CHAPTER 2 — THE CURSED CAVE
They left the city at dusk.
The sky dimmed into layered violets and golds, artificial clouds dissolving as curfew protocols shifted. Transit rails thinned, buildings grew sparse, and the hum of civilization softened into something almost… natural.
Lucy felt it with every kilometer they traveled—the farther they went, the lighter her chest felt, like a pressure easing that she hadn't known was there.
Abbie noticed.
"You're smiling," she said, eyebrow raised. "That's suspicious."
Lucy blinked.
"Am I?"
"Yeah. Like someone who just quit a job they hated but didn't realize it until now."
Lucy looked out the window. The city's glow was distant now, a soft crown on the horizon. "I just… feel weirdly calm."
Abbie didn't like that answer.
She shifted, hand brushing the small satchel at her side—focus charms, emergency ether vials, a knife she pretended was symbolic.
Adam sat opposite them, quiet.
Too quiet.
"You still haven't explained the apple," Abbie said.
Adam kept his eyes forward. "Because it's not something you explain. It's something that happens."
"That's not comforting."
"It's honest."
They disembarked near the old exclusion zone—a stretch of land abandoned after mana-collapse fractures made it uninhabitable.
The air here tasted different. Not poisoned. Just… unfiltered.
The cave entrance waited at the base of a fractured cliff, half-hidden by blackened stone and mineral growths that glittered faintly in the dark.
Lucy stopped walking.
The cave wasn't calling to her.
It was remembering her.
"You don't have to go in," Adam said softly.
Lucy swallowed. "You tricked me into this, didn't you?"
His jaw tightened. "Yes."
Abbie shot him a glare sharp enough to cut bone. "Oh, I'm killing you later."
Lucy took a step forward anyway.
The cave swallowed sound.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the outside world folded shut like a forgotten dream.
Light bent strangely inside—no single source, no clear shadows.
The walls shimmered between obsidian black and molten gold, veins of luminous ether running through them like blood.
Abbie let out a low whistle. "Okay. This officially shouldn't exist."
The cave was vast.
Cathedral-wide chambers opened into impossible corridors, ceilings vanishing into darkness.
Water flowed in slow, glassy rivers, glowing faintly with blues and purples that pulsed like breathing things.
Lucy felt small.
And known.
"Don't touch anything," Abbie muttered, instincts flaring. "Places like this don't like being noticed."
Lucy nodded, but her eyes were already drifting—drawn toward patterns etched into the stone. Symbols that weren't carved, but grown. Spirals. Moons broken into thirds.
"Adam," Lucy asked quietly, "how do you know about this place?"
He hesitated. "Family records. Forbidden ones."
Abbie snorted. "Of course."
They walked deeper.
Time stopped behaving.
Minutes stretched. Or hours collapsed. The cave twisted back on itself, corridors shifting subtly when they weren't looking.
More than once, Lucy swore she saw figures reflected in the ether-water—tall silhouettes, antlered shapes, things that vanished when she blinked.
"Tell me again why we're here," Abbie said, voice tight.
Lucy opened her mouth—then closed it.
She hadn't told Abbie about the apple. About the choice.
Guilt coiled in her stomach.
They turned left.
The cave opened into a shallow basin, the air suddenly still and reverent, like the inside of a sealed tomb. At its center lay a pool of crystal-clear water. And rising from the pool—
A tree.
Small. Delicate. White wood untouched by decay.
Its leaves shimmered in impossible colors—blue, red, purple—each hue bleeding into the next.
Hanging from its branches were fruits made of solid gold, smooth and radiant, pulsing faintly with light.
Golden apples.
Lucy's breath caught.
Abbie froze. "Lucy…"
"I'm sorry," Lucy whispered.
"What did you do?"
Lucy stepped forward.
The pool didn't ripple when she entered it. The water felt warm. Familiar.
Her reflection stared back at her—then smiled a fraction too slowly.
"Lucy," Abbie said sharply, "don't."
Lucy reached up and plucked an apple.
The moment her fingers touched it, the cave sighed.
She bit into it.
Light exploded.
Ether roared through her veins like a forgotten language being spoken directly into her bones.
The world fractured into color and sound and meaning.
Lucy lifted off the ground, hair floating, eyes glowing with a blue so deep it bordered on black.
Power poured out of her—raw, unshaped, ancient.
"Lucy!" Abbie screamed.
Lucy couldn't hear her.
She was falling inward.
Memories that weren't hers brushed against her consciousness—moons colliding, a woman screaming as metal closed around her head. The taste of iron. The silence of space.
Then gravity returned.
Lucy crashed back into the pool, unconscious.
Her shadow peeled itself off the ground.
It rose slowly, stretching, solidifying—limbs elongating into something wrong.
A beast formed from darkness and light: part lion, part bear, eyes glowing with etheric fire.
Abbie didn't scream.
She moved.
"Of course," she growled, hands igniting with sorcerous light. "Of course this happens."
The beast roared—soundless, but violent. It lunged.
Abbie dodged, rolling across stone slick with glowing water.
She flung a bolt of compressed ether, ripping through the creature's flank.
It staggered, howling—not in pain, but confusion.
"Get back in your shadow!" Abbie shouted, as if that meant anything.
The creature struck again, claws tearing through stone.
Abbie slammed a barrier up just in time, the impact rattling her bones.
She fought like someone with nothing left to lose.
Spell after spell burned through her reserves. The cave reacted—walls pulsing, water churning, symbols flaring briefly before dimming again.
Finally, with a scream born of rage and grief, Abbie drove a blade of pure ether straight through the beast's chest.
It froze.
Then dissolved—melting back into Lucy's shadow like smoke returning to fire.
Silence.
Abbie collapsed to her knees, panting.
She looked at Lucy—unconscious, glowing faintly, alive.
"That thing," Abbie whispered, realization dawning. "It wasn't a soul shard."
She laughed shakily. "It was you."
Footsteps echoed.
Slow. Applauding.
Adam emerged from the shadows, expression unreadable.
"Well," he said softly. "That went… mostly as planned."
Abbie turned on him, eyes blazing.
"You absolute bastard."
And far above them, unseen and amused, something ancient shifted its gaze—already preparing the pounce.