghosts. Every step we took seemed to draw shadows out of the darkness, like there was something following, always just out of sight. I kept my blade close, but nothing ever came.
On the fourth day, Elias walked through one of those cursed doors, and as soon as he crossed the threshold, the light vanished—swallowed up by a darkness so thick it seemed to have weight. I lunged forward, but the door slammed shut, leaving me alone in the cold black. I called for him until my voice went raw, but there was nothing. Only the sound of my own breathing, the silence that seemed to press in from all sides. I wandered through the ever-shifting halls after that, lost and desperate, no stars to guide my way, no sense of direction. Just an endless walkabout in that dark maze.
It must have been five days, or maybe five weeks—I’ve no way of knowing how long it truly was—after I lost Elias, I stumbled through a doorway and felt the air change around me. Suddenly, I was out—ripped from the twisting corridors and thrown into a barren wasteland. The ground beneath my boots was thick, coarse red sand, dry as the bones left by scavengers. It stretched out in every direction, the sky above a strange shade of crimson, casting everything in an eerie light. This was a new level of hell, but at least it was one I could see.
As I trudged up the nearest sand dune, something strange appeared at the top—a stone slab, half-buried in the sand. And there, resting atop it, was a sword. It glinted in the dying light, the first sign of human hands I’d seen in what felt like forever. I don’t know what it means, or why it’s here, but I can’t help but feel like it was waiting for me.
