Cold stone pressed against Kael's cheek.
He groaned.
For a moment he didn't move, letting the dull ache in his skull settle into something manageable. Every muscle in his body felt heavy, like he had run for hours without stopping.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
Darkness surrounded him.
His lamp lay a few feet away on the chamber floor, its beam casting a crooked circle of light across the stone.
Kael blinked.
Right.
The cavern.
The fall.
The crystal.
He pushed himself up onto one elbow. His ribs protested sharply, reminding him the fall had not been a dream.
"Fantastic," he muttered.
His head throbbed as he sat up fully.
The chamber looked exactly the same as before—smooth curved walls, strange symbols carved into the stone, the massive pillars rising toward the ceiling.
But the pedestal in the center of the room was empty.
Kael frowned.
He distinctly remembered grabbing the crystal.
Then the light.
The pain.
After that… nothing.
"Must've blacked out," he said quietly.
His voice echoed faintly through the chamber.
He rubbed his face and exhaled slowly.
Probably a concussion.
That would explain the hallucinations.
Kael reached for his lamp and clipped it back onto his belt. The beam steadied, illuminating the chamber again.
As he stood, something caught his eye.
A faint green glow.
Kael looked down at his hands.
For a moment his brain refused to understand what he was seeing.
Etched into the center of his palm was a symbol.
A thin circle surrounded by delicate lines that spread outward like roots through the skin of his hand.
The lines glowed faintly emerald.
Kael stared at it.
"…Nope."
He turned his hand over.
The symbol remained.
The glowing lines followed the veins beneath his skin before fading just past his wrist.
Kael flexed his fingers slowly.
Nothing hurt.
Nothing felt strange.
Except for the glowing rune carved into his hand.
"Definitely a concussion," he decided.
That had to be it.
People saw all kinds of things after head injuries.
Glowing symbols included.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Still there.
"Great," he sighed.
He lowered his hand and scanned the chamber.
The crystal pedestal still stood empty.
Whatever had happened here… it had happened to him.
Then he heard it.
A faint scraping sound echoed from one of the tunnels.
Kael froze.
The sound came again.
Scrape.
Followed by a quick scurrying noise against stone.
His grip tightened on the lamp.
"Not imagining that," he whispered.
Another sound answered from deeper in the cavern.
Something was definitely moving down here.
And judging by the echo, it wasn't small.
Kael slowly backed toward the tunnel he had come from.
Waiting around suddenly felt like a terrible idea.
If the miners were still clearing the shaft, the safest place to be was near the entrance.
Not wandering deeper underground.
He turned and started down the tunnel.
The smooth stone walls slid past in the beam of his lamp. The strange carved symbols flickered briefly as the light passed over them.
His boots echoed loudly through the passage.
Behind him, the scraping sound followed.
Closer now.
Kael quickened his pace.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Definitely time to leave."
The tunnel began sloping upward slightly as it curved back toward the main cavern.
His ribs complained with every step.
The concussion theory still made the most sense.
Crystal hallucinations.
Glowing symbols.
His brain was probably still rattling around from the fall.
Up ahead, the tunnel opened into the larger cavern where he had landed.
Kael stepped through the opening.
The chamber looked unchanged.
The circle of daylight still shone far above through the collapsed shaft.
Massive rocks filled the opening halfway up.
Dust drifted slowly through the beam of sunlight.
But something else had changed.
Kael felt it immediately.
A faint sensation beneath his boots.
Almost like…
A vibration.
He froze.
The feeling lasted only a second before fading completely.
Kael frowned and looked down at the stone floor.
"Nope," he said firmly.
"Definitely hallucinating."
Above him, faint voices echoed down the shaft.
The miners were still working.
Good.
He walked toward the center of the cavern and waved his lamp upward.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Still alive down here!"
The echo bounced off the cavern walls.
Behind him, somewhere deep in the tunnel he had just left…
Something moved.
And this time, Kael heard the claws scraping clearly against the stone.