Chapter 276
Chapter 276
Atasha’s POV
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“How deep do you think this place is?” I asked, keeping my voice low even though the surge had ended, because the cave still felt like it could swallow sound and spit it back out at the wrong me.
Cassian’s gaze moved over the stone around us, the narrow pocket, the jagged opening, the cracks that looked new, like they had been torn open by force rather than carved by time. “Deep hough,” he answered. “I read about passages like this when I was younger, when the North still bothered to keep records of anything that was not war. I have never seen a real one.”
The way he said it made my stomach tighten.
I shifted closer to the opening and peered out, careful not to let my shadow cross the gap too much. The tunnel outside looked different than I remembered. The edges were sharper, the floor more uneven, and there were fresh fractures that had not been there when we ran. It was not a clean collapse. It was like the cave had been shaken apart and then stitched back together poorly.
“The shaking,” I said slowly. “It created more pathways.”
Cassian nodded once. “It changes the structure.”
I glanced at him. “Do you think the pathways increase every time there is shaking?”
He considered the question for a moment, his eyes narrowing as if he was mapping the cave in his head. “Not necessarily,” he said. “But the possibility is huge that a few more were added since the original collapse, and the first shaking we felt inside. It might not always create new tunnels. It might also block old ones. Either way, it does not stay the same.”
That was worse than any simple answer, because it meant the cave was not only dangerous. It was unstable. It was a shifting maze that could change while we were inside it.
I nodded and said nothing.
The anchor had to be at the center.
If the passage was behaving like a wound, then the anchor was the thing buried in the deepest part of it, the thing holding the tear open. That was the only explanation that matched what had seen, what Lady Kenneth had warned, what the King had called the core.
I could only hope we were still moving in the right direction.
Cassian waited, watching me like he could tell when my thoughts started spiraling, then shifted first, reaching for his sword and checking the edge with a quick glance. “We move now,” he said. “Before the cave decides to shake again.”
We climbed out of the pocket carefully.
My legs felt weak at first, not from injury but from the strange emptiness that comes after losing time. Eight hours unconscious should have left me in worse condition, but my body felt more like it had been drained and then refilled poorly, like something had pressed the pause on me in a way my healing could not fix.
Cassian stayed close. We moved through the tunnel in silence, following the slope downward, stepping over broken stone and patches of loose dust that still fell from the ceiling whenever something shifted far away.
The cave had changed.
I could see it now that I was paying attention. The walls held new splits. The floor had fresh ridges where slabs had lifted and settled again. In some places, the glowing insects clung thicker than before, their bodies pulsing faintly, lighting the tunnel in uneven strips of color. In other places, they had vanished completely, leaving darkness thick enough that even our senses had to work harder.
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Chapter 276
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I kept listening for any sign of the others, any voice, any scrape of boots, any scent that could tell me the King and Rio were alive somewhere nearby.
There was nothing.
The silence pressed in until it felt personal.
Hours passed in a blur of walking, scanning, listening, and cutting down whatever skittering beasts crept too close. They were not dangerous on their own, but I did not trust anything down here to be harmless. Cassian killed them quickly, and I purified what we took, because we needed food whether we liked it or not.
Food was not the problem.
Water was.
The metal flask Cassian carried had already been refilled twice from our supplies before the collapse, and now it felt lighter every time he shifted. I could still swallow the dryness in my mouth, but my body knew we were running low. There was only so much we could conserve before thirst started slowing reactions, and in a place like this, slowing down meant dying.
I stared at the flask when Cassian’s hand brushed it again, and the worry rose sharp in my chest.
We did not know when we would find water.
We did not know if the cave even had any.
Then Cassian stopped so suddenly that I nearly ran into his back
He lifted his hand in a signal for silence, and his head tilted slightly, as if he was listening to something I could not hear yet.
“What is it?” I whispered, forcing the words out carefully.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
I held my breath and tried to extend my senses the way I did when I healed, widening my awareness until every sound in the tunnel sharpened. I heard nothing but our breathing and the faint buzz of insects.
I shook my head slowly. “I do not hear anything.”
Cassian did not relax. If anything, his posture tightened. “I did,” he said, and there was no doubt in him.
Before I could ask what he meant, he lifted me again. Then he started running.
His boots struck stone in long strides, moving so fast that the tunnel blurred around us. The air shifted, warmer, thicker, and the glow along the walls changed from scattered insects to clusters that pulsed brighter, like we were moving toward something that fed them.
My heart hammered, part fear, part confusion, because I could not understand why he was running toward danger instead of away from it.
I did not think Cassian did reckless things.
Not when I was involved.
Not when every choice mattered.
So I held onto him and tried to steady my breathing, trusting that he had heard something real, something important.
After what felt like forever, the sound reached ine too.
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Chapter 276
A low chorus of growls.
Not one beast.
Many.
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The sound echoing off stone in a way that suggested open space not a narrow tunnel. It was mixed with heavy movement, bodies shifting, claws scraping.
Cassian slowed slightly, his steps becoming quieter as he approached the end of the tunnel. The path opened suddenly, and he stopped at the edge before lowering me carefully onto my feet.
I steadied myself and looked up.
It was a cliff.
Inside the cave.
The tunnel ended at a jagged drop, and beyond it was a wide clearing below, a massive chamber that opened downward like the inside of a broken mountain. The glowing insects clung thick along the walls here, lighting the space enough that I could see the uneven terrain below, scattered rock formations, and a shallow pool that caught the light and reflected it back.
A spring.
For a moment, my mind refused to accept it, because water down here felt impossible, like the cave would not allow anything clean to exist.
But it was real.
The pool shimmered faintly, fed by a thin stream trickling from the stone wall, disappearing into a crack in the ground like it did not want to stay visible.
And the beasts were there.
They crowded the edge of the spring in a loose circle, massive bodies hunched as they drank. Their backs were broad and layered with thick ridges. Their heads were wrong, too heavy, jaws set with blunt strength rather than sharp elegance. They reminded me of bears only because of their size, but these were larger than any of the ones we had fought earlier.
They were the kind of creatures that could crush a man with a careless step.
My breath caught, not because of the beasts alone, but because I understood immediately.
We needed water.
We had found water.
But we could not approach it without being seen.
Cassian crouched beside me, his gaze fixed on the clearing as he measured distance and numbers.
I clenched my jaw, staring at the spring until my throat ached from thirst.
“If we want water,” I whispered, keeping my voice so low it barely existed. Then we either lure them away…”
My gaze slid over the beasts again, counting the bulk, the way they shifted and bumped into each other, the way their claws dug into stone without effort.
“…or we kill them all,” I finished.
20:32 Fri, Feb 6 BB.
Chapter 277
