In the cave

"No," I whispered, the word echoing back as a hollow mockery. "No, no, no!" The stories were lies. The legends were just bedtime tales to keep kids from wandering off. Frustration, hot and familiar, surged through me. I pulled back my fist and swung at the solid rock that had just executed my dreams. But my hand didn't shatter against the stone. It vanished. The momentum sent me stumbling forward, my fist passing through the "wall" as if it were made of smoke, and I ended up punching my own leg. I froze, my heart stopping for a beat. I reached out again, trembling, and watched as my fingers dipped into the rock. It felt like cool mist. I took a deep breath, held it, and stepped through. The air on the other side was startlingly warm, a sharp contrast to the damp chill of the tunnel.

I found myself in a massive chamber carved directly out of the mountain's heart.

Two colossal pillars rose toward a ceiling, and in the center of the room lay a strange, intentional mound of stones, a jagged circle of rocks of all sizes. And then, at the far end, stood a freestanding stone wall. In the middle of it was a doorway.

It was true. Everything was true.

I walked toward it, my boots clicking rhythmically on the dry floor, but as I reached the threshold,

I stopped. There was nothing on the other side. Not a room, not a forest, just a flat, absolute void.

A doorway into a blackness so thick it seemed to swallow the light of my flashlight. I turned back to the rock pile and grabbed a stone the size of my palm. I weighed it, tossing it up and catching it a few times to steady my nerves, then took a breath and hurled it into the darkness. It didn't fall.

It didn't clatter against a floor. It simply... ceased to be. No sound, no echo, just a silent theft of existence. A cold shiver raced down my spine. I decided to walk around the back of the freestanding wall, half-expecting to see the stone lying on the floor on the other side. But I wasn't prepared for what was actually there. Piles of them. Skeletal remains bleached white by time, tossed haphazardly over one another. Some were tangled in heaps; others sat propped against the stone as if they were still patiently waiting for a bus that would never arrive. "Nope. I’m out. I am so done."

The adrenaline of discovery turned into pure, unadulterated terror. I spun around and sprinted back toward the wall I had emerged from, desperate to crawl back to my boring street and my boring life.

BANG!

I slammed face-first into solid rock. The impact sent me reeling backward, stars exploding in my vision as I hit the floor. Panicked, I scrambled to my feet and began clawing at the stone, my nails dragging against the cold, unyielding surface. I ran my hands along every inch of the wall, searching for that soft patch of mist, anything. But there was only rock. Cold, hard, solid rock. It was a one-way valve. You could come in, but the mountain didn't let you out. No one had ever "disappeared" into another world. They hadn't found adventure or magic. They had just walked into a trap.

 And now, I was in here with them, just another skeleton waiting for the end. I retreated to the far corner of the chamber, as far from the skeletal remains as the cold stone walls would allow.

My back pressed against the rock, and my gaze remained fixed on the yawning black void of the doorway. Then, my stomach betrayed me with a loud, hollow growl. "Great. I’m starving," I muttered to the silence. Maybe skipping dinner just to spite Viola hadn't been my most brilliant tactical move.

I leaned my head back against the stone and closed my eyes for a second.

 No, it was definitely worth it, I decided with a small, defiant smirk. I reached into my bag, pulled out one of the apples, and sank my teeth into it. It was incredibly sweet, the juice stinging a small cut on my lip and trickling down my chin. I wiped it away with my sleeve, chewing slowly, trying to make the moment last. When I had finished every edible bit, I stood up and walked back to the doorway, tossing the core into the blackness. It vanished just like the stone. I stood there, thinking.

If all these people had been trapped here for years, why were they all in the same spot?

No sane person would choose to lie down and die in a pile of strangers. Why were they heaped together instead of scattered across the room?

The realization hit me like a physical blow. Something was collecting them.

Panic bubbled up in my throat, hot and acidic. I spun around, my flashlight beam dancing frantically over the pillars and the shadows, looking for eyes in the dark. But then, a second thought chased the first. If something was coming in here to pile them up, then something was also getting out.

There had to be a way.

Maybe the door wasn't a hole into nothing. Maybe it was the only way forward.

I studied the threshold. The stone had gone through. The apple had gone through. I was just matter, same as them. There was only one way to know for sure.

I backed up until I hit the mound of stones, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I took a deep, shaky breath, fixed my eyes on the center of the black void, and sprinted.

I didn't hesitate at the edge. I lunged forward, throwing my body into the darkness. Suddenly,

the world vanished. There was no floor, no ceiling, no sense of direction. I was spinning through a pressurized vacuum, a sickening swirl where up was down and forward was back.

My stomach lurched, the apple threatening to make a reappearance. And then, the ground came rushing up to meet me. I hit the earth hard, my limbs flailing like a ragdoll's, and tumbled across the dirt until the world finally stopped spinning. I lay there for a long while, emitting a series of pained grunts that echoed through the silence. Every bone in my body felt like it had been put through a rock tumbler. Eventually,

I forced myself up, brushing the dirt from my palms, and squinted at my surroundings. I was in a forest. A wave of bitter disappointment washed over me. Had I really risked my life, jumped into a void, and plummeted through a magical portal just to end up back in the same damn woods?