CHAPTER I: THE WORLD WITHIN

Few people know of the cave that remains beneath Demwith Island, but tonight you’ll become one of them. There is no moon and there are no stars as the boat runs ashore. Above you is the grey mass of a cliff face. You disembark, the rocks, shells and broken glass below wounding your feet.

As instructed, you walk 50ft to the entrance. You pull the thick, heavy chains on the outside to hoist open the solid metal door in the cliff, revealing a void darker than night, with a stench stronger than hell. The dim light of your torch hardly shows the way through the cave, as cold, wet stone emerges under your feet. What at first sounds like a stream now must be a sewer, rats scurrying up ahead, thoughts of disease entering through the cuts in your feet. Something decayed swallows your next step, and from afar, you hear a dull electrical generator. But in this lightless, heatless underworld, you can’t place what it’s for. Perhaps it powers the settlement above, the life you once led. You had no choice but to come here.

Suddenly, a colony of bats rushes overhead, and in surprise you drop your torch. It smashes and there’s nothing but darkness and the generator, humming, haunting. It guides you through the cave until you reach a locked door. This is where the instructions stop.

Thumbling through your keys of large and rusted metal, you find one that fits. You turn it, unlocking the door, its hinges creaking as it opens. Here lies the generator. You walk towards it, running your hand along a metal panel, warm and coating your hand with something that feels like rust or soot, the sulphurous smell of fuel blending with the putrid cave.

You struggle to see in the darkness, until you find a switch. You press it and the generator lets out a deafening roar, filling the cave with blinding, white light. When it subdues, you see the walls for the first time, although certainly not the last - the messages are unforgettable. Line after line, the etchings of a thousand souls: pleas, cries, despair. Was this their final resting place? The generator cuts out and the light disappears. The last thing you hear is the door in the cliff face come crashing down, sealing you in.