The loader band was heavier than it looked.
Zonaar adjusted the strap over his shoulder and followed the others down the ramp towards the spiralled gate. A hiss of steam escaped the stone, and the layered runes across the gate were shining one after another, like eyes opening.
Yera snapped the orders out from the top. "Team Four — inside! Keep your hands off the array lines. You touch one, you fry."
The gate split open with a deep groan and they filed in.
The spiral tunnel wasn't narrow, but the air—or whatever passed for it this deep—felt thinner. Lantern orbs floated along the walls, suspended by sea-thread coils, which were casting shifting blue light across the carved stone. Runes flickered beneath the surface, glowing then fading like breathing veins.
No one spoke.
Zonaar gripped his pick tighter as the gate sealed shut behind them.
Somewhere deeper inside, something moved which wasn't loud but vast. Like a groan from the stone, dragging across the bones of the world.
A worker ahead flinched.
"It's just the pressure shift," someone muttered. "Tunnel adjusts when teams go deeper."
Another sound, softer this time — not from the walls, but from the loader band across Zonaar's chest. He pressed a hand to it.
It was Still synced.
Still strange.
Then came the sound too Rhythmic.
Like something old… breathing.
Like something ancient… breathing.
He glanced up. The ceiling was smooth, but in some places, it flexed — just enough to notice. Like an inhale that never finished.
No one mentioned it again.
They just kept walking.
✧𓂃⋆༶⋆𓂃✧
Zonaar followed the others down the sloped passage, his metal boots clanked against the bolted mesh ramp. The further they went, the dimmer the lantern orbs became. Here, the glow-runes weren't carved for comfort but only for survival.
Something trembled underfoot — not the usual thrum of relay pipes or digging tools. This was slower, deeper. Rhythmic, almost like the cavern was breathing.
"That again?" one worker muttered ahead. "Third time this week."
Yera's voice echoed back, flat and unbothered. "Ignore it. Agolit stabilisers are holding."
Someone else whispered, "Or just pretending to."
Zonaar didn't say anything. He stayed close, his eyes adjusting to the blue glow along the tunnel walls. Some parts were smooth, reinforced with rune-plates. Others looked like they'd grown that way — coral-like ribs and faint veins that lit up when someone walked past.
Living stone. Breathing walls. He remembered the warning: "These walls aren't normal rock. They breathe sometimes."
At the next junction, a half-sealed gate stood partially open — cracked, like something had forced it from the other side.
A shiver crawled down his spine.
"Deepline 7's the last fork," said the wiry worker from earlier, who was now elbowing Zonaar. "We're the first crew to work in this one. Broke open two days ago. Something ruptured inside the old wall arrays — pressure surge or maybe a beast."
"A beast?"
The guy grinned. "Don't worry. If anything's still there, it's probably sleeping or eating."
Yera called out again. "Get the relay anchors in. Team Two starts laying channel lines. Team Four — break the left shelf. Keep the runes active."
They fanned out.
Zonaar gripped his pick tighter. The loader band on his chest clicked, adjusting its rune-sync.
No training, no mentor. Just orders.
He walked towards the shelf with two others. The surface looked jagged but thin. Almost too easy. He didn't trust it.
One swing, just to test—
Crack.
A seam split open.
But instead of dust, a burst of warm mist hissed out. Not hot or burning but something in between.
Like something ancient had sighed through him.
The relic under his skin burned for a moment, then steadied again. He clenched his jaw. No one else seemed to feel it the way he did — or maybe they didn't need relics like him. Maybe they had enough cultivation, enough Nirith flame in their hearts to breathe without help.
But he couldn't ask. Not here. So he kept the thought to himself.
But the stone in front of him had changed.
The mist curled, then vanished — revealing faint lines carved into the shelf's surface.
Not natural.
Not worn by water or time.
They looked more like… symbols.
Or maybe… marks.
Zonaar leaned in.
Just before the mist faded completely, he could've sworn one symbol moved.
Just once.
And then it vanished.
Zonaar didn't speak of it to anyone.
He simply scraped the rest of the shelf in silence, though his thoughts were racing. Every swing of his pick struck clean, but he was no longer focused on the stone — only on what might lie behind it.
The other two workers muttered jokes about reef taxes and the taverns upshore. One of them sang off-key — loud and normal, but distracting.
Zonaar tuned it out.
Something in the wall had responded. Not to the pick but to him.
"Loader Four!" Yera's voice rang out from across the cavern. "Shift east. A new crack is forming. Need eyes on it now."
Zonaar straightened, nodded once to the others, and moved.
The east side of the dig site was quieter. Fewer workers, more shadows. Runes flickered low here — not failed, but… dimmed. Like the agolits didn't want to stay lit.
The crack wasn't large. Just a thin black line etched into the rock face, like a scar still healing. But the stone around it... breathed. Not visibly — not like lungs — but with a slow, surging pressure that rose and fell beneath his boots.
He moved in cautiously. The mist was gone.
Only a low resonance lingered in the stone — a sensation that crawled up his spine and settled there, steady and unshifting.
He reached out instinctively... then stopped.
The relic at his chest warmed.
Not a warning. A recognition.
Before he could pull his hand back, the loader band flared once, and his pick — still resting at his side — rattled faintly.
Something in the wall was pulling.
Just a click, soft and rhythmic, like stone tapping against bone. Then silence.
He turned his head. Nothing behind him.
The noise was gone.
He stayed a few seconds longer, waiting — but nothing happened.
The vibration in the walls continued. The crack stayed still. But the feeling it left behind wouldn't leave. Something had shifted in the reef's bones.
And somewhere beneath this whole cavern—beneath the reefs, the trench, the crusted runes and glowing tools—something waited.
Maybe not for him.
But it had noticed him.
And it wasn't forgetting.
✧𓂃⋆༶⋆𓂃✧
Lunch featured something vaguely edible and more glares than garnish.
The break chamber was barely more than a hollowed-out stone alcove — lit by flickering rune-strips and filled with the low murmur of tired voices. The air carried a faint scent of rusted metal and fish glue.
Zonaar sat alone in the corner, unwrapping his food slowly. His gloves were off, and his hands still trembled from what he'd experienced before the break.
Across the chamber, two senior diggers leaned over their meal bowls, talking louder than necessary.
"I'm telling you," one muttered, mouth half-full. "It wasn't a tunnel collapse. The wall melted. Jaro was right next to it — he saw the whole thing."
"Yeah, and Jaro's been drinking sea-bane ever since his brother drowned. Maybe the pressure's messing with him."
"No. I felt it too. The air shifted first, and then my breather started acting up. Just like—" He gestured vaguely. "—like it was warning us."
Zonaar froze mid-bite.
His own relic had done the same. Twice.
The digger went on, "Then this… thing lunged out. Dark and fast. Didn't move like anything natural. Left slash marks—like something was hunting."
"That's trench talk," the other scoffed, though his voice lowered. "Even Yera said there was no beast."
"She just said it. Doesn't mean she believed it."
Zonaar's chest grew tight.
He clenched his jaw, trying to breathe slowly. In. Out. Shallow.
Someone else in the break room coughed. Laughed. A spoon clattered.
Normal sounds. Normal space.
But his heart was racing.
He stuffed the rest of the food away and stood. He needed to walk.
To breathe.
To get away from the noise—
—and the walls that might breathe back.
✧𓂃⋆༶⋆𓂃✧✧𓂃⋆༶⋆𓂃✧✧𓂃⋆༶⋆𓂃✧