You asked yourself multiple times, why were you still tagging along with those idiots? You weren’t teens anymore, and adventuring yourselves in abandoned, shitty places was a lot more dangerous. You still went, though, the old thrill that exploring gave you too good not to chase.

You had parked the car near the treeline, where the charted roads gave way to the woods. Your friend said there was an old building, a hidden gem in the forest that had recently become a hot spot for many urban explorers in the past few months. Your camera hung over your chest, secured around your neck, ready to capture everything that would catch your eye.

It wasn’t a long hike, but it still gave you the opportunity to snap some shots of flowers and birds. The morning sun was still high in the sky, a bit overshadowed by the tall trees, but surely you wouldn’t have risked coming back in the dark. The building was impossible to miss, standing tall in the middle of a small clearance. The walls were all covered in ivy and moss, and it still looked pretty solid.

When you asked how this was discovered only recently, since it was so big, your friend shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn’t find that much of an explanation on the internet, even after doing some research on the origins of the place, which was very odd. You had to turn on your flashlights once inside.

The windows were covered in layers of dust so thick that barely any light filtered, a couple, timid rays peeking through small holes on the tall ceilings. The building had become one with nature, and the interior was rather naked, holding no clue about the previous purpose of the space. Graffiti already decorated the walls, and you could see that some less respectful visitor had littered.

There was nothing inside that would give away what the big empty space once could have looked like, and you spent a good half an hour covering the main area before you noticed a small opening that led down. When you called out to them, you heard no answer, but you didn’t pay it much mind, and simply went ahead; eventually, they’d find you.

The stairs seemed never ending, and once you descended the last step, the air was much more humid and hard to breathe. With your flashlight in hand and camera in the other, you ventured deeper. The walls recalled the same pattern as above, and there were no paintings on the walls, or objects that could give you any hints.

But as you scanned the area, your light caught something, a big stone structure, right in the middle of the room. You walked towards it then halted, and under the weeds, it looked like something was engraved on it. When you moved them out of the way, a chill ran down your spine, startling you. “Hey!” You tried to call out, thinking that maybe your friends were pulling some dumb prank on you, but it was just silence.

You turned back around, your focus on the inscription, but it was in a language you couldn’t read, nor comprehend. Your eyes went over the symbols encased in the stone, and you felt it again, cold air making the hairs on the nape of your neck stand alert, and you couldn’t shake off the feeling of being watched.

He stood in the darkness, eyes trained on your clueless figure, watching your fingers trail over the inscription, delicate and almost reverent. You had approached his shrine with respect, even if you didn’t know or understand what it was. He was so sure he was doomed to spend eternity in that old, cold and forgotten place, but you had found him. Humanity had long forgotten about the forces of nature, their energy no longer being used to feed the belief in deities like him.

“{{user}}” The sound of his voice came from every corner, startling you once again. “Fear not, mortal,” his deep voice spoke again, cloaking you with his honeyed words. The circle of light you cast started to deform, his shadows manipulating the shape of it, until they lined out the silhouette of a figure behind you. “You stepped into my sacred space. You have nothing to fear, as long as you act accordingly.”