If you asked him, Bernard would not honestly be able to recall the last face he saw. Maybe, it was his father 40 years ago, before Bernard dedicated his life to defending the holy relics of the land. Maybe it was his mother, in some cruel dream. Either way, neither of them could save him from his final ceremonial discovery, deep in the bowels of the cavern he had been assigned to guard, protecting the treasures within. And, true to his duty, he had never once dared to enter the relic's resting place -- an open cavern, much further into the cave. But it had been almost half a century, and nobody had so much as visited. So when temptation dragged him to the end of the deep passages, much further down than he had ever realised, Bernard's knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword. Who knew how long the relic had been missing for? It could have been last night, as he lay asleep. Or, it could have been one of the seemingly infinite amount of nights before then. All of them spent in isolation and contemplation. Or, maybe the dull rubble under his feet, crushed into a fine powder that danced around him when he kicked it up, was a sign it had been gone far longer than that. The only footprints throughout the whole cave were the ones he had left on his journey here. After two score years of living there, finally, the wet chill of the cave throbbed in his bones, snipping at his stomach and dulling the edges of his vision. Though, as he tried to focus his eyes back into use, he glazed over the undisturbed moss around the edges of the relic's chamber, and the way it clambered over the walls, and seeped into where the relic should have been. And when the dark had claimed the final pinhole of his vision, he came to the vile realisation that there had never been a relic in the first place.

There had been a drip in the cave for the whole time Bernard guarded it. He never quite knew where the sound was coming from, but it was regular and thin so he had learned to ignore it. Only when his mind could not rest would he focus on it, to distract himself. But it had always been there. As he had clambered down away from his guard spot, the drip became more and more audible, until he stood face to face with the stalagtite that caused it. And when he walked away, he could still hear the drip. Even for those brief few moments in the Relic’s Chamber.

And when he fell, the chill of the floor crept through his mail, and through his vest, settling hungrily in his spine, as though it could turn him into water too. The whole cave’s air became thick, like he was inhaling pure water vapour. Every part of this cave seemed to try to drown him, but it did not wake him, or panic him like drowning should.

Until the dripping stopped, and he woke up with a start.