Collide: The Memory of Stars

Selene's POV

The moment the door fully opened, the stale air rushed past us like a whisper of forgotten voices. The darkness ahead was thick, pressing in like a living thing, resisting the faint light of Khael's flames.

The woman stayed behind, her face unreadable as she watched us step into the abyss.

As soon as we crossed the threshold, the door groaned behind us, dragging shut with a finality that sent a shiver through my spine.

The last flicker of light from the outside vanished, and for a brief moment, all I could hear was our breathing. Then, slowly, Khael's fire expanded, casting an eerie glow upon the chamber we had entered.

The walls were lined with faded murals—scenes of battle, of desperation, of figures hunched over in agony as something unnatural twisted their forms.

The further we walked, the more distorted the images became, until they were nothing but hollow-eyed figures staring back at us, their expressions frozen in silent screams.

Tyra exhaled sharply. "This place was never meant to be entered again."

Axel nodded, gripping his sword tighter. "Which means we're on the right path."

A sound echoed through the chamber—a low, dragging noise, like something shifting just beyond the reach of our light.

My pulse quickened. I strained my ears, trying to pinpoint its source, but the darkness played tricks on my senses.

Then, a whisper.

Soft, distant, yet unmistakable.

A name.

I froze. It wasn't just any name.

It was mine.

The others must have heard it too, because Axel immediately stepped closer, his stance protective. Tyra spun, scanning the shadows, her broad sword steady in her grip. Khael's fire flared, trying to push back whatever had spoken.

"Stay together," Axel said, his voice firm but quiet. "They're watching."

I swallowed hard and nodded. We moved forward, deeper into the cursed chamber, the oppressive silence stretching around us. The whispering didn't stop. More names drifted through the air—familiar, yet wrong. Twisted. Hollow.

The Forgotten were close.

Then, out of the darkness, something moved.

A shape, barely visible in the dim light, stepped forward. Its form was human, or had been once. Its skin was ashen, stretched too thin over its bones. Its eyes—empty voids—locked onto mine, and for the briefest moment, I swore I saw recognition flicker within them.

Then, it lunged.

Axel moved faster than I could react, his blade slicing through the air. The creature staggered back, but it did not fall. It did not bleed. It only… watched.

And then, it smiled.

A hollow, joyless thing.

More movement. More figures emerging from the darkness, their whispers turning into a chorus of voices calling names, memories, lost pasts.

Khael's fire flared into an inferno. Tyra raised her broad sword. Axel stood firm beside me.

The first creature moved with unnatural speed, its limbs jerking like a puppet on broken strings.

It lunged for me again, mouth stretching impossibly wide, but Axel intercepted it, his blade cutting through its chest. There was no blood—only a shadowy mist spilling from the wound, curling around his sword like grasping fingers.

More came. From the walls, from the darkness itself, their hollow eyes gleaming as they surrounded us. The whispers turned into a cacophony, voices layering over each other, some pleading, some mocking, some simply repeating our names like a curse.

Khael's fire roared, his control slipping as emotion flared through him. Flames lashed outward, scorching the ground and forcing the creatures back. For a moment, the heat cut through the suffocating cold, but the Forgotten did not burn like normal beings. Their flesh blackened, yet they continued to move, mouths splitting wider as if relishing the pain.

Tyra swung her broadsword, cleaving through one of them. The force sent it sprawling, but it twisted unnaturally, clawing at the stone floor as it forced itself upright. Her eyes narrowed, muscles tensing.

"They don't die easily."

Axel drove his sword into another, but it grabbed his wrist, its grip ice-cold. His eyes flashed, and a pulse of power surged through him, forcing the creature to recoil. He stepped back beside me, breath steady despite the battle.

"We need to move. There's too many."

I turned my gaze toward the far end of the chamber, where the murals had faded into sheer, cracked stone. There—a faint outline of a doorway, hidden within the shadows.

"There's an exit!"

Tyra and Khael moved to flank Axel and me as we pushed forward, cutting through the shifting horde. My pulse thundered in my ears as one of them grabbed my arm—its grip sent a wave of nausea through me, like something was peeling away at the edges of my mind. I gasped, struggling, and Axel's blade severed the creature's hand, freeing me.

