The stars were going out.

It was a strange first thought to slip through the heavy black curtain of unconsciousness with, but it was the one universal truth Casek’s freshly woken mind could grasp with any surety. The stars were going out.

You will go the same way as them if you don’t move!

Casek’s eyes snapped open, the alien voice penetrating the confusing haze of wild, stray thoughts clogging his mind like too many feathers in a pillow. He blinked, slowly at first, trying to clear the thick blanket of sleep from his eyes so he could find the source of the voice. It was no use. Even with what little light there was in the room, all he could make out of his surroundings were clumps of dense shadow—furniture, he supposed, sparse for a room of this size, and concentrated towards the edges.

Blearily, he tried to move, and started when he felt resistance at his wrists and ankles. For a moment, he tried to peer down at them for an explanation, but the familiar feel of cold steel shook loose a fragment of clear thought. Shackles. He was bound. He should have felt more frightened by that knowledge. Memories from before waking here were non-existent, but that much he knew. Being captive like this was seldom a good thing.

So why did he feel so reassured by their touch on his skin?

Will you stop gawking and move, you moron—they will be here soon!

Casek tensed at the sound of the foreign voice, frantically trying to find the source of the voice and failing once more. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that clawed loose from his parched throat was a spluttered croak that morphed into a dry, hacking cough. He hissed at the tearing sensation the coughing fit brought, but as quickly as it had come, a gentle warmth pulsed through him, numbing the pain.

There, the voice came again, its tone far softer. I have no talent for Restoration, but I’ve done what I can to ease the pain–at least until we are out of here.

“Who’s there?” Casek rasped, eyes darting around the shadow-dimmed room, still too poorly adjusted to see clearly.

There was no sound at first, but Casek got the distinct impression of something–someone–sighing.

Look, you have about three minutes before the incredibly ravenous shades that sensed you waking, make it to this room and turn you into a buffet. And that’s only if something worse wasn’t close enough to sense an easy meal. I get you’re confused, and scared and must have a billion questions, but if you wait any longer, you won’t survive long enough for the answers to matter. Move!

He blinked, the desperation lurking at the edges of the voice creating even more questions with no answers. What was clear, however, was—whether or not he believed the words it spoke—he could not stay here, strapped to a table, forever. He needed food. Water. Answers. No amount of knowledge would help him if he didn’t live long enough to use it.

The iron restraints on his wrists rattled as he tested them, tugging at them with as much strength as his deteriorated muscles could muster. It was odd to feel so weak, as though he hadn’t moved in only the Gods knew how long. It was odd to wake in a room so obviously decrepit by the acrid taste and smell of stale air. Most of all, it was odd how rust had rotted through the chains binding him—so much so that his right arm yanked free at the third time of asking, chain links crumbling to amber dust.

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He freed his left arm with no more difficulty than the right, leaving only the manacles and a scant few surviving chain links upon his wrists—a problem to worry about when he was away from here, and safe. Casek turned his attention to his feet and frowned when he realised the iron bindings around his ankles had been unlocked.

Muscles quivering, he swung himself off of the metal table he’d been strapped to, and his legs gave way beneath him, unprepared for his weight. He struck the cold stone floor with an unceremonious, fleshy thud, but managed to hold back the pained hiss his body wanted to let loose.

Instead, he froze, his eyes adjusting to the dark locked on another dark shape with him on the floor. Fathomless black pits where eyes had once been stared back at him, set upon a yellow-tinged human skull. Behind it, the rest of the body’s bones lay, stained by time. The corpse reached up towards where he had laid upon the table, a single skeletal hand stretching out towards him. In its hand, a key.

For your bindings, the voice came again. When the Shadow came, he tried to free you. Almost succeeded.

The shadow. The words stirred something in him. Memories not touched in a long time. The tear in the sky, and the horror that broke through it. Golden warriors stood thousands strong upon lush, emerald plains. The feel of good steel in his hands. Pride and hope.

Casek could feel himself tremble, breathing ragged. He pulled himself to his feet as quickly as his screaming muscles would allow him. He looked around the room, movements jerky and wild, looking for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. Now that he could see well-enough, the state of disrepair the room was in sent a razor sharp sliver of terror through him like a blade.

The walls, soot-blackened and crumbling, had lost the pure-white sheen he now remembered, and dust and dank air hung thick in the once sterilised air. Any semblance of furniture had been shattered into rotting wooden splinters thick with moss, and weeds had long since crept through the cracks in the brickwork and floor.

Worse still, there was more than one body in this room with him. These had once faced away, towards the door, and had died facing what had killed them. Painfully, if the shattered ribs and cracked skulls were any indication. He scratched at his chin to still the growing shakiness of his hands, and realised for the first time in his life, he wore a beard, albeit an unkempt and matted one.

Gods, how long had he been lying on that table? And why were the few memories he could gather nothing but the loose and scattered threads of a once beautiful tapestry—faint images and recollections, but scant concrete facts?

The frantic panicked scratching at the back of his mind was growing ever-harder to keep reigned in, and Casek knew he needed to get out of this place before it overwhelmed him. Squaring his shoulders, he made for the door, a shambling stumble the fastest his body would carry him, his legs still not quite able to run.

He emerged into a corridor of sterile grey concrete, its walls pockmarked and scarred, the floor littered with debris, some of which had once been living. Dust hung thick in the air, shafts of sunlight streaming inside through the crumbling stonework of the ceiling made them glow like the embers of a fire.

His instinct—or perhaps some trace of memory that he couldn’t fully take hold of—told him he should head to his right, but the voice in his head had different ideas.

Take the left. I’ll guide you to where you need to go.

“But,” he protested, brow furrowed, but the voice cut him off.

You need to trust me, Casek. I will explain as much as I can later, but right now, we just need to survive. To do that, we go left.

The word ‘we’ sent an uncomfortable flicker of recognition through him that bordered on nausea. He had been operating under the assumption, or perhaps hope, that the voice was simply his dazed subconscious. If it wasn’t, after all, why was it in his own head?

A crash of metal on stone to his right banished the thought from his mind. It echoed through the empty corridors, the only sound many of these walls had heard for what appeared to be an eternity. Slowly, another sound became known. So faint that, at first, he mistook it for his imagination, or the last fading echoes of the first noise. It was soft. A gentle scratching, subtle at first, but growing into a cacophony of chattering movement, coming ever closer.

“Left it is,” he said, hardly daring to breathe.

Quickly, the voice said, harsh with fear. The Shadow has come.