Entropy

Prelude - Pandora's Lament

"SERGIO!"

Sergio ran. He didn't need to look over his shoulder to know that they were hot on his heels.

"SERGIO, STOP! STOP RIGHT NOW!"

His breaths came in ragged and heavy. The exertion of running was burning his lungs and his limbs. He must've looked quite like a phantom. The ends of his unbuttoned lab coat were flapping wildly behind him, and months of depthless pain and fatigue had blanched his face. His hands clutched the sword's hilt so tightly that it cut the skin of his palm. But he couldn't afford to stop. Not now, not ever. Emilia was waiting for him.

"Dammit, I said stop!!!"

He almost slid as he sharply turned the corner. His ankle almost gave out, but he threw his weight forward and willed his feet to move. He was close now...

There was an explosion, like a pop, and something hot wizzed by the skin of his neck. He felt a slight burning sensation. Even if they shoot me, even if my body is filled with holes, I swear I'll make it to you, Emilia. Just a little more now, my love.

The walls of the cavern now morphed into the stone corridors of the catacombs. The strange script carved in the stone was watching the mortal trespass their domain. Heed our warning! they silently screamed at him. But he couldn't read their language, and his vision was only focused on the path that lay before him.

Another bullet flew by, but missed.

That was when he saw it, the great hall that housed the coffin. It was a stone coffin, inscipted in beautifully ominous scribbles and scrawled letters. It was in the center of the room, upon a stone dias. The haunted shadows of the past flickered and danced on the walls from the light of the torches. He still remembered the day they found the tomb and the white lilies that were laid upon the lid. They were lillies that hadn't touched the scent of the sun for ages and yet never died. No matter how much they experimented, burned, froze, acidified the lilly's plant tissues, it never died, preserved by an invisible force.

He halted and walked over, tracing the surface of the lid with his fingers. Deep inside, there was something stirring, something alive. Even from the outside, he could feel it through his flesh. It called out to him.

Dimitri and Florence caught up at last. Their eyes were wild as they realized what he was going to do.

Florence approached first. "No, no, no, please, Sergio, you can't!"

Sergio looked into her eyes. "I'm sorry, but I have to. This is to save Emilia."

"Emilia never would've wanted this!"

"How do you know that?!" he snapped, his voice booming off of the walls. "She...she was so happy. We were so happy. We were going to get married. She had just chosen her wedding dress that morning, you know?!" His eyes pleaded at them as his voice broke down. Florence's eyes broke away, unable to bear his pain. "I...It's all my fault..." His throat quivered with emotion and burned, unable to contain his sobbing. "I....I...I killed her!"

"You don't know that!"

"But I do! If I hadn't asked her to pick up my brother that day, if I wasn't so caught up in my paper, she wouldn't have have been in that car! She wouldn't have died!"

"But how could you have known? What you're doing now is wrong! Please Sergio," Florence tried to reach out to him in vain. "All those rumors about the power of the coffin, they're just rumors, you know that! Nothing can bring her back, she's dead. Opening that coffin won't change anything!"

He cringed.

She's dead.

Dimitri held his tongue. He didn't believe any of the midwives' tales, but he knew that opening the coffin would destroy a vital artifact of the lost civilization. The smoking gun in his hand proved he was ready to defend it, even if it meant killing his best friend. The discovery of the tomb was the culmination of centuries of work, and he wasn't going to let Sergio destroy it. But Florence quickly restrained his arm when he made a move and shot him a glare before turning back to Sergio.

"Please, it's not too late. Come back with us." She held out her hand.

"I'm sorry."

"SERGIO, NO!!!"

Florence leapt to stop him. Now freed, Dimitri raised his arm to shoot. But both were too late.

In the blink of an eye, Sergio had brought out the sword, pointed the tip downward, and stabbed the center of the coffin. All as the mysterious man had instructed him to. There was a loud snap as the seals were broken and the tomb began to rumble. Florence and Dimitri looked around wildly. The lid of the coffin began to slide off by itself, and a dark fog was leaked, crawling outwards.

"What have you done?!" Florence cried. She turned to run out for help when she fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in pain. The dark fog formed a tentacle that wrapped around and squeezed her throat. She clawed at it, but couldn't get it off.

"Florence!" Dimitri moved to help her when he too fell and was strangled.

This...This wasn't supposed to happen! That man had lied. The body in the coffin was supposed to have the power to bring Emilia back!

Sergio could only watch in horror when the lid of the tomb hit the ground with a thud. His eyes focused at the figure that emerged. The figure sat up before opening its eyes.

Its eyes...they were all that Sergio could focus on. The blood-red glowing irises of fire that floated in empty eye sockets. He couldn't breathe; everything in him had frozen. There was no sense of fight or flight in him as if his mind knew that there would be no escape. And then the eyes turned to him and bore themselves onto his soul. The figure extended its hand and began to suck the life out of him.

But the eyes...They were all that he could think about in his final seconds before succumbing to eternal death. As his body fell to the ground, the last thing he saw was that mysterious man stepping over the bodies of Dimitri and Florence and kneeling before the coffin.

"My goddess, I have waited so long for this. Welcome back to the land of the living."

The voice that followed was ethereal and inhuman.

"The land of the living? Hahaha, we'll see about that!"