Bran's fingers hooked onto the rough edge of the opening.
For a moment, he dangled there, while his legs kicked at the empty air.
Dust and small rocks rained down on Sophie, stinging her eyes. She watched him with her heart in her throat.
If he fell, they were all dead.
"Pull, Bran! Pull!" Sophie screamed.
Above her, Bran let out a grunt of exertion. His boots scraped against the stone walls of the narrow chimney.
Slowly, painfully, he hauled himself up. First his elbows, then his chest.
He squeezed into the tight space, using his back and knees to push himself toward the circle of white light.
Down in the cavern, the situation was becoming a nightmare.
Ragnar was a machine of destruction, but then, even machines run out of fuel. He stood still, his massive frame filling the gap.
His [Stoneskin] was cracked in a dozen places.
Green spider blood coated him from head to toe, mixing with his own red blood seeping from a deep gash on his thigh.
"Hurry up!" Ragnar roared. He swung his axe in a wide, desperate arc.
CRUNCH!
The blade cut through two spiders at once, sending crystal shards flying everywhere.
But three more crawled over the broken bodies of their kin. They were endless.
One spider slipped past Ragnar's guard and latched onto his shoulder, its fangs sinking between the gaps in his armor.
"Ragnar!" Sophie yelled. She drew her knife, ready to jump in. "Stay back!" Ragnar bellowed.
He dropped his axe for a split second, grabbed the spider with his bare hand, and ripped it off his flesh.
He threw it against the wall with a sickening thud.
"Get up that hole, Sophie! I can't hold them forever!" Sophie looked up. Bran had made it. He had pulled himself out of the shaft and onto the surface.
The circle of light was clear.
"Bran!" she shouted, waving her hand frantically. "Drop the rope! Or your arm! Anything!"
She waited. One second passed. Two seconds.
The spiders' sounds were deafening. A high-pitched chitter that felt like it was drilling into her brain.
Ragnar was panting like a dying animal. He picked up his axe again, his arms shaking with exhaustion.
He swung, but it was slower this time. Weaker. "Bran!" Sophie screamed again. "What are you doing? We need help!"
Finally, a shadow appeared over the hole. Bran's face came into view. He was backlit by the sun, making it hard to see his expression.
To Sophie, he looked like an angel. He was their salvation. He was their escape from this dark, crystal hell. "Throw it down!" she pleaded, stretching her arm up as high as she could, standing on her tiptoes. "Hurry!"
But no rope came down. No hand reached out. Bran just stayed there, looking down at them. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He just watched.
Down below, the line broke. A massive spider, larger than the rest, slammed into Ragnar.
The big man groaned as the impact drove him backward. He stumbled, his boots slipping on the blood-covered floor.
He fell to one knee. "Sophie, go!" Ragnar gasped, swinging his axe blindly to keep the swarm at bay.
"Climb! I'll cover you from here!" Sophie didn't wait. She couldn't. She sheathed her knife and jumped, grabbing the rough rock of the wall.
She began to scramble up, her fingers digging into the cracks as she struggled against the hard surface.
The rock was slippery with moss and dampness. She looked up at the opening, just ten feet above her. Bran was still there.
"Bran, help me!" she cried out. "Reach down! I can't make the last pull!" Then, she saw it. The sun shifted slightly, and the light hit Bran's face.
The fear was gone. The trembling, terrified boy who had begged them not to leave him behind was gone. In his place was a stranger.
Bran stared down at her with eyes that were without emotion. There was no panic in them. There was no urgency. He looked... bored.
A chill ran through Sophie. Her normally sharp mind went blank.
"Bran?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "What are you doing?"
Bran tilted his head to the side. A slow, cruel smile spread across his face. It wasn't a nervous smile. It was a smirk.
"You guys are loud," Bran said. His voice echoed down the shaft. It was calm. "It's annoying."
Sophie's grip on the rock slipped.
She scrambled to regain her hold, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"This isn't the time for jokes!" she shrieked. "Pull us up! Ragnar is dying down there!"
