AN: this is an old story I wrote and have been constantly rewriting, I would love feedback for improvement as I would kill to be able to publish it for real
There is an old legend, a cave that knows your secrets. The locals call this cave Karma. The cave is said to know all your sins, wrongdoings, and ill intentions. The story of the cave is a tragic one. When man was young, it was a cave that would grant wishes in return for gifts and such, but as people grew and life became older, people would take more than they would give. The cave let it happen at first, but as time went on, people became more greedy. As the people wanted more, they would dive deeper into the cave, the first man to go deeper than the charted area came back with tales of the most beautiful gems and jewels. Soon more people would travel further and further, and the townsfolk learned the hard way, the further you went, the less likely it was for you to return.
At first, people ignored it, but as more people went missing, more people realized it was a bad idea. Every once in a while, someone would be consumed by their greed and travel down, never to return. This just set a reminder that you shouldn't go down too far, with the time passing, it became more apparent that no matter how far you went, you would never come back. Eventually, the townspeople got together and banned anyone from entering the cave entirely, though occasionally tourists would go down to see it, they were warned of the horrors it concealed. Still, travelers did not take the legends seriously and led themselves to their demise. Word got around and only the people that wanted extreme adventure would travel down, ignoring the fact that their death was creeping up on them, never to return.
One morning, some of the town's older children got together. They had decided that they would go to the cave to prove there was nothing to fear and the adults were just using it to scare the young ones. Later that day, two of the seven returned, broken and bloody. They told stories of crystals that whispered of all their sins, they were let off with beatings but the others had done too much wrong. When asked who, or what beat them so very brutally, they could not answer. They did not know, or more likely, they could not describe what was down there. For the next few years, the children believed and obeyed, fearing that the cave could hear their every bad thought. It was told that a child would be born that was pure in every way, the child would be able to reason with the cave, and convince it that man was not so bad, only those who had been consumed by their greed.
After years of the cave being cut off, the child who was believed to be the purest was grown, the townspeople were skeptical at first, but they let him travel down, hoping it would work. The child was not pure, the child had committed multiple sins, the boy was full of pride and wrath, and the people of the town found this when they could hear his screaming from the entrance to the cave. After that, no one believed it when a child was said to be pure, and no one tried to trick the town into believing their child was one. Parents went back to using the cave as a way to scare children into behaving, not learning the lesson that was taught by the children that did not believe the stories, and ventured down into the cave, trying to prove that the story was only fantasy.
