The words aren’t mine. They come from somewhere behind the walls, soft but insistent.
I freeze — suspended on spurs, body trembling. The pain inside me throbs like a second heartbeat.
Then the voice again:
“You climb for what’s worth saving.”
I turn my head — though there is no head to turn; only blackness dust-dirty stone and the echo of memory. The voice sounds like Yorta, rough old warrior, scarred, steady.
I drag my forearm up, the bone-plate grinding faintly, shards of rock biting into flesh.
“Y-Yorta?” I rasp.
But there’s no answer. Only the wind whispering cold in my ears.
Another voice — calm, measured, ancient: Parfi’s voice, offering soft wisdom through the dark.
“Pain is not the end, Warlord. Pain is the hammer that tests your resolve. Hammer hard, but don’t shatter.”
I suck in a breath — shallow, ragged. The cave air tastes like damp stone and old dust. I close my eyes for a moment, let the voices hold me steady.
I grit teeth. Lift.
My clawed hand finds a shaving-thin crack; I jam a spur in. The rock slices across bone-plate. The pain snaps half my vision red. I bite hard on my own wrist-band — claws scratch through cloth; I taste iron. I swallow the scream down, bury it. Mustn’t shriek. Mustn’t bleed out before I get to her.
I press upward.
Again, Parfi’s voice — distant, calm — echoes:
“Vengeance is fire, not poison. Let the heat burn away the rot, but don’t let it scorch the soul.”
I choke a laugh. Fire. Rot. Soul. Words for poets standing on hilltops. Not warriors climbing through slit caves. But I cling to them.
Closer.
The wall narrows — slick with moisture, rock rubbing flesh raw. My ribs shout with each shift. The broken spurs on my boots catch — once, twice — and I slip.
A crunch. Bone-plate buckles. My shoulder shifts in its socket. A scream, sharp and white, claws at my throat. I bite hard again, taste salt, blood, acrid fear — but I don’t let it out.
I hang there on one arm, the other clutching the wall like a vise. My legs dangle, boots scraping air, metal creaking. My breath spits.
I whisper soft: “Freya…”
Her laugh — bright, defiant, human — echoes faint across rock and memory. “You taught me to stand tall,” she’d said. “Stand with me…”
Terror wells — not for me, but for her. For what waits above.
I lift my free hand — slow, painful. I brace it against rough stone. The world tilts. I taste dust. I taste rock. I taste regret.
But I do not fall.
I rise.
Bone-spur greets rock-edge. A groan echoes. My palm splits further. I taste more iron.
Still: I rise.
The wall narrows into a chute — a filthy scar of stone carved by water long dead. Each push upward sends pain through broken bone and bleeding flesh.
