Silence.
Then, pain.
It was a distant thing at first. A vague, throbbing ache everywhere. Then it rushed in. A symphony of agony. His left shoulder screamed. His ribs on the right side felt like hot knives were wedged between them. His head pounded with a deep, sickening rhythm.
He couldn't see. Absolute, pitch black. He couldn't move. Something heavy pressed down on his legs, his chest. Dust filled his nose and mouth, gritty and dry. He tried to cough, but the pressure on his chest made it a weak, pathetic spasm.
He was buried alive.
Panic surged, white and blinding. I'm going to die here. Crushed. Alone in the dark.
His Glitch Meter spiked in response to the terror. 45%... 47%...
No. No, calm. Calm! Breathe. Think.
He forced the panic down. He focused on the Internal Dampening, reinforcing it. He couldn't afford a Glitch Pulse here, in a confined space, with tons of rock on top of him. It might bring the rest of the outcropping down on his head.
He took shallow, dusty breaths. He tried to assess.
[Status]
HP: 18/45 (Critical) (Bleeding: 1 HP/10 seconds)
MP: 5/40 (Recovering)
Conditions: Crush Injury (Left Shoulder, Ribs), Minor Concussion, Buried.
System Instability: 16%
Glitch Meter: 47%
Critical HP. Bleeding. He was dying. Slowly, but surely.
He couldn't move his left arm. It was pinned. His right arm was trapped against his side, but he could wiggle his fingers. He could feel the cool metal of Bran's knife still clutched in his right hand. He had somehow held onto it through the collapse.
First priority: Stop the bleeding. He focused inward. Minor Regeneration Lvl 1. The skill was passive, slow. Too slow. He needed more.
He pushed his will at it. He poured a trickle of his meager MP into the skill, trying to activate it, to boost it. He imagined the torn tissues knitting, the bleeding vessels sealing.
[Skill Evolution Attempted: Minor Regeneration -> Active Heal.]
[Insufficient MP. Insufficient Skill Level. Conditions: Critical Injury, High Stress. Evolution Partially Granted.]
A warm, focused itch spread from his core to his wounded side. The bleeding status flickered.
[Bleeding: 1 HP/15 seconds... 1 HP/20 seconds...]
It slowed. It didn't stop, but it slowed. His MP dipped to 2, then began its slow regeneration. It was something. He wouldn't bleed out in the next minute.
Next: Light. Air.
He couldn't cast Mana Bolt for light. No MP, and the concussive force might destabilize his rocky tomb. He had no other light spell.
Air was thinning. Dust clogged every breath. He had minutes, maybe less, before he suffocated.
Think, Kaito! The System! You have other skills!
Analyze. He used it on his immediate surroundings.
[Analyze: Immediate Vicinity.]
[Status: Entombed within sandstone collapse. Approximate weight above subject: 8-10 tons.]
[Air pocket: Small. Oxygen depletion estimated in 4-7 minutes.]
[Exit routes: None detected. Structure is unstable.]
No exit. No air soon.
Despair threatened to swallow him. He had survived the Dredger. He had evaded Lilith. Only to die like this? Crushed and suffocated in a hole he dug himself?
No.
He refused.
He focused on the Bond Links. A crazy, desperate idea formed. The bonds were two-way. He could feel their emotions. What if he could… send something back? Not an emotion. A sensation. A call for help?
He focused on Lilith's link. It was a storm of violent emotion right now.
Shock. Rage. Terror. NO! NO! You foolish, beautiful, broken star! What have you DONE?!
He pushed past her storm. He concentrated. He didn't send words. He sent a feeling. The feeling of pressure. Of crushing weight. Of stone. Of dust in the lungs. Of darkness. He sent the sensation of being buried. And beneath it, a single, raw pulse of primal will: LIVE.
He pushed it down the bond with all his remaining mental strength.
For a moment, nothing. Then, a reaction. A shockwave of pure, undiluted fear echoed back down the link. Not fear for herself. Fear for him.
NO! You are alive! I can feel you! You are trapped!
Her emotional storm shifted instantly. The rage vanished. The possessive grief was still there, but it was overtaken by a frantic, focused desperation. The violet light outside his tiny, buried prison began to move. To shift.
He felt a new sensation through the bond. A sensation of immense, straining effort. A will being exerted on the physical world.
Outside, in the silent shadow, Lilith raised both hands toward the mountain of rubble. Her violet eyes blazed. Shadows deeper than the ones she'd brought coalesced around her fingers. They didn't flow gently. They speared into the rubble, thin as needles, strong as adamantine cables. She wasn't trying to move the rock with brute shadow force. She was inserting threads of her will into the stone itself, seeking the cracks, the weaknesses, the points of pressure.