"Don't let them touch you for too long," he warned, voice tight. "They're trying to unmake us."

We pushed forward, step by grueling step, until we reached the doorway. Khael's flames flared again, forming a burning wall between us and the Forgotten. It would not hold forever, but it gave us precious seconds to escape.

The moment we crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind us with a deafening finality. Silence followed, heavy and absolute.

I leaned against the wall, heart pounding. Tyra exhaled sharply, rolling her shoulders. "That was too close."

Axel sheathed his sword, his gaze fixed on the sealed doorway. "They were testing us."

Khael frowned, still catching his breath.

"Testing us?"

I swallowed hard, the memory of those vacant eyes still lingering in my mind. "They knew us. They were calling our names."

Axel nodded. "And they were smiling."

The realization settled in my chest like a stone. The Forgotten were not mindless. They remembered. And whatever had been done to them, whatever had cursed them into this existence, they wanted to share it with us.

I pressed my back against the cold stone, my breath still uneven as the weight of what had just happened settled over us. The silence in the new chamber was deafening, but it was better than the whispers. Better than the feeling of something reaching into my mind, trying to unravel the threads of who I was.

Khael's flames had dimmed to embers in his hands, his face tight with exhaustion. He wiped at the sweat beading his forehead, his fingers trembling slightly.

"They knew us," he repeated Axel's words in a whisper. "But how?"

Tyra kept her broadsword raised, her gaze darting toward the walls as if expecting them to shift at any moment.

"This place is cursed. We knew that coming in, but this?" She exhaled sharply.

"Something here is wrong on a level beyond magic."Axel ran a hand over the hilt of his sword, the glow of his power still faintly pulsing beneath his fingers.

"This isn't just a resting place for the dead. It's something else." He glanced at me, his blue eyes unreadable.

"Do you feel it, Selene?"

I did. More than I wanted to admit. There was a weight pressing against my chest, something deeper than fear, something that felt almost... familiar. Like a half-forgotten memory lingering just out of reach.

Before I could answer, the room shifted.

The stone beneath us trembled as dust rained from above. Faint echoes rippled through the chamber, like distant footsteps pacing just beyond the walls.

The door we had come through remained sealed, but I felt it—something moving behind it, watching, waiting.

Khael's fire flared again instinctively. "We need to keep moving. We can't stay here."

Axel nodded, already scanning the room for another way forward. The chamber was vast, its ceiling arching high above us, carved with intricate patterns worn nearly invisible by time. At the far end, a staircase descended into deeper darkness.

"There," Tyra pointed with her sword. "That's our way down."

I hesitated. Every instinct in me screamed against descending further into this place, but what choice did we have? The Forgotten had blocked our way back, and something told me they wouldn't stop until they had us.

Axel placed a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"We're not alone in this."

I met his gaze and nodded. "Let's go."

One by one, we stepped onto the staircase, our footsteps eerily loud against the ancient stone. The air grew colder with each step, the oppressive weight of the unknown pressing heavier against our chests.

Shadows clung to the walls, shifting just beyond the reach of our light, and I swore I could hear faint voices whispering again—softer now, but no less haunting.

Then, the whispers stopped altogether.

And the floor vanished beneath us.

The fall was instantaneous and absolute, a sensation of weightlessness overtaking me before I could even cry out.

Darkness swallowed us whole, the air rushing past in a blur of cold and silence. My heart lurched as the world spun, and then—

Impact.

I hit the ground hard, the breath torn from my lungs. A sharp pain flared in my shoulder as I rolled, my body colliding with rough, uneven stone. For a moment, all I could do was gasp, my mind struggling to catch up with what had happened. Around me, I heard the others stirring, groans of pain and disoriented breathing filling the space.

"Everyone—" I started, my voice hoarse. "Is everyone okay?"

A low curse came from Khael, followed by the flicker of his flames. The dim glow illuminated the chamber we had fallen into—a vast cavernous space with walls that gleamed like obsidian.

The firelight reflected in jagged, uneven patterns, casting eerie shapes that seemed to shift with every movement.

Tyra pushed herself up, shaking dust from her hair. "I'm alive. Barely."

Axel was already on his feet, his sword drawn as he scanned the darkness. "This wasn't an accident. The floor was designed to collapse."

I shivered, rubbing at my bruised arm. "A trap?"

