The castle does not like being searched for.
Especially by those who are looking for gold.
On a high hill, above a land that remembers more deaths than names, stand the ruins of Hubkiv Castle.
Once, there were walls here.
Towers.
Gates.
Dungeons.
And the Semashko princes.
People spoke of them in whispers.
Because wealth is not the most frightening thing a person can leave behind.
More frightening is the memory of their cruelty.
They say Prince Semashko ordered underground passages to be dug beneath the castle. Deep, narrow, cold. They descended so far into the earth that people could no longer tell where the castle ended and hell began.
That was where he hid his gold.
Silver.
Precious stones.
The things for which other princes started wars.
But along with the riches, something else remained underground.
Screams.
In the dark dungeons, Semashko punished those who refused to obey.
They say the stones there were soaked with blood.
They say that at night, voices can still be heard beneath the hill.
They also say that the prince knew magic.
Not the kind written about in books.
Something else.
Something that could make a person die, while leaving their fear alive.
That was why the peasants kept away from the castle.
They crossed themselves.
They did not look at the towers.
They would not enter the dungeons, even when there might have been gold inside.
Then the princes disappeared.
A century passed.
Then another.
Then one more.
The castle began to crumble.
Stones fell from the walls.
Trees grew through the floors.
The roofs disappeared.
But the gold remained.
Or so they said.
And then came the treasure hunters.
They were not afraid of the princes.
They were not afraid of curses.
They were not afraid of the dead.
They cared only about the gold.
They struck the walls with pickaxes.
They dug through the dungeons.
They broke apart the old masonry.
They descended into places where even the living had once been unwilling to go.
But the castle remained silent.
It gave nothing back.
No gold.
No precious stones.
Not even a fragment of the princes’ glory.
Perhaps the treasures never existed.
Or perhaps they lay deeper than human hands could reach.
Then another story emerged.
It was no longer told by princes or travelers.
It was recorded by the local historian Oleksandr Tsynkalovskyi.
One day, a young man fell into a deep cellar beneath the castle.
Darkness swallowed him.
And then he returned.
In his hands were gold coins.
Many of them.
He explained nothing.
He simply took part of the treasure.
And left.
But a secret does not remain a secret for long.
Especially when it is made of gold.
One peasant heard about the discovery.
And decided to send his son into the dungeon.
The boy descended.
Into the darkness.
To the place where the princes’ treasures had once been kept.
To the place where, perhaps, the smell of old blood still lingered.
He disappeared.
Forever.
No body.
No coins.
No trace.
Only the empty entrance to the cellar.
After that, people began speaking of the curse again.
Because gold can be found.
But if you have to descend somewhere from which not everyone returns, then it is no longer a treasure.
It is bait.
Perhaps Prince Semashko really did hide the gold.
Perhaps it still lies somewhere beneath Hubkiv Castle.
In a stone chamber without a door.
In a well.
Beneath an old wall.
At the very bottom of an underground labyrinth.
Or perhaps the gold disappeared long ago.
And all that remains is the legend.
But legends have a price, too.
Especially those that make people come back.
Every generation comes to the castle with new tools.
New maps.
A new belief that it will be the one to find what others could not.
And the castle remains silent.
Because it knows:
the real treasures do not lie on the surface.
They lie where a person can no longer tell gold from darkness.
And perhaps, somewhere beneath the hill, Prince Semashko is still standing.
Neither alive.
Nor dead.
Simply waiting.
Before him stands a chest.
Inside it — gold.
Behind him — an endless underground labyrinth.
And somewhere far away, beneath the earth, footsteps can be heard.
Someone is descending again.
Searching again.
Believing again.
And the castle smiles through its black windows.
Because it knows something the treasure hunter does not:
sometimes gold is simply a way to make a person walk into the darkness on their own.