Chapter 51: The Words are Speaking

Mel and Vilnia carefully stepped into the secret passage.

The faint sound of boot soles crushing gravel was particularly clear in the corridor, Vilnia could feel her eardrums vibrating slightly with the sound of footsteps.

Darkness coiled around their limbs like some sort of living creature, every breath was filled with a thick musty smell, as if they were inhaling the decaying air from a coffin sealed for a thousand years.

“Mel, can you see clearly?”

Vilnia's voice echoed in the narrow passage, tinged with a hint of unease.

This pitch-black darkness, where one couldn't see their hand in front of their face, couldn't help but remind her of the feeling of being in The Void.

“It's fine, my night vision is decent.”

Mel answered softly, her amber pupils glowing faintly in the darkness, like two distant stars.

The two of them moved forward slowly, the occasional faint sound coming from under their feet, as if they had stepped on the bones of some small animal.

The sound of cracking echoed in the silent underground, as if it were the laughter of a voyeur lurking in the dark.

Vilnia was startled, subconsciously reaching out to press against the stone walls on both sides to maintain her balance, but the sensation under her fingertips made her freeze instantly.

The supposedly rough granite surface was covered with layers upon layers of paper pages, fine fibers flaking off with a rustle at her touch.

“Is this... paper?”

Vilnia pressed her palm against the cold stone wall, the fine texture piercing her nerves through her sheepskin gloves.

Something resembling mycelium was writhing beneath the layer of paper, and when she tried to peel off a fragment, the paper suddenly emitted a tearing sound like a baby's cry.

The two of them staggered back, the crisp sound of bones shattering coming from under their feet.

“This is…”

Mel bent down and picked up half a phalanx, and a ghostly blue phosphorescence suddenly seeped out from the bone's seam.

The surface of the skeleton was covered with fine bite marks, as if it had been gnawed by some creature with comb-like fangs.

Seeing this, Vilnia subconsciously tightened her grip on Mel's hand, her heart racing.

Mel squeezed Vilnia's hand back, but her own heart was already in her throat.

As they went deeper, the smell permeating the air became increasingly strange.

A mixture of rust, mold, old paper, and some indescribable rancid smell filled the narrow passage.

“What a foul smell....”

Mel and Vilnia frowned at the same time.

Suddenly, a faint light appeared at the end of the passage.

The phosphorescence illuminated the path three yards ahead—

Countless yellowed pages covered the ground like shed snakeskin, each sheet pulsating slowly, as if lungs were breathing underneath.

As she walked over the ground covered with paper, Mel felt that what she was stepping on was not gravel at all.

But thousands of bone fragments rising and falling between the pages.

The two of them quickened their pace and soon arrived before a circular stone chamber, but the scene before them made them stand frozen on the spot.

The moment they stepped into the circular stone chamber, a murky phosphorescence ignited in the bronze lamps without any warning.

The moving flames showed a corpse-like grayish-green color, illuminating the entire circular stone chamber as if it were soaked in a formalin solution.

The pupils of both of them contracted at the same time:

—The books embedded in the stone walls were not neatly arranged at all, but grew within the walls in a distorted manner that defied the laws of physics.

Moldy sheepskin covers and scarlet leather covers overlapped like scales, and the unknown characters outlined by dark gold patterns on the spines pulsed eerily with the firelight.

In the dim light, the gilded letters on the spines of the books shimmered with a ghostly light.

“These books... are growing in the wall?”

Vilnia's voice was swallowed by a kind of viscous silence.

She saw a book inlaid with human teeth suddenly open its cover, and a tar-like substance seeped from between the yellowed pages, flowing into a stream along the stone crevices, and finally pouring into the groove of the central altar.

The two looked around uneasily, their gazes finally falling on the center of the stone chamber.

There stood a huge stone platform, covered with complex runes and totems.

In the circular array supported by seven steps of obsidian, twelve human skulls were bowed low.

As if kowtowing and kneeling to some great existence.

Mycelium gushed out from the empty eye sockets, and wax tears solidified into stalactite-like lumps on their cracked mandibles.

The solidified wax tears intertwined on the platform surface, forming patterns like a network of nerves, eventually converging into a circular array composed of twelve human skulls.

Vilnia suddenly felt a wave of nausea.

She covered her mouth and nose, and as her gaze swept over one of the skulls, she saw the rotten brain tissue suddenly pulsate within the mass of mycelium.

“Is this... the layout for the God's descent ritual?”

Mel pressed her throbbing temples, and as she stared at the totem in the center of the altar, the afterimage on her retina began to reassemble:

Those seemingly disordered carvings were clearly deformations of hundreds of writing systems—

The sharp corners of cuneiform pierced into Sumerian incantations, Mayan numerals crawled between Hebrew letters, and all the characters' ends extended into tiny tentacles, entangling with each other.

Vilnia staggered back, and a sucking sound like paper swallowing suddenly came from her palm.

She discovered in horror that the books on the stone wall were secreting mucus, and the sheepskin covers were blistering like the skin of a toad.

For a moment, she even saw the golden patterns on the spines transform into the shape of vertical pupils.

At the same time, twelve blurry silhouettes suddenly appeared in the center of the previously empty altar.

Those translucent humanoids maintained the same kneeling posture as the skulls, the spinal cords hanging from their broken necks winding around the obsidian like withered vines.

At the same time, the books on the stone wall began to pulsate.

The moldy pages opened and closed like rotting gills, and the sheepskin covers oozed a mucus with the metallic smell of blood.

Mel discovered that her shadow was being pulled into a strange shape by the phosphorescence—dozens of slender tentacle-like projections extended from her spine, swaying gently with the rhythm of the pulsating pages.

Just then, her gaze unintentionally fell upon the stone tablet in the middle of the platform.

That stone tablet seemed to be inscribed with some kind of writing.

“What... is this?”

Mel spoke subconsciously, and then found that her mouth had become uncontrollable.

It seemed that something had taken over her body, attempting to use her mouth to utter some kind of syllable.

That was by no means a syllable that an ordinary human could produce.

A syllable belonging to no known language overflowed from Mel's throat, and the air trembled as if glass was shattering.

As Mel's voice fell, she suddenly felt as if something around her was watching her.

A feeling of being watched came from within and without, from head to toe, washing over her entire body.

It was as if countless pairs of eyes had opened in the surrounding darkness.

They were of different sizes and shapes, some slender like a cat's eye, others round as a copper bell.

These eyes were everywhere—on the walls, on the ground, in the air.

Even inside and outside her own body.

Vilnia felt a warm liquid flowing out of her ear canal, and when she raised her hand to wipe it, she found her fingertips covered in blood.

“Mel! Are you okay?”

She called out anxiously.

“We have to get out of here quickly!”

Mel couldn't answer.

She only felt her consciousness being torn apart, as if countless invisible hands were pulling at her soul.

“Buzzzzz....”

A low buzzing sound echoed in the stone chamber, and the books embedded in the walls suddenly began to tremble violently.

The pages flipped frantically, making a sound like millions of butterflies flapping their wings.

“They... they are watching me....”

Mel's voice trembled, the distorted symbols and words seemed to come alive, dancing on her retina.

“Vilnia... did you hear that?”

Mel's voice became erratic, as if coming from a distant place.

Her pupils dilated, her amber eyes reflecting countless distorted symbols.

“Those words...they are speaking...”

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