Chapter 5
I hit the ground hard.
My knees buckled as I hit the ground, palms slapping against cold, wet stone. The shock travelled up my wrists into my shoulders, causing the book to slip from my grasp and slide to my left. I heard it scrape and halt. Above me, the sky's circle had already shrunk significantly. Although it was fifteen paces wide on the surface, it appeared like a coin held at arm's length from this vantage point. The pale, thin light filtering through it didn't reach the floor where I knelt. It hovered just above my head, fading into grey.
I remained on my hands and knees, feeling the wet, cold stone beneath my palms; it wasn’t just damp, but soaked as if water constantly flowed over it. I sensed it shifting under my fingers, a delicate film sliding toward an unseen drain. The air carried the scent of mineral water and earth, deep, sunless soil that has long been hidden from sunlight.
I lowered myself onto my heels, feeling my jaw throb. The salve on my lip had cracked during the fall, and I could taste blood, fresh and metallic. My knees ached from the impact, and the bruise on my spine pulsed with every breath. I looked up at the clear sky. No faces appeared at the edge, and no ropes were lowered. The instructors had pushed me in and then left.
Five days passed as I allowed my eyes to adapt, a process that took some time. The darkness wasn't complete but nearly so. After a few minutes, shapes started to emerge from the black. The walls of the Pit were made of rough stone, curving inward as they ascended. The floor was uneven, dotted with shallow pools that reflected the faint light from above in a dull, flat manner. The area where I had landed was roughly a ten-paces-wide chamber.
There were three openings leading out. Dark mouths carved into the stone, each varying in size. The largest was on my right, large enough to walk through comfortably. The smallest was on my left, low and narrow, resembling more of a crack than a proper passage. The third was directly in front, medium-sized, from which a faint, colder air current flowed.
I observed the walls. Even in the dim light, the marks were visible. They formed dense, overlapping patterns across the stone, stretching from the floor up to where the faint light reached. These marks resembled those above the entrance, flowing lines, angular clusters, shapes that weren’t quite letters or images but something older. In this chamber where the Pit started, there were more of them than I had seen on the surface. They covered every visible spot. I reached out and touched one. The stone was cold under my finger. The mark was a shallow groove, no deeper than a fingernail, worn smooth by time and water. I traced it. It curved, then sharply changed direction, then curved again.
A faint sensation moved through my hand, a warmth, and a pressure that wasn't weighty, resting on my fingertip where it met the stone. It lasted less than a second before disappearing, leaving the stone untouched. I withdrew my hand and examined my finger; the skin was unchanged, with the raw patches from the wolf pup still red and tender. Nothing had shifted, and I didn't touch the marks again.
I looked for the book. It had landed near the base of the wall, spine-up, pages splayed on the wet stone. The leather cover was dark with moisture. The yellowed edges of the pages were soaking up water from the floor.
I picked up the book. The leather felt slick in my hands, but I couldn't read it because the light was too dim. I could see the shape of the cover, the thickness of the pages, and the cracked spine, but the words were invisible. I held it for a moment, recalling that the instructor had thrown it at me, saying I needed to read about the riders' history, the ranking system, and old traditions. She wanted me to sit in darkness, absorb the knowledge, and feel a change within. I placed the book against the wall, closed it, and put it out of harm's way.
I moved to the driest, stoniest patch I could find and sat with my back pressed against the wall. The cold stone seeped through my shirt, and the damp air rested on my skin. I could feel it on my face, hands, and the back of my neck, a fine, persistent moisture that wasn't rain or mist, but something in between. The temperature remained steady, cool enough to make me aware of any thin or torn spots in my clothing, yet not cold enough to make me shiver. I closed my eyes. It made no difference.
I tried to sleep, but the stone kept me awake. Every position pressed on a bruise, scrape, or the swollen side of my jaw. Lying on my back, the bruise on my spine pressed into the rock. Turning to my side, my hip scraped against the uneven surface. Curling forward, my ribs ached. The sounds didn't help: water dripped somewhere to my right in an irregular, slow rhythm that refused to be predictable. The air moved through the three openings with a low, steady hum that shifted pitch as the wind above changed. Deeper in the cave, I heard a faint, spaced-out clicking sound, which could have been rock settling or something else entirely.
