It might be time to turn back. I know that Lyra was excited to show me this place, but it looks like she didn't know how far this bridge goes. Who knew that we would find a place like this so close to home. Part of me is a little bit worried. So close to a place where people live, something this big is unusual. We didn't go very far underground but somehow we ended up on this never-ending bridge and there's no ground or ceiling in sight. It's so large in every direction, why haven't we heard about this before? Do they know about it, but they didn't tell us? It's possible that the ones who built this were cleared out ages ago. In that case, it could just be ruins. That would be kind of lame, but still interesting to study. The bridge looks like it's made of obsidian, but normally that would be far too brittle to build anything with, let alone a bridge this long.

I can tell Lyra is starting to feel uneasy. She usually has good intuition so maybe it's better to turn back. I know we should, but I want to go further. If something still lives down here, it has existed since before humans settled here. Of course, that also means it could be pretty dangerous.

"Lyra, should we head back?"

"No, I'm a little nervous, but we can keep going."

"Okay, we won't go too much further." Lyra's never really had an interest in risky adventures like this, but she always tags along. I'm a lucky sister. I'll find her another pet or something when we get home.

It might be the darkness getting to me, but I keep feeling like I see something over the edge of this walkway. We must have walked five miles so far. Something about all of this is disturbing. The length of this bridge, the primitive figures carved into it, the empty space in every direction, how much did people sacrifice to make this? If it's something so important, how did Lyra find it stumbling around in the woods? We're not the first ones to come down here, are we?

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"Woah."

The bridge ended at a round platform. In a circle, jagged columns of obsidian stood. Growing on them, was a plant that I had never seen. It was like a vine, but it was almost... fleshy. The color of muscle and parts of it webbed together and ran over the black rock like veins. The light from the lantern shone on its surface like coagulated blood. It seemed to avoid the center of the room and stuck only to the very outer edge of the platform. So much that they drew a large black circle on the floor. We took a few steps closer.

In the center of the floor, was a mass of corpses. Some were human, but most were not. Most of them looked alien, like something that humans may have separated from millenia before. They coiled together and wound around each other, in some places their lanky limbs and distorted features jutted out. In the center, their arms fused and twisted together to form a pedestal. On it, was a small ball of hands. A pair of hands on the outside interlocked fingers to secure a small pair inside of them, this continued until you could not tell where one pair ended and another began.

"I wanted to show you this, Mae." Time began to move very slowly. Lyra walked over to the corpses and lifted the hands from their resting place. Each heartbeat passed one at a time while Lyra walked over to me with the object in her hands and held it out to me.

"No..." I stepped back from my sister, but she moved fast and touched the thing to my stomach. In that instant it touched me, I was filled with a vision of beauty unlike any I could have seen or imagined. The light filled me with warmth. But when the hands fell to the ground, I was back here in this dark cave with a shattered lantern on the ground. I dropped to my knees and with all my power l slammed my skull against the black stone and the deep thunk echoed.

Again.

I felt my head bruising.

Again.

My head is soft.

Again.

I can feel my eye coming out.

Again, I think my skull is opening.

Again. Brain out.

AGAIN.

AGAIN

AGAINaGaINAGaiNagainAgGAINnAGaIN aGaINAGaiNagainAgGAINnAGaINaGa INAGaiNagainAgGAINn AGaINaGaINAGaiNagainAgGAINnAGaINaGaINAGaiNagainAgGAINnAGaIN

Lying with my eye, brains, and teeth spread across the black stone, I was happy. With my one unmoving eye, I watched Lyra pick up the hands with tears in her eyes and felt her arms around my twitching body. I knew that I would see her again soon.

And for the first and only time in history, the hands belonged to someone.