Soot streaks half his face, blood carving a too-bright line from temple to jaw and matting his hair. He is shouting orders, shoving dazed miners toward the exit.
They limp, stagger, clutching burned hands, broken arms, faces ghost-pale with fear. Behind them, the tunnel belches fire, chewing upward, devouring timbers in violent bursts.
But my eyes are fixed on Vein Two as another flume of fire bursts up the shaft, and through that column of flame, charred to a crisp yet somehow still moving, comes Erold.
His skin is a ruin of melted flesh, sliding off bone in blackened strips, but his eyes burn white, and they are locked straight on me.
He stalks forward, that ruined mouth twisting into a crooked grin, rows of razor-sharp teeth glinting where human teeth should be. It can’t be. Pax knew his man. Erold is a miner. Not a monster. He can’t be the thing from the lake.
Unless… unless it wears Erold’s face the same way it knew my father’s voice.
Around us, chaos reigns, the Aurevault trembling and shedding stone as flames lick the cavern ceiling, but no one sees him. No one notices Erold walk through the madness with single-minded purpose, straight to me.
He gets close enough that he is horrifying to look upon. The smell alone makes my stomach seize, burned flesh and something far fouler. His blackened skin cracks and falls away as he reaches for me.
I scramble back, my hands clawing at the rock, fingernails snapping. Tears blur my eyes. My back hits the wall, and when those huge, flayed hands reach for me at last, I scream.
It’s enough to draw the attention of two miners, who sprint to help. I drag myself upright, lungs burning, trying to get my feet beneath me. I take my eyes off them for only a second before I hear a sickening crack.
I whip back around to see one miner already crumpled on the ground, eyes staring, body still, while Erold wraps his hands around the second miner’s head, and with a brutal, effortless wrench, snaps his neck. The man collapses on top of the first.
“Neve!” Pax calls.
He’s sprinting toward me, lifting an axe from the floor as he runs. He swings it up, teeth gritted, fire exploding behind him.
Erold, if it truly is Erold, glances over his shoulder at Pax’s charge, but there’s no fear there. Not even concern. He turns back to me, opens his mouth, and black ichor spills over his lips, dripping thickly to the ground.
“Another time,” he says.
And then the white light behind his eyes snuffs out as quickly as blowing out a candle. His broken, charred body collapses into a lifeless heap.
Pax reaches me, drops the axe, staring at what remains of the man he once knew. But there’s no time for questions. I couldn’t answer them anyway.
He grips my arm hard and yanks me toward the main tunnel. “Move!”
We run shoulder to shoulder, miners streaming past us in a panicked tide. The cave groans louder this time, angrier, pebbles raining from the ceiling. The floor trembles beneath my boots, the vibration running straight up my spine.
But from behind us, I hear screams that turn my blood cold.
Raw, agonizing, they slice straight through the roar of the fire and the pounding in my skull. I twist, vision swimming, just in time to see a plume of flame erupt from Vein Two, the heat slamming into my face like an open furnace.
“There are still men down there,” I rasp, my throat sandpaper and smoke. “We can’t just leave them.”
Pax doesn’t stop. His grip only tightens as he drags me harder toward the entrance.
“There is no saving them, Neve,” he bites out. “We save ourselves, or we die with them.”
I stumble after him for a few steps, my body limp, my mind still clawing its way through shock, until something inside me snaps taut.
No.
I wrench my arm free and plant my feet. He spins toward me, confusion and panic flashing across his face.
“What are you doing? We don’t have time to stop!”
“Then go without me,” I say, breath shaking, but resolve solid as steel beneath it. “People are alive in that tunnel. I have to help them.”
His expression hardens, fear sharpening into anger.
