Three years passed in the cavern.
They did not pass gently.
Time did not flow there like a calm river, carrying me quietly toward the future.
It pressed down on me, day after day, like iron being hammered into shape inside a cold and merciless forge.
When I first arrived, I believed magic would be the key to my survival.
I thought that if I could only learn enough spells, I might be able to overcome anything the darkness threw at me.
Mammon quickly corrected that belief.
“Power is useless to the dead,” he told me.
He said it without cruelty, but there was no comfort in his words.
They were simply the truth.
Before I could master advanced magic, I had to learn how to stay alive.
That meant finding food, locating safe water, treating my injuries, understanding the creatures that lived beneath the earth, and learning when to run instead of fight.
My days became a strict routine.
Hunt.
Gather.
Eat.
Recover.
Train.
Then repeat.
The cavern system was vast, and every tunnel seemed to possess its own dangers.
Some passages were narrow enough that I had to crawl through them on my stomach.
Others opened into enormous underground chambers where the ceiling disappeared into darkness.
Strange plants grew along the walls, glowing faintly in shades of blue, green, and violet.
Their light was beautiful from a distance, but many of them released poisonous spores when touched.
Food was difficult to find.
During the first few months, Mammon took me into the lower tunnels to hunt Blind Cavern Crawlers and pale, hairless rodents that moved through the cracks in the stone.
The crawlers were fast, vicious creatures with too many legs and rows of small, needle-like teeth.
They had no eyes, but they sensed movement through vibrations in the ground.
The rodents were less frightening, but they were not harmless.
Many carried diseases, and their meat could become poisonous if prepared incorrectly.
Mammon never helped unless my life was truly in danger.
He would stand in the shadows, watching while I struggled.
When I failed, he allowed me to suffer the consequences.
When I succeeded, he gave no praise.
At most, I received a brief nod before he sent me toward the next task.
I learned to skin the crawlers using sharp flakes of obsidian.
Their hides were tough, and my hands were often cut before I managed to remove the meat.
I also had to avoid their venom glands.
If the sacs were punctured, the poison spread across the flesh almost instantly.
My first mistake left two of my fingers numb for nearly a week.
Mammon watched me wrap them in strips of monster hide.
“You were careless,” he said.
“I know.” “No.
You understand that you were injured.
That is not the same as understanding why.” I looked at him through the dim blue light of the moss.
He pointed toward the dead crawler.
“You saw meat.
You did not see the creature.
Every part of it is a weapon.
If you wish to survive, stop looking at prey as food.
Look at it as a collection of dangers that happens to contain food.” I never forgot that lesson.
To cook, I learned to create a small magical flame by compressing Demonic Power into a single point.
At first, the fire exploded every time I tried to form it.
I burned my palms more than once and set fire to the roots above our camp.
Eventually, I learned control.
The flame became no larger than a candle.
It burned hot enough to roast meat, but not hot enough to attract creatures from the surrounding tunnels.
Finding water was even more complicated.
The deeper we traveled, the more unreliable the underground streams became.
Some were safe.
Others carried minerals that caused paralysis.
A few streams flowed near geothermal vents and contained acidic runoff capable of burning through flesh.
Mammon taught me to study the cave before I trusted anything inside it.
“Observation precedes consumption,” he would say.
He showed me how to read the moss growing along the walls.
Luminescent blue moss usually clung tightly to stone near clean water.
Red lichen, on the other hand, was a warning.
It grew where sulfur and decay had contaminated the streams.
Even then, the signs were not always obvious.
I had to examine the water’s surface, smell the air above it, and test a small amount against certain stones before drinking.
To purify water, Mammon taught me to construct a basic filtration system.
I layered crushed charcoal made from burned cave roots with coarse sand and pulverized quartz.
The mixture removed much of the dirt and unpleasant taste, but it could not eliminate everything.
After filtering the water, I sent a thin pulse of Divine Light through it to neutralize invisible toxins and bacteria.
Then I followed it with a controlled sweep of Demonic Power to draw out heavy metallic residue.
It was the first practical use I found for the two opposing forces inside me.
Divine Light cleansed.
Demonic Power consumed.
Together, they made something useful.
That discovery changed the way I thought about magic.
On the Heavenly Realm, I had been taught that Demonic Power was nothing more than a corrupt and destructive force.
The angels described it as a wild flame—violent, filthy, and impossible to control.
Mammon showed me that they were wrong.
Demonic Power was not naturally chaotic.
It responded to intent.
It could be shaped, stretched, compressed, and woven into almost anything if the caster had enough control.
I learned to pull it away from explosions and condense it into thin, dark strands.
By stretching those strands across narrow passageways, I created invisible tripwires.
Any creature that charged through them would be sliced before it even realized the trap was there.
I learned to coat the soles of my boots in a layer of Demonic Power that absorbed sound.
That allowed me to cross gravel without making a noise.
I practiced until I could walk directly behind a sleeping beast without disturbing it.
I learned to compress burning demonic energy into small needles of dark plasma.
They were not as powerful as a large spell, but they were faster, quieter, and far more precise.
A needle aimed at the right place could pierce the hide of a creature several times my size.
I also learned that a powerful spell was often less useful than a small one used correctly.
Mammon repeated that lesson constantly.
“Do not waste strength proving that you have it,” he said.
“Use only what the situation demands.” The greatest challenge was still the union of Divine Light and Demonic Power.
Most mages used one element at a time.
Their magic circles were rigid, built around a single form of energy.
Mine could never be that simple.
The two forces inside me were constantly fighting, and forcing them together placed immense strain on my body.
I used my Internal Spoken Tongue to construct dual-layered matrices.
The inner circle stabilized one energy while the outer circle controlled the other.
If the structure was even slightly unbalanced, the spell collapsed.
Sometimes it exploded.
Sometimes it rebounded through my body.
Sometimes I lost consciousness and woke hours later with blood running from my nose, ears, and eyes.
Still, I continued.
In battle, the combination became devastating.
I could send Demonic Power toward an approaching beast and make its armor or hide decay, while using Divine Light through my other hand to blind it.
The two forces struck the creature in completely different ways—one corrupting, the other purifying.
The contrast was so violent that many monsters froze, unable to understand what was happening to them.
That moment of confusion was usually enough.
My body suffered terribly during those years.
A broken rib could make breathing painful for weeks.
Poisoned claws left wounds that turned black around the edges.
Once, a creature tore open my side, and I nearly bled out before I reached the camp.
In the past, I would have cried out.
Eventually, I stopped.
Not because the pain became easier, but because I learned that panic made it worse.
I would sit alone in the darkness, press one hand over the wound, and begin the slow process of repairing myself.
Divine Light knitted torn muscle and encouraged damaged flesh to heal.
Demonic Power sealed the edges of the wound and cauterized the bleeding.
The process was agonizing.
Light felt like needles beneath my skin, while Demonic Power burned like molten metal.
But it worked.
Little by little, I became harder to kill.
Then Mammon began teaching me the final part of my training.
Elemental Transmutation.
One night, he brought me to a wide chamber filled with mineral-rich earth.
A pile of jagged iron ore, crushed shale, and dark soil lay in the center of the room.
He hovered above it, his enormous shadow stretching across the stone.
“Gold,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Mortals worship it.
Kings destroy nations for it.
Merchants build their lives around it.” His eyes glimmered in the darkness.
“Gold is the blood that moves the Mortal Realm.
Master this, and you will never again be a slave to circumstance.” The process was far more difficult than any battle spell.
I had to understand the material before I could change it.
By placing my hands against the earth and extending my consciousness into it, I sensed the different substances hidden inside: silica, iron, sulfur, copper, traces of silver, and countless impurities.
Each element had to be separated.
Each structure had to be broken down and rebuilt.
Divine Light acted like a scalpel, isolating the materials I needed and stabilizing the process.
Demonic Power became the furnace, crushing the old molecular lattice and forcing the matter into a new form.
My first attempts failed completely.
The earth either crumbled into useless dust or erupted in clouds of poisonous smoke.
Once, the pile became a mass of warped black metal that radiated enough heat to crack the stone beneath it.
Mammon did not intervene.
He simply told me to try again.
So I did.
For weeks, I practiced until my hands shook whenever I touched the ground.
I learned to separate the useful elements from the worthless ones.
I learned how to control the heat.
I learned how to slow the process down instead of forcing it.
At last, one evening, the spell began to work.
I knelt before the pile and placed both palms against the dirt.
I closed my eyes and reached inward.
The cavern disappeared.
I felt only the earth beneath my hands and the complex web of materials buried inside it.
I guided the Divine Light through the mineral deposits, isolating what I needed.
Then I fed Demonic Power into the structure.
A low vibration passed through the floor.
Hummm… The stones trembled.
A faint golden glow appeared beneath my fingers.
Sweat rolled down my face and stung my eyes, but I did not move.
Every grain of dirt demanded attention.
Every impurity had to be removed at the correct moment.
The shale cracked.
Sulfur burned away in a thin, bitter-smelling wisp.
The iron and copper separated, leaving behind a dense, glowing core.
I pushed harder.
The magical matrix tightened around the remaining material, reshaping it again and again until the rough mass became smooth.
When I finally lifted my hands, the pile of gray stone was gone.
Three gold ingots rested on the cavern floor.
They were heavy, flawless, and bright enough to reflect the light of the blue moss along the walls.
For several seconds, I could only stare.
Mammon gave a low chuckle.
“Exquisite,” he said.
“You transformed worthless earth into fortune without losing control of the spell.” It was the closest thing to praise he had ever given me.
By the time I reached my tenth year, I barely recognized the person I had once been.
The sickly child who had fallen from Heaven was gone.
My body was lean rather than large, but it had become strong, quick, and resilient.
My hands were covered in scars.
My movements were quiet and deliberate.
I wore dark leather made from monster hides.
A bone dagger rested at my hip.
My silver-white hair fell around my face, no longer matted with blood or dust.
I still carried pain inside me.
I still remembered Heaven.
But I was no longer defined by what had happened there.
One evening, Mammon descended from the upper darkness and landed near the dying fire.
His expression was unusually still.
“Your foundation is complete, Fallen,” he said.
“This cavern has taught you everything it can.” I stood and secured a dark leather satchel over my shoulder.
Inside were the three gold ingots, along with a few smaller pieces I had created during practice.
Then I checked the dagger at my hip.
“The Mortal Realm lies beyond the mountain pass,” Mammon continued.
“There are kingdoms, guilds, merchants, soldiers, thieves, and people far more dangerous than the beasts you have hunted here.” “I know.” “No,” he said.
“You do not.
But you will learn.” Behind him, the cavern entrance began to open.
Ancient stone shifted with a deep, grinding sound.
For the first time in three years, I saw the night sky.
Stars filled the darkness above the mountains.
They looked impossibly distant, cold and beautiful.
Beyond the pass, faint lights flickered across the horizon.
Mortal cities.
A new world waited for me there.
Mammon turned toward me.
“Remember what you are,” he said.
“You are neither angel nor demon.
Do not allow anyone to force you into a shape that suits them.” The wind entered the cavern, carrying the scent of snow, trees, and open air.
“You are Fallen,” Mammon said.
“Go forth, and let the world discover what you have become.” I stepped beyond the threshold.
The cold night struck my face, but I welcomed it.
After three years beneath the earth, even the wind felt like freedom.
I looked toward the distant lights and began walking.
My life in the cavern was over.
Whatever waited beyond the mountains—wealth, danger, betrayal, or death—I would face it on my own terms.
I was no longer Heaven’s discarded child.
I was no longer a nameless mistake.
I was Fallen.