Fiction

My bare feet climbed stone stairs that disappeared into the darkness above. The walls of the cavern surrounding me rose to unmeasurable heights, swallowed by darkness where no ceiling could be found. There was no reference point. No ledge, no echo, no decay, nothing to mark the passage of distance or time, only stairs bordering the walls. Some of the stairs landed at doors, whilst some stopped abruptly. I have been climbing these stairs for too long now and hopefully; there would be a door. Doors usually led to a room, and maybe a place to rest. Pale beams of distant light swept the cavern’s edges, flickering like breath on glass, painting motion onto walls that hadn’t been touched in centuries. The AI-Muntaqim themselves remained hidden, but their presence lingered in the shifting light. Ghosts of movement cast across stone, whispering of their relentless drift beyond the reach of sound. Still climbing. A hollow ache pulsed in my gut. My hunger was not for food. Or maybe it is. My legs dragged underneath me, each step heavier than the last. Exhaustion clings to me, not just in my muscles but in my breath. Even the will to live feels like weight, pressing down until I could crumble into stone. But I can’t stop. There’s nowhere to rest. The stairs have no rails, no ledges. There is only the abyss off the side, falling endlessly into black. It would be easy to stop. Just lean sideways and let gravity do the rest. I used to imagine hell as fire and screams, but if it’s down there, it’s neither. It’s cold. And silent. A silence so complete it devours you before you even land. The lights are gone now, swallowed by black. I climb by touch. Hands, knees and feet scraping stone. My arms do most of the work, dragging more of me forward than my legs can lift. Then something changes. The incline flattens. The steps are gone. I reach out and feel the edge of a landing. Stone giving way to a wall. I trace it blindly, fingers fumbling until they slip into empty space. An opening. A door. I crawl through and collapse inside. I sprawled across the cold stone floor, breathing like I’ve been underwater too long. As my breathing begins to relax, the light beams outside grow sharper, hotter, bleaching the room in white. Shadows stretched like wounds across the stone as an AI-Muntaqim neared the doorway. The darkness collapsed into searing, silent brilliance. I pressed myself into the corner, pushing my spine against the cold stone until it hurt, as if pain could anchor me in place. There was no sound. Only light. Panic surged, but I held it down. No breath. No movement. My heart pounded like it wanted to betray me, but still, I did not move. Then slowly, silently, the light began to fade. Only then did I exhale, a breath torn from my chest I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. Further inside across from the entrance, just beyond the fading white, a doorway leading further into the structure. I waited, breathing shallow, until the light had almost fully receded into darkness. Only then did I move. As it withdrew across the cavern, I dared a single glance at the AI-Muntaqim receding into the cavern. Its silhouette etched itself into my mind: a grotesque matriarchal form, drifting on a crown of coiling limbs, its tentacles trailing behind with a mind of their own. A nightmare queen watching without eyes and hearing without listening. A barely visible flicker trembled on a stairwell across the far cavern. Movement within shadow. Almost missed. It took a moment to register: a lone figure, small against the vast scale of stone. A man, I thought. He was descending, each step hesitant, as if the stairs themselves might betray him. Then the cavern swallowed everything back into black. Another human. Who was that? How did he get here? How long has he survived in this place? I withdrew deeper into the chamber’s dark corner, torn between silence and the unbearable need for connection. Should I follow? What if they have survived so long and suffered so much trauma, they have grown paranoid and hostile? Maybe they have found tools, or food. Maybe there were more. If nothing else, it would give me something to do. I would try to follow. I pressed myself against the wall and slid my eyes past the edge of the doorway. A light began to rise. I tried to sight the stairs in the dim light. The figure was still there, caught halfway, frozen under the harsh glare of the approaching AI-Muntaqim. For a breath, he didn’t move. Then he turned and began to climb, fast but unsteady. He was struggling. Slower than fear should allow. Labouring up the steps as the sentinel closed the distance like a falling star. I watched, breath trapped in my throat, as the man, in what felt like a final act of defiance, spun and hurled himself at the machine. His arms flailed, fists struck its plated body. It didn’t hesitate. The AI-Muntaqim’s tentacles converged, coiling, piercing, crushing, tearing the man apart in a storm of metal limbs. His body hit the wall in pieces like rags of meat and silence. Then came the beam. A column of white, searing light, reducing the remains to nothing but blackened stone. The wall still smoked. The sentinel hovered, limbs bristling. Listening for a second threat. Then, satisfied, it resumed its patrol. The light began sweeping the walls and stairs again, calm as ever. I couldn’t move. Not at first. To witness the destruction of a human, with such indifference, is something no soul can prepare for. The fragility of man, revealed in seconds. Gone. Time seemed to slow. My chest caved inward, breath stuttering like a broken machine. The moment burned itself into me and every detail seared permanent. Only after I felt the wet on my cheeks did I realise I was crying. The utterly senseless death I could not reconcile. It’s as if gravity had changed and crushed me to the floor. I couldn’t stay here. I had to move. I crawled on. The threshold passed like a breath, and darkness swallowed everything. I pressed a hand to the cool stone wall and moved slowly, blindly. There was no echo in this chamber, or hallway. No stairs, only walls. Wall after wall, some ending in nothing, some curling back on themselves. Each step became a lesson in memory. It took me many passes to build a map in my mind. A rough path through the labyrinth of empty rooms and dead corridors. Why does anything like this deserve to exist? The thought of a rat comes unbidden, darting from shadow to shadow, its only defence the hope of not being seen. Clinging to shadows, feeding off what it can find, surviving not through strength but through silence and chance. In the end, we’re not so different. I kept my hands against the walls, groping forward in search of something more; a break, a passage, anything but another dead end. The mental map I’d built from endless crawling suggested that several narrow halls and scattered rooms converged on a larger central chamber. I couldn’t say how tall it was. I jumped, reached, but touched nothing. No ceiling. No fixtures. No depressions, carvings, or contours. There were no objects. I felt no scrape of memory. No objects. No past. Only stone. The room was stripped, like me. No past, no function. I slipped behind the chamber, into the network of corridors that ran like veins around it. That’s when I felt a small opening, barely wide enough for a crouched man to pass through. I pushed into it, and the passage ended suddenly. There was no floor beneath me. No ceiling above. No walls. Only a vast absence. A ledge, perhaps, but I could feel no steps, no incline. Then a light appeared in the distance, faint but rising, beginning to shape the edges of the void. The AI-Muntaqim was approaching. I scrambled backward into the corridors, retreating to the last chamber I knew. In the pale wash of its nearing light, something caught my eye — faint scratches on the stone. Falsehood shall not endure. Then the light withdrew, and I was left in the eternal night once more. Who wrote those words, and with what? Was it that human who was destroyed? There was more text, but I couldn’t see it — the darkness had swallowed the rest. Should I wait for another AI-Muntaqim to pass? The thought twisted in my gut. That might take longer than I could bear. Could I call it? Risk exposure? Risk erasure? I slumped back against the wall, pulled my knees to my chest, and buried my head in my arms. Time passed, or maybe it folded. It felt like a sleep I was awake for. It took several passes of light but after an eternity, the rest of the inscription revealed itself, as if the stone itself had whispered it to me: Falsehood shall not endure, nor shall the shadow bear a voice. Light shall encompass all things. And verily, whoso turns away from the light, he is of the forsaken. ...