The wind over the mountains sounded wrong. Not like air, not like storm—more like something vast breathing beneath the earth. Snow drifted sideways across the broken ridges, thin and sharp as ash, clinging to the rusted bones of old-world towers that jutted from the valleys below. Ayla tightened her fur cloak and adjusted the dagger at her waist, boots crunching softly over ice-crusted stone. The herd was smaller this winter. Too many goats had vanished near the forbidden slopes. Too many tracks that weren't animal. Still, food was food, and fear didn't fill stomachs. She followed the last stray goat higher than she should have, toward the black scar in the mountain the elders warned about—the place where sound died and compasses spun like mad things. The air grew colder with every step, metallic, stale, like a sealed room opened after centuries.
The goat bleated suddenly and bolted. "Hey—!" Ayla lunged after it, heart hammering, boots slipping over loose shale. The ground cracked under her weight. For one breathless second the world tilted. Then the mountain swallowed her. Rock shattered, snow collapsed, and she plunged into darkness with the animal's terrified cry. She caught the edge of a jagged outcrop with one hand, pain shooting through her fingers, her body dangling over an abyss that smelled of wet stone and something older… something alive. Below, there was a crunch, a short choking sound, and then silence. Not the natural silence of caves—this was heavy, listening silence. Her eyes adjusted slowly. Far beneath her, in the faint blue glow leaking from the depths, a shape moved. Tall. Thin. Not human. Not beast. Two pale lights opened like eyes.
Deep underground, something that had never seen the sky took its first breath of freedom.