Chapter 10—A Shadow

Chael bolted deeper into the cave, his body screaming in agony, but he didn't stop. His breath tore through his lungs and his legs burned with every step. The stab wound in his side throbbed and his broken fingers barely able to curl into a fist. His arm hung limply at his side, useless, broken beyond repair. He was running on nothing but instinct now, his body long past its limit.

Behind him, the flames roared, wild shadows dancing across the walls. Most of the Mongrel's Vow had now gotten out of the fire besides an unfortunate two or three that burned to death. Some had dropped, rolling desperately to smother the flames while others had managed to escape unscathed, their boots pounding against stone as they chased after Chael.

Garren's furious voice cut through the chaos. "Get him!"

The mercenaries surged forward as their heavy steps echoing through the twisting tunnels.

Echidna, still clutching her bleeding thigh, gritted her teeth as she watched them go. Her breath came fast and frustration flashed across her face before she let out a low curse. "Idiots! Don't just rush in-"

But they didn't hear her and chased after Chael while completely blinded by rage.

With a snarl of irritation, Echinda pushed herself up and followed.

Chael kept running, deeper and deeper into the unknown. His vision blurred at the edges, the cavern stretching endlessly before him. The air was damp and silence pressed in, devouring the sound of his own footsteps. The deeper he went, the more the tunnel seemed to swallow him whole, wrapping him in its suffocating darkness.

He should have been afraid right now.

Any sane person would be.

He was running blind into the abyss, into a place where no light reached, where creatures older than human memory could be lurking in silence. But neither, nor hesitation, nor human instinct that screamed at him to turn back around came.

Because in this moment, for the first time in his life - he was free.

Not just from his captors. Not just from the Mongrel's Vow.

From everything.

The burdens, the responsibilities and the chains that had bound him since birth were gone. His life had been one long march of obligation and of expectations placed on his shoulders before he was even old enough to understand them. He had never been given a choice and he had been born into a the clan and raised as a chief before he had even become a man.

A slow grin spread across his lips. His chest burned with exhaustion and his limbs barely held him up but none of it mattered.

If he lived, so what? If he died, so what? It was all the same. If a beast that had been hiding in the shadows suddenly clawed his head off, he'd be perfectly fine with it - after all at least he was dying on his own terms.

Behind him, the shouts of the Mongrel's Vow grew distant, drowned out by the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears. He could hear their fury and their desperation but they didn't matter.

Nothing seemed to matter at this moment did at this moment.

Because this was the closest thing to freedom he had ever known.

As he stumbled across the cave tunnel in pure darkness, he heard it again. 

"...You... the reflection... what... will be..."

Chael's eyes narrowed in exhaustion. This time Chael was sure it came from the back of his own mind. There were no echoes to this muffled, unintelligible and ancient-sounding voice whatsoever. It sounded like someone was talking to him from under the water.

'Yeah, I'm loosing my mind, alright?' Chael said as he trudged forth, his boots stomping on the stone floor, 'I probably won't live long enough to see it through though.'

Suddenly, the ground wasn't there anymore.

One moment, Chael was sprinting forward and the next his foot hit nothing but empty air.

His stomach lurched as gravity seized him and yanked him into the abyss. The world twisted violently around him, stone walls flashing past, jagged rocks scraping his skin as his body flipped and rolled through the darkness. A sharp impact slammed into his ribs knocking the breath from his lungs.

Bam.

He crashed hard against the cavern floor, rolling from the sheer momentum before slamming into a rock wall. The pain was instant and all-consuming, like fire spreading through every nerve in his body. His ribs ached with sharp, stinging pain. It was probably cracked again. His broken fingers throbbed mercilessly and blood spill pooled beneath him from the wound Echinda had inflicted with her knife.

For a few long moments, he just lay there and tired to catch his breath.

But the air down here was thin.

It was barely breathable.

His chest tightened and his lungs struggled to pull in even the smallest gasp of air. Every inhale felt like dragging a blade against his ribs.

It wasn't just the lack of oxygen - something was wrong.

This wasn't just another cavern.

This place felt... different.

Small vestiges of light peeked through tiny cracks in the ceiling above, their dim glow barely illuminating the space. The cavern stretched outward, vast and suffocating, yet the darkness seemed thicker than it should have been. 

The air itself felt alive and heavy, like it was pressing in around him.

It was silent. Not the peaceful kind of silence... but complete silence. 

No distant echoes of dripping water. No skittering of unseen creatures. Not even the distant howling of the storm above.

It was completely dead.

Chael exhaled slowly, his breath feeling like it barely carried beyond his lips. He forced himself to move, to push up from the cold stone, but his limbs felt heavier than they should. His body was wrecked but something about this place made it worse. 

Suddenly, Chael felt a shadow shift.

His breath caught.

It wasn't just the darkness moving.

Something was watching him.

He wasn't alone.

A presence loomed from the depths of the cavern, where the light didn't reach. He didn't see eyes nor did he see it's form. He just about made out a shape.

For the first time since falling, something colder than the air crept into his bones. 

The shadow shifted again, as if it was coming closer.

A twisted sense of irony rose at the edge of his thoughts.

Funny. After everything, after surviving what should have killed him a hundred times over, maybe he really was about to die here - in the belly of something he didn't even have a name for.

And yet, a small, bitter smile pulled at his lips. There was something freeing about it. The idea that this was it. That he had outrun every hell thrown his way, only to meet his end in the unknown. Not at the hands of men who wanted to control his fate, but on his own terms, against something no one would ever know existed.

For so long, he had survived purely out of spite. Every step forward, every breath he had taken, had been an act of defiance against the world which was trying to drag him down. He should have died with his clan. He should have died in Enir-Ilim. He should have died back at that cave, or in the storm, or beneath the weight of his own wounds.

But he hadn't.

And maybe that had been the joke all along.

Not that he was destined for something greater but that he was never destined for anything at all.

That he had lived and continued living purely because he refused to let the world take him.

And now? Now, maybe he was ready to stop running.

He sat there, back against the stone, staring into the abyss, waiting for whatever it was to make its move.

And soon, a hand that was long and twisted with far too many fingers came into the light.

It reached for Chael.

Then-

A distant sound broke the silence.

"Where the fuck did he go?"

The shadow froze.

Bootsteps and loud voices soon echoed through this cavern, and soon, the several mercenaries who were chasing him fell one after the other into this pit.