The iron hinges of the church's cellar door groaned as it swung open, coughing up a breath of damp rot from below.
Two villagers — burly, silent men with worn, battered faces — hauled Kian and Ellie roughly to their feet. The crowd watched from the pews, their faces a blend of grim satisfaction and thinly veiled horror.
Kian staggered, his wrists still tightly bound. Ellie fought, trying to wrench free, but a brutal shove between her shoulder blades forced her forward.
"Move," one of the men muttered.
They descended the stone stairs, the light from the church above shrinking until it became nothing but a memory.
Only dim lanterns nailed to the walls lit the path downward — their flames flickering against the rough, damp stones.
The air grew heavier with each step, thick with the scent of mildew, blood, and something else.
Something alive.
Or once alive.
The cellar opened up into a large, circular chamber carved directly into the earth. The ground was uneven, the ceiling low enough that Kian had to duck slightly to avoid the hanging roots.
And at the center of it all…
The cage.
Massive, forged of black iron, reinforced with silver etchings and crude talismans hammered onto every corner. It resembled something ancient — a prison built not to hold a man or an animal, but a nightmare.
Chains thicker than Kian's arm wrapped around the bars, some rattling as if pulled from inside.
A figure crouched within.
Twisted. Wrong.
The Wraith.
Even bound and broken, it radiated a suffocating sense of dread.
Its skin was a mass of blackened scars and raw flesh, its form vaguely human but stretched too thin, too sharp. Two luminous eyes blinked from the darkness — not yellow, not red, but something in between, glowing with a sick, malevolent light.
When it breathed, the air itself seemed to recoil.
Ellie stiffened beside Kian. He could feel her pulse pounding through the chain that connected them.
One of the villagers approached the cage cautiously, a long iron rod in hand. He jabbed it through the bars.
The Wraith didn't react at first.
But then, like smoke taking shape, its head tilted toward the motion — slowly, mockingly — and a sound escaped its broken lips.
A chuckle.
Low. Rasping. Mocking.
The villager flinched and backed away.
Cowards, Kian thought bitterly. All of them.
They call us the monsters, but they feed this thing. They keep it breathing.
---
The villagers shoved Kian and Ellie toward the far wall, chaining them to iron rings embedded into the stone.
"Leave them," barked the elder of the two men. "Let it… judge."
The others didn't need convincing. They hurried back up the stairs, locking the heavy cellar door behind them.
The final sound was the grinding slam of the lock falling into place.
Then silence.
Except for the breathing.
Theirs.
And its.
---
For a while, neither Kian nor Ellie spoke.
What could they even say?
Their world had already ended once — when the village burned, when the skies tore open.
Now, it was ending again, slower, more cruelly.
Ellie shifted, testing her chains.
"Bastards," she hissed under her breath.
Kian leaned his head back against the cold stone, the iron biting into his wrists.
"They're scared," he said finally. "Doesn't make them right. Doesn't make them brave."
Ellie laughed — a short, bitter sound.
"No. Just desperate."
A scraping noise.
Both of them froze.
The Wraith had risen onto its knees, the chains on its body clinking softly. It leaned closer to the bars, its face now fully visible under the low lantern light.
It was worse up close.
It wasn't just scarred — it was broken .
Half its jaw hung slack, stitched crudely by human hands. One of its arms twisted the wrong way, bone exposed through rents in the flesh.
And yet its eyes — god, those eyes — burned with a terrible, relentless will.
The Wraith inhaled deeply.
As if smelling them.
Then, a voice — cracked, wrong, but unmistakably human — rasped from its ruined throat.
"...new ones…"
Kian and Ellie stayed frozen.
The Wraith's lips curled into a grotesque parody of a smile.
"Not… from here."
It dragged its chains, slowly, toward the edge of the cage.
Ellie pressed her back harder against the wall, eyes darting for any missed exits, any flaw in the stone.
Nothing.
Kian swallowed hard, forcing his voice steady.
"What do you want?"
The Wraith tilted its head — an oddly childlike motion, almost curious.
Then it said something that chilled him more than the cold stone or the iron chains ever could:
"…freedom…"
The word echoed, distorted.
A gust of foul wind seemed to stir through the cellar, extinguishing one of the lanterns.
Darkness thickened.
The Wraith laughed again, a hollow, rattling sound.
"Give… and take… same as always…"
It reached toward the bars, claws brushing just short of them, sparks crackling where its fingers met the silver runes.
It hated them. The barriers. The chains.
It wasn't meant to be caged.
Just like them.
Kian locked eyes with Ellie.
They didn't need to speak. The plan was clear:
Survive.
Escape.
Together.
But the Wraith… it wasn't going to wait.
It was testing the chains now, straining slowly, methodically, as if sensing their weakness.
And deep down, Kian realized something terrifying.
They hadn't been sent here just for punishment.
The villagers were feeding it.
Testing how long it could be chained.
How much pain it could take.
Or maybe...
They were hoping it would break free.
And take the burden of guilt off their hands.
A distant sound — a rumble from above.
Footsteps?
No — it was something heavier.
Maybe even another Wraith…?
Kian's heart raced.
Ellie's whisper snapped him back to focus: "We need to break these chains."
He nodded grimly.
The Wraith laughed again, as if it could hear every desperate thought.
---
Outside, night fully settled over the ruined village.
Inside the cellar, three prisoners — human and inhuman alike — waited.
The question was no longer if the cage would fail.
It was when.
And when it did…
Would Kian and Ellie survive the thing that waited for them in the dark?
Or would they become nothing more than the Wraith's next experiment?
The iron chains groaned.
The final lantern flickered.
And the shadows crept closer.