I lay on the stone, listening to the dripping, humming, and clicking, but I couldn't sleep. My mind kept racing, cycling through thoughts like the instructor's office and the wooden case with Solari pins, iron for Kindling, copper for Flare, bronze for Blaze, and the empty slots above them. Forty-five levels of progression, yet I hadn't advanced in any.
Rank Zero. The absence of a rank.
In the darkness, I observed my hands, feeling the slight, lingering warmth I had ignored since being in the garden because I didn't want to confront it. My palms, warm and central, pulsed gently with my heartbeat. I pressed them onto the cold stone floor, but the warmth quickly dissipated as the stone absorbed it, leaving my palms just as before.
“If I really were rank zero, then how could I do this?” I told myself it was nothing.
I turned onto my other side. The stone pressed a new bruise into my shoulder. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep the way you wait for something you know is not coming.
I slept, though I don't know when. I woke to the same darkness, with the dripping and humming still ongoing. The sky above had darkened to a deep blue, perhaps evening or early morning, though I couldn't tell. My body was stiff, with every joint locked. As I sat up, my back crackled like dry wood bending. My jaw had swollen more, and the left side of my face felt thick and hot, the skin stretched tight like a drum.
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I was thirsty, with a dry throat and an empty stomach. I hadn't eaten since before the bonding ceremony, which now felt like a different lifetime. I stood up, my knees aching, and put my hand on the wall. The three openings awaited me. I needed water. The instructor had said it was nearby if I could find it. I could hear a drip somewhere deeper inside, but the sound here was strange, bouncing off the walls and coming from directions that didn't make sense. I stood at the edge of the largest opening, trying to sense which way the water was.
A voice within urged me to go left, coming from deep inside my subconscious, guiding me toward the narrowest gap, the crack in the wall. I didn't trust this instinct and instead opted for the wider opening, which seemed to have a smoother floor and allowed me to pass without stooping. I placed my hand on the right wall and moved forward.
The tunnel was narrow but navigable. I kept my right hand on the wall, feeling the wet, textured stone beneath my fingers, ridged with mineral deposits that resembled frozen wax. The floor angled downward, initially slowly, then more steeply, forcing me to brace my feet sideways to avoid slipping. Darkness thickened, and the faint grey from the landing chamber faded after about twenty paces. Nothing was visible ahead. My eyes strained against the darkness, creating illusions, flickering edges, and dissolving patterns when looked at directly. I advanced using touch: right hand on the wall, left hand extended with spread fingers, and testing every step with my feet. The uneven floor caused me to stumble twice on unseen ridges, and once I stepped into a shallow pool, cold water soaked through my boot and gripped my ankle.
As I descended further, the atmosphere shifted; it was now colder and damper. The dull hum from the openings faded, giving way to a dense, textured silence. I could hear only my breathing, heartbeat, and the scratching of my boots, nothing else. The tunnel split ahead. Moving my hand along the right wall, I felt only emptiness. The wall curved away, revealing a second passage on the left. I paused at the junction. The right pathway carried warmer air, while the left carried colder air, accompanied by the faint sound of flowing water. The unseen pull drew me again, subtle and wordless, pointing toward the left.
This time, I followed it closely. The passage narrowed, and the ceiling lowered. I had to duck, then crouch, then crawl on my hands and knees. The stone pressed against me, and my shoulders scraped the walls. The wet rock soaked through my trousers, and the cold seeped into my joints. My torn callus snagged on a rough edge, making me bite my lip and taste salve mixed with blood. The sound of water grew louder. The passage suddenly opened up. I crawled into a space so vast I couldn't see its edges. Here, the air was different, broader. The steady sound of water came from ahead, flowing over the rocks. The floor under my hands was smooth and worn by the water.
