➤ Chapter 9: "Whispers from the Deep"
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The nights were beginning to feel colder.
Not in temperature—no frost touched the crops, no snowflakes drifted from the sky—but in silence. The wind didn't rustle the leaves the way it used to. The owls no longer called. And deep in the darkness beyond Ehsan's torchlight, something listened.
He didn't notice it at first.
He was too busy building.
The tool shed had taken shape over the last day: four walls, a sloped roof of birch slabs, shelves crafted from trapdoors and spruce planks. Inside, he'd organized everything—stone on the left, wood in the middle, iron and rare items locked in a chest at the back.
Each item had a place. Each tool was named in his mind. "Survivor's Pick." "First Axe." "Home Blade."
Naming them gave them meaning.
And meaning gave him calm.
But calm is fragile.
And curiosity always stirs.
It began with a faint sound.
Ehsan was harvesting his wheat, sickle in hand, when he heard it: a low, echoing thrum, like stone being struck far, far below.
He paused.
Listened.
Nothing.
He waited again.
Then—thrum—fainter this time, almost imagined.
But he knew that sound. It wasn't thunder. It wasn't lava.
It was cavesong—the eerie, muffled groan of blocks shifting under pressure, the ambient music of Minecraft's deepest, oldest chambers.
Something was down there.
And now, so was he.
Ehsan returned to the ravine the next morning, better equipped and more focused.
• Full iron set—helmet, chestplate, leggings, boots.
• Shield crafted with oak and steel.
• A brand-new iron pickaxe.
• Water bucket.
• 64 torches.
• Cooked pork, potatoes, and four bread loaves.
He descended deeper than before.
Past the first ravine. Past the iron veins. Past the water pools that glowed in torchlight.
He found a narrow crevice branching from the base wall—one he'd overlooked earlier.
He slipped through it sideways, hugging the wall with shield raised.
The tunnel narrowed, then widened again into a low-ceilinged cavern.
And there, in the quiet…
Was the sound.
A low hum.
Constant. Faint.
Not quite music. Not quite mechanical.
Alive.
He planted a torch.
The light revealed moss blocks, speckled with glowing lichen. Vines crept up the stone walls, and something glimmered in the cracks—amethyst? No, something darker. Something bluish and glassy.
He bent closer.
"What is this…?"
The block pulsed faintly beneath his hand, as if reacting to his touch. He didn't mine it. Not yet. Instinct said wait.
It wasn't just rare. It felt important.
Like it didn't belong in an ordinary world.
He mapped the chamber in his head, leaving torches on the ground this time. He noticed something strange: the moss here was shaped unnaturally. A circle. No—an oval, carved faintly into the floor by different moss colors.
As if someone—something—had once marked this place.
A ritual? A gate? A trap?
No mobs approached. No sounds came from beyond the cave.
And yet Ehsan could feel something was watching.
Not hostile.
Just… present.
Waiting.
He stood in silence for a long time.
Then marked the chamber with a cobblestone pillar and returned to the surface.
Not because he was scared.
But because this wasn't an ordinary mine anymore.
This was something else.
Back at his cabin, the sun had set. The forest returned to silence.
He placed the strange shard—collected from near the glowing block—on his crafting table.
It didn't merge with anything.
Didn't craft into tools.
But it hummed when he touched it. Like a vibration inside his bones.
He didn't sleep that night.
He sat by the window, sword across his knees, watching the moon rise over the forest.
The world was still beautiful.
Still peaceful.
But beneath that peace… something whispered.
And it called to him.
From the deep.
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▶ To be continued...
Next Chapter: "Moss and Memory"
Thanks for reading!