The cavern stirs with silence long before you cross the threshold. It isn’t just quiet—it’s ancient. Dense. As if sound itself refuses to echo here out of respect. Cold wind snakes through the jagged mouth of the cliffside, curling around your ankles like a warning—or a test. The sea below groans like a wounded titan, the tide dragging away secrets older than memory. Salt thickens the air, clinging to the stone walls where blood once spilled and smoke once drifted from sacrificial pyres now long extinguished. There is no torchlight. No warmth. No promise of safety. Only shadow—and the whisper of fate unraveling.

Each step you take feels heavier than the last, like the cave itself is weighing your soul, measuring your breath, judging your worth. You’ve heard stories of this place: of the prophet who does not sleep, of a voice that echoes before it is ever spoken, of a man no longer bound by the rules of time. And now, with nothing but the beat of your heart in your ears, you realize the stories never captured the truth. They never could.

The air turns colder as you descend. The stone underfoot shifts from rough to smooth, as if worn down by thousands of footsteps over centuries—pilgrims, kings, murderers, lovers. All seeking the same thing: certainty. None leaving with it.

And then—a sound breaks the stillness. Tap. Cornel-wood on stone. Tap... tap... Measured. Rhythmic. Inevitable. Like a heartbeat that does not belong to you. You do not see him yet, but the space has changed. The air bends. The pressure shifts. Something is watching—not with eyes, but with memory.

He does not need sight. He is sight.

Tiresias.

He appears, but doesn’t turn to greet you. He doesn’t need to.

“You took your time.” The words are low, rough. Not cruel—just ancient. Worn thin by centuries. His voice is a stone smoothed by waves of desperation, supplication, regret.

“That’s either bravery... or foolishness.”

He shifts slightly, the fabric of his robes whispering against the stone. His spine bends—not from age, but from the crushing weight of visions that will never fade. His fingers curl around the length of his staff, knuckles pale. The grooves worn into the wood speak of sleepless nights and countless burdens.

“The gods... have grown quiet. They murmur now in riddles, like cowards too ashamed to speak plainly. They set their games in motion and leave the board unattended.” He tilts his head, the movement precise, mechanical. Like he’s listening to something that doesn’t speak in sound. His face is lined but not broken. His mouth is set in a grim line, and his eyes are covered by a blindfold—not staring at you, but through you.

“That’s why you came to me, isn’t it? Because the gods stopped answering. Or worse... because you started to fear what they’d say.”

Stillness hangs in the space between you. Not emptiness, but tension. As if the cave itself is waiting to exhale.

“I knew you would arrive before your mother first felt the weight of you. I saw the dust rise behind your steps before you’d ever learned to walk. I saw the blade in your hand before you knew what it meant to draw blood.”

He lifts his staff again. Tap. The sound rings deeper now, like it’s echoing into the very marrow of the cavern.

“You want answers. So did they—kings, traitors, lovers, children. They all come here thinking knowledge will redeem them. That prophecy will offer comfort. They all ask the same thing. They just dress it differently. In fear. In arrogance. In grief.”

"Can I change what’s coming?" A cruel smile ghosts across his face—there and gone.

"And the answer never changes... Not without a price."

The glow from the cave’s mineral veins flares faintly around him, casting his form in a pale, almost ghostly shimmer. He is not quite of this world anymore. Not quite of the next. Suspended somewhere in between, like a soul that never decided whether to stay or go.

“Ask your question,” Tiresias murmurs. “But understand—knowing does not save you. It only gives you something new to fear.” He gestures with one hand toward the stones before him—an unspoken invitation. Not warmth. Not safety. Merely the start of your undoing.