The doors closed behind him.
Not with a slam,
But with a sound so deep
It seemed to pass through the stone
And into his bones.
John Vilkas turned.
The great doors
Had disappeared into darkness,
Their enormous surfaces
Meeting with ancient precision.
And then,
Nothing.
No stars.
No distant asteroid field.
No pale reflection
Of his own visor.
Only darkness.
Complete and absolute.
The kind of darkness
That seemed older
Than space itself.
John waited.
His breathing
Echoed inside his helmet.
Slow.
Measured.
Human.
He raised his hand
And watched the faint instruments
Upon his glove.
The tether line
Stretched behind him,
Trapped within the closing doors.
He pulled.
Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
He released it.
There was no going back.
His eyes slowly adjusted.
Or perhaps
The darkness was simply
Allowing him to see.
Ahead of him lay
A narrow cavern.
A path,
A wound,
Descending into the asteroid.
Its walls were impossibly close,
Forcing John to turn sideways
As he began his descent.
There was no gravity.
Only the occasional push
Against the stone
And the gentle drifting
Of his body downward.
His gloved hand
Reached for the wall.
The moment he touched it,
light.
A faint aqua glow
Spread beneath his fingertips.
Phosphorescent.
Cold.
Alive.
John froze.
He moved his hand.
The light followed.
A thin luminous trail
Ran along the stone,
Revealing ancient markings
Beneath centuries of dust.
He touched the wall again.
More light.
The cavern awakened
One fragment at a time.
And John began to descend.
Something lay beneath him.
A shape.
Then another.
He stopped.
The aqua light revealed a skeleton.
Not human.
Not anything
John could name.
Its bones were long
And twisted,
Arranged in ways
That suggested a creature
Built for a world
Where the laws of anatomy
Were entirely different.
He pushed away from it.
Another skeleton.
Then another.
Some had too many limbs.
Some appeared
To have no limbs at all.
One possessed a skull
That seemed to split
Into several separate jaws.
John stared.
He was suddenly very grateful
That whatever these creatures
Had been,
They were dead.
Or appeared to be.
He moved on.
Downward.
Deeper.
The aqua light
Continued to awaken
Beneath his touch.
And with every metre
He descended,
The asteroid seemed
To become less like stone
And more like
The remains of something
That had once been alive.
Then the cavern opened.
John drifted forward.
The narrow passage
became enormous.
His helmet light
Was swallowed
By the darkness ahead.
He touched the wall.
Nothing.
He touched it again.
Then,
The cavern exploded with light.
A brilliant aqua-white radiance
Rushed across the walls,
Spreading outward
In every direction.
John shielded his visor.
The cavern was vast.
Far larger
than anything
that should have existed
inside the asteroid.
The walls disappeared
into distant darkness.
There was no ceiling
That he could see.
No floor.
Only a vast chamber
Suspended within the stone.
And at its centre was a plinth.
A single block of ancient stone
Floating within the cavern’s
Strange illumination.
Symbols covered it.
And surrounded it
Expanding out across the floor
In concentric circles.
Carved into every surface.
Some resembled writing.
Others resembled eyes.
Others,
John looked away.
He could not understand
What he was seeing.
The symbols seemed to change
When he tried to focus upon them.
Not moving.
Not exactly.
But becoming something else.
Something his mind could not hold.
Around the plinth,
The light pulsed.
Slowly.
Almost like breathing.
John watched.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
He realised,
The cavern was breathing.
He pushed away from the wall.
His body drifted towards the plinth.
For a moment
He almost flipped forward,
Arms spinning uselessly
In the weightless air.
He caught himself.
Reached out.
His gloved hand
closed around the edge of the ancient stone.
And then,
the asteroid moved.
Not drifted.
Not rotated.
Moved.
A vibration passed through the cavern.
At first it was gentle.
A tremor.
Then another.
Then,
RUMBLE.
John’s hand tightened.
The stone beneath his glove
Began to vibrate.
The symbols illuminated.
One after another.
A pulse of light
Travelled across the plinth.
And somewhere
far below him something answered.
A sound.
Low.
Distant.
Impossible.
John stared into the darkness.
The sound came again.
Closer.
The entire chamber shook.
Dust and fragments fell from the walls.
John pushed himself away.
But there was nowhere
to go.
The asteroid groaned.
A sound like mountains
Being dragged across one another.
Then,
The plinth erupted with light.
John was thrown backwards violently.
His body struck the wall.
CRACK.
Pain exploded across his face.
His visor fractured.
For several seconds he could not breathe.
He floated helplessly against the stone.
His hands reached for the wall.
His fingers found it.
He held on.
And listened.
Something was happening below.
The floor around the plinth
was cracking.
At first there was only one line.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
A web of fractures spread outward
across the stone.
The plinth began to sink.
John watched
as pieces of the cavern floor
broke away.
They floated briefly
in the weightlessness,
Then disappeared.
Down.
Into darkness.
There was no bottom.
No echo of falling stone.
Only blackness.
John’s breathing quickened.
The cracks widened.
The floor collapsed.
A great section
Of ancient stone
Fell away beneath him.
And from below,
Came a sound.
Not a roar.
Not quite.
It was deeper than that.
A vibration.
A growl
That seemed to have no beginning
And no end.
An inhuman resonance
That travelled through the asteroid
Like a voice too enormous
To belong to a living thing.
John pressed himself
against the wall.
The sound came again.
Closer.
The darkness moved.
Something emerged.
At first he could not understand
what he was seeing.
A shape.
Long.
Wet-looking.
Black.
It slid slowly through the opening
in the cavern floor.
A limb.
A tentacle.
A serpent.
John could not tell.
It was enormous.
Far too enormous
To fit within the space
He was seeing.
Yet somehow
It continued to emerge.
Its surface
Shifted beneath the light.
Not skin.
Not scales.
Something else.
Something ancient.
Something that seemed to absorb the light
Rather than reflect it.
The limb curved upward.
Slowly.
Blindly searching.
John watched
As it moved through the cavern.
Feeling.
Listening.
Hunting.
Its tip passed beneath the glowing plinth.
Then rose.
It searched the air.
The stone.
The darkness.
John held his breath.
The thing paused.
For one terrible moment
He thought it had found him.
Then it moved away.
Searching.
Waiting.
Remembering.
John looked at the shattered floor.
Then at the plinth.
Then at the ancient symbols.
And finally
At the enormous creature
Moving within the darkness.
The truth arrived slowly.
Not as a thought,
But as a certainty.
This rock
Was never simply an asteroid.
The doors were never an entrance.
They were a seal.
The cavern
Was never a passage.
It was a prison.
And the skeletons
Were not remains of explorers.
They were warnings.
John’s hand trembled
against the glowing wall.
He looked down
Into the darkness.
Something had been sleeping here.
Something ancient.
Something that had survived
The death of worlds.
Something that had been
Buried inside stone
And left alone for longer than humanity
Had possessed a name.
And he,
John Vilkas,
Had found the door.
He had entered.
He had touched
the prison.
He had awakened the prisoner.
The tentacle moved again.
Slowly.
Still searching.
And somewhere beneath the asteroid,
Something much larger
Began to stir.
John stared into the darkness.
And understood with absolute horror,
He had not come to this place
To find peace.
He had come
To open a tomb.
