Chapter 5 #3
“He’s okay,” Sylvian murmurs after a moment, though his tone is still tight. “Just exhausted.”
“We all are,” Ashton mutters.
I drag in a slow breath, fighting for control as I finally look around.
The pit is steep and smooth, its walls rising high above us, offering no grip, no ledge, nothing to climb. The darkness presses in from every side, thick and suffocating, broken only by the faint circle of moonlight far above us.
The realization sinks into me like ice.
“We’re trapped,” Sylvian says quietly, echoing my thoughts. “And the cyclopes… they’ll find us trapped down here. It’s only a matter of time.”
My stomach drops, panic threatening to rise again, sharp and fast.
“There has to be a way out,” I say, forcing the words out before fear can take hold. “There’s always a way out.”
Ashton exhales hard, dragging a hand down his face, but there’s no real defeat in it. Just exhaustion. “Then we find it,” he mutters, glancing around the pit, already scanning the walls.
“We’re not trapped,” Sylvian says quietly, but there’s steel in his voice. “No matter what it takes, we’ll get out of this situation, just like we got out of all the others.”
Oberon lets out a low breath, rolling his shoulders like he’s already preparing for whatever comes next. “This is probably just a damn test from the goddess, which means there’s a way to win.”
The certainty in their voices steadies something in me.
“Could we use magic?”
Ashton and Sylvian exchange a look I can’t quite read, but Oberon is the one to answer, “I don’t think they have anything left to give right now.”
Okay, that’s fine. We can figure this out.
I take another breath and really look around.
The pit is deeper than I first realized, the walls smooth in some places, jagged in others, rising high above us in uneven shadows.
Moonlight spills in from the opening overhead, but it barely reaches the bottom, leaving most of the space in thick, shifting darkness.
Corners disappear into black. Shapes blur.
It’s impossible to tell where the stone and dirt ends and something else might begin.
There could be anything down here.
Or nothing at all.
“I’m so tired of tests,” I mutter under my breath, pressing a hand to the wall as I start moving. “And caves. And being underground. And underwater.” My fingers drag across the earth, rough and cold. “If I never go underground again, it’ll be too soon.”
Ashton huffs a quiet laugh somewhere behind me. “Noted. Next time we nearly die, we’ll aim for open sky.”
“Please do.”
We spread out as much as the pit allows, each of us taking a section, running our hands along the walls, searching for anything that doesn’t feel solid. The stone is uneven, broken in places, but most of it is unyielding. Too smooth to climb. Too solid to break.
Time stretches.
My fingers ache from pressing into every crack, every seam, every place that might give. Dust coats my skin, small cuts sting where the rock bites back, but I don’t stop.
None of us do.
Above us, the sounds have long since disappeared, like the cyclopes are in another world entirely, even though I know they’re just on the other side of that hedge.
It doesn’t make me feel better.
“There,” I whisper suddenly, my breath catching.
My fingers brush something different. Not quite a gap, but not solid either. I press harder, tracing the edge of it, trying to feel where it begins and ends.
“Maybe,” I say, louder now. “There’s something—”
They’re beside me instantly.
Oberon crouches, a flame igