inside the cave Reza's Eyelid twitches, sitting straight up from with fright, looking around and wondering what the hell just happened , his eyes lands on his friends unconscious bodies, fear overtakes him and Hurry up to their side.
seeing they're breathing he signed in in relief, looking more closely it doesn't seem that they're injured.
the cave is darker now not that dark that he couldn't see but darker nevertheless, there isn't the sound of the storm outside making him almost think that all of it was a hallucination , there is scary silence in the cave even so he likes the silence more than the sound of the storm.
touching Elena's shoulder and shaking it up slowly he calls to her , Elena wakes up and sees Reza's face looking at her with concern , remembering what happened her first action was to look for her sister, she finds her next to herself slowly waking up makes her relax.
Elena asks Reza; "what happened?"
Reza;
"i don't know if it seems like all of us lost consciousness at the same time ...."
Elena; " how?why?I mean.."
she wanted to know what the hell was going on but She couldn't put her thoughts in order,
Reza heart broke when he saw her in this state but he didn't have any answers that could comfort her.
he hadn't heard anything remotely like this scenario so he was also freaking out but it wasn't time for that, they need to leave this weird place immediately.
Elena;"how long were we unconscious?"
Reza comes back to reality looks at his watch and answers with some doubt;
"about 5 minutes?"
Elena;. "5-minutes?"
Reza:
"it must be broken from in the Fall , it doesn't matter.... anyway check yourselves for any injuries and be ready, I will be back in five."
Elena sees Reza walking towards the exit and shouts in a high peach voice; "be ready for what... and where are you going?"
"to check out the weather, there is no sound so the storm should be gone... we're leaving after I make sure the weather is fine for descending."said Reza as he walked away.
Elena didn't mind Reza's actions anymore and started to ask rose a lot of questions like how was she feeling or was she hurt but she just keeps shaking her head and peeking towards the ceiling. Ethan was sitting a few meters away hugging his knees staring at the cave ceiling it seemed like he was in shock.
Elena guessed they need time to get themselves together , they're young after all a lot has happened in just a few minutes.
After making sure her sister is fine she leaves the rose and walks towards Ethan.
"are you ok?"
"I will be.after we leave the cave ..I saw something...this place is not normal" he said in the grave voice still staring at the cave crystal.
Elena is first shocked by his answer but looking at his seriousness and his uneasy expression, she decides to unravel what he knows after all it's not normal for them to pass out without a reason at the same time any information about the situation could be helpful.
with some persistence Ethan tells her what he saw trying to not look insane but the lack of reaction proves otherwise.
Of course she thinks it's one of his pranks, god's he should really stop doing those.
Just as he was about to explain he wasn't joking, Elena stared at the area of his head with some concern.
touching the area she's looking at he sees a small amount of blood and his finger nails suggesting that he's been hit on the head because of The Fall so he starts to doubt himself but Roses voice who interrupted them cleared all doubt in his eyes.
rose:"I saw the same thing"
that's all she said but it was enough to make Elena scared because Rose wasn't a person to make such jokes and she didn't have a head injury.
The only possibility was... no possibility of them seeing the same hallucination is non-existent.
so she did what normal people do, they were packed so she decided to leave the cave and not wait for Reza to return.
once they were outside the cave they were flabbergasted by what they saw the landscape was completely different there were no signs of the snow and rocks there's just a huge forest with completely different trees like amazon forest the weather was hot, the muddy land and clouds in sky suggested that it's been raining recently, as their heart palpitate by unknown they saw Reza looking at his tablet doing something.
he must have heard their footsteps so turning his head towards them with a hopeless face he said:
"I don't know where we are".
obviously they were in Zagreus mountain anymore before they could digest the new reality
the hopeless face of Reza changed into terrified once his eyes landed above their heads.
Elena groups were 5 meters away from the cave and Reza was a few meters further away from them.
seeing Reza reaction they turn their confused faces toward the cave entrance it was different from they remembered there was a mountain beyond the cave and on top of it at it's peak is smoke coming out of it but that wasn't that they were terrified about, it was a cheetah above the cave entrance ready to hunt them at any moment they were frozen solid and didn't dare to make a move.
In just a few seconds Reza's voice shouting at them to run was heard so they didn't waste a second Ethan was running on left while Elena and Rose holding hands running on right , the land was slippery resulting Rose fall into mud just couple steps ahead and Elena helping her gets up sees the cheetahs target isn't them but Ethan ,none the less she gets her sister up and start running at forest in front of them.
Reza was trying to save his friends without the thoughts of consequences Maybe it was the adrenaline commanding his body but he had to do something so he starts running towards Ethan while tossing his tablet at cheetah and grabbing a dagger from god knows where. cheetah dodged the tablet resume it running and in no time lunching it self at Ethan.
Reza watched in despair as the cheetahs teeth grabbed his friend's neck and snapping it like a tweet.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing he's brother is dead before he could understand that, the cheetah dragged Ethan beyond a rock and started to feed on him.
it was the most brutal and terrifying scene he witnessed in his life, his knees gave up falling in mud and vomiting on it, the cheetah was still feeding on his friend but he didn't dare to look, the sound was disturbing enough.
Fear and helplessness overtakes him
Reza didn't want to leave his childhood friend beyond but soon the instinct to survive kicked in and started running in the direction of the girl's footsteps with tears in his eyes.
the cheetah didn't pay any attention to him.
all it was left in the scene was a hungry cheetah and an unrecognizable corpse.