You ever walk through a place that feels like it knows you're trespassing?
Like every tree's watching, every rock's holding a grudge, and the wind's trying to whisper spoilers to your enemies?
Yeah. That was today.
We left Calen's camp at dawn. No goodbyes. No second glances. Just boots on dirt and the heavy silence of a group that's trying very hard not to say what they're really thinking.
Theo was limping. Again. Ava hadn't spoken since we left. Again.
And me? I was doing that thing I always do — where I pretend I'm not thinking about how badly this is going to end.
We followed a narrow ravine that split into what looked like the ribs of a dead beast. Jagged black stone, edges sharp as truth. Sunlight didn't even bother. It just glanced off and gave up.
"Who makes terrain like this?" Theo muttered.
"Gods with anger issues," I replied.
Ava stopped ahead of us, crouching by the ground. I came up beside her.
"What now?"
She didn't answer, just pointed.
Tracks. But weird ones. Long and thin, like someone dragging sticks behind them.
"Animal?" I asked.
"No," she said. "Too regular. Bipedal. Large stride. Probably armored."
"Friendly?"
She looked up at me like I'd asked if knives could hug.
Right.
By noon we found the source.
Not a beast.
A machine.
Or what used to be one.
It lay in a clearing, half-buried in moss and rust. A metallic humanoid torso, limbs like a crab's nightmare, face melted into a permanent scream. Emblazoned on its chest: AEXIS UNIT – 09.
"What the hell is that?" Theo whispered.
"No clue," I said. "But I don't like how its eyes are still glowing."
Ava was already circling it, blade drawn. "If this was active recently, someone activated it."
"Mercer?" Theo asked.
"Doubt it," I said. "He wouldn't send a relic. He'd send something that bleeds."
Still… we searched it. Got some wiring, a power cell (probably useless), and a scrap of parchment jammed between its shoulder plates.
I unrolled it. Old paper, newer ink.
"Sector 9. Vault locked. Key lost. Blood awakens the stone."
Cryptic? Definitely.
Creepy? Check.
Worth remembering? Absolutely.
I slid it into my pack.
That night, we found a cave with markings near the entrance — circular symbols, dots in triangles, stuff that looked like math having a seizure. Ava scanned it silently while Theo tried not to breathe too loud.
"It's a warning," she said.
"Can you read it?"
"No. But it's always a warning."
So naturally, we set up camp there.
You learn fast on Skull Island: safety isn't about avoiding danger. It's about choosing which danger you can survive.
Later, while Theo slept and Ava sharpened her blade for the fiftieth time, I sat by the fire thinking about that machine.
"Ever seen anything like it?" I asked her.
"No," she said. "But I've heard whispers. Mercer's been sending scouts to find old tech. Stuff left behind by… whoever came before."
"You think it's from before the Game?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it was the Game once."
That stuck with me. I hated how easily it made sense.
Ava tossed a chunk of wood into the fire and looked at me sideways.
"You ever wonder if this is the devil's version of a joke?" she asked.
"This?"
"All of it. The Game. Skull Island. Us."
"Yeah. Feels like someone's watching and laughing."
She nodded slowly. "And what if the only way to win is to stop trying?"
"Then I've already lost."
We sat there for a while. No words. Just flames and the sound of Theo snoring like a tiny dying animal.
Then she said something I didn't expect.
"You're not as broken as you pretend to be."
I blinked. "That's… rich. Coming from you."
"I don't pretend."
Fair.
Still, something about her voice lingered. Like she was remembering something. Or someone.
I didn't ask. Not yet. Relationship dynamics with Ava were like landmines. You didn't poke — you waited to see if it was safe to step.
Morning came too fast.
Theo was wide awake for once.
"Hey," he said. "Don't freak out, but I think someone was watching us."
I blinked at him. "...That's not how you start a sentence."
Ava had already vanished from the cave's mouth. Her version of "I'll check it out" was gone-before-you-blink. Which meant she thought it was real.