She was trying to perform micro-surgery on a landslide.
Inside the tomb, Kaito felt a strange vibration. Not a rumble. A subtle shifting. A tiny groan of stone. A trickle of dust fell near his face. Then, miraculously, the pressure on his chest lessened. Just a fraction. He could take a slightly deeper breath.
She was doing it. She was carefully, impossibly, moving the rubble from the outside. Not with an explosion of power, but with painstaking, precise manipulation of shadow and force in the tiny spaces between rocks.
But it was agonizingly slow. His air was running out. His HP was at 14/45. The slowed bleeding was still draining him.
He checked Seraphina's bond. It was a knot of conflict, but now with a new thread: Alertness. She had felt the magical collapse. She was close. And she was coming to investigate.
He was caught between two saviors who both wanted to cage him.
A new sound. Faint. Muffled by tons of rock. The clink of metal on stone. A voice, distorted but clear.
"Captain! Over here! The collapse is fresh! And… by the Light, feel that? Residual shadow energy. Thick. And… something else. That glitch signature. Faint, but it's here. Under the rock!"
Seraphina's voice, cold and clear: "The anomaly is here. And the Calamity is present. Battle formations! Paladins, prepare Auras of Purity. Mages, dispersion spells on my mark. We purge the shadow first, then extract the heretic."
Kaito's heart, already struggling, seized. The Legion was here. They would attack Lilith. A fight here, on top of this unstable rubble pile, would kill him for sure. It would bring the rest of the mountain down.
Through the bond, he felt Lilith's reaction. A surge of protective, furious rage. She would fight them. She would defend "her" ground, her claim on him. She would turn this place into a battlefield.
No! He pushed the thought down the bond with all his might. STOP!
He felt her hesitate. Confusion mixed with her rage.
He sent another pulse. Not a feeling this time. An image. A memory. From her own mind, reflected back at her. The memory she'd shown him. The child in the burning village. The helplessness. The destruction raining down from above.
This is the same, he pushed. Fighting here will bury me. It will kill me. You want to keep me safe? THEN STOP.
The message got through. The violent readiness in her bond dimmed. Replaced by a frustrated, agonized impotence. She couldn't fight them without risking him. She couldn't quickly dig him out with them here.
He felt her make a decision. A heartbreaking one.
The pervasive shadow around the rubble began to recede. The violet light started to dim, to pull back. She was retreating. Not abandoning him—he could feel her furious, sorrowful resolve—but withdrawing from immediate confrontation. To wait. To watch from the deeper shadows.
The Legion soldiers outside tensed as the shadowy presence faded.
"Shadow signature is receding!" a mage called out.
"It's a trick," Seraphina stated, but uncertainty tinged her voice. "Maintain formations. Mages, scan the rubble. Find the anomaly's exact location. We dig him out. Carefully. He is fragile and valuable."
Kaito listened to the sounds above. Shovels biting into gravel. The grunt of effort. They were digging for him. But they were being slow, methodical. They were afraid of the shadow's return, afraid of triggering another collapse.
He had maybe minutes before they broke through to his air pocket. Minutes before he was in Legion chains.
He had to move. Now.
The pressure on his chest was slightly less. Lilith's careful shifting had created a tiny bit of space. He wiggled his right arm. He could move it a few inches. He still held the knife.
He couldn't dig upward. That was where the Legion was.
He looked down. With his Enhanced Cognition active, he could just make out the faintest outline in the absolute black. His legs were pinned by a large, flat slab of rock. But beneath his lower back… there was a gap. He could feel a slight draft. Cold, damp air. Not from above. From below.
The crevice! It hadn't just been a shallow crack. It must have gone deeper, connecting to some underground fissure, a tiny cave system perhaps. The collapse had sealed the entrance but maybe opened a way down.
Hope, desperate and wild, flared.
He twisted his body, ignoring the scream from his shoulder and ribs. HP: 11/45. He used the knife. Not to cut, but to probe. He pushed the tip into the gap near his back. It slipped in, then met resistance. Rock. He angled it. Scraped. A few pebbles dislodged and fell away into darkness. The draft grew slightly stronger.
It was a way. A terrible, unknown, claustrophobic way down into the deeper dark. But it was a way out from the Legion.
He started to dig. With the knife, with his fingernails, with sheer, agonizing will. He scraped and pushed at the loose rubble blocking the narrow fissure below him. Every movement sent fire through his injuries. Dust choked him. His HP ticked down to 9/45.
