During her social season, Yvette attended an exhibition at the Royal Academy, where the Barbizon School—forerunners of the Impressionists—had begun challenging tradition. The academic artists, with their flawless techniques and photographic precision, crafted works so focused on form they felt sterile, leaving little room for imagination. In contrast, the Barbizon painters, though rougher in execution, captured nature’s essence through raw, heartfelt observation. Their art breathed life.

  Like prose: academic pieces were gilded but hollow; the Barbizon works, though unpolished, pulsed with authenticity.

  The statues here echoed this ethos. Grotesquely distorted, carved with primal roughness, they exuded a feral menace no words could capture.

  Holding her lamp close, Yvette traced a statue’s contours. Unbidden memories surfaced—a nightmare of falling, chased by shapeless dread, yet eerily familiar.

  She stepped back, glass crunching underfoot. A shard glinted in her palm.

  “We’re not the first,” she whispered.

  Across the chamber, Ulysses crouched, feline eyes glowing as he tinkered with a corroded artifact. Metal clinked.

  “Thirty years prior,” he said, lifting a broken Argand lamp. Its glass shade was splintered, the brass base green with age. “1880s design—brighter than oil lamps, once a luxury. Even American presidents gave them as gifts. This one’s sloppy craftsmanship. Mass-produced, surely.”

  Had another soul wandered these shadows decades ago, lamp trembling before these horrors? The shattered glass suggested panic.

  But the intruder’s fright might’ve been fleeting. Yvette spotted gold leaf clinging to a statue’s ear—more flecked hidden crevices.

  Did they scrape the gold off? The idea sparked revelation: the statues’ eyes and limbs bore jagged grooves, as if gemstones had been pried loose…

  “Natives here smelted gold and worshipped these idols,” Ulysses observed.

  Yvette nodded. Gold was simple to refine—streams yielded nuggets, melted easily. Even cavemen mastered it.

  No natives lurked now, but even if they did, Spanish steel had toppled empires. Primitive spears posed scant threat.

  They pressed deeper into narrow tunnels, silence broken only by dripping stalactites.

  A scorch mark stained the wall ahead. Ulysses froze, staring at rubble—shattered stalactites.

  “Not natural,” he muttered. Each bore hairline fractures. Nearby, lead pellets peppered the stone—like those shot at Yvette by Heather’s merrow crew.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A sailor’s pistol lay ahead. Its cherrywood grip, carved with nautical motifs, bore dark stains. Blood.

  The battle’s remnants unfolded: multiple lead shots, a single-shot blunderbuss. Reloading required minutes—powder, wad, pellet—forcing close combat after one volley. At least four sailors had fought here.

  Who won? The abandoned, bloodied gun hinted at their defeat.

  What were they fighting? Tribesmen should’ve fled gunfire. Yet the sailors’ panicked shots—one even striking a stalactite—suggested terror beyond reason.

  “Survivors escaped,” Ulysses said, revisiting the scorch marks. He lifted another Argand lamp. “Oil reservoir removed—unlike the hall’s intact one. Deliberate. They dumped fuel, set a firewall.”

  Yvette pictured it: a traitorous sailor igniting allies’ retreat path, sacrificing comrades to flee.

  Only certain doom could justify such betrayal. Else, surviving allies would’ve hanged the deserter.

  The tunnel’s tight confines should’ve favored defenders. With staggered reloading, they could’ve held the line. Yet they’d collapsed.

  Unless the enemy wasn’t human.

  “Sir, ahead might be—”

  “We go on,” Ulysses cut in.

  “I know. Just… be careful.”

  Logic dictated Ulysses scout ahead—his night vision surpassed her lamplight. Still, unease gnawed at Yvette. If ambushed, saving him demanded flawless execution—no second chances. Like her old shooter games: if the pointman fell to a camper, teammates had one shot to counterattack. But here, failure meant death.

  Catching her anxiety, Ulysses smiled. “Don’t fret. I won’t die.”

  Yvette wondered if his words hid deeper meaning—beyond tonight’s peril.

  They pressed deeper into the caverns until they discovered another chamber—its walls unnervingly smooth, as if shaped by hands long gone. Rows of niches honeycombed the stone, each cradling skeletal remains no taller than a child. The skulls wore eerie masks of carved bone; around their necks lay necklaces of polished stone, now scattered like fallen stars where frayed threads had failed.

  “Children?” Yvette ventured, though doubt tinged her voice. The bones were small—under a meter—yet oddly proportioned. A child’s skull outpaces its growing frame, but these skeletons balanced head and limbs like adults shrunk by some alchemy of time.

  “Adults,” Ulysses corrected. “Their growth plates fused. You recall island dwarfism? Predators shrink when resources dwindle. These might’ve been priests.” He gestured to ritual blades and beaded talismans among the bones. “Imagine—knee-high shamans threatening armed sailors. Unless…”

  “Unless their magic was real,” Yvette finished. A chilling thought, yet the bones predated any recent terror. Decades of decay hadn’t touched these relics. If the tribe survived, newer graves would mark their lineage. But the niches held only dust.

  No huts. No tools. No trace of fires or forage. The island lay barren, its dwarf inhabitants erased save for this tomb.

  The walls told their story in lurid pigments. Crude yet alive, the paintings writhed with half-seen shapes—a goddess monstrous in her fecundity: a nest of swollen breasts, eyes vast as moons. Early murals showed humans favored, kneeling closest to her gaze. But later works warped perspective—beasts swelled, men shrank, and the goddess stared emptily upward, deaf to desperate sacrifices.

  “Delusions… or an Old One?” Yvette breathed. The painted eyes followed her.

  “Artemis. Isis. Durga.” Ulysses recited names like a grim liturgy. “One entity, many masks. The temple’s tide-linked chambers suggest lunar ties.”

  As they descended, bones littered the passage—giant avians, their wings atrophied; reptiles like scaled nightmares. All bore strange pitting, as if nibbled by stone teeth.

  Then—a skitter. A whisper through rock.

  “Did you hear—”

  “Nothing yet,” Ulysses cut in. “But this place hungers. Stay sharp.”

  His blade gleamed faintly as shadows pooled ahead.