Theo pointed to a ridge above the cave. "There. I saw movement."
We waited. Ava returned five minutes later.
"Two people. Lookouts. Dressed in bone armor. Might be from the Hollow Crown."
"What the hell is that?"
"A faction. They believe death is the only true currency. The more people you kill, the more status you get. Total lunatics."
"Fantastic," I muttered. "We going to make friends?"
"No. We're going to vanish."
The next two hours were pure muscle and silence. We ran, we climbed, we crossed a river so cold I think my soul shriveled. But we lost them.
I think.
Ava said we did.
Which meant there was a 60% chance we were still being followed and a 40% chance we were walking into something worse.
So, you know. Optimism.
Late afternoon, we reached something different.
A tower.
Not like the one I jumped from.
This one was stone. Ancient. Covered in vines and what looked like blood runes. No windows. One door.
It hummed. Not like a machine.
Like a thing.
"You feel that?" I asked.
Ava nodded.
Theo clutched his stomach. "I think I'm gonna throw up."
"You can't," I said. "The building might eat it and come to life."
I was only half joking.
There was an inscription on the door.
Same symbols as the cave.
Theo traced a few with his finger, squinting. "This looks like an equation. Kind of. Like… entropy over—wait. No, that's wrong."
"You understand this?" I asked.
"Bits of it. Maybe. I used to be… kinda good at numbers. Before… you know."
"No, I don't," I said.
And for once, he answered.
"Before I dropped out to work fourteen hours a day so my mom didn't starve. Math went from fun to useless real fast."
Ava looked at him for a second.
Then, weirdly, said nothing.
Not pity.
Just recognition.
Like she understood what it meant to lose something slowly.
The tower door opened with a sigh.
Not because we solved the math. Not because we knocked.
Just because it wanted to.
We looked at each other.
And I realized something that hadn't hit me until right then:
We weren't explorers.
We weren't warriors.
We weren't even survivors.
We were pieces.
Pieces on a board none of us could see.
And something — or someone — was about to make the next move.
Somewhere Deep Inside the Tower...
Two glowing eyes flickered awake.
A whisper passed through stone.
"Blood awakens the stone."
And far below, an hourglass shifted.
[To be continued.]
The Tower That Breathes
So the door opened.
By itself.
No keys. No spell. No warm invitation to brunch. Just a slow, ancient creak, like it hadn't moved in centuries—and wasn't entirely sure it should be moving now.
Theo stepped back immediately.
Ava didn't.
She stood still, her head tilted slightly, eyes calculating. Like she was listening for something I couldn't hear. Or maybe trying to hear nothing, which is always more dangerous.
"Ladies first?" I offered.
She didn't look at me. Just walked inside.
Fair enough.
The air in the tower was heavier than outside. Dense. It pressed against your skin like water but didn't leave you wet. The walls pulsed faintly, almost like veins under old marble. They weren't just stone—some kind of hybrid. Magic, tech, maybe even living tissue.
Ava ran her fingers along the nearest wall, expression unreadable.
"This place is alive," she said quietly.
I blinked. "Figuratively?"
She turned. "No."
Oh. Good.
We advanced slowly—Theo in the middle, Ava at the front, me watching our back. The corridor twisted like a spinal cord, narrow and ribbed with arches that bent unnaturally. There were carvings etched into the stone, but none of us recognized the language. They didn't look like letters.
More like instructions.
Or warnings.
We passed one that looked like a man on fire, but the fire was inside him. And his face was smiling.
That one gave me pause.
"Creepy art direction," I muttered.
Ava just nodded.
Theo didn't respond. He was too busy counting his steps.
I'd noticed he did that when nervous.
Two turns later, we came to a chamber.
Circular. Massive. Ceiling lost in shadow. In the center, a platform floated above the ground—suspended by thin strands of light coming from crystals embedded in the walls. On the platform lay a cube, black as void, with silver lines crawling across it like living circuitry.
