Miles beneath the surface of the world's tallest mountain. Inside a cave that has known neither light nor the caress of fresh air for a million years. A man sat with his bare back against the deepest part of the cave.
Shallow wrinkles lined his face, mostly around his forehead and mouth. Thick silver hair fell from his scalp; over well-defined shoulders, a wide back, and densely muscled chest to pool around him on the stone floor.
His eyes were open. Ominous yellow pupils glowed faintly against the darkness. His pupils never deviated, his eyelids never fell. Only the shallow breaths, separated by dozens of minutes at a time, proved the man was actually alive.
“I don’t want to be here.”
The man’s body reflexively reacted to the intrusion; his pupils lengthened to dagger like slits and slid towards another point on the wall.
“Those scary Sect guys said this place was forbidden. So, why were we sent to mine over here? What if there’s a Soul beast nearby? Who’s going to take care of my family if I’m rotting in a dung pile at the back of some animal’s lair?”
The man’s neck slowly turned towards the voice of the stranger. Dust and small rocks slid off his skin and hair to land in the tangled mass of hair on his legs.
“Their inner voice must be remarkably loud if I can hear it from here. How loud would it be if they were standing in front of me?” The man listened for any other 'inner voices', but he couldn’t find any. Everything seemed to be coming from the soul of a single man.
The stranger wasn’t inside the same cave as the man. That would be impossible. But if it was detectable, then either his inner voice was screaming in pain, or the stranger was closer than anyone had been since the day of sealing.
The man slowly returned his head to its original position. While his eyes remained fixed on the wall. Something inside his gut was twisting uncomfortably. Was he nervous? No, he didn’t think so. But he did hope the stranger would quickly go on his way and take his inner voice with him.
“I hope the children can make it on their own. I didn’t want to leave them; they’re still my flesh and blood. But I don’t have any other choice.”
Still images of two sleeping boys flitted across the stranger’s mind. The boys, twins by the looks of it, were cuddled together inside the hollowed base of a tree with purple leaves. A small rucksack hung from a nearby branch. Out of reach of most small animals and insects, but at the mercy of any brave bird or tree-climbers.
“Okay… Focus now. We need to get this tunnel dug out before the end of the day or we won’t get paid… Ancestors above — I do NOT want to be here.”
The man’s eyes widened imperceptibly. Had the stranger screamed the last part, or was he getting closer?
The bad feeling from earlier was back and pressed down on his guts like an anvil.
An unending stream of consciousness flowed from the stranger to the man inside the cave. Sometimes his inner voice was loud enough to be a scream beside the man’s ear. Other times it was a raucous series of whispers.
Time held little meaning inside the cave. Darkness was unaffected by it, and stone neither wrinkled nor grayed. But through the stranger’s voice, the man was gradually reminded of time’s endless journey.
Then it happened. A second inner voice joined the first.
“Dryden was right. For once. I don’t like the look of this one bit. We’ve already had three tunnels collapse this year. We shouldn’t be digging this aggressively. Especially not in this cold. Who knows how much of this mountain is held together by ice and a prayer…”
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Then a third, fourth, seventh, fifteenth. As more voices joined the noise, the unpleasant feeling rose to drown it out.
“Ah.” The man’s eyelids slowly closed, then opened again. “This is hunger.”
The man shifted his weight forward, his body unfolding like a well-oiled hinge, smoothly and without sound.
Thick layers of dust fell away and left a trail in the air as he stepped forward.
His body was bare; only covered by the thick silver hair that hung to his knees and the dust that still clung to him.
His body was practically humming with instinctual craving. A desire to feed that ignited his heart and scorched him down to his very soul.
He walked the length of the cave with painstaking slowness. This was his home; in more ways than one. He’d resigned himself to never leaving, never seeing the light of day or feeling the sun’s rays on his skin.
The muscles around his core tightened as he walked. He felt as if he’d been stabbed through with a spear. Of course, that hadn’t actually happened… At least, not recently. But his core was aching for sustenance.
He placed a gnarled hand over the space between his stomach and heart. An image of his core popped into his mind; a dark spot where not even light could exist. The energy swirling around his core was angry, misshapen, like a starved beast tearing at its chain.
A few minutes of walking brought him from one end of the cave to the next. All of it dark. All of the air was stale. It wasn’t much, but this thousand-foot hole was his.
This end of the cave had two things the other side didn’t.
A thousand words, ten thousand marks, a million scratches scarred the wall: illuminated by the dim glow of a large crimson seal.
His pupils reacted, lengthening to resist the unfamiliar light.
It irritated him. He’d known only darkness for so long, even this small light was like needles piercing his brain.
He blocked the light with a hand over his eyes and, in his semi-blind state, strayed too close.
The seal’s light instantly dimmed by half. His core eagerly snatched whatever energy it could and stuffed it down.
The man stepped back into the narrow tunnel he’d been following and decided not to get closer than this.
Instead, his gaze shifted to a spot on the floor.
A human skeleton lay with its arms crossed over its core. Its feet were pushed together and kept that way by a length of muscle tissue that acted as twine.
He’d forgotten which beast he’d gotten the strip of fiber from. Nevertheless, he was thankful its muscles, when treated, could outlast the flesh of even a man like the skeleton.
Its clothes had turned to dust, much like his own. But the energy inside its core, the stable golden orb with specs of silvery white was still as beautiful as it always was.
The skeleton had given everything; his past, his present, even his future to create the seal on the wall. And even now, hundreds of thousands of years after his Soul ceased to be. His golden core continued to power the seal.
The man slid to his knees and placed his forehead against the floor with his palms flat to either side.
“I apologize.” Though he whispered, his voice caused the walls of the cave to shake. “I was hoping to keep my promise.” The walls continued to shake and rattle; dust fell from the ceiling and covered the man’s back.
“No! The walls! I knew this was going to happen!”
The original stranger’s inner voice was deafening. He was closer now than ever before. He was quickly joined by many other recognizable voices; panic, fear, regret, anguish, anger, hope…
The stranger’s emotions slid across the man’s mind like water off a roof.
The cave shook once again; more violently than before. But the tremor didn’t stop with one. They came again and again, each more violent than the last.
“I’m so sorry… My son.”
The stones in the walls cried out — Crack! — The wall behind the seal split diagonally, from left to right.
The seal flickered once; its light vanishing completely before returning with a vengeance.
The seal flickered again; its light dimming but not completely disappearing.
The seal flickered a third time… And did not return.
The man’s hands balled into fists. Long strips of stone were gouged out by his fingers, then turned to balls in his fists.
The cave continued to vibrate and shake as the mountain itself realized something had changed.
The man’s head lifted off the ground. His eyes glowed in the utter darkness of the cave… And then they began to grow.
