The cavern stretched endlessly before them.
Stone rose and fell in vast arches before disappearing into darkness. Toward the center, even the crystal light seemed to fail, leaving only the distant rush of water.
Sid peered into the black.
“Probably dangerous.”
Silence.
They kept close to the cavern wall, where clusters of blue crystal continued to grow from the stone. Their light caught on metallic flecks embedded in the pale rock, scattering glints of gold across the ground.
Alan tapped one with a finger.
“Is that some kind of ore?”
“Looks like pyrite.”
Elias crouched beside the wall and examined a glittering vein.
“How can you tell?” Alan asked.
“I can’t.”
Alan stared at him.
“It’s an observation, not a conclusion.”
Elias scraped loose a fragment with his crystal blade and turned it beneath the blue light.
“Metallic lustre. Gold color. Mineral association is plausible.”
He studied it.
“If I’m right, it could be useful.”
Sid’s head snapped around.
“How useful?”
“Potentially fire.”
Sid was beside him almost immediately.
Elias pointed at the metallic flecks.
“Strike pyrite against something sufficiently hard and it can produce sparks hot enough to ignite suitable tinder.”
Silence.
“Fire…” Sid whispered.
“Yes.”
Sid drew his crystal blade.
“So, in other words…”
He pointed it at the wall.
“We need this.”
Clink.
The crystal struck the pale stone.
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A small chunk crumbled away.
Sid looked at it.
He struck again.
Harder.
More stone broke loose.
“…Soft.”
“As expected,” Elias said.
“Limestone?”
“Most likely.”
Sid’s eye lights brightened.
“Help me.”
The others joined in.
Crystal blades chipped, scraped and pried at the wall. Pale fragments tumbled down the uneven slope, followed by loose sediment and glittering chips of mineral.
Elias remained slightly behind them.
Watching.
Listening.
A chunk of limestone bounced into the darkness.
A few seconds passed.
Plunk.
Everyone stopped.
Water.
The sound echoed faintly from below.
Sid looked down the slope.
“Hm.”
Then went straight back to digging.
Twenty minutes later, a glittering chunk finally broke free.
Sid caught it in both hands.
His jaw rattled.
“Pyrite…”
Alan peered over his shoulder.
“So that’s it?”
“Half of it,” Elias said.
Sid looked at the mineral.
Then toward the dark cavern ahead.
“We’re getting closer.”
“Closer to—”
SNAP.
Everyone stopped.
Something shifted between the crystal formations thirty meters away.
A tall shadow.
Its neck jerked left.
Then right.
It rose.
Two legs unfolded beneath it.
Sid leaned forward.
“Bipedal?”
His thought escaped into the cavern.
BIPEDAL.
BIPEDAL.
BIP—
The four skeletons turned toward the echoes.
Then immediately back.
The shadow was gone.
Nobody moved.
Kaya crouched slightly behind the pile of excavated stone.
“What was that?”
Alan stared into the darkness.
“Is it gone?”
Sid shrugged.
“Just a cave dweller.”
A pause.
“I’d love to dissect it.”
Kaya looked at him.
“Of course you would.”
They moved on.
The slope carried them toward the sound of water, blue light shimmering faintly across a stream below.
Alan walked beside Sid.
“Why do we need clay?”
Sid glanced at him.
“What happens when you dry clay?”
“It hardens.”
“And if you shape it first?”
Alan thought.
“A container.”
“Exactly.”
“But a container for what?”
Sid’s eye lights brightened.
“Heat.”
Alan frowned.
“Heat?”
“A kiln.”
Sid gestured as he walked.
“Clay gives us vessels. A kiln gives us higher temperatures. Higher temperatures give us better ceramics and eventually metalworking.”
He looked toward the pyrite Elias carried.
“And metalworking gives us tools.”
Alan nodded slowly.
“That feels like a lot of steps.”
“It is.”
Sid crouched at the stream and dragged his fingers through the current.
Water curled between his bones.
“It has to lead somewhere.”
“Maybe a lake,” Alan said.
“An underground lake?” Kaya asked.
Sid shrugged.
“Why not?”
“The water is flowing,” Elias said. “So it has both a source and somewhere to go.”
Sid stood.
“Then we follow it.”
They did.
For the next hour, the stream led them deeper into the cavern.
The walls gradually drew closer.
Then widened.
And widened.
Until the passage opened.
Kaya stopped first.
“Oh…”
Warm golden light spilled across her bones.
Yellow crystals rose from the cavern beyond, their glow replacing the cold blue that had followed them since awakening.
But it wasn’t the crystals that stopped them.
It was everything growing around them.
Moss blanketed the stone.
Ferns crowded the water’s edge. Broad leaves spread beneath the yellow crystals, overlapping in dense patches of green. Roots disappeared into cracks along the cavern floor.
For the first time, the labyrinth looked alive.
Sid walked forward.
Slowly.
His gaze moved from the plants to the crystals overhead.
Then back again.
He crouched beside a broad leaf.
“…Interesting.”
Two fingers traced its surface.
“Photosynthesis underground…”
His gaze lifted toward the yellow light.
“This shouldn’t be possible.”
A quiet cackle escaped him.
“Hehehe…”
Then he noticed the bones.
They were everywhere.
Half-hidden beneath the vegetation.
Ribcages swallowed by moss.
Skulls nestled between roots.
Femurs protruding from the stream bank.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Sid went still.
Kaya stepped through the opening behind him.
Her pink eye lights widened.
“…Oh.”
Sid slowly rose.
His gaze travelled across the field of dead.
The plants were alive.
Everything else had died here.