Above, the sounds of digging got louder. Closer.
"I've got a reading! Five feet down, slightly to the east! Life signs are weak but present!"
"Dig! Gently!"
He had no time. He gave up on subtlety. He shoved his good shoulder against the slab pinning his legs, pushing with all his fading strength. It shifted. A grinding groan. More dust rained down from the ceiling of his tiny tomb. Above, the Legion soldiers yelled in alarm.
"The pile is shifting! Careful!"
The shift freed his legs. They were numb, bruised, but not broken. He kicked downward, into the gap he'd widened. His foot met empty space. He pushed more rubble down the hole. The draft became a steady, cool stream of air.
It was big enough. Maybe.
He didn't let himself think. He pushed his upper body through the narrow gap, scraping skin off his back and chest. He wriggled like a worm, downward into the unknown dark. The rock scraped and caught on his clothes. For a terrifying second, he was stuck, his hips wedged. He pushed, twisted, and with a final tear of fabric, he popped through.
He fell.
It was a short drop—only three or four feet—into a narrow, vertical chimney of rock. He landed in a crouch, his injured leg buckling. He collapsed onto damp, cool stone. He was in a small, natural cavern. Faint, phosphorescent fungi on the walls provided a ghostly greenish light. He could see! The air was stale but breathable.
He looked up. The hole he'd fallen through was a jagged tear in the ceiling, barely visible.
From above, he heard Seraphina's voice, sharp and clear, right above the original crevice. "I see an opening! It leads down! He's trying to escape through underground passages! Mages, seal the exit!"
He couldn't let them seal it. He raised his right hand, pointing up at the hole. He had 8 MP. It was enough.
He didn't use Mana Bolt. He used Shadow Spark. He fired the murky, static-filled bolt not to disrupt shadow, but to disrupt structure. To disrupt the fragile integrity of the rock around the hole.
The bolt struck the edge of the opening. The rock didn't unravel. It crumbled. With a crack, several large stones broke loose and tumbled down, partially plugging the hole. Dust billowed.
It wasn't a perfect seal, but it would slow them down. They would have to clear it carefully.
He turned and ran. Or rather, he limped and stumbled. The cavern was a tunnel, leading downward, then twisting. He followed it, driven by pure instinct. The ghostly fungal light was his only guide.
His HP was at 7/45. He was seeing black spots at the edges of his vision. He couldn't keep going much longer.
The tunnel opened into a larger cavern. In the center was a still, black pool of water. An underground spring. He collapsed at its edge and drank greedily, ignoring the mineral taste. The cold water was life itself.
[Consumed Pure Spring Water.]
[Dehydration cured. Minor HP regeneration triggered.]
HP: 9/45... 10/45...
He splashed water on his face. He needed to heal. Properly. He focused on Active Heal, the evolved form of his regeneration. He poured his slowly recovering MP into it. The warm itch spread through his side, his shoulder. It was painfully slow. But his HP began to climb more steadily.
HP: 12/45... 15/45...
He was out of immediate danger of death. But he was still deep underground, wounded, and hunted.
He checked the bonds.
Lilith: ❤️🔥💢(Grieving/Rage) >> Emotional State: Frantic Concern/Relief. Location: Vicinity of collapse. Holding position.
Seraphina: ❤️⚔️🌀(Disoriented/Intensified) >> Emotional State: Frustration/Duty. Location: Collapse site. Directing excavation.
She was relieved he was alive. Seraphina was frustrated but determined.
He had to find a way out before Seraphina's mages unblocked the hole and sent scouts down, or before Lilith found another way into the cave system.
He explored the cavern. The pool drained away through a crack too small to follow. There was one other tunnel leading out, opposite the one he'd entered from. It sloped upward. Toward the surface.
He followed it. The climb was steep, torturous with his injuries. He leaned on the wall, dragging himself upward one step at a time. The fungal light faded behind him. He was in darkness again. He felt his way along the wall.
After an eternity of climbing, he saw a pinprick of light. Real light. Daylight.
He scrambled toward it. The tunnel ended in a small, hidden opening behind a screen of hardy desert brush. He pushed through the brush, blinking in the blinding sunlight.
He was out. He was on the other side of the rocky outcropping. He could see the massive pile of rubble that was his tomb about a hundred yards to his left. He could see tiny figures—Legion soldiers—moving around it. He could see a concentrated patch of deep shadow pooled in the lee of a nearby dune. Lilith, watching.
He was exposed in the open. But they were all focused on the collapse site.
He activated Shadow Veil. It was a huge risk. His MP was only at 15. It would cost 25. It would push his Glitch Meter over 50%.
But he had no choice.
MP: 0/40.
Glitch Meter: 52%.
The cold shroud settled over him. He became a blur, a mirage. He turned and ran, not toward the distant coast, but north, parallel to the rock formation, putting solid stone between him and his pursuers.
The veil dropped after thirty seconds. He was exhausted, his Glitch energy buzzing uncomfortably under his skin. But he was out of their immediate line of sight.
He collapsed behind a dune, gasping. He checked his bonds.
Lilith: ❤️🔥💢 >> Emotional Spike: Panic/Loss. Bond signal fading due to distance/muffling?
Seraphina: ❤️⚔️🌀 >> Emotional State: Focus/Determination. No detection.
They had lost him. For now.
He looked at the sliver of blue sea on the horizon. It was still miles away. He had no water, no food, low HP, and a Glitch Meter over halfway to a catastrophic pulse.
But he was alive. And he was free.
He began the long, painful walk north, planning to circle wide and then turn west toward the coast. Every step was agony. Every shadow seemed to move. Every glint of sun on metal in the distance looked like a Legion scout.
He walked for hours as the sun began to sink. His HP regenerated to 25/45. His MP slowly recovered. The Glitch Meter settled at 51%, a constant, threatening hum.
Just as despair was about to take him again, he crested a dune and saw salvation.
A small, lone wagon was stuck in the sand ahead. Its single dray-lizard was straining. A figure—a young man in simple traveller's clothes—was pushing frantically at the back wheel.
It wasn't a Legion wagon. It wasn't a merchant caravan. It looked… ordinary.
Kaito watched for a long moment. This was a risk. But he needed help. He couldn't make it to the coast on his own.
He approached slowly, his hood up.
The young man, hearing the sound of sand underfoot, spun around. He had a kind, worried face and the pointed ears of a half-elf. He held a woodcutter's axe defensively.
"Who's there? Stay back! I've got nothing worth stealing!"
Kaito kept his hands visible. "I'm not a thief. I… I need help. My caravan was attacked. I'm trying to get to Seabridge."
The half-elf lowered his axe slightly, suspicion in his eyes. "Attacked? By what? Sand-Dredgers? Bandits?"
"Both," Kaito said, which was technically true. "I'm hurt. I have a little coin for passage." He showed one of the silver bits from Elara's purse.
The young man's expression softened. He looked Kaito up and down—the torn, dusty clothes, the obvious pain in his posture. "You look like you've been through the nine hells." He sighed, dropping the axe. "I'm Aric. My father runs a timber post near Seabridge. I was making a delivery when this damn sand trap caught me." He gestured to the stuck wheel. "Help me get this free, and you can ride with me to the outskirts of town. No promises into the town itself—the Legion's been checking wagons at the gate."
Kaito's heart leapt. "Thank you." He moved to help push. The effort made his ribs scream, but together, they rocked the wagon. With a final heave, the wheel popped free of the deep sand.
Aric grinned, wiping sweat from his brow. "See? Teamwork. Now, get in. You look like you're about to fall over."
Kaito climbed into the back of the wagon, which was filled with rough-cut logs. He sank down, hidden among the timber.
As Aric clicked to the lizard and the wagon began to move, Kaito finally allowed himself to breathe. He had a ride. He was moving toward his goal.
He opened his Bond Links one last time as the desert sun set, painting the sky in hues of fire.
Lilith: ❤️🔥💢(Grieving/Rage) >> Emotional State: Deep Sorrow/Relentless Resolve. Note: Bond signal stable but distant. Subject is not giving up.
Seraphina: ❤️⚔️🌀(Disoriented/Intensified) >> Emotional State: Cold Determination/Frustration. Location: Organizing search grid. Note: Mission priority remains Alpha.
They were both still out there. One mourning in the shadows, one planning in the light. Both would keep hunting.
But for now, as the wagon wheels turned and the first stars appeared in the purple twilight, Kaito was ahead. He was battered, broken, glitching, and hunted.
But he was moving forward.
[Quest Updated: Survive the Shadow's Recapture.]
[Status: Success (Temporary).]
[Quest: Journey to the Coast continues.]
[New Objective: Enter Seabridge undetected with Aric's help.]
[Warning: Glitch Meter at 51%. Extreme caution required.]
He closed his eyes, listening to the roll of the wheels, the sigh of the desert wind. The hunt was far from over. But he had survived the day.
That was enough.
To be continued...