"This ain't so bad."

Levi moved deeper into the ruins. His boots sank into damp moss, each step swallowed by silence. Apart from the stillness, apart from the weight of sorrow pressing down from every stone, the place felt… meek.

But the deeper he went, the air seemed to grow heavier. It wasn't weight, not really— more like a presence. Something unseen pressing against his chest, close enough that his breath came tight, as though invisible hands were reaching for him.

He stopped.

A statue stood before him, carved from a single block of black, marble-like stone.

The face was etched with unsettling precision. One could say too precise.

'Did the face change?'. Levi's thoughts stumbled. Just now, when he blinked, he was sure it had been different.

'Let's see…'.

He narrowed his eyes.

At first, the carving was serene. A woman's face, pale and smooth, her features softened by a quiet, prayerful calm. Strands of stone hair framed her cheeks, flowing and delicate. Between her brows rested a third eye.

Levi blinked.

This time, something tugged at his mind.

'The third eye wasn't there before… right?'. His brow tightened. The first time, he could have sworn that there had been none.

He blinked again. This time there was a third eye in the previously smooth forehead.

'How did it appear? I know it wasn't there… or was it?'. His stare hardened, confusion knitting at his face. He began forcing each detail into memory, engraving it deep.

'This time, I'll know. The eye opens vertically'.

He blinked. Looked again.

The third eye was open now, a thin vertical slit staring back.

Levi's breath stalled.

'Wait… wasn't it horizontal before? Was there even a third eye at all?'.

'System'. Levi cried out. 'Do this statue have a third eye?'.

[What third eye?] The voice of the system sounded in his head, voice marred in confusion.

'So they is no third eye'.

[Of course not, Could host be hallucinating?]

Levi focused returned to the statue, the third eye was still there, but his memory and the system told his otherwise.

'Must be this damn silence, making me hallucinate. Humans aren't really good at being alone. After all we are social animals'.

After saying that to comfort that knot in his heart he turned towards the entrance of the chapel and sent the leech inside.

The leech crossed the entrance of the chapel, and after five minutes nothing had jumped at it. Deeming it safe, Levi ventured in.

The chapel swallowed him whole.

Inside, it was vast and hollow, the kind of emptiness that felt alive. Dust blanketed everything— benches lined in neat, skeletal rows, high windows reaching for the ceiling, their panels choked under dust so thick it seemed painted on.

Not a single shaft of light broke through, the air itself tasted stale and dry, if air had age, this one was old.

Levi's boots left faint tracks across the grey surface, the moss giving way to cold stone. Each step echoed dimly, muffled by the shroud of dust.

And then his eyes fell on the altar.

Unlike the rest of the chapel, it was bare of dust— its surface polished, clean, as though something had brushed it only moments before. The sight struck him like a blade of wrongness, his fingers twitching at his thigh.

Slowly, he advanced.

The wall behind the altar was not blank. Murals sprawled across its surface, crude yet deliberate, painted in colors that time should have long devoured but hadn't. They depicted shapes— things that looked vaguely humanoid.

Their forms stretched, eyes sprouting across limbs, mouths sewn shut, bodies kneeling before something just beyond the frame.

The longer Levi stared, the less humanoid they became.

Beneath the paintings, a script was etched, looping and jagged. The characters slithered across the stone as if written in haste— or fever. His eyes strained to follow them, yet the words seemed to shift, changing between one glance and the next.

A chill crept down his spine.

'…the hell is this place?'. He muttered inwardly, voice too small for the silence.

'Why do I feel like those marks should be words? They look too scattered, too haphazard to be text…'.

[Those are certainly text.... Written in a dead language]

'Dead language'. Levi eyes lit up, of course he knew what dead language was, from the story he knew that they referred to old languages related to other civilizations.

'Can you translate it?'. Levi asked, his excitement rising to a feverish pitch.

[No]

Before Levi could begin to swear, the system saved itself.

[But I do know how..... Speak a word]

Staring at the words of the system, Levi pondered on it, he remembered the last time he talked back to a Deity, and that did not end well.

And although this place had no such entity, he had a bad feeling talking in a place like this.

'Are you sure nothing is going to jump at me?'.

[Can I see into the future?]

'Bastard'. Levi swore a couple more time at the system before taking a deep breath, readying to say something.

'What's the worst that could happen?'. Steeling himself Levi spoke.

"So.... Like this?". That was what was supposed to come out of his mouth. But silence answered.

No sound left his mouth. He felt it—bwords flowing out, yet soundless. Not vanishing, no— pouring straight into the murals, soaking into paint and stone.

The wall drank them.

And then, it answered.

A voice slipped back out. His voice— yet older, cracked with sorrow and pain.

"Forgive us Mother, for we know not what we were doing."

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