Bran glanced past her, looking down at the battle below. Ragnar was on his back now, holding the axe shaft across his chest to keep a spider's snapping jaws away from his face.
Other spiders were biting at his legs. "Yeah," Bran said casually. "He looks pretty done. Shame. He was a good meat shield."
Sophie froze. "What?"
"And you," Bran continued, looking back at Sophie. His eyes locked onto hers. "You were useful for a while. Good eyes. Smart. But you ask too many questions, Sophie. You're too suspicious. It gets exhausting pretending to be scared all the time just to keep you happy."
The realization hit Sophie like a physical blow.
It was all an act. The crying. The limping. The helpless victim routine. He had played them. He had played them all perfectly.
"You..." Sophie choked out. "You fucking traitor!!"
"Traitor?" Bran laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. "We aren't friends, Sophie. We aren't a team. We are just people trying to climb a ladder.
And the thing about ladders is... sometimes you have to kick the person below you to get to the top."
He stood up. He dusted his hands off on his pants.
"No!" Sophie screamed. She tried to climb faster, her fingernails tearing against the stone.
"Bran, don't you dare! Don't you dare leave us here!"
"I'm not leaving you," Bran said softly. "I'm burying you." He stepped back from the edge.
For a second, the circle of blue sky was empty.
Sophie stared at it, hope flickering and dying in her chest. Maybe he was joking. Maybe he was just scared and snapping. Maybe he would come back with a rope. Then, a shadow blocked the light. It wasn't Bran's face. It was a rock.
Bran had found a massive boulder sitting near the edge of the shaft. It was huge and heavy, a rough piece of granite that would have needed two men to lift.
Bran gripped it with both hands. His muscles didn't bulge. He didn't strain. With a strength that defied his small body, he pushed.
GRRR-CHUNK!!
The rock slid across the dirt.
"Die, Bitch!" Bran shouted.
His voice wasn't a whisper anymore, it was full of pure malice.
He shoved the boulder over the opening. The circle of light vanished.
THUD!
The sound of the rock sealing the shaft was final. It was the sound of a coffin lid slamming shut.
Total darkness swallowed the cavern.
"NO!" Sophie screamed. It was a sound of pure despair. "NO! BRAN!" She let go of the wall. There was no point in climbing anymore. There was nowhere to go.
She fell back to the floor, landing hard in the mud. The blue glow of the crystals on the walls seemed dim and sickly now.
The clicking of the spiders grew louder, closer. They sensed the hopelessness. They sensed the end.
Ragnar was still fighting. He couldn't see what had happened, but he heard the thud. He heard the light vanish.
"Sophie?" Ragnar called out. His voice was weak, wet with blood. "What happened? Where's the kid?" Sophie sat in the mud.
She stared up at the sealed ceiling. Tears streamed down her face, hot and angry. "He did it," she whispered. "He locked us in." "What?" Ragnar grunted as he kicked a spider away.
"That's impossible. He's... he's just a kid."
"He's a monster," Sophie sobbed. She stood up, grabbing her knife. Her hands were shaking.
"He played us, Ragnar. He killed us." The spiders surged.
Ragnar let out a laugh. It was a broken, wheezing sound. "Well," he said, pushing himself to his feet one last time.
"I guess Daniel was right about trusting people." He raised his axe. The glow of his [Stoneskin] faded completely. He was just a man now. A man facing a tide of death.
"Come on then!" Ragnar roared at the darkness. "Come and get me, you ugly bastards!"
Sophie didn't scream anymore. She wiped her eyes. She gripped her knife until her knuckles turned white. She wouldn't die crying. She wouldn't give Bran that satisfaction.
"I hope you rot in hell, Bran," she hissed into the dark. "I hope the Vale eats you alive." She turned to face the swarm.
He could hear them. The sounds came up through the small cracks in the ground, muffled but clear.
He heard flesh tearing and the screeching of the arachnids eating.
Then came the voices.
Bran didn't stop walking. He didn't look back. He just kept walking into the sunset.
For a long time, the only thing Bran could hear were the dying screams of Ragnar and Sophie fading into the silence behind him.