Sealed Garden of Gods

Chapter 3- The Silk Trap

The "morning" didn’t bring no sun. It just turned the dark gray mist into a pale, sickly silver. We woke up with our clothes damp and our lungs feeling heavy, like we been breathing in wet wool all night.

"Move out," Borg grunted. He looked older today. The fire was nothing but cold ash now, and that warmth I felt in my chest last night? It was gone, replaced by a knot of stone.

We walked for hours. The forest changed. The trees weren't just black anymore; they were covered in something white and fuzzy. It looked like mold at first. Then I saw it hanging from the branches in long, thin strands. It looked like the mist had finally gotten tired of floating and decided to sit down on the world.

"Static," Vax whispered. He was rubbing his arms. "The air feels... sticky. My skin is crawling."

"It is the mana," Elian murmured, though he sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "Ancient ruins often leak raw energy. It sticks to the physical world. It is a good sign. We must be getting close."

Vax didn't look convinced. He kept looking up. "I don't like the trees. They look like they're reaching for us."

He was right. The canopy was lower here. The massive black branches were draped in thick, heavy curtains of that white stuff. It wasn't mold. It was too strong. Too organized. Every time my shoulder brushed against a hanging strand, it didn't break. It stretched.

"Wait," I said, stopping.

The group halted. "What is it, Kyle?" Borg asked, his hand tightening on his wooden club.

"Listen," I whispered.

Silence.

In a forest, silence is supposed to be peaceful. But this was a dead silence. No wind. No rustle of leaves. No sound of our own breathing. It was like the world had held its breath, waiting for a punchline.

Then, a soft thrum. Like a plucked guitar string, deep in the fog.

"Vax?" Borg called out.

Vax didn't answer. I turned my head. Vax was standing three feet away from us. But he wasn't looking at us. He was looking up. His mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. A single, thin silver thread was stuck to his collar.

Snap.

In a blink—faster than my eyes could follow—Vax was gone. One second he was there, the next, there was just a blur of movement and a sharp whoosh of air.

"VAX!" Elian screamed.

We looked up. High above, in the thick white webbing of the canopy, a bundle was twitching. It was Vax. He was wrapped in silk from his neck to his ankles in less than a second. He was struggling, his eyes wide with a terror so pure it made my stomach turn. Then, something dark and many-legged scurried out from the shadows of the leaves. It moved with a jerky, unnatural speed. It dipped its head toward Vax’s neck, and the twitching stopped.

"Run," Borg whispered.

"What—" Elian started.

"RUN!" Borg bellowed, grabbing Elian by the collar and shoving him forward.

We bolted. The mud splashed against our legs, but it wasn't just mud anymore. The ground was covered in layers of webbing that acted like glue. Every step was a fight. Behind us, and above us, the thrumming started again. Not just one string. Hundreds.

The mist wasn't mist.

I looked at my hand as I ran. A tiny, microscopic thread was stuck to my thumb. It wasn't vapor. It was silk. The entire forest—every inch of the air—was filled with millions of invisible spider threads. We hadn't been walking through a forest. We been walking into a web that was miles wide.

"They're everywhere!" Elian shrieked.

I looked up and saw them. Thousands of eyes. Small, red, and cold, reflecting the sickly light of the forest. The "trees" were moving. The bark was peeling off, revealing hairy legs and bloated, pulsating abdomens. The spiders weren't on the trees. The spiders were the forest.

"Keep moving! Don't look back!" Borg roared. He was swinging his club like a madman, snapping the thick webs that tried to descend on us.

A spider the size of a wolf dropped from a branch right in front of Elian. It had a skull-like pattern on its back. Elian fell backward, his hands glowing with a frantic, flickering blue light.

"Get back!" he yelled, throwing a burst of mana. The spider hissed as the magic singed its legs, but three more dropped behind it.

"Elian, move!" I shouted, diving forward with my rusted dagger. I jammed the blade into the side of a spider’s head. It felt like stabbing a bag of wet sand. Thick, yellow ichor sprayed over my face, smelling like ammonia and rot.

"I can't—my legs are stuck!" Elian cried out.

The webbing on the ground had coiled around his ankles like living snakes. He was being pulled toward the darkness under the roots.

"Borg! Help him!" I yelled.

Borg turned, but he was surrounded. He was smashing heads, his face covered in blood and sweat, but for every one he killed, ten more crawled out of the mist.

"Kyle... save yourself..." Elian gasped.

I reached for him, my fingers brushing his robe, but then a massive web-net dropped from the canopy. It draped over Elian, pinning him to the earth. Before I could cut him free, a dozen spiders swarmed over him. I heard the sound of silk spinning—a dry, rasping sound—and then Elian’s screams were muffled into a hum. They dragged him upward, into the dark, just like Vax.

It was just me and Borg now.

"The gate!" Borg pointed ahead.

Through the trees, I saw it. A massive, crumbling archway made of white stone that glowed with a faint, holy light. The ruins of Aldenora. The spiders were thick on the trees near the gate, but they weren't crossing the line. It was like there was an invisible wall they couldn't pass.

But standing between us and the gate was the Queen.

She was the size of a carriage. Her legs were tipped with obsidian spikes, and her abdomen was translucent, filled with thousands of tiny, squirming young. She didn't scuttle; she drifted, her weight supported by thousands of threads we couldn't even see.

We stopped. There was no way around her.

Borg looked at the gate, then he looked at me. His eyes were calm. The "Captain" was back. He wasn't a criminal anymore; he was a soldier with a job to do.

"Kyle," he said softly. "You’re the fast one. When I move, you don't stop. You don't look back. You get to those ruins."

"Borg, no," I said, my voice cracking. "We can both—"

"Shut up," he snapped, but he smiled. It was the same smile he gave me by the fire. "I’m a traitor, remember? This is a good way for a traitor to go. Saving one life to make up for the ones I couldn't save in the slums."

He let out a guttural roar that shook the very mist. He charged.

He didn't use his club. He dropped it and tackled the Queen’s front legs, digging his fingers into the joints. He was a fortress wall, and he threw his entire weight into her. The Queen screeched, a sound that felt like needles in my brain. She reared back, her massive fangs dripping with green venom.

"GO!" Borg screamed, his voice straining as the spiders began to swarm over his back, biting through his leather armor.

I ran.

I didn't want to. Everything in me wanted to stay and die with him. But I saw Vax’s face in my mind. I heard Elian’s laugh. They died so we could get this far. If I died here, their deaths meant nothing.

I sprinted past the Queen. I felt her leg brush my shoulder, sharp as a sword, cutting through my shirt and skin. I didn't stop. I dived toward the white stone archway.

I hit the ground hard, sliding across cold, ancient marble.

I scrambled to my feet and turned around.

Borg was gone. There was just a mountain of spiders, a shifting mass of black and gray legs where he had stood. For a second, I saw his hand reach out from the pile, clutching a piece of the Queen’s leg, before he was pulled down into the swarm.

The spiders reached the edge of the stone gate and stopped. They hissed, their mandibles clicking in fury, but they wouldn't step on the white marble.

I stood there, shaking, covered in the blood of my friends and the guts of monsters. I was alone. Again.

The silence of the ruins was different than the forest. It wasn't a dead silence. It was a heavy, waiting silence.

I looked up. The "Sealed Garden" wasn't a garden. It was a graveyard of white stone and giant statues that looked down at me with empty eyes.

I took a shaky breath. My heart was beating so hard it hurt. I was alive.

"I'll live," I whispered to the empty air. "I'll live for all of you."

I turned my back on the forest and walked into the ruins of the Gods.