And next to it?
A body.
Not fresh.
Maybe not even human.
Its arms were elongated, double-jointed in ways that made my stomach twist. The jaw was cracked open like a peeled fruit. Its chest cavity had been... excavated. Not ripped open—surgically removed. Clean. Precise.
Ava crouched beside it and frowned.
"Someone took something," she murmured.
"Like what?"
She didn't answer.
Theo walked slowly toward the platform, eyes fixed on the cube. "That thing. I've seen symbols like that before."
"Where?" I asked.
"Back home. In a bookshop. My boss made me throw out the old archives when it went bankrupt. I remember a cover that glowed like that... said it was a Codex of Binding."
"That doesn't sound ominous at all."
He touched the platform.
The cube responded instantly.
It unfolded.
Not with gears or hinges. It blossomed. Like a metal flower blooming inward. And from its center, a small orb rose—hovering, humming, waiting.
I grabbed Theo's shoulder. "Don't—"
But the orb shot into him.
Not at him. Into him.
Straight through his chest.
Theo collapsed.
His body hit the floor like dead weight. Ava moved to him immediately, checking his pulse.
"He's alive," she said. "Just... unconscious."
"Great," I muttered. "So Skull Island has possession orbs now. Wonderful."
The orb was gone. Fully integrated into him or hiding, I wasn't sure. But something about him looked different already. His breathing was deeper. Skin a little paler. And there was a faint line of symbols crawling up his neck like a temporary tattoo.
Ava looked at me. "We carry him out. Now."
"Agreed."
Dragging Theo was a nightmare. The tower seemed to react to our movement—hallways shifting slightly, walls growing smoother, then rougher. At one point, the air thinned so sharply I thought my lungs were collapsing.
We stumbled out into daylight just as the tower's door slammed shut behind us.
A gust of wind hit me like a slap.
Theo groaned.
Ava laid him down on the grass. His eyes fluttered open.
"You good?" I asked.
"I... I don't know," he whispered.
"What happened?"
"I saw... a map."
"What kind of map?"
His gaze was glassy. "Not where. When."
Oh no.
Later that evening, we set camp by a small brook half a mile from the tower. Ava and I took shifts. Theo slept for nearly four hours straight, then sat up and started drawing.
In dirt.
With disturbing accuracy.
Ava leaned over and raised an eyebrow. "That's Skull Island."
"Yeah," I said. "But not how we know it."
Theo was tracing borders—ones that didn't match the current territories. There were nations I'd never heard of. Fortresses where jungles currently stood. Entire regions blacked out completely.
"This is from before the Game," he said.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"I just... do."
And then he added something.
A symbol in the center of the island. A tower.
Not the one we'd just visited.
A different one.
Bigger.
With the same glowing lines from the cube.
Ava went still.
"You've seen that," I said.
She didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Once. When I was thirteen. My family got caught in a border skirmish between two factions. Everyone ran. I got separated. I climbed a hill to avoid the fighting and saw it in the distance. But no one believed me when I told them later."
"Because it disappeared?"
"Because it wasn't supposed to be there."
So.
Let me recap.
In one day:
We found a haunted breathing tower.
Theo got semi-possessed by a space-orb and now knows ancient cartography.
Ava may or may not have repressed childhood trauma linked to mythical architecture.
And me?
I'm starting to realize something I don't like.
This Game?
It's rigged.
Not because of Mercer or the devils or the psychotic factions trying to eat each other alive.
It's rigged because this island has a memory.
It remembers the people who walk it.
And I think it's starting to remember me.
Somewhere Else...
In a shadowed hall of red glass, a robed figure placed a hand on a sphere filled with smoke. Symbols flickered on its surface.
A voice echoed behind him.
"The Codex has awakened."
The robed figure did not turn.
"It chose the boy?"
"Yes."
"Then accelerate the timeline."
The smoke pulsed.
Skull Island stirred.
And far below, the hourglass spilled another grain.
[To be continued.]