Chapter 199
Trigger warning; Graphic Violence, Disturbing imagery and death.
The tree sucked him in.
The first thing Cain noticed was how wide the place was. The inside of the tree stretched like a forgotten world, bigger than it had any right to be.
The second thing he noticed was the smell.
Rot.
It was disgusting. The kind that clung to your throat and curled in your stomach. The kind that made your eyes water and your tongue taste decay. Cain pressed two fingers under his nose, pushing down the urge to vomit as the stench hit him like a wave.
He turned slowly and then he saw them.
Bodies. Piles of them.
Scattered across the floor and tangled in the roots, rotting, decomposed, some little more than skeletons in rusted armor. Others had decomposed halfway, still wearing their expressions of agony. A few were recent. Bloated. Blue-lipped. Their hands frozen in claws, like they’d tried to dig their way back out.
Cain’s breath hitched. Not from fear but from the weight of it. The number of them. The failure. All of them had come here for the same thing. The heart of Celeste, and yet, none of them had made it.
And now it was his turn.