Back into the same tunnels where their friends died.
As if nothing ever happened.
That is why Pax is angry.
This,all of this, is just another reminder of how the Fae, our lords, see us. We are expendable. Measured only by how useful we are to them, how much we can produce before we break.
I follow Pax back into the mine, and I cannot believe what I see. I had expected the outside to be one thing, but I never thought they could so completely erase what happened in the tunnels.
There is no trace of the chaos. No lingering mark of the horror that tore through this place. The black stone walls stand unscarred. The blood has been scrubbed from the jagged floor beneath my boots.
What happened here exists only in my memory now.
The Veins have all been stabilized and reinforced, green sigils blazing along the arches overhead. Even Vein Four, unused for as long as I have been here, now stands open and active.
Even Vein Three. The tunnel where Rollin swore something called his name. Where the rock came down on me.
Even Vein Two, where Erold tossed a charge down the shaft, setting off a chain of death and terror that still curls through my thoughts when I try to sleep.
All of it is operational again.
“The man,” I say. “Erold.”
Pax stops. Slowly, he turns back to me.
“You saw his face, didn’t you?” I continue. “When he attacked me. When he killed those men.” My voice falters. “He wasn’t… he wasn’t a man anymore. It was like something else was wearing him.”
Pax lowers his head.
“I don’t know why Erold did what he did,” he says after a moment. “That wasn’t the man I knew. He was good. He worked hard. He missed his family.” His voice tightens. “He wanted to pay off his debt so he could go home to them.”
He looks around the tunnel with open contempt, jaw clenched.
“It’s these fucking mines,” he mutters. “They do things to your head. Just when we think things have settled, it starts again. It crawls back in. Drives men mad.”
I grab his arm. “So this has happened before?”
He pulls away from me sharply. The first time he ever has.
“We don’t talk about it,” he snaps, then exhales hard. “It spreads fear, and things are hard enough down here already.”
“There’s something down there,” I insist, lowering my voice as I lean closer. “Isn’t there? Do these tunnels go beneath the lake?”
Pax gulps.
“The tunnels go everywhere.”
My voice drops to a whisper. “I’ve seen it. It called my name. It used my father’s voice.”
Fear flashes across his face, but beneath it, something else surfaces too.
Relief.
His lip trembles, as if holding back a flood. “Sometimes,” he admits, “when I’m alone in the tunnel… I hear it too.” He swallows. “It calls me Pattenwald. Only my father ever called me Pattenwald.”
He turns away, shoulders drawn tight.
“They say if you listen to it. If you follow the voice, it makes you do things. Things you would never do.” He turns back to me then, and there’s a cold sheen in his eyes. “They say it takes you over.”
