AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She counted fifteen thousand and five hundred steps until she couldn’t take another.
Her sleep was shallow and filled with restless dreams.
Anthea stirred. Her throat was parched.
Mustering up all the strength she had left, she rose to her feet. Her legs wobbled, and for a moment she feared she would collapse back onto the cold, hard cave floor. But she steadied herself, taking a deep breath. She couldn’t give up.
Two thousand and seventy steps later, she heard it—the faint trickle of water echoing in the cave. Anthea strained her ears, trying to gauge the direction of the sound. The air tasted musty, ancient, and the ground felt increasingly slippery underfoot.
The arrow markings along the cave walls seemed to beckon her to a wider path. The tickling sound of the water came from the narrower path. Taking a moment to gather her resolve, Anthea squeezed through the constricted passage. She needed water first—she could come back for the markings later.
The walls pressed in from both sides, forcing her to hunch over. Eventually, she had no choice but to get down on her hands and knees, the rough cave floor scraping against her elbows and knees. Every rock and crevice dug into her as she crawled, and a creeping doubt settled in her mind. Was this the right way? Had she made a mistake?
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Anthea pressed through a particularly narrow gap.
Then the ground gave way. With a sharp intake of breath, she was sent tumbling down a steep incline.
With a thud, she landed hard on the uneven floor. Gasping for breath, she slowly sat up, trying to orient herself. Anthea patted the ground around her.
She froze—her fingers had found something.
It felt like a bone.
It felt like a bone.
Fire—she needed fire.
Taking off her backpack, she sat on her knees and searched for the flint.
Anthea took out her cloak, bunched it up and put it on the ground, hoping it would burn easy. Scraping the flint with her dagger a few times, she prayed to whichever gods wanted to listen. She needed sparks.
She scraped, and scraped.
The air was so damp.
Her hands trembled, but she kept on scraping until her cloak was on fire. Her heart skipped a beat when her eyes fell on a grotesque pile of bones. Scrambling backward, she collided with something hard and cold. Anthea shrieked, realizing she was leaning against a skeleton perched next to her. Lifting her eyes forward, her screams died in her throat.
Bones, dozens of them, lay scattered about, some intact and some in fragments.
It was a tomb.
Everywhere she looked—more skeletons: The walls were adorned with them, their empty eye sockets staring at her.
Anthea scrambled to her feet, her boots slipping on the damp floor. The cold, moist walls of the cave seemed to close in on her as she threw herself at them, trying to scale back up to the entrance she had fallen from.
“Help!” she cried out, her voice desperate. “Is anyone there? Please!”
Every time she tried to find purchase on the wall, her fingers slipped against the damp moss. The sharp edges of the stones bit into her flesh, and she felt the sting of broken nails. The wall was simply too slick, too steep.
Fumbling in the meager light from her burning cloak, she pulled out the biggest dagger from her thigh, hoping to carve out handholds in the rock. Anthea stabbed and scraped, but the blade merely scraped across the surface, barely leaving a mark.
Frustration and despair coursed through her, and in a fit of anger, she threw the dagger across the tomb. It landed with a sickening thunk, embedding itself in the eye socket of a lonely skull.
“Oh fuck, I’m sorry!” Anthea blinked back tears, a wash of absurdity sweeping over her. Was she really apologizing to a skull? Shaking her head, she roamed her hands along the walls. Every nook, every crevice she felt was just another dead end.
Falling to her knees, she let out a heart-wrenching scream as she hit the ground with her palms.
Then she slumped back, tear-streaked face staring blankly at the skull with her dagger, the light from the dying flame casting flickering shadows over its remaining empty socket. She snorted through her tears. “Treia would’ve adored you,” she said, her voice hoarse from her earlier cries. A laugh, both broken and absurd, escaped her lips. “Instead of her, you’re stuck with a mess like me.” Anthea wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Maybe this is what I deserve? Trapped here for all the pain and ruin I’ve caused?” Her voice wavered as she voiced her darkest thoughts. “I’ve messed up everything,” she confessed to the silent audience of skeletal remains. “Every step I’ve taken, every decision I’ve ever made . . . All it’s done is hurt people . . . Maybe this is what I deserve?”
