14. Chapter 14 - Matt #2
The stairwell descended deeper beneath the mountain in long uneven spirals carved directly into the stone.
Whatever civilization had once existed here had not built for human comfort.
The steps were narrow in some places, steep enough in others that several of the Valker agents nearly lost footing as the chamber behind them continued trembling from distant impacts below.
Matt stayed close to Theron near the front of the group. At first he told himself it was because the stairwell narrowed unpredictably in places and because Vale wanted tighter formation spacing during the descent, but deep down he knew the truth had very little to do with tactics.
He simply did not want Theron out of reach anymore.
The deeper they descended, the warmer the air became. Moisture gathered along the walls in slick black streaks that reflected the pale glow of mounted weapon lamps.
The whispers no longer drifted aimlessly through the tunnels. They tracked the formation somehow, sharpening each time the stairwell carried them deeper.
“You hearing actual words yet?” Matt asked Baptiste.
Baptiste answered from farther up the stairs. “You don’t want to.”
“That reassuring attitude of yours is really growing on me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
Matt sighed. “You wolves are exhausting.”
A faint sound escaped Vale somewhere behind them that might have been the beginning of a laugh before professionalism strangled it.
The stairwell widened abruptly several levels lower before opening into another massive chamber.
Matt halted at the threshold.
The room looked less like a tomb and more like the remains of an underground cathedral.
Colossal pillars disappeared upward into darkness while hundreds of alcoves lined the circular walls surrounding them.
Ancient stone sarcophagi rested inside each recess, stacked level after level high enough that Matt could barely make out the upper rows.
Some remained sealed beneath layers of dust and age, while others gaped open like broken teeth scattered through the walls. Empty.
The nearest shattered coffin drew his attention. Deep claw marks scored the interior stone from the inside out. “Well,” he muttered, “that’s horrifying.”
Nobody disagreed.
Vale motioned the teams outward. “Perimeter positions. Watch the upper alcoves.”
Flashlights swept across the chamber as armed wolves spread through the ruins. Matt noticed the shadows moving before he saw any bodies.
Something shifted between the higher crypts and vanished. “You saw that too, right?” he asked.
Theron’s gaze tracked upward. “Yes.”
That was all the confirmation Matt needed to hate this place completely.
Baptiste approached one of the sealed sarcophagi near the center aisle. Ancient symbols had been carved across the lid in circular patterns surrounding a single crest Matt now recognized.
Baptiste pointed toward the symbol. “The same crest from the throne chamber.”
“The royal bloodline,” Theron confirmed.
Despite every warning instinct, Matt approached the coffin. The stone looked ancient enough to predate most recorded history, yet the carvings remained unnaturally sharp, as though time itself had struggled to wear them down.
Then Matt noticed the scratches. Fresh ones. His stomach tightened. Something inside had tried very hard to get out.
Vale approached beside him. “How long ago?”
Theron crouched near the broken seal running along the edge of the lid. His fingers brushed lightly across the fractured stone. “Recently,” he said.
“How recently?”
Theron looked up. “Hours.”
The chamber fell silent. Hundreds of crypts surrounded them, far too many standing open.
A low sound echoed somewhere overhead. Movement again. This time everyone heard it. Weapons rose instantly toward the upper alcoves.
Nothing appeared. The silence afterward felt worse.
Matt drifted nearer to Theron without realizing it. Their shoulders nearly brushed now as they scanned opposite sides of the chamber.
“You know,” Matt started, “there was a version of my life where my biggest concern was whether my landlord would ever fix my air conditioning.”
Theron turned his head toward him. “I do not know what that means.”
Matt sighed. “Honestly? I miss when that was my biggest problem.”
“And now?”
Matt gestured vaguely toward the nightmare crypt surrounding them. “Now I’m apparently participating in the collapse of ancient wolf hell.”
The severity in Theron’s face eased by a fraction and Matt caught it. If Theron could still respond to him down here, then maybe the mountain had not swallowed him entirely yet.
Vale approached again, rifle still raised. “We found the next seal.”
Theron’s expression sharpened instantly. “Where?”
Vale pointed across the chamber.
Behind the crypts stood an enormous circular stone door nearly forty feet high. Symbols pulsed faintly across its surface in slow waves of silver-blue light. Thick fractures had already begun spreading across the center.
Something on the other side was pushing back.