I approached the sound and felt the edge of a stone channel with my hands. Cold, fast-moving water flowed through it. I cupped my hands and drank, the water tasting of iron and chalk, so cold it hurt my teeth. I kept drinking until my stomach cramped, then sat back and pressed my wet hands against my swollen jaw.
The cold felt good against the heat.
I sat by the stream for a long time as waves of fear washed over me. Unlike immediate, sharp panic, my fear grew quietly, fuelled by darkness, cold, and the unsettling awareness that I was alone in an unmapped cave system with no food, no light, and no way to call for help. My breathing sped up. I pressed my back against the wall, pulled my knees to my chest, and rested my forehead on them. The mountain loomed above, around, and beneath me, there was no sky, only endless stone. My hands warmed again. I lifted them, placing them in front of my face, but I couldn't see them. Still, the warmth from my palms slowly spread into my fingers, a gentle wave extending to my fingertips and lingering there.
Something flickered.
A small point of light rested in my left palm, so flickering and brief that I doubted it was real. It was a tiny, orange-gold spark that lasted less than a second before vanishing, making the darkness seem even deeper. I looked at my hands as the instructor's words echoed in my mind:
A spark—nothing more. Emotions surged as I sat in a cave, starving, with a swollen jaw and the memory of a dead wolf pup haunting me. Naturally, my power flickered; it meant nothing. I pressed my thumbnail into the raw spot on my thumb, feeling the sharp, familiar pain. The warmth in my palms ebbed away. The spark didn’t reignite. I got to my feet, touched the wall, and kept moving.
The cave system was a maze. Every tunnel led to more tunnels. Some wide enough to walk through. Some crawl spaces. Some dead ends where I stood with my hands flat on solid rock and felt the finality of it before turning around. I was losing track. I had been keeping a rough map in my head, counting turns, noting textures. But the turns multiplied. The textures repeated. The darkness made everything the same. The pull came and went. Standing at junctions with two or three passages ahead, I would feel it: that faint tug pointing in a direction I had no reason to trust. When I followed it, the passages tended to lead somewhere. A wider chamber. A second water source. A stretch of dry floor. When I did not, I hit more dead ends.
The heat in my hand would come and go. When darkness pressed hardest and fear filled my chest, the warmth would appear. It would gather in my palms, sitting patiently, waiting for something I didn't know how to offer. Once, in a very narrow passage where I had to turn sideways, the warmth spread from my hands to my forearms. The skin along the inside of my wrists felt as if it was basking in sunlight. This sensation lasted about ten or fifteen seconds before fading away.
I found a place to rest. It was a chamber, larger than the landing room, with a ceiling high enough that I could not hear my breathing bounce back. The floor was dry in the centre, covered with fine grit. The air was faintly warm.
I sat against the far wall. The stone here was covered with marks. I could feel them under my fingers, dense and layered. Down here, far from the entrance, far from any light, the marks were thicker.
I did not touch them with intent. My hand was resting against the wall, my fingers tracing the grooves idly.
The sensation returned, stronger this time. Warmth travelled through my fingertips into my hand, bringing with it a sense of space and depth. For a moment, I could feel the cave system around me as if I were sensing the shape of a room with the lights on. Tunnels extended in unexplored directions, with open chambers above and below. Water flowed through channels I couldn't hear. The mountain's interior appeared in my mind like a map drawn using pressure, temperature, and the faint vibration of stone. This feeling lasted two or three seconds. Then my hand shifted, breaking the contact with the mark, and the impression faded back into darkness.
I remained very still, feeling my heart race and catching a brief amber flicker at the edge of my vision, a glow from my own skin. I leaned my head against the wall, closed my eyes, and felt the dry grit beneath me. The chamber was warm, and the marks beneath my fingers were smooth and unhurried. I couldn't grasp the pull, warmth, spark, or impression of the caves. Nor did I understand why my dormant power was reacting to this place after years of lying inactive, only surfacing once—at the worst moment—to harm something small and frightened.
I sat in the dark and breathed, and I waited for whatever came next.
