The blood trail led them deeper into the silk-veiled dark, and the manmade path behind them slipped away like a story told too many times. The deeper they went, the quieter Cain felt.
It was the kind of quiet that made even a joke feel like a sin.
The silk didn’t cling. It didn’t pull. It wasn’t sticky at all. It was just… there, threaded in purposeful lines across the walls, looped between natural stone pillars like banners in a hall. The path they followed was narrow but never blocked.
Someone—or something—wanted them to walk it.
Lexi moved quietly behind him, always just a step off his heel. Her breath had slowed. Her steps, too. If she was afraid, she didn’t show it.
Cain hated that.
He slowed near a sharp curve, flattening his palm to the stone beside him. The webbing here was arranged—spaced at perfect intervals, strung like invisible tripwires across the floor and above their heads. He ducked through the strands without touching them, like slipping under a noose.
“This doesn’t feel like a nest,” he muttered. “It feels like a hallway.”
Lexi’s chains clinked softly as she mirrored his movements, ducking the strands with ease.
“You okay?” Cain asked over his shoulder.
She nodded.
He didn’t buy it, but he let it go.
The tunnel took another slow curve downward, and the scent changed. Still dust and silk, but now there was also something older, like rusted iron soaked in rainwater. He wrinkled his nose and swept his hand over the wall.
More silk. And—
He froze.
A face.
No, not a face. A mask of one.
A body was wrapped on the wall, just above the curve, bound so tightly in webbing that it looked like part of the stone. But the eyes were exposed. Open. Milky and wrong. The jaw had collapsed inward, and the hair—what little remained—was pressed flat to the scalp, matted in ash-colored threads.
Another corpse, this one presumably human.
Cain grimaced and looked away, then stopped.
Another one
Wrapped lower this time, close to the floor, with its head missing, chains still locked around its ankles.
Lexi stared for a moment too long.
The air grew heavier the deeper they went—thick with dust, but still. Still in a way that pressed against the eardrums, that made every footstep sound wrong. Their movements were loud in the silence, and yet the silence was somehow louder.
The blood trail was drying now, flaking near the edges, but still there.
Cain flexed his fingers on the grip of his gun, eyes flicking across the corridor. The webbing had shifted. It no longer draped or veiled. Now, it outlined. Each wall had narrow vertical patterns, like ribs. The ceiling’s threads curved inward like a jaw closing.
“We’re walking into a mouth…” Lexi muttered, fascinated.
“I know,” Cain said.
The corners of her lips turned up. “Then… let’s go?”
They kept going.
Eventually, the trail ended.
It wasn’t abrupt—the trail gradually faded as they followed it. The drag marks lost their red, turned to brown, then to a patch of scrubbed stone where someone had tried to clean up.
The chamber beyond was lit—but not by flame.
A soft glow hummed from a circle embedded into the ground, like a magical seal or rune, but faded and uneven. It cast just enough light to show that the room ahead was manmade.
Stone benches lined the walls surrounding a low, central platform. Webs stretched above like a vaulted ceiling, but not a single thread touched the floor.
Cain stopped just outside the circle.
Lexi came up beside him, her expression unreadable. She looked at the seal, then at the room beyond.
“What is this?” she asked.
Cain shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He stepped into the light.
Nothing happened.
No attack. No trap.
But something watched. He felt it. He knew the same way a paranoid man feels the camera shift angles when he’s alone.
He scanned the edges of the room.
There—carved into the far wall, mostly hidden beneath another drape of silk—was a sliver of steel.
A doorway.
He moved toward it, slower now.
The door had no handle, just a small indentation in the center and a burn mark below it like someone had tried to force it open once.
“Lexi,” he said, nodding toward the door. “We’re close.”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Cain turned.
She was still standing in the circle, staring at the glowing lines. Her hands were trembling.
Yet there was no fear in her eyes.
“I didn’t think we’d get this far,” she whispered.
Cain softened his voice. “We’re not done yet. But we’re almost there.”
“What if they say no? These are humans. They won’t free a monster…”
Cain looked at the door, then at her.
“Then we’ll figure something else out.”
She met his eyes.
“What if it’s too late? What if I break before then?”
He grinned. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I don’t care,” he said. “You won’t.”
She stared at him, her eyes widened slightly in disbelief. Her shoulders tensed, her breath catching.
“You… don’t care?”
He sighed and turned back to the door.
The silk curtain twitched slightly—just enough for him to glimpse a set of eyes behind it.
Human eyes.
The silk curtain rippled—just once—and the eyes vanished.
He took a step forward—
—and the light vanished.
Not dimmed. Gone. Like someone had plucked the rune from the earth and snuffed it out between two fingers. The walls were there, but wrong. The air folded inward. Cain stumbled, caught his balance—
And heard something massive hit the stone floor, shaking the chamber.
Behind them.
“Move!” he barked.
Lexi spun as an enormous spider the size of a small car surged into the ritual circle, bloated abdomen twitching, legs sharp as scythes and twice as long.
The air bent around it.
It was there.
Then not.
Cain fired on instinct—
The bullet passed through it, cracking the stone wall behind.
“Shit—!”
A second spider stepped out of the wall.
Then a third.
A fourth.
Lexi hesitated, her eyes flicking between the new spiders with a hint of uncertainty.
“Those spiders aren’t real…” she said. “I think…”
“You think?” Cain snapped.
She surged forward, sweeping a chain through one. It burst into a plume of silk and smoke.
“Pretty sure.”
The spiders circled.
Four, five, maybe more.
Each moved like they were caught between frames—jittering, glitching, limbs stuttering through solid stone. Their eyes shimmered like wet obsidian. Their shapes bled into one another.
Cain raised his gun toward one and fired.
The spider dropped.
But there was no system notification.
He narrowed his eyes. “Cunning piece of shit.”
The body twitched and twisted.
Another spider crawled out of its mouth.
Cain shot it.
It burst into silk and vanished.
It was just a distraction.
Then he heard it. A voice.
Faint, but familiar.
“Cain…”
He froze. The sound had no direction like it had slipped into his ear through memory alone. He turned—
And saw a spider with Lexi’s face.
No, she was caught in its legs, screaming, arms pinned—
No.
She was standing behind him. Unharmed.
He blinked and the vision was gone.
A spider appeared above him—he turned too late.
It crashed into him from above, driving him to the floor with the full force of its weight. His back slammed into the stone and all the air fled his lungs. He cried out as one jagged leg slammed into his indestructible jacket and raked down his side.
“NIC—CAIN!”
He rolled, the spider’s fangs sinking into the stone beside his head, missing by inches. The heat of its breath was wet, sour, and close.
He tried to lift his gun—
The spider slapped it aside with a foreleg. His wrist cracked against the floor.
Cain groaned, trying to crawl away.
Then he saw Lexi.
Frozen.
Wide-eyed.
Chains limp.
“Don’t—” he wheezed. “Don’t freeze up now—!”
Her pupils dilated.
A second spider dropped near her. It hissed.
“Not again…” she whispered.
Her breathing quickened.
“Not again…!”
Something snapped.
She screamed and lunged across the chamber. Her chains sang through the air and cracked against the real spider’s side, sending it reeling from Cain.
Then she was on it.
Chains wrapped around its head, legs, jaws. She pulled and tore and ripped, howling madly.
Cain rolled over, gasping as he cradled his wrist.
The spider let out a faint screech.
He stared at it through a haze of pain, half-laughing, half furious.
“The skill point…” he muttered. “I’m not fighting a fucking car-sized spider for nothing.”
He shambled over to his gun, each step dragging. His left hand trembled. His right wrist hung useless at his side.
Cain knelt, teeth clenched, and scooped the weapon up.
Then he pointed it at the spider.
And he fired.
=You have defeated (1) Duskweb Spider=
=You gain 0.50 skill points=
=Current skill points: 0.73=
He lowered his gun.
“…Lexi…”
She didn’t stop.
The spider’s body sagged beneath her, already caved in. Half its eyes had ruptured. Its legs twitched reflexively under the repeated impacts.
Still she ripped and tore and smashed.
“LEXI!”
He ran toward her and grabbed her wrist.
Without thinking, he used the hand with a broken wrist.
White-hot pain lanced up his arm—sharp, sudden, blinding.
He bit down on the scream, but it showed in his face.
She froze.
Her breath tore out of her lungs in ragged, animal bursts. Her hands, face, and chest were soaked in spider blood. Her eyes looked past him at something long gone.
Then she blinked.
And she saw him.
And she saw what she’d done.
“Cain…?” she whispered.
He nodded once. “I’m here.”
She looked down at the ruin beneath her. Her chains trembled in her hands.
“I couldn’t stop,” she said. “Even after it stopped moving, I couldn’t stop…”
He gently let go of her wrist. The silence crept back around them.
Then he reached out and pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her into a hug.
She flinched at his touch but didn’t pull away.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay.”
Behind them, the stone door hissed open.
They didn’t move. Not yet.
The open doorway gaped wide, framed by hanging strands of silk, like curtains parting for a stage. But neither of them felt like stepping through just yet.
Lexi leaned into his chest, lowering her eyes. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t want to be like this.”
He hugged her tighter, wincing as pain lanced up his arm.
“Then don’t be.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Whatever she’d been about to say, it folded in on itself like a sob swallowed before it reached air.
Finally, she pulled away.
“Would they still want me?” she asked. “If they saw me like that…”
He didn’t need to ask who she meant.
The ones who were gone. The ones who couldn’t answer.
But he could.
He looked at her—really looked. He saw the blood. He saw her quivering eyes and the exhaustion in her trembling body.
“You’re still here,” he said. “As long as you’re still here, you can become whatever you want later.”
She shuddered, her lips quivering as she nodded.
Cain stood, cradling his injured wrist. The pain was there—blazing, sharp—but distant now, like background noise.
He looked toward the door.
The ritual circle behind them had gone dark. The silk strands above had stilled. The air no longer rippled with illusions or threats.
He offered her his good hand.
Lexi hesitated only a moment before taking it.
Together, they stepped through the open doorway.
The stone shifted behind them with a heavy click, like the dungeon was closing its mouth.
The silk curtain whispered shut behind them.
The room on the other side was quiet—eerily so. No webs or spiders. No glowing circles or ornate runes.
It was the most ordinary room they’d seen in hours. And somehow, that made it worse.
Lexi exhaled slowly, the last of her adrenaline bleeding out in a shiver. She didn’t let go of his hand right away.
Cain scanned the chamber. It wasn’t large—perhaps ten paces wide. At the far end stood a desk built into the stone, cluttered with scrolls, ink pots, and a half-burned lantern. Behind it, a curtain of black cloth veiled a second doorway.
“This doesn’t look like a dungeon,” Lexi murmured.
“Looks like we made it,” Cain said, voice low.
A soft shuffle echoed from behind the curtain.
Cain tightened his grip on her hand.
Then a voice spoke. It was calm, unhurried, measured.
“You made it further than most.”
The curtain parted. A woman stepped out. She was human and looked to be in her mid-thirties. Tired eyes rested behind a set of round spectacles. She wore a coat that didn’t match the room—it was too clean and modern, the kind used to blend into an urban city, not a dungeon.
Cain stepped forward, every instinct on edge. “We were told someone down here could help with a contract.”
The woman looked them both over. Her gaze lingered on Cain’s wrist, on Lexi’s chains, on the spider blood still drying on her arms and their clothes.
“Cain, I assume?”
He nodded cautiously.
“A little over an hour, by my estimate. Not a bad clear time since you took the main route.”
She tapped a silver ring on her finger, the faintest blue pulse flickering across its surface. “We’ve been watching since you entered.”
Cain stared at the ring.
“…Been watching the whole time?” he repeated, voice quiet.
She nodded. “That’s part of the test.”
Lexi shifted slightly; her chains rattled faintly.
Cain’s voice darkened. “And?”
The woman tilted her head like he’d asked a silly question.
“You belong,” she concluded.
He took a breath and let it out slowly.
Behind them, the door slid shut. The sound was soft, but final.
The woman turned and walked deeper into the room. “Come. We’ll get your wrist healed up and then we’ll discuss terms.”
Lexi hesitated. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ground.
Cain didn’t push her. He just waited.
After a moment, she moved. She didn’t have enough resolve, but she managed to muster up some momentum—just enough to keep going before she thought too hard about stopping.
Cain followed.
The light dimmed behind them. The spider blood on their clothes was already beginning to flake.
The woman didn’t look back to see if they were following.
He adjusted his grip on his wrist, ignoring the pain. His eyes tracked the hallway ahead, the faint glow of sconces built into carved stone, the distant hum of enchantment, and the low rhythmic thud of something mechanical further in.
He had his suspicions when Lila sent them down here.
People. Infrastructure. Rules.
All this, buried beneath a monster’s nest.
He didn’t like it.
Not because it was dangerous.
But because it was organized.
Because someone had built it this way.
And that meant someone had plans.
Cain sighed, the last of the dusty dungeon air leaving his lungs.
It was time to see the true face of the Thieves’ Guild.
Project Knightfall 