Matt took in the spreading cracks, the surrounding claw marks, and the dozens of open tombs lining the walls. “Nope,” he said.
Vale blinked once. “Nope?”
“I would like the official record to show that I am strongly against opening any more murder doors today.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“I miss having options.”
Theron had already started moving toward the seal. Matt followed beside him automatically.
As they crossed deeper into the chamber, the whispers grew louder again. Matt could finally make out individual voices hidden beneath the overlapping noise: crying, begging, prayers muttered in fractured whispers that dissolved into static before he could fully understand them.
Somewhere among them, something laughed softly in the dark.
Matt’s grip tightened around his knife.
The hyena stirred uneasily beneath his ribs, but fear was not what drove it this time. The feeling resembled recognition, ancient and instinctive, like some buried part of him already knew what waited below the mountain.
Theron slowed beside him. “You feel it,” he said.
Matt looked toward him. “Feel what?”
Theron’s eyes remained fixed ahead on the glowing seal. “The First King reaching through the mountain.”
Matt wished that he did not understand what Theron meant.
The whispers no longer sounded distant. They pressed against the inside of Matt’s skull with unsettling familiarity, as though the mountain had finally turned its attention toward him.
The pressure inside his skull grew until it felt like another heartbeat.
The hyena answered with a low, instinctive growl that existed entirely inside Matt’s mind.
No.
The word wasn’t Matt’s.
***
Beyond the cathedral crypt, the lower levels no longer resembled anything built by living hands.
The carved corridors had given way to something older and less orderly, vast chambers connected by fractured stone bridges and uneven passageways that looked more excavated than constructed.
Walls curved at unnatural angles beneath layers of black mineral growth that pulsed faintly beneath the glow of weapon lights, almost like veins buried inside the rock itself.
Matt stayed close behind Theron as the group moved carefully through another narrow passage overlooking a cavern so deep he could not see the bottom.
Individual words began separating from the overlapping voices.
His fingers tightened around the knife.
Ahead of him, Theron slowed before glancing back over one shoulder.
“You hear them more clearly now.”
It was not a question.
Matt exhaled through his nose. “I was really hoping we wouldn’t circle back to that conversation.”
Theron gave him a brief sidelong look. “The mountain is testing whether you can hear its call.”
“Fantastic.” Matt adjusted the rifle hanging against his chest. “Love that for me.”
“You joke when you are afraid.”
Matt looked toward him. “You brood when you’re afraid. Everybody copes differently.”
For the briefest moment, Matt caught the version of Theron that only seemed to appear around him.
Movement rippled through the cavern below, stopping the entire group. Matt saw it a second later.
At first Matt thought the weapon lights were distorting the darkness below the bridge. Then one of the Valker agents angled a flashlight downward, and the beam swept across the cavern floor far below them.
Bodies moved through the ruins. Dozens at least. Possibly hundreds.
Thin, twisted shapes crawled over broken stone and collapsed pillars with unnatural speed, spilling across the cavern floor in jerking waves that made Matt’s stomach tighten.
Some climbed upright for a few strides before dropping back to all fours, while others never rose at all, dragging themselves forward in spasmodic bursts that no intact body should have survived.
One of the agents swore under his breath.
Vale stepped carefully toward the edge of the bridge, rifle raised as she studied the movement below. “How many?”
“Too many,” Baptiste answered grimly.
They had once been wolves. Matt could still see it beneath the ruin. Weapon lights caught flashes of pale eyes, exposed bone, elongated limbs, and jaws that opened far wider than any living wolf’s should as they swarmed through the shattered ruins below.
Then one of them stopped.
Its head lifted toward the bridge.
Even from that distance, Matt felt the exact instant it noticed them.
The creature screamed.
Every head in the cavern turned upward at once.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Matt muttered.
Then the swarm charged.
The sound hit first. Hundreds of claws slammed against stone as the mass surged toward the walls beneath the bridge, climbing with horrifying speed. Loose rock shattered beneath them while bodies poured upward through cracks and broken ledges like floodwater breaking through a dam.
“Move!” Vale snapped.
The formation surged forward.
Matt ran beside Theron as the bridge trembled beneath their boots. Behind them came the sound of claws striking stone fast enough to resemble heavy rainfall.
One of the younger agents risked a glance backward. “Jesus Christ…”