The boulder tore free of the earth and came for me, a wall of stone blotting out everything. There was no space to run. No left or right.

  I dropped low and brought the black blade up on instinct, edge angled, shoulders tucked. My teeth ground together as I braced for a final impact.

  The boulder struck the ground just short of me with a thunderclap that rattled my bones. Stone rebounded on stone. For the briefest heartbeat, it hopped. A sliver of space opened beneath it.

  The sword answered.

  It thrummed in my hands, the vibration climbing my arms, louder and sharper than ever before. My vision narrowed to that gap. Too small. Too fast. I drove anyway.

  Every muscle screamed as I threw what little strength I had left into the plunge. I hit the opening shoulder first. Something cracked, hot and wet pain flaring down my arm as the weight of the world rolled over me.

  My head slammed into the ground. Once. Then again. Breath exploded out of my lungs. For a blink I felt open air, the impossible relief of it, before the boulder clipped my heel and crushed it down. Another sickening crunch tore through me as my body was spat forward onto the rubble.

  I tried to rise. My body didn’t answer.

  A shadow fell over me. The massive spriggan loomed, following the trail of shattered stone and blood. Fingers like carved pillars closed around my torso and lifted me from the ground.

  For the first time, my grip failed. The black blade slipped from my hand and struck the ground. The vison of the stone skin I wore began to crumble, flaking away as the last of my strength bled out…

  I could barely move.

  The spriggan’s grip tightened around me. And with the blade gone, the old weight crept back in. The curse I had held at bay for so long flooded back into me, heavy and familiar, yet far stronger than it ever had been, filling the silence where the sword’s presence had been.

  Pain flared everywhere at once, sharp enough to steal my breath. The sound that tore out of me did not feel human.

  The spriggan jerked at the noise, its grip loosening for a heartbeat before stone fingers clenched harder around my ribs. Something shifted inside my chest. The world pulsed red.

  The fiery red tendril etched across my skin shuddered and brightened, light flickering in time with my heartbeat. Blood ran freely now, hot against the cold air, dripping from my wounds in thick streams. My vision tunneled. The edges darkened.

  The moon hung above me, pale and distant. I stared at it through the blur, trying to fix it in my mind. The thought came slow and heavy. This might be the last thing I ever see.

  Something moved into my fading view. A shape. A head, maybe. I could not tell if it was real.

  The spriggan shifted. Its face filled my vision, stone lips curling back as its mouth opened wide. Jagged teeth ground together, rock scraping on rock. The creature hauled my body closer to its maw.

  I twisted, screamed, fought with what little strength I had left. It did nothing. I knew it then with a cold certainty. I was going to die.

  The world lurched.

  The pressure vanished.

  I dropped.

  For a heartbeat there was only falling, my stomach lifting into my throat. Then I hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Stone exploded beside me as something else struck. The arm that had held me shattered on impact, breaking into slabs and dust.

  The spriggan roared, the sound grinding and furious. I forced my eyes open in time to see it turn toward whatever had struck it.

  My vision dimmed, swam, then focused.

  Jerald stood between me and the monster.

  He looked impossibly calm, feet planted, hands resting on his hips as if he were facing a minor inconvenience rather than a towering stone behemoth. His sword remained sheathed at his side.

  I stared, stunned. Somehow, without even drawing his blade, he had hit the spriggan hard enough to tear its arm clean off.

  Jerald spared me a glance. His eyes flicked over the blood, the broken way I lay, the way my chest barely moved. His jaw tightened. Then he looked back up at the monster.

  The spriggan roared and lunged, its remaining arm swinging down in a wide, crushing arc. I tried to shout a warning. Nothing came out.

  Jerald vanished.

  One blink he stood between me and the creature. The next the air detonated.

  He reappeared at the spriggan’s chest in a flash of motion I couldn’t track. A concussive boom rolled through the chamber, stone screaming as it fractured inward. Jerald’s fist drove through the creature’s chest like it was wet clay, punching a gaping hole straight through solid rock.

  The spriggan flew backward, its massive body hurled across the chamber as if it weighed nothing. It struck the far wall with a sound like a collapsing cliff, stone splintering on impact.

  Jerald was already moving.

  Before the dust could settle he was on top of it, hammering blow after blow into its torso. Each strike sent tremors through the ground. I caught flashes of motion between blinks as I fought to stay conscious, the world dimming and swelling in time with my pulse.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The curse gnawed at me, cold and crushing, dragging at my thoughts until even holding on to awareness felt like work. I forced my head to turn, searching through the rubble.

  My sword lay a few feet away.

  So close it hurt to see it.

  Jerald kept pummeling the spriggan, each impact shaking the ground as I dragged myself forward. Inch by inch. Stone tore at my skin. Every movement sent knives of pain through my body.

  I reached for the blade and came up short. My arm shook so badly it barely listened to me. I needed it. I needed the relief, the surge of strength, the way the sword pushed the pain back and filled the hollow inside me. Without it I could feel my life leaking away, slow and steady, drop by drop.

  My fingers slipped on blood and dust. The chamber felt distant now, sounds muffled as if I were sinking underwater. My limbs grew heavy, then cold. Thought came apart, edges blurring.

  Crunch.

  Jerald’s final strike landed with bone-deep force. The spriggan’s body convulsed and split, a rush of greenish blue energy bursting free in a violent wave. The light washed over the chamber and then began to fade.

  My vision tunnelled. Darkness crept in from the edges.

  I stretched one last time, every muscle screaming, and my hand finally closed around the hilt.

  The world went black.

  It did not fall away all at once. It thinned. Sound dulled. Weight loosened. It felt like stepping backward from something warm and solid, leaving it behind without quite meaning to.

  Pain followed me. A single thread of it, thin but sharp, tethering me to the world above. It burned just enough to remind me I was not gone yet.

