The wind never stopped blowing from the Hole.
It carried with it the taste of stone and ash, a dryness that clung to the tongue. Even now, as the dawn broke across the stone terraces of Orrhollow, the abyss inhaled and exhaled as it has done for countless centuries. The banners of the kingdom flapped restlessly in its breath. It felt as though the nation itself were perched at the lip of some endless maw, waiting to fall in.
At the very edge of the First Ring, the lowest circle of the kingdom, a boy knelt with his hands pressed to the earth. He was thin, with dusty black hair, his bare feet bleeding on the broken stones, eyes sunken from lack of food but they had a glint that none of the bottom dwellers had. Beneath him the ground trembled, soft groans echoing from the Hole's depths. The others fled when the tremors began, but he stayed. He could hear it.
A voice.
Not words, not yet, but something older, deeper. Like the thump of a powerful heartbeat buried beneath the world.
Behind him, bells tolled in the temples in the upper rings. Priests in gold, red and white robes raised their chants in unison, claiming the quake was another blessing of the abyss. Soldiers ran to the walls, peering down into the abyss from which black fog curled up.
The boy lifted his head.
For a moment, he thought he saw something moving in the fog. Not human, nor an animal, not a shape he could name, just the suggestion of a vast shadow larger than anything. Something which was writhing far below.
Then, silence.
The ground stilled. The fog dissipated as if it had never been there. But the boy knew, with a certainty that filled him with dread, that something within the hole had looked back.