Joah stared ahead, his breath so slow it barely left his lips, his body pressed against the cold, crumbling pillar of rock. The mine stretched before him, its flickering lamps painting restless, writhing shadows over the wood beams and unfinished tunnels. A mine, yes, but was it not also a tomb? Somewhere, water dripped in the dark. His ears caught the smallest rustle, the faintest tremor of something moving beyond his sight. He felt not fear exactly, but a terrible awareness, a feeling of being watched.

And yet, worse than the mine itself was the voice. It never stopped, not even when silence might have saved them both.

‘Oh dear, my dear, you can’t escape like this. Do you need help, my boy? Do you? Uh? I know your skills are lacking, but—my dear boy—I was not expecting them to be quite so… insubstantial. It was so simple to escape… so clean, so efficient. Just one stroke of your knife in that old man. But what did you do? You tried to be the hero. Pah! Dumbass. You’re a rat, not a mouse.’

Joah’s fingers scraped against the dusty stone wall, leaving faint trails in the filth. The grit lodged itself beneath his nails, grounding him, if only slightly. His head shook — slow, deliberate, as if the motion alone could cast off the memory. But no, it clung to him like old cobwebs. He saw it again — the moment he woke, the cold sting of reality as he stumbled to his feet near the mine’s entrance, utterly lost. Except for Goad, of course.

The entrance had been open before him, a gaping wound in the earth. He would have turned away, vanishing into the black forests that stretched beyond, but fate — fickle, laughing fate — had given him an old man instead.

The miner had been frail, bent like an old tree too long battered by wind and time. Perhaps Joah had seen his grandmother in him, or perhaps he had clung to the idea that someone, anyone, might explain what had happened. It did not matter now.

The man had spoken of Duskmoor, of iron veins and the town’s slow, pragmatic greed. Of the mine that predated them all, swallowing men, driving them mad, as if the earth itself resented their intrusion. First, it was creatures — common, then tainted. Then, something worse. The unknown. Poisons without cures, minds unraveling, men turning on one another with pickaxes meant for rock but finding flesh.

‘A lovely place, really. Perhaps we should stay a while.’

Joah ignored Goad, just as he had ignored the tightening knot in his gut when the old miner whispered of the figures he had seen in the woods — men who walked without light, gliding between the trees like shadows themselves. Curiosity, that old fool’s disease, had led him to follow. He had seen them slip into the mine and heard their chanting in the dark. Cultists, the old man had said, though Joah wondered if the word itself was just a poor attempt to give shape to something vast and unknowable.

Then the knocking had come. Soft at first. Then insistent.

He remembered the stillness between each knock, how the old miner had turned pale, his breath suddenly shallow. Then the rattling of the door, the hurried whisper, "Follow me."

The escape was doomed from the start. The miner was too slow, and time was too cruel. Joah had tried — he truly had — but survival has a voice of its own, and it speaks louder than guilt. He ran. Without thinking, without looking back, he ran, letting the darkness swallow him. He became a shadow, slipping between tunnels, losing his pursuers in the twists of the mine’s labyrinthine veins.

And so he had wandered. Seven days. Seven days of damp stone, flickering lights, gnawing hunger. He had stolen dried meat from an abandoned chamber, but that, too, was dwindling. The tunnels were alive, shifting. Sometimes, he saw the creatures — glimpses of twisted limbs in the periphery of his vision. Other times, he saw the figures — still searching, still moving with that terrible, unnatural ease.

Now, at last, light. A thread-thin beam filtering into the tunnel ahead. An exit? It did not matter. If he wanted to live, he needed to reach it. But for that to happen, he waited in silence.

‘Oh yes,’ Goad murmured, curling somewhere in the back of Joah’s mind, his voice a slow, amused slither. ‘Silence has served you so well thus far.’

Joah adjusted his backpack, his fingers tightening around the worn grip of his knife. He saw them. Two figures, vague, shifting outlines moving toward him, their shapes briefly carved out by the flickering lamplight. Dark robes, dark shoes. And masks — owl-like, their hollow eyes glowing a pale, unnatural white. They moved without sound, gliding rather than walking, as though their bodies obeyed some unseen rhythm beneath the surface of reality. Joah frowned. Their pace — impossibly slow, yet unnervingly fast.

Then, one of them stopped. Close. Too close.

Joah hushed his breath, his pulse a coiled whisper beneath his skin. The shadows embraced him, weaving around him like an old lover, and in that moment, the figure looked straight through him. “Common human.". That was what Joah read in his eyes, in the tilt of his head, the way his fingers flexed absentmindedly at his sides. Flesh and bone, beneath all that fabric.

‘Humans,’ Joah thought, but the word did not settle. No, something was wrong. The way they walked, the way they existed, made it impossible to imagine anything human beneath those masks.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Then, the voice. Low. Flat. It scraped against the air like metal dragged across stone, void of warmth, yet stained with a color Joah could not name. "We must find him. Our mother needs another sacrifice."

His stomach twisted.

‘Oh, boy! Why not?’ Goad cooed, stretching himself luxuriously within Joah’s mind. ‘You look like a lamb, dear Joah. Why not offer yourself? At least it will be fun, no?’

‘If I die, you die, worm.’