  Somewhere far away a man was shouting. The sound reached me warped and distant, like it had to travel through deep water to get there. The cold presence of the sword lingered in my thoughts, a steady pressure that told me it was still in my hand, even if I could no longer feel my fingers.

  The darkness shifted.

  Within it, I became aware of something else.

  Not outside me. Within me.

  A presence stirred deep in my core, vast and heavy, ancient in a way that made the void around it feel small. I could not see it at first, only sense its shape, its weight, the way it filled the dark without moving.

  Then I noticed the bindings.

  Red tendrils wrapped tight around it, layered and knotted, pulsing faintly with each echo of pain from the world above. They held it still. Held it silent. I understood without words that they had always been there, that they were the only thing keeping whatever lay beneath from waking.

  They were also the reason I was dying.

  The blade’s presence reached inward.

  It was not gentle. It did not ask. It fed.

  The red tendrils shuddered as the sword drew them in, unraveling them strand by strand. Each one torn away sent a ripple through me, relief and agony tangled together. The pain that had anchored me to life weakened as it was consumed. The curse was being stripped from me, pulled free from where it had dug itself deep.

  As the last bindings loosened, the thing beneath them shifted.

  The surface cracked.

  Light burst outward, violent and overwhelming, filling the void in a flood that should have blinded me. Yet my eyes saw nothing. The light did not come from without.

  It came from within.

  And whatever had been sleeping inside me was waking up.

  Air slammed back into my lungs and I gasped, my body jerking as awareness crashed down on me all at once.

  Jerald loomed above me, his face tight with panic. I tasted something sharp and sweet in my mouth, cherries and harsh liquor burning my tongue and throat. My eyes struggled to focus. An empty glass vial slipped from my lips and clinked against the stone beside me.

  “Holy shit, kid. You scared the daylights out of me.”

  He looked me over fast, hands hovering but not touching. As the fog lifted, pain followed. Every injury spoke at once. My chest locked up and I fought for breath, shallow and ragged. This time there was no doubt about it. Things were broken.

  I tried to speak. Nothing happened.

  “Easy. Try not to move,” Jerald said.

  He dug through his pocket and pulled out something squat and wooden, shaped like a stubby flare gun. He angled it upward and fired.

  The night split with a sharp crack. A burst of emerald fire bloomed overhead, hanging in the air and bathing the chamber in green light. The glow washed over Jerald’s face, and I saw the worry there, raw and unguarded.

  “I gave you a renewal potion,” he said, voice lower now. “It’ll keep you going for the moment.” He exhaled hard. “If I hadn’t shown up when I did…”

  He stopped himself, but the words were not needed.

  My hand twitched. I followed the movement and saw the sword still clutched in my grip.

  It was wrong.

  The blade was no longer black. The surface looked dull and ordinary, like plain worked steel. I stared at it, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Even so, I could still feel it. A steady, cooling flow ran through my arm and into my body, drawing something out of me in a slow, constant stream. The curse was still being drained away.

  Jerald’s gaze followed mine. His eyes dropped to my shoulder. Then to my foot.

  His jaw tightened.

  I coughed and pushed myself upright, moving slow enough that every inch felt like a risk.

  “I said don’t,” Jerald started.

  Another cough cut him off. My chest burned. “I’m fine,” I said, and knew it was a lie even as the words left me.

  I shifted my weight and waited for the familiar spike of pain from my foot. It never came. I looked down, expecting to see it twisted or swollen. It wasn’t. I pressed it against the stone, testing it. The ache was there, deep and dull, but nothing sharp. Nothing broken.

  I rolled my shoulder carefully, bracing for the pop I was sure I had felt earlier. It moved. Stiff, sore, but whole.

  That made no sense.

  My head still felt stuffed with fog, thoughts sliding out of reach as soon as I touched them. I tried to hold onto the feeling of wrongness and failed.

  Jerald studied me with a hard look. “Alright. You’re not dying right this second,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you’re fine. Could still be internal damage.”

  I nodded and drew a slow breath, testing my lungs. The air went in clean.

  A rope dropped from somewhere above and slapped against the stone floor. Then another.

  Boots followed. Dark shapes slid down the lines and fanned out, cloaks blending into the shadows as they took positions around the cavern. One of them pulled his hood back and peered down at me, eyes sharp.

  “Alright, Red?” he asked.

  The name caught on something in the back of my mind.

  I lifted a hand without thinking and brushed my hair from my eyes. A lock slipped through my fingers, lighter than it should have been. I stared at it for a second before understanding settled in.

  Red.

  My gaze drifted down to my hands. The old scars were gone. No ridges. No white lines. Just smooth, pale skin where steel and fire had once left their mark.

  I closed my fingers slowly and said nothing.

  My grip tightened on my sword. I checked it without meaning to. Plain steel. Quiet. Still warm in that strange, steady way.

  I looked back up at the man.

  “Good,” I said after a moment, forcing the words out. “Good to see you.”

  Brent’s expression shifted. He dropped to one knee beside me and reached into his pocket, pulling out a vial the same narrow shape as the one Jerald had poured down my throat earlier.

  He held it out. No questions. No explanation.

  I took it and drank. The liquid slid down cool and sharp, spreading through me in a slow wave. This time the sensation went deeper, settling beneath the surface. Pressure eased in my chest. The dull ache in my gut loosened, as if something inside me had been gently pushed back into place.

  Jerald watched closely. As the haze lifted from my thoughts, he nodded once. “Can you walk?”

  I pushed myself up and put weight on my foot. I waited for pain that never came. There was soreness, nothing more. Whatever damage had been there was gone now, or close enough.

  I nodded.

  Brent glanced up toward the ropes hanging above us. “And what about climbing?”