Trapped In Elysium: A Virtual Reality Nightmare-Chapter 116: Nothing here but death

The air grew colder the deeper they ventured into the palace. The once-grand halls of stone and crumbling marble gave way to narrow corridors lined with dust-covered statues—many of them broken, their eyes gouged out or faces chipped into twisted, unreadable expressions. Borik and Liam led the way, Borik holding the tattered map.

They said little as they moved, the only sounds being the low hum of their boots against the floor and the occasional whisper of wind moaning through unseen cracks in the structure. Now and then, a cold draft would sweep past them, raising the hairs on their arms and necks—not from temperature alone, but from something else. An unnatural stillness that clung to the air. A silence that didn’t feel empty, but full... watching.

Liam raised his fist, motioning for a halt.

Ahead, the corridor opened into a large, arched stone doorway that led downward into darkness. A staircase carved directly into the earth beneath the palace—twisting, steep, old. The stone looked wet in places, glistening like it had recently been wept on by the earth itself. Moss clung to the edges of the steps, and the air grew heavier with each breath they took.

"This is it," Borik said quietly, eyes on the map. "The royal crypts. Passage leads down to the resting place of the king’s bloodline."

"Fantastic," Marcus muttered behind them. "Nothing like strolling through a cursed dead family’s basement to brighten your afternoon."

They descended one by one, the light from a fire torch casting eerie, dancing shadows along the walls. Nobody spoke now. The silence was sacred, but not in a comforting way. It pressed against them, weighty and oppressive, as if the dead didn’t like being disturbed.

When they reached the bottom, the air was stale. It clung to their skin like a thin sheet of cold sweat. The crypt chamber stretched out before them, dim and vast. High, curved ceilings arched overhead, and stone coffins lined both sides of the room in perfect symmetry. Dozens of them. Some sealed shut, others cracked or worn with time. Each one bore names etched in ancient symbols, some covered in moss, others fresh enough to read.

At the center of the room stood a raised dais with one particularly ornate tomb—larger than the rest. Clearly royal. Its carvings were different. More ominous. More... alive.

A sense of wrongness rippled through the group like a chill.

Sophia’s eyes scanned the room carefully. "Why do they feel like they’re watching us?"

"They are," Eleanor said, her voice hushed, more of a breath than speech. "Or something is."

Suddenly, a sharp, creaking groan echoed faintly through the chamber. Not from any one place—everywhere, and nowhere all at once. It was the kind of sound that made you question if you’d really heard it, or if it was just your nerves.

Jason gripped his staff tighter.

They moved slowly, feet dragging over the dust that had gathered untouched for what felt like centuries. Liam reached the center of the chamber and turned to make sure everyone was still close, still accounted for. He didn’t like this place. The air felt heavy with death—but not the peaceful kind. The kind that lingered. Bitter, angry, waiting.

Borik suddenly turned to the others, holding his hand up sharply. "Do not touch anything," he said, firmly. His voice cut through the heavy silence like a blade. "Not a tomb. Not a wall. Nothing. These kinds of crypts... they’re trapped. Protected by old rites.

Mariel moved instinctively closer to Sophia, her hand nervously gripping her sword hilt. Sophia, in turn, kept her bow low but ready. Nobody questioned Borik. They’d all seen what traps could do—and here, in this chamber of forgotten kings and their bloodline, one wrong step might wake more than just ancient mechanisms.

So they stood there, still as statues among the tombs, surrounded by the remains of a dynasty whose power had long since crumbled—but whose presence still clawed at the walls like a silent scream begging to be remembered.

Liam inhaled through his nose, slowly. "Stay close. Eyes open. We keep moving."

They had gone deeper than any of them thought possible.

The stone beneath their boots had long grown colder, damp with age and silence. Their breaths echoed louder now, like the air was thinner, the walls pressing in tighter. Marcus was the first to voice what everyone else had been feeling for the last twenty minutes.

"Are we going to the core of the damned world?" he grumbled, rubbing his forearms as a shiver ran through him. "I swear, we’re more underground than above it by now. Even dwarves don’t dig this deep."

Jason let out a nervous, hollow chuckle. "For once, I agree with Marcus. Something’s off about this. The deeper we go, the heavier everything feels... Like the stone itself is judging us."

"No turning back," Borik said gruffly, eyes locked on the map, though even his voice lacked the usual steel. "The map says this leads to the inner vault. Whatever we’re meant to find—it’s through here."

The corridor opened into a wider chamber just up ahead. The ceiling arched higher again, and crumbled steps led them into a massive, half-destroyed antechamber. Rubble lay strewn across the floor, ancient roots curling in from the cracks above like claws. The torches on the wall had long since gone cold, but some strange, dim glow emanated from the stones themselves—faint, eerie.

Liam’s hand reached out and stopped the group. His eyes locked onto something scrawled across the walls. Not carved like the royal markings above the tombs—but etched hastily. Desperate, even. With blood, or charcoal, or something darker.

Sophia stepped beside him, her hand running over one of the writings. Her fingers trembled, even though she tried to hide it.

"What the hell..." she whispered.

There were dozens of them—scrawled across every reachable surface, overlapping one another in a frenzy of madness. Some neat. Others jagged. All written by hands that knew fear too intimately.

"Nothing here but death," Liam read aloud, voice flat.

Jason moved closer, shining the tip of his staff at the wall. His face fell pale as he read another line just beside Liam’s hand.

"Never touch the treasure," he muttered. "They’re not warnings... they’re dying words."

Marcus squinted at another, frowning. "Nexus Corp lied to us."

"Suicidal mission..." Sophia whispered, reading another. "There’s no escaping death or madness here." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Mariel sank to her knees slowly, her face drawn with a quiet dread. Her sword slipped from her hand without her even noticing.

"So many people came before us," she murmured. "And none of them made it back. Why would we be any different?"

Silence followed her words. A heavy, damning silence.

Even Von looked uncertain now, his fingers gripping the handle of his club too tightly. Eleanor’s face was unreadable, her eyes flicking between the words like she was searching for logic in madness. But Liam saw it in their eyes—doubt, fear, that creeping thought clawing at the back of all their minds.

They were going to die here.

"No," Liam said suddenly, his voice louder than he meant, ringing through the chamber. "Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. We’re not dying down here. I don’t care how many failed before us—we are not them."

He turned to the others, gaze sharp.

"We’ve come this far because we work together. Because we’re not the same fools who came here chasing gold or glory. We didn’t come unprepared. We’re not the same."

No one answered him. Not with words. But something changed in their stance. Mariel slowly picked up her sword again. Marcus crossed his arms and looked away, but he didn’t argue. Sophia gave Liam a faint nod, and Jason tightened his grip on his staff.

Then it came.

A sudden, bone-chilling cry.

It echoed from somewhere ahead—no, not just ahead. All around them. Like the walls themselves were screaming. It wasn’t the cry of an animal. Or a man. Or anything human. It was raw. Piercing. Like sorrow turned inside out, twisted with hate and fury. It dug into the ears, into the mind, and everyone staggered back on instinct.

Then... it appeared.

Floating there... between the last passage and the stone archway to the next room.

A spirit. Not of the dead kings. Not of anything they could recognize. Just wrong.

And it was watching them with murderous intent.