I don’t remember how it started. A scream? A blow? Or the silence that seeped into me like cold water, flooding my mind and soul. I was trapped.

  For the first ten years, I fought my way through. Every month—one push upward. Every month—a voice.

  “I’m here!” I would scream until my throat split into blood and rust.

  But every time I thought I was getting out… he appeared.

  Tgar.

  He didn’t hit. He didn’t shout. He retched fire, melting the air between us, and every time I felt my skin slide off my bones. He didn’t just bury me—he burned me. Then, with a hoarse rumble, the stone floor would part, and Tgar, like it was his little game, would hurl me down into the very heart of the pit.

  The rocks closed over my head again, as if I’d never existed at all.

  He never spoke.

  He never listened.

  He simply was—huge, blazing, like a living bonfire of hate.

  The only one who knew I existed.

  And the only one who pretended I didn’t.

  Another ten years passed. And I stopped digging. Stopped screaming. Stopped waiting. Something inside me went out—whatever used to make me me. Desire. Rage. Hope. They vanished.

  All that was left was me… and emptiness.

  But not quite emptiness. I got friends.

  Ha-ha… yeah. Friends.

  Look: that’s Foron! He’s funny—he talks in rhymes. And that’s Drouzd—he’s very quiet. He watches Tgar while he digs.

  Sometimes the three of us laugh.

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  Sometimes I talk alone, and only the walls laugh.

  Sometimes I laugh—and it sounds like someone is peeling my skin off from the inside.

  “What am I doing… God…” I would whisper, curled beneath the ceiling that had long since become my sky. “There’s no one here. Except me…”

  In my thirty-second year, I tried digging again. Down. Forward. Anywhere. But the wall beneath me wouldn’t yield. It wasn’t rock—it was a sentence.

  The King carved my pit like a gravestone: eternal, smooth, unbreakable.

  I broke my nails, my teeth, my will.

  Nothing changed.

  Only Tgar. He still came. Sometimes. Without a word. Just to remind me:

  you won’t get out.

  There was one attempt left—sleep. Sleep forever. But even that wouldn’t work. My mind thrashed. Dreams tore into screams. I started forgetting.

  Why am I here? Who am I?

  Every day I wrote on the wall: “Lucida. You were there. You were alive. You shone.”

  Weeks later I couldn’t tell whose handwriting it was.

  In my fortieth year… I made a choice.

  I had one thing left. An ice sword. Once, it had been given to me. Zariil gave it to me back in the days when… what? When he still was.

  The only thing that didn’t fall silent if I pressed the blade to my heart.

  I drove it into myself. Slowly. Precisely.

  I wasn’t dying.

  I was calling the cold.

  I was opening a door.

  Ice spread from the wound like a flower—across the floor, the walls, the air.

  I lay down in the center of that flower, like a seed of hope.

  “Let someone find me… anyone…” I whispered, closing my eyes.

  And I fell asleep.

  Let time freeze. Let my mind grow over with frost.

  Until someone sets me free.

  Lucida.

  The ice cracked.

  At first—barely audible. Like something inside the mountain itself had exhaled.

  Then louder.

  The floor under me shuddered. Thin, twitching cracks ran through the stone. The ice around the sword buried in my body began to melt. Slowly. Painfully.

  I didn’t wake all at once.

  First came pain.

  The sword was still in me.

  Hunger burned through my gut, like I hadn’t eaten in ages.

  My body tried to regenerate—jerking, ragged spasms, breaking itself as it rebuilt.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Every inhale sliced my throat. And I remembered—how long it had been since I’d spoken. Since I’d formed a single word.

  And then… I understood.

  The walls.

  They were cracked. Not smooth. Not eternal. Alive—and broken.

  Above me came a dull grinding sound. The stone floor… split open on its own.

  For the first time.

  I didn’t think. I just crawled.

  With what little strength I had left.

  Hands rubbed raw to bone. Legs that barely remembered what movement was.

  Light slammed into my eyes.

  I dragged myself out.

  And I saw him.

  Tgar.

  He lay there. Dead. Charred. Broken.

  And farther up—higher—I saw two silhouettes.

  Leaving.

  Climbing out.

  I wanted to scream. To call. To stop them.

  But my throat locked up.

  Only a rasp came out.

  I fell.

  And slept again.

  But this time—not in a tomb.