"More like a test," Axel murmured.

"Something wanted us down here."

The thought sent a chill through me. I turned my gaze upward, but there was no sign of the passage we had fallen from—only smooth stone, as if the floor had never existed in the first place. We were sealed in.

Khael's flames brightened as he extended his hand, casting more light across the chamber. At first glance, it seemed empty, but the longer I looked, the more I realized there was something carved into the walls—patterns, symbols, words in a language I didn't recognize.

"What is this place?" Tyra murmured, stepping closer to one of the inscriptions.

Axel exhaled slowly. "A tomb."

I turned to him sharply. "For who?"

He didn't answer right away. His fingers traced one of the symbols, his expression grim. "Not just one person. This entire place… It's a burial ground. But not for the dead."

The words sent a fresh wave of unease through me. "Then for what?"

A sound echoed through the chamber, low and guttural, like a breath stirring in the darkness. I went still, my pulse hammering in my ears. Khael's fire crackled as he spun toward the source of the noise, his stance tense.

Then, from the farthest edge of the cavern, the shadows moved.

A figure stepped forward, its form cloaked in darkness, its presence pressing against my senses like a weight I couldn't shake. Hollow eyes gleamed from beneath the hood of its tattered robe, and when it spoke, its voice was the whisper of ages past.

"You should not have come here."

The cavern turned deathly cold. My fingers curled into fists as I forced myself to speak. "Who are you?"

The figure did not move closer, yet its presence seemed to expand, filling the space between us. "The Forgotten welcome you, Selene."

My breath caught. It knew my name.

Axel's grip on his sword tightened. "What do you want?"

The entity tilted its head, the motion slow, deliberate. "To give you what you seek. And to remind you… there is always a cost."

A deep, resounding crack echoed through the chamber. The ground trembled beneath our feet, and the walls seemed to pulse with a life of their own. Shadows bled from the carvings, twisting into spectral figures that watched us with sightless eyes.

A choice was before us.

The darkness deepened, thickening like a shroud as the whispering voice of the entity reverberated through the chamber. My breath hitched, my fingers clenching at the icy tendrils of unease creeping along my spine.

Axel took a step forward, his silver hair catching the dim glow of Khael's fire. "What is the cost?" His voice was firm, unwavering, but there was a tension in his stance, as if he already knew the answer would not be simple.

The hooded figure did not move. "That depends on what you seek."

The words slithered through the air like an unseen current. I swallowed hard, my mind racing. We had come here for answers—for a way forward, for hope—but the presence before us reeked of something far more dangerous than mere knowledge.

Khael shifted uneasily beside me, his flames crackling in his palm. "I don't trust it."

"Nor should you," the figure replied, turning those hollow eyes toward him. "Trust is a fickle thing. It is earned, lost, twisted. But knowledge… knowledge remains, no matter the shape it takes."

Tyra's voice cut through the heavy silence. "You called yourself the Forgotten. What does that mean?"

For a moment, there was nothing but stillness. Then the figure raised one skeletal hand, and the very walls of the tomb seemed to tremble. The carvings along the obsidian surface glowed with a sickly light, the spectral figures within them shifting, almost writhing as if desperate to break free.

"We were once known by another name," the entity said. "Scholars. Those who sought to protect the fragile balance between light and dark. But knowledge… it is both a gift and a curse. In seeking to preserve it, we were forsaken."

A chill settled over me. "Forsaken by who?"

The figure turned its hollow gaze to me. "By time itself. By history. By those who chose to forget."

Axel exhaled sharply. "And now? What do you want from us?"

A long pause. Then, "To choose."

The air thickened, the weight of unseen forces pressing against my chest. The chamber was no longer just a tomb—it was a crossroads.

"Each of you seeks something," the Forgotten whispered. "But for every gift, a sacrifice must be made. Choose wisely, or be consumed by the weight of your desires."

The ground beneath us shifted again, and suddenly, the walls no longer felt solid. The darkness around us pulsed like a living thing, the spectral figures in the carvings now turning their eyeless faces toward us, waiting.

A test. A challenge. A bargain.

I met Axel's gaze, my heart pounding. We had come for answers, but what were we willing to pay for them?

And more importantly—could we afford the price?

 To be continued.