It felt unreasonably real, maybe it was real, but if so, how… he had no idea.

And he knew he would probably not learn the truth any time soon, but what he wished to do, was see what was inside the waterfall, since inside his dream Anger had come out of it, and if this one was the same as the one in his dream, it had to mean that there was something behind it, or maybe even someone.

So he made his way through the cold water of the waterfall, slowly making his way, until he finally went inside the water, feeling the cold wrap around his body like tentacles as water poured on him, but it wasn’t for long, as not even a second after he crossed it.

It wasn’t like he didn’t get wet, but at the same time, at least it ended shortly after it began.

Aether shook his head to get the water out of his hair before looking and seeing.

That he was in some kind of cave.

The cave opened wide before him, far larger than he had expected from behind the thin veil of falling water.

The ceiling rose high into shadow, uneven and jagged, where stone teeth hung like frozen fangs; he had to say, a part of him was scared that they might fall on him, and if they did, he would probably die.

Water dripped constantly from above, not in a soothing rhythm, but in irregular, hollow echoes that bounced through the chamber and never seemed to settle, it made him want to cover his ears.

The air was cold and heavy, but maybe that was just because it was winter, damp enough that every breath tasted of stone and old stillness.

Light was scarce. What little crept in from the waterfall, which was little in this time of the year, since the sun was covered by clouds.

The other lights came from lanters and torches that, for some reason, kept burning, even if they seemed to have been lit a long, long time ago.

Someone had lived here…

The proof was everywhere once he started to look, and it was evident; it even made him feel dumb for the fact that he couldn’t see the clues until now

The floor had been cleared in places, the jagged rocks pushed aside into rough piles, forming paths worn smooth by repeated steps.

Near the far wall stood the remains of what might once have been a fire pit, its stones blackened and cracked, ash long since scattered and soaked into the ground.

Rusted fragments of metal lay half-buried nearby, unrecognizable now, but placed too deliberately to be natural.

Then his eyes caught the walls.

Marks.

They covered the stone in uneven clusters, carved deep with something sharp and done with more force than care. Tallies, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Some were neat, counted in sets of five like a ritual clung to in desperation.

Others were crooked, overlapping, scratched so hard the stone had splintered around them. In some places, the marks had been violently crossed out, lines gouged over older lines, as if the counting itself had become unbearable.

Days. Weeks… maybe years.

‘Damn… who the hell lived in this place for this long?’

Aether stepped closer, his fingers hovering just short of the wall, a little hesitant. The stone was scarred, not just by time, but by restraint.

The markings grew denser the farther he went, as if the more he went down, they seemed as if they were losing consistency, like there were two people instead of one. Until the walls seemed less like stone and more like a surface layered with memory. Some lines were shallow, tentative, as if carved in moments of calm.

Others were deep enough to catch the light, their edges sharp, cut with anger or desperation. Of course, there hadn’t been two people, just one, but that one had to have gone through tough times, as it seems. In places, the stone had cracked under the strain, fractures spidering outward from a single point where too much force had been applied again and again.

Iron rings were set into the walls at irregular intervals, their metal corroded and dark. A few still held broken lengths of chain, snapped links twisted into shapes that suggested strain rather than simple decay.

Others were empty, torn loose entirely, leaving scars in the rock where they had once been anchored.

…

‘Chains? What the hell… then…’

He shook his head, trying to get that thought out of his mind for the moment.

Aether slowed, his steps careful now.

The floor here was smoother, worn down in long arcs and scuffed lines that curved back on themselves. Not straight paths. Circles.

Endless pacing, back and forth, around and around, until the stone itself had been polished dull beneath repeated movement. As if someone had gone completely insane.

Near the center of the chamber, the rock bore darker stains, patches where something had scorched it, the surface warped as if briefly softened and then forced to harden again.

Water no longer pooled here. It steamed faintly instead, thin wisps rising and vanishing into the cold air above.

He stopped beside one of the walls and looked closer. Between the tallies, half-hidden by newer marks, were other carvings.

Not numbers. Not words. Just shapes. Jagged lines that cut into one another, overlapping and unfinished, as if whoever had made them had abandoned the act halfway through. Some had been scraped over later, deliberately ruined, while others remained untouched, small islands of intent amid the chaos.

He wondered what the meaning behind them was, for what reason the one trapped inside had to try and make them, and why did he abandoned them?

Near the far end of the chamber stood a crude structure of stacked stone, no higher than his chest. It was uneven and imperfect, with gaps left between the rocks, but placed with care. Not a wall, not quite.

More like a boundary someone had decided not to cross. Beyond it, the ground dipped sharply, forming a shallow hollow carved into the rock itself.

The stone there was different, as if it were another cave entirely.

Smoother. Darker. Veined with fractures that spread outward from a single point, as if the cave had once been struck from within.

The ceiling above it bore the same scars, long cracks running upward and disappearing into shadow. Whatever had happened here had not been contained to the ground alone.

Aether did not step past the stacked stones.

…It was safe to say this place was, in fact, not normal at all.

But that had been obvious the moment he had first seen it.

Though it made him wonder, what if instead of this place being from his dream, Anger had stolen it from the real world?

But if that was right, he had to have had a reason for doing so. Why was this place special? Why did it choose it?

He didn’t know Anger that much, ironic, when he’s supposed to be a part of him, his own anger, just goes to show how little we truly know about ourselves. But he did know Denial, and they couldn’t be that different from each other.

And he knew something important about Denial, he didn’t just show illusion randomly. So Anger had to have seen an advantage in showing him the Waterfall in their dream.

But I think there was a bigger elephant in the room, the fact that someone had definitely lived in this place.

And it seemed that they had been living here for a while, I mean, the marks showed it clearly, the sheer amount, it screamed insanity.

But who? This place was deep inside the forest, so who the hell could have lived in this damn place, and why? For what reason could they ever have?

There was also the possibility that people were trapped inside these places; after all, there were chains in this place, which could mean that someone had been forcibly made to stay.

Which made much more sense than doing it at your own will.

A part of him didn’t even want to; he didn’t want to know, after all, who says that the one living inside had to be a human. He didn’t know what beasts existed in this place, but from the ones he had seen in the Tides, they could be anything.

…

‘Whatever this place is, whatever this waterfall is. And whoever lived inside this place… I don’t want to know…’

It was better to stay away, after all, it didn’t seem as if this place was going to help him in any way.

And plus, while he had been to many other strange places, there was something about this one appearing in his dream.

It gave him the creeps, which was not something many places have, and definitely not on this level.

It was the first to drive his curiosity away.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep