Spooktober 2025: Drown

Previous Part, Spooktober 2025: Doom   The ground convulsed beneath me. I fell to my knees as the black mist swallowed the clearing, thick as tar and reeking of grave soil. The chanting had stopped, but the echoes of it remained, bleeding through my skull. I couldn’t tell whether it was the dead men’s voices—or mine.   The pale creature reached upward, clawing through the veil. Not for me, but through me. Each breath it took pulled something from my lungs, threads of warmth unraveling into the cold night. The bruise on my chest split open. No blood came out—only a thin stream of moonlight that poured down into the pit.   I staggered back, desperate to escape, but the forest had already vanished. There was only water now, black and still, stretching to every horizon. The staff, the temple, the stones—all gone. Only ripples and the reflected sky remained. A sky different than the one had had spent the night under.   My reflection floated under me, the ripples distorting it, giving it that same knowing smile from before.   Come Verti, you were never the seal, but always the key.   The words came from my reflection, try as I might not to hear them. They filled my ears as the water filled my mouth, and I realized too late that my reflection and I had swapped, I was now the one under the water, sinking away.   My body drifted downward, settling eventually onto a cold stone at the bottom of this strange lake. My hands drifting down to find the edges of the stone, tracing indentations that seemed almost carved.   Carvings here? Huh... something is amiss