'But will you die? Will I die?’ A dry chuckle. ‘I just need to take over, my dear Joah. Unlike you, I know how to hunt.’

Joah’s grip tightened on his knife, his knuckles white. The second figure was moving now, lowering himself onto one knee, his lips moving in some murmur of devotion. From the earth beneath him, something stirred. Smoke curled from the cracks in the stone, thick and heavy, and from it a face began to rise. Twisted. Warped. More nose than mouth, the flesh distorted as if it had been sculpted by a blind god with trembling hands. The nostrils flared, breathing in deep, then the thing turned its face toward the path Joah had taken.

The kneeling man pressed his hands against his chest in reverence. "Oh, Mother, we love. Oh Mother, we serve. Help your son find the prey for our plate and our hope."

Joah’s heartbeat kicked against his ribs, and the shadows around him deepened, swallowing his view of the tunnel ahead. But he saw the thing’s face — smelled its breath in the air, heavy and hot. It turned toward the tunnel, toward the place he had come from, and the kneeling man whispered again. "Oh, Mother, we love. Oh Mother, we serve. Your son, with his love, shall bow in respect for your love."

Slowly, the figure drew a knife from the folds of his robe. Without hesitation, he sliced his palm open, the blade carving deep into flesh, and let the blood drip onto the grotesque face beneath him. Smoke coiled upward, hungrily drinking the offering. The face shuddered, then began to dissolve, sinking back into the ground like something returning home.

"Let’s go," the figure murmured, rising to his feet. Without another word, both figures turned, moving toward the chamber Joah had used to rest.

He swallowed. Goad’s voice was warm in his ear, almost affectionate. ‘Well, my dear, it seems they’re making themselves right at home.’

He trekked forward, his steps measured, not for caution, but because exhaustion had rooted itself in his bones. He had used too much of his power, stretched himself thin, but at least it had kept him unseen. He told himself that mattered. That survival was enough.

Then came the thoughts. They crept in like a slow sickness. The Eruption. Since the first day, four had died. One captured. He tried to tell himself it was just bad luck — the first day, after all. No updates. And in the absence of news, hope flickered like a dying ember. Maybe things had stabilized. Maybe the worst had passed. But what did he really know about the Eruption? Nothing beyond the scraps of knowledge the academy had fed him. Theory. Cautionary tales.

"It’s a game," he recalled the words. "A cruel, merciless game. And you must win."

He needed to win more than anyone else. The thought of Baurous — his home — crushed under the weight of destruction, twisted by corruption, made his stomach turn. A lingering, acrid taste coated his tongue. He swallowed it down, but it remained, a reminder. His family was there. His only family. He couldn’t fail. Wouldn’t.

And to win, he had to adapt. To become. That was what Goad told him. That was what gnawed at the edges of his mind, whispering like a silver-tongued prophet in the dark. The voice and the reality clashed, tides crashing against each other in his skull. What did it mean to accept? Did he need to become what Goad claimed he already was? A cold, precise killer? A creature that could take life without blinking?

Could he do it? The tunnels stretched around him, their blackness folding over itself, swallowing the past, the present, and the thing he feared most — the future. The void within them mirrored the one inside him. And, of course, Goad would not let an opportunity like that slip by.

‘Accept it, boy! Accept it!’ The voice curled and writhed, laced with venomous delight. ‘Alone, you are weak. Useless. But those two figures? You could kill them easily. You are the shadows, boy. Use them! Imagine it — an ambush! The surprise! And the thrill of it, ah! The rush! The fastest way to evolve your core, to move from common to tainted! You need to survive, boy. Or do you still not understand that?’

Joah’s fingers tensed. He had killed before. In that alley. In that moment of survival or death. He could still see the man’s face — the wide eyes, the lips trembling with half-formed regrets, the murmuring of unfinished dreams. And then, his awakening. Her face. That sweet, sorrowful smile. Her tears. His grip on the knife tightened. The blade trembled, as if it knew its master’s indecision, as if it might, at any moment, turn against him instead.

‘It’s been days, boy, and you still don’t see, do you?’ Goad’s voice slithered with cruel amusement. ‘This isn’t a normal Eruption. It’s corrupted. A thing beyond what your little epoch can imagine. But I know, boy. I know everything. Accept me, and I’ll tell you. Ah! But I know the truth — you will bow to me, sooner or later. And when that day comes, oh, how I will smile. How I will spit on you. Trust me, boy. The day will come. Trust me!’

Joah exhaled slowly. There was no use arguing with a parasite. He reached into his pack, pulling out the last scraps of dried meat. He chewed, slow and methodical, the salt cutting against his tongue, the taste stale and bitter. He nearly gagged on it, but at least it forced his thoughts back to practical matters.

The clearing. A hole gaped in the ground before him, a mouth yawning open, black and bottomless. A ladder and ropes hung loosely, swaying ever so slightly, as if something had recently disturbed them. The darkness inside was not passive — it called to him, beckoned with a quiet promise.

“Jump.”

His muscles twitched. But he resisted the pull, turning his attention to his surroundings. Two paths. One left, one right. From above, a thin beam of light filtered in through a crack in the ceiling, casting a feeble glow over the stone. A sign. A decision was made for him. He took the left path.