“Sanora.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” he said, chuckling when I muttered thanks.
He tilted his head. “I’m guessing you’ll be heading back when the train arrives in four days?”
I nodded, thankful for the remainder that dragged me under. I had four days left in Nimorran. Four days to let go of the strangeness, the fear, the questions, and the pull I still couldn’t explain. And to call it bittersweet was putting it lightly.
Merton’s gaze wandered, his head tilting slightly as though he was searching for a thread of conversation to tug on. His eyes drifted downward and caught on the book in my hand. The realisation lit across his face as he spoke.
“You must be the girl Amelia talked about.”
I cut him a brief glance, my brow arched, waiting.
“She mentioned lending my grandfather’s book to a girl with green hair.” His eyes flicked to my hair, the corner of his mouth quirking. “Green and brown, I see.”
A smile tugged faintly at me, softened by the warmth of genuine appreciation. “Yeah, she did. It actually helped me a lot.” I tilted my head. “Do you stay here?”
“Oh, no. Just Amelia. She was closest to my grandfather, and when he passed, she wanted to preserve the library herself instead of giving it over to someone else to manage.” He gestured between us with a shrug. “We came together. Definitely must have missed each other on the train. Maybe we’ll see each other when we’re leaving?”
I gave him a small nod in reply.
He let out a breath. “The only other time I’d ever come here was for a school project,” he went on, almost as though to fill the silence between us. “I came with my group.”
That pulled at me. My curiosity gnawed, and I turned my head fully to face him. “School project? What did you study?”
“I majored in Historical Geology,” he said, watching the flicker of interest in my expression. Encouraged, he continued. “There were six of us, and we thought Nimorran might hold some unique stones, since…you know.”
“So, did you find any before you left?”
He nodded, his expression brightening. “Yes. Quite a lot. But during our search, we stumbled across something else. It was a cave. It was…different. It was nothing like we’d ever seen before. I can’t remember exactly where it was, but it felt creepy.” He visibly shivered. “Cannot also recall all the details. But we hammered out a fragment of the stone and brought it back to experiment on. At first, it seemed like ordinary igneous rock. But it gave off residual warmth long after we’d removed it from the cave, and whenever the sun hit it, it shined, like tiny pieces of diamonds were caught in it. Even in storage, it felt…alive. Sometimes, under darkness, it glowed faintly with air hissing out of it.”
I gave him a questioning look.
“There was a private research,” he explained. “Conducted, I think, about nine hundred years ago. Actually, it was a private record our school kept locked away because the people who started that research weren’t able to complete it—died the next year. After a lot of back-and-forth with professors, we discovered that the cave wasn’t just any cave, and every anomaly we found was there in the old research.”
I frowned. “In what way? What did you find?”
He took a long look at the eagerness on my face, then continued, counting on his fingers as though he was listing them out in the order he remembered. “There were organic traces where none should even exist, it was unnaturally warm for stone that had been existing for over a millennium. They speculated that something powerful slept inside due to the strange glow. The old records noted inaudible whispers heard by those who entered the cave.” He pointed to himself. “We also heard some twisted sounds even from outside, and it was eventually linked to the Soulless Man’s lore of corrupting minds. They believed it was his home.”
My shoulders dropped as I rolled my eyes, letting out a short scoff. “How would they know he slept there? Always spreading false lore about him.”
“And how would you know he didn't?” He smiled and pressed on. “They were just speculations though, nothing solid, no real evidence to actually back it up. It was named The Cave of the Undead before they died.”
My brows pinched. “What?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “We didn’t go inside. Fear kept us out. None of us wanted to risk not making it back. But the old researchers did. Could the Soulless Man have lived there, really? Do you think they all died the next year because of it? Our professors banned us from going back there to continue the research, in fear we might end up like them.”
The Cave of the Undead.
The name alone unsettled me, familiar like a half-remembered dream, pressing cold into my skin. Could it be one of those histories still alive, a magical element that survived the wrath? It had to be very special if the wrath didn’t destroy it. And if so, why there? Why would Thrax live in such a place nine hundred years ago?
Only one person could give me the truth.
“Thanks, Merton. I gotta go.”
He looked caught off guard, scrambling for something to hold me there, words tripping over his tongue. “Uh—uhm, maybe we’ll see each other when we leave? At the station, perhaps?”
I gave him an appreciative smile. “Sure.”
