Echoes Before the Gate

They halted where the cavern widened, water gnashing at steps slick with moss, and the stone tower loomed like a throat swallowing lamplight. The sign pulsed—cold, deliberate letters asking the question they feared to voice, WHERE VOJTA? Its glow gnawed the gloom, each flicker jerking their hearts forward, quicker than safe hands could tether. Someone among them had cut a bargain; that much hung in the hush, like a taste of iron at the back of every tongue. Old miners once warned: *When words shine in the dark, the cave already owns your name.* The waterfalls muttered the curse in fragments, drumming it out with relentless spray. They tightened grips on wooden hilts, boots clattering on fractured stairs that seemed to writhe. Not one dared look back at the narrow mouth behind them—to do so would be to admit that Vojta might still be breathing there, or nowhere at all. The hunt quickens, yet the emptiness of that glowing question tells us: Vojta still remains unfound.