The darkness swallowed Gu Tian whole.[1]
Not the darkness of a moonless night, where eyes could adjust shapes of objects eventually. This was absolute, a suffocating void that pressed against his eyes that made him question whether he still had eyes at all. Gu Tian's hands shot out instinctively, his fingers scraping against rough cave wall as the pain ground him in a reality his other senses struggled to confirm.
Chan'er. Chan'er. Chan'er.
Her name became a drumbeat in his skull, drowning out the screaming logic that he'd thrown his life away for sentiment, that a ten-year-old girl couldn't possibly survive what had driven the rest of the crew into panicked flight. His hand found his chest where he'd hang the Soul-Jade necklace she'd pressed into his palm before they entered this cursed place.
"For luck, Gu-gege," she'd said with that gap-toothed smile that made something in his chest twist painfully. "My mama said it glows when the person wearing it is thinking of you. See? It's glowing now because I'm thinking of you!"
His fingers closed around the small pendant and pulled it free. In the absolute darkness, that pale jade glow seemed bright as a star, barely enough to illuminate his own bloodied knuckles but there. It was steady and alive. She was alive.
The logical part of his mind whispered that Soul-Jade could retain spiritual resonance for hours after death. That he might be following a ghost, chasing the fading echo of a child who'd already been torn apart by those things. He crushed that voice in his mind with savage efficiency. The pendant was warm against his palm. Chan'er was alive, she had to be!
His other hand found the wall again and he began to move, each step a small act of faith in a darkness that wanted him to curl up and wait for death. The stone beneath his feet was uneven, scattered with debris he couldn't see. It was bones or perhaps rabble or the dropped weapons of those who'd come before and never left. His foot caught on something and he stumbled barely catching himself, his palms scraped against some stone that opened the scabs that had barely begun to form from his earlier landing. But he didn't care about the distant pain. Everything was unimportant except the glow of that jade and the name that wouldn't stop echoing through his thoughts.
Chan'er. Find Chan'er. Save Chan'er.
Time lost meaning in the dark. He might have been walking for minutes or hours. The pendant's glow revealed nothing beyond his immediate reach, five feet of rough stone tunnel that sometimes narrowed down so he had to turn sideways to squeeze through, or even sometimes opening into spaces so vast the sound of his footsteps vanished into empty air. He should be terrified of the Plague Hounds, those nightmare creatures that had torn through the expedition like paper. He'd seen what they could do—Cheng Wei's arm disappearing into a mouth full of rotting teeth, Ling Yi's head that almost got torn off wasn't it for Dui's intervention.
But fear required space in his mind and there was no space. Only Chan'er's name repeating a mantra against madness. His foot came down on something that rolled and made him nearly fall but he caught himself against the wall. The jade's light revealed what he'd stepped on, a bone. It was human by the look of it. A femur; picked clean, old enough that it didn't even smell of decay anymore. Other bones scattered the tunnel floor like macabre seeds.
How many had died here? How many had walked this same path following their own desperate hopes into the dark?Don't think and keep moving. She's alive. The jade is glowing.
His lips moved, shaping her name without sound, Chan'er. The little girl who'd been orphaned in the beast tide three years ago, who the sect had taken in more out of obligation than kindness. Most people treated her a little more than a servant, a charity case who should be grateful for the scraps of attention they threw her way. But she'd found him, or rather he had found her crouched in the garden crying over a dead bird. He had sat with her until she stopped shaking. After that, she'd followed him like a shadow and somehow, she'd wormed her way past his careful defenses with her gap-toothed smile and the way she said "Gu-gege" like he was someone worth admiring.
He'd left her. When the Hounds came, when the darkness filled with screams, he'd run like everyone else. Survival instinct overriding everything, feet carrying him toward the portal's light while behind him...
No. Don't think about it. She's alive. Keep moving.
His throat had gotten raw that made him realize distantly. Had he been screaming calling her name? The darkness ate sound so completely he couldn't tell. His voice could have been echoing through these tunnels for hours and he'd never know, alerting every predator in the depths to his presence. He should be silent and keep moving with the careful stealth his sect training had drilled into him. But he couldn't stop his feet from falling heavy, couldn't stop the ragged sound of his breathing that filled the tunnel like a death rattle.
Let them come. Let the Hounds find him. He'd tear through them with his bare hands if they stood between him and Chan'er.
The tunnel opened suddenly into a larger space. His foot came down expecting stone and found only air. He pitched forward, arms windmilling and the jade's light spinning wildly as he fell. He hit the ground hard three feet below where he'd expected it to be. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a pained wheeze. He lay there for a moment, stars exploding behind his eyes as his ribs screaming protest.
The jade had fallen from his grip.
No! Panic detonated in his chest, sharp and vicious.. He scrambled upright despite his body's protests, his hands sweeping frantically across the stone floor in wild, desperate arcs. His palms scraped against rough stone, his fingers searching, finding nothing but cold rock and scattered debris.
"No, no, no..." The words spilled from his lips in a broken chant as he crawled forward on hands and knees. His movements were frenzied and uncoordinated. Without the jade's glow, he was utterly blind, completely blind.
His hand came down on something sharp, a bone or broken stone, and pain lanced up his arm. He didn't care but kept searching, kept sweeping the ground in increasingly wider circles, his breath coming in ragged gasps that sounded too loud in the oppressive silence.
Where is it? Where is it? Chan'er, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I lost it, I lost you. I can't find it.
His searching fingers found the edge of what felt like a drop-off, a crevice in the floor. His stomach lurched. Had the jade fallen into a crack? Was it gone, tumbled into some unreachable depth, taking with it his only proof that Chan'er still lived, his only way of finding her in this maze?
"Please," he whispered into the darkness, his voice breaking. "Please, please, where are you. Don't hide from me."
And then he saw it!
A faint glow, so dim he almost missed it coming from his left. Not the steady pale light he remembered but a flickering, dying luminescence like a candle's last moments before the darkness claimed it. The jade was caught between two stones, its light pulsing weakly and fading with each passing second.
Gu Tian lunged for it, his hand closing around the pendant just as the glow stuttered, dimmed to almost nothing and went dark.
Complete darkness swallowed him whole. The jade sat cold and lifeless in his palm, its warmth gone, its light extinguished and dead. Chan'er's soul-link had severed.
His hand closed around the jade so tightly the edges cut into his palm, drawing blood he couldn't see. The pendant that had been warm and alive moments ago now felt like a stone pulled from a grave; cold, inert and dead.
She was gone! He'd failed.
"No," he whispered. Then louder, "No. No, you're wrong." He was shouting now, tears welling up and his voice cracking. "She's alive! She has to be alive! CHAN'ER WHERE ARE YOU!!!"
[1] Hope you are attentive, he had entered the cave at Chapter six. This is his POV. I couldn't delay it longer.