For a split second, Noah wondered if the tablet had glitched. Then he tossed the idea—this place didn’t do ordinary glitches unless someone had slipped in a god-tier AI that could hot-swap languages on the fly.

  He eyed Gaudemunda, suspicious now.

  This woman… Gaudemunda. What were the odds that the only other dead person he’d meet down here would also be Lithuanian? Statistically microscopic. Unless the admins had sent him a compatriot on purpose—to make small talk easier? No. Something wasn’t lining up.

  “What?” she fidgeted under his stare.

  “Look, Gaudemunda…” Noah spoke slowly, turning over a far more absurd theory. “Right now—what language am I speaking to you?”

  “Right now?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Polish, obviously.”

  Noah knew maybe two words of Polish. No way he was stringing full sentences with just that.

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Why are you asking?” She inched her chair back.

  “Because I’m pretty sure we’ve been speaking Lithuanian this whole time.”

  “What? No! I wouldn’t even know how—wait, you’re Lithuanian?” she blinked.

  “Yeah. Y’know, that small country north of Poland…”

  “I know where Lithuania is.” She rolled her eyes. “But seriously? Your name sounds… Polish.”

  “You wish,” Noah snorted. “Your name is the Lithuanian one. Gaudemunda? I’d never guess you were Polish…”

  “It’s an old name, okay?” she bristled. “Rare, but perfectly Polish.”

  “I’d happily Google it if this stupid tablet allowed it,” Noah muttered, not ready to concede.

  They both fell quiet, chewing on it.

  “So,” Noah said at last, scratching his head. “Here’s where we are: I speak Lithuanian and hear you in Lithuanian. You speak Polish and hear me in Polish?”

  She nodded.

  “This cave just keeps getting weirder,” he grumbled. “At least it explains that cursed video.”

  He didn’t feel like reshooting it. Mood ruined.

  Now he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if the next cage held a Chinese or Japanese prisoner. Would they, too, answer him in crisp, accent-free Lithuanian? He kind of wanted to see that…

  * * *

  When the tablet chirped its ten-percent threat, Noah headed out to pour the glowing soup of the dead. This time, he hustled, chasing a personal best. Twenty-four buckets up, then two more for the two points. He now had four total and refused to spend a single one yet.

  Noah and Gaudemunda geared up: he took the bucket pole, she the butcher’s hook, and one lantern.

  Back in the big grotto, everything was as they’d left it. Either no new cage had dropped, or they’d missed it. Noah breathed easier. Sure, he still wanted to meet a Japanese soul who magically “spoke Lithuanian”… just not today.

  At the far end, he opened the tablet, tapped Open Black Door. After a jaunty jingle, his points ticked down by one. The door, as always, didn’t so much as twitch.

  “Ready,” he murmured.

  Gaudemunda set the lantern down and raised the hook.

  Noah pressed the handle and swung the door wide. Rusty hinges screamed— that was expected. Absolute darkness beyond was also expected.

  Unexpected was the slap of wind in his face.

  They waited, muscles tight. Finally, the echoes bled away, and silence fell.

  Gaudemunda lifted the lantern and leaned forward. No corridor this time. Just a lip of ground, then hard-cut darkness.

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  “For hell’s sake,” Noah muttered.

  Braver now, she edged to the threshold and dipped the lantern. The lit strip ended at a sharp drop: another abyss. No opposite wall, even when Noah hooked the lantern to the pole and pushed it out over the void. The space beyond was massive. The only way forward was down, into black uncertainty.

  “I can’t see anything,” Gaudemunda whispered. “Is this it? No path?”

  “There has to be.” Noah cupped his hands and shouted into the dark. “Hey!”

  Echoes came back in layered waves; nothing else stirred.

  “Big open chamber,” he diagnosed. “With walls.”

  He lowered the light toward the threshold, then edged out and peered left, along the wall.

  “Aha!” he called, brightening.

  There was a path after all: a narrow ledge skirting the stone. He glanced right—an identical ledge led the other way.

  “Left or right?” he asked.

  “Uh… left?” she wavered.

  “Or we split up and try both,” Noah mused aloud. “Doesn’t sound like anything’s lurking out there. Except for the fall.”

  She did not love that idea.

  “Left it is,” he said quickly, catching the fear in her eyes. “I’ll go first.”

  He pressed his back to the rock and eased along the ledge. The stone was dark gray, swallowing light; he could see four, maybe five steps ahead.

  Behind him, Gaudemunda swore under her breath.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” he paused.

  “N-no! I’m not!” she shot back, voice trembling. “And stop… stopping!”

  He rolled his eyes and moved on, counting steps. The path angled downward. For a second, he thought about filming the trek, then let it go—too dark, too risky, and he didn’t need crowd-sourced advice right now. Options he had. Unless someone out there actually knew this place.

  After roughly a hundred steps, he got impatient. The ledge kept dropping, never widening or crumbling—good news there. Gaudemunda’s breathing grew louder; she hated this.

  “Is… is it much farther?” she blurted.

  “How would I know?” Noah muttered. “The path just goes.”

  “Should’ve gone right…” she whispered, then her shoe scraped. “O kurwa—!”

  He threw out a hand, but she didn’t fall. She plastered herself to the wall, panting.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “At least now I know you’re Polish,” he said dryly.

  She answered with a mean look.

  They moved again—and stopped ten steps later. The lantern caught a side path jutting at a right angle away from the wall, straight over the void.

  “Okay, which now?” Noah sighed. “Left or right?”

  Gaudemunda leaned out, squinting at the faintly lit bridge.

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “Either way, it’s our first bridge across. And my turn to choose.”

  He stepped onto the narrow bridge, arms out for balance. It was a bit wider than the wall-hugging ledge, but now there was no wall to lean on. Gaudemunda’s breathing quickened behind him. She was scared, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. They had to cross.

  Thankfully, the gap wasn’t huge. After about forty steps, the path met another ledge along the far wall—this one blessedly wide, three paces across. You could lie down here full-length. Gaudemunda practically did—she stumbled, dropped to her knees, then lay there gasping. Noah sat beside her and waited. He checked the tablet: only forty minutes since the last refill. Plenty of runway.

  Once she’d caught her breath, they took the broad ledge in the direction she pointed. It dead-ended quickly at a sheer drop. Back they went.

  The other branch was more promising, and they picked up the pace. The path widened and pinched, rose and dipped, but refused to end or fork. With every step, Noah felt the scale: not just a large grotto—a titanic one. At least it was silent. He’d stopped fearing ambushes long ago and mostly watched his feet. There wasn’t much else to watch.

  After maybe half a kilometer, they found stairs—crisp-cut into the rock, leading upward. Noah grinned. Finally, a sign they were going the right way.

  At the top, a small landing hugged the wall. And another set of black doors. No bonus lanterns this time.

  He tried the handle and got the usual frostbite smack. Of course...

  Noah opened the app and paid another point. Two points left.

  He gripped the pole tighter and nodded to Gaudemunda to pull the door. Even if nothing had jumped them yet, he wasn’t about to get lazy. Most likely, those sneaky admins will lull them into a false sense of safety—and then BAM, unleash the hell when they least expect it.

  The hinges wailed. Beyond was the same bottomless dark and the same impossible space.

  And a path hugging the abyss.

  “Again?” Noah groaned. “Did the admins run out of ideas or what…”

  Gaudemunda only sighed.

  They walked. And walked. A word here and there; otherwise, footsteps and the occasional ghost of a breeze from nowhere. When they finally hit another fork, Noah saw with a twinge that their elapsed time was sneaking toward six hours. Both branches looked solid. They scouted a little each way—no dead ends.

  “I don’t like this,” he said, stopping at the junction.

  “I haven’t liked any of this since the beginning,” she said, eyeing the drop.

  “The worst part is we don’t know how far to the end,” Noah said. “If we don’t reach something real in the next four hours, we have to turn around.”

  “Left or right?” Gaudemunda asked, glancing both ways.