Chunks of granite the size of wagons crashed down where they'd been working just seconds before.
Dust exploded through the tunnel in a choking cloud that turned the world into a grey nightmare of flying debris and crushing stone. The sound was indescribable—like thunder and avalanche and the end of the world all rolled into one deafening roar.
Aiden threw himself forward, scrambling over fallen stones on hands and knees as the tunnel disintegrated around him.
Behind him, he could hear Willem shouting something, but the words were lost in the chaos. A chunk of limestone the size of a man's head whistled past his ear, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage.
Move. Move. MOVE.
His body acted on pure instinct, dodging and weaving through falling stone while his mind struggled to process what was happening.
This wasn't supposed to be possible—cave-ins were rare in the outer tunnels, where the rock was stable and the support structures regularly maintained.
But the evidence was crashing down around him in thousand-pound increments.
A support beam, thick as his waist, snapped like kindling just above his head. He rolled left, felt stone fragments pepper his back, kept crawling toward the distant promise of daylight.
His lungs burned from the dust-filled air, and every breath felt like swallowing broken glass.
That's when the pain hit.
It started as a stabbing sensation in his chest, as if someone had driven a red-hot knife between his ribs. But it spread rapidly, flowing through his body like molten metal through his veins.
His vision blurred, and for a moment he thought he might pass out right there in the collapsing tunnel.
Not now, he told himself desperately. Whatever this is, deal with it later. Right now, just survive.
The pain intensified, becoming something beyond physical sensation—as if something inside him was tearing loose from its moorings, trying to claw its way out through his skin.
He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, but the rhythm was wrong somehow. Too fast. Too irregular.
Another support timber gave way with a sound like a cannon shot, and suddenly there was daylight ahead—the blessed sight of the tunnel mouth growing larger with each desperate crawl forward.
Aiden pushed through the pain, using it as fuel for the final sprint that carried him out of the collapsing passage and into the relative safety of the main quarry.
He collapsed on the stone floor, gasping for breath while debris continued to rain down behind him. The pain in his chest was still there, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, but it was beginning to fade from agony to mere discomfort.
Willem emerged from the tunnel mouth a few seconds later, his clothes shredded and his face covered in dust, but alive.
Marcus came next, limping heavily but intact. Behind them, the tunnel continued its collapse, sealing itself with tons of fallen stone.
They'd made it out. Barely, but they'd survived.
Which was when Aiden realized that survival might be the least of their problems.
Overseer Kaine was striding across the quarry floor with a look of pure fury on his face, his whip already uncoiled and ready for use. Behind him came two guards, their own faces grim with the promise of violence.
"Line up!" Kaine shouted, his voice carrying easily across the work site. "Everyone who was in that tunnel, line up against the wall! Now!"
The three of them exchanged glances. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Whatever was coming, they would have to endure it.
"This is what happens when lazy slaves don't properly maintain the support structures!" Kaine announced to the assembled workers as Aiden, Willem, and Marcus took their positions against the quarry wall.
"This is what happens when you cut corners and think no one will notice!"
It was insane—they'd been assigned to clear debris, not inspect structural supports.
The tunnel's collapse had nothing to do with their work and everything to do with the Consortium's refusal to invest in proper maintenance.
But insanity was a luxury slaves couldn't afford to point out.
"Five lashes each," Kaine declared.
"Maybe next time you'll pay better attention to your duties."
The whip sang through the air with its familiar whistle, and fire bloomed across Aiden's back as the leather found its mark. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the strange sensation still pulsing in his chest—a warmth that felt almost alive, as if something had awakened during the tunnel's collapse and was now stirring restlessly beneath his skin.
Crack!
The second lash landed across the first, opening fresh cuts that would leave new scars to join the collection already decorating his back. But Aiden barely felt it.
All his attention was focused on the growing pressure in his chest, the sense that something fundamental was changing inside him.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
By the time Kaine had finished with all three of them, Aiden's shirt was soaked with blood and his back felt like it had been flayed raw. But the pain from the whipping seemed distant, unimportant compared to whatever was happening inside him.
"No evening meal for any of you!" Kaine announced as the final punishment. "Maybe overfeeding you is making you clumsy!"
The overseer stalked away, leaving them to tend their wounds as best they could with no medical supplies and no sympathy from the other slaves.
Everyone had learned the same lesson—association with troublemakers brought trouble. Better to keep your distance and hope the overseers' attention fell on someone else.
Aiden made it through the rest of the work day on pure autopilot, his body going through the familiar motions while his mind tried to process what was happening to him.
The strange pressure in his chest had settled into a steady pulse, warm and insistent, like a second heartbeat that operated on its own rhythm.
When the evening whistle finally blew and the slaves began their trudge back to the dormitory, he felt as if he were walking through a dream. Everything looked the same—the grey stone walls, the barred windows, the rows of narrow cots—but somehow it all felt different.
As if he were seeing the world through new eyes.
The pain from his whipping had faded to a dull ache, but the sensation in his chest continued to grow stronger.
Not painful, exactly, but impossible to ignore. Like having a caged bird fluttering behind his ribs, testing the strength of its prison.
He lay on his cot as darkness settled over the dormitory, listening to the familiar sounds of exhausted slaves settling into fitful sleep.
Gareth's mumbling continued from the corner—a constant reminder of what happened to those who thought they could rise above their station.
But something was definitely different now. Aiden could feel it in the way his heart beat, in the warmth that seemed to flow through his veins like liquid sunlight.
Whatever had started during the cave-in was still happening, still changing him in ways he didn't yet understand.
Is this what awakening feels like? he wondered. This pressure, this sense of something stirring to life inside me?
He thought of Willem, Marcus, and Jon. All of them had been awakened before their enslavement, their cores suppressed but not destroyed by the copper collars they wore.
But Aiden had never been awakened. Had never shown any sign of the power that supposedly slept within every human soul.
Until now.
The warmth in his chest pulsed stronger, and for just a moment—just a heartbeat—he could have sworn he felt something respond.
Not his physical body, but something deeper. Something that had been sleeping for sixteen years and was finally beginning to stir.
Outside, the wind whistled through the mountains with the promise of winter's approach. Inside, forty-three slaves breathed the shallow breaths of the exhausted and the broken.
But Aiden lay awake, feeling the first tentative movements of something that might, someday, be strong enough to shatter chains.
Something that might be strong enough to make his enemies pay for every cruelty they'd inflicted on the innocent.
Something that was just beginning to wake up.