The phantom of Miller dug at the unyielding wall, his silent screams more deafening than any sound. Aris’s own breath hitched, a painful stitch in his side that began to mirror the rhythmic, desperate motions of the long-dead priest clawing at his eyes. The temple wasn’t just showing them its horror; it was seeding it within them.
Lena gripped his arm, her nails digging into his jacket. “Aris, his eyes…” she breathed.
Miller’s ghostly form paused its digging. Slowly, with the jerky inertia of a broken marionette, his head turned towards them. Where his eyes should have been were only dark, weeping hollows, matching the priest in the relief. The curse was refining its performance, making the echoes consistent, more visually cohesive for its new, captive audience. A new sound permeated the hall—a wet, grating shudder, like stone grinding on meat.
From the shadows between the pillars, another echo manifested. This one was different, denser, more defined. It was the faceless deity from the carvings, a thing of smoothed, featureless stone, yet it moved with a terrible, slithering grace. In its hand, it clutched a beating, glowing heart that pulsed with the same hellish light as their flares.
It glided toward the phantom priest, the ritual reaching its climax. But as it passed Miller’s echo, the stone god’s head rotated a full 180 degrees. The smooth plane of its face fixed not on its intended victim, but on Aris and Lena. It sees us. The thought was an ice pick in Aris’s mind. They weren’t just spectators; they were part of the cast now.
The air grew thick with the smell of ozone and old blood. The whispers began, not in their ears, but in their minds—a cacophony of a thousand final thoughts, a thousand apologies, all pleading for a release that would never come. Lena clapped her hands over her ears, a futile gesture against the internal assault. “The door,” Aris choked out, pulling her toward the sealed entrance. Their hands scrambled against the cold obsidian, finding not even a hairline crack. It was as if the door had never existed.
Behind them, the grinding stopped. Aris dared to look back. The stone deity stood motionless, its blank face now directly facing them, just feet away. The beating heart in its hand stilled. Then, with a crack that echoed in the silent reality and the spectral one simultaneously, it split open.
Instead of blood, a dark, granular dust poured forth, hitting the floor with a sound like falling sand. The dust began to coalesce, rising, taking shape. It formed a smaller, imperfect replica of the god. Then another. And another. An audience of stone, created for an audience of flesh. They were multiplying, and they were all turning their smooth, featureless faces toward the two living intruders, the only real things in a realm of echoes, waiting for the show to begin.
