Cold. Everything was so cold, as if the sun had never once shone upon this place. Alina's entire body felt freezing, as if it had been completely stripped of every last bit of life essence. She knew she was awake. She knew she was alive, yet she felt like she couldn't physically get up. No matter how much she tried or how hard she strained, her body remained stubbornly stuck right there on the concrete floor. She really couldn't move.
No, not yet. She couldn't give up right now. She had to survive.
Forcing herself through sheer willpower, she was finally able to snap her eyes open. As she slowly dragged herself up, she took a hard look at her surroundings. It was a cave. There was absolutely no natural light within the cavern, the only source of illumination coming from weird, glowing crystal stones embedded into the rock walls. As she slowly got to her feet, she noticed that the ground was covered in a thick, wet slime. It was quite slippery.
She had no idea where she was. The cave seemed to be endlessly winding downward, and no matter how much she looked around, she couldn't spot a single exit. How annoying. Deciding it was better to keep moving forward rather than waiting around, she set off. Who knew what could happen if she stayed in one place?
As she kept going deeper and deeper down the slope, the cave became significantly wider, and the lights radiating from the crystals became more prominent. They looked almost alive, as if someone's literal life force had been trapped inside of them.
A weird feeling began to stir in her gut, a growing certainty that something was waiting for her at the bottom. If she kept going deeper into this cave, she knew that she might never get out. But she couldn't stop. It felt as if her body was actively moving against her will. No matter how much she struggled to halt her steps, it was entirely to no avail.
"Damn it..."
By the time she finally arrived at the stomach of the cave, her feet felt like they were breaking apart. It felt like they were being stabbed by endless, agonizing needles.
Then, she finally saw it. The thing that was causing everything. It was a gigantic monster, a massive, carnivorous-looking flower that seemed to be actively sucking everything it could from the ground. It was feeding itself, growing stronger and more bloated by the second. This was most likely the exact same fate that had befallen the people who had disappeared from the village. They had simply become food for this creature.
The beast looked like a blue rose, sporting a massive mouth lined with sharp yellow teeth that seemed capable of swallowing absolutely everything whole. Alina kept walking toward it. She couldn't stop herself no matter what, feeling exactly like a marionette blindly following orders. She didn't feel like herself, and she absolutely hated it.
Then, she did something entirely unexpected. While her legs were completely hijacked, she realized she could still move her arms. Reaching down, she found whatever sharp object she could grasp from her gear and slammed it directly into her own legs.
The pain flared so violently that she felt like she was going to faint at any second, but she held on. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, enduring the agony. Finally, the desperate gamble paid off; the shock of the pain broke the trance, and her legs stopped moving forward. She laid down flat on the ground, looking out at the cave.
It almost looked like a garden, a horrific garden designed to harvest living human food. The host flower had already created smaller flowers just like itself. It would probably need even more food soon, and she had to do something before it was too late. There was a high chance that if this thing went unchecked, it would spread everywhere.
As a knight, it was her sacred duty to protect people. But how on earth was she going to do this? Her divine blessing wasn't working properly in this dead zone, and she was significantly weaker than usual right now.
Could she burn it? Yes! That was it. If she could just set the host flower in front of her ablaze, she could end this. But how could she start a fire? Even something small would be enough. She looked around frantically, hoping to find anything useful, but in the end, she found nothing.
Ugh, what was she supposed to do now? Was there really no way out of this? She could feel it in her body, she was starting to lose control again, and by now, she had lost far more blood than necessary from her self-inflicted wounds. Her vision was slowly beginning to distort. If this went on much longer, she would not live to see another day.
Oh, she really missed her brother right now. They had so much to do together. They had promised each other that they would be together forever; she had to manage this somehow. She knew her brother would come for her. She was absolutely sure of it. She just had to wait and stay alive.
It was better to find a place that was farther away from the monster. Mustering up every ounce of her remaining strength, she slowly got up and moved forward to find a hiding spot, a trail of blood dripping from her punctured legs as she walked. She winced heavily because of the sharp pain, but she still held on.
Finally, she found a small alcove that was positioned a little more to the side, hidden away from the gigantic monster in front of her.
Now that she thought about it, she didn't even know what this creature was. If Nuri had been here, he would have instantly been able to identify it and come up with a perfect plan. That was just how good he was. Although Nuri always thought he wasn't anything special, Alina thought the exact opposite; she really looked up to him. He possessed immense knowledge, and his critical thinking was easily the best part of him. Because of him, they had been able to escape from that place...
No, this wasn't the time to sit around thinking about the past. As she hid away from the monster's line of sight, she tore a piece of her shirt and bound her leg tightly. The bleeding was manageable now. She looked around the small space she was currently resting in, it was a small hole in the side of the rock wall, and it almost seemed... man-made? Had people come here before? Had someone actually managed to escape from this place?
Just as a look of relief began to wash over her face, something completely unexpected happened again.
Her foot. It was caught again.
Shit... how... how... HOW did it find her?
She wasn't even able to let out a scream before the invisible force yanked her completely out of the hole, dragging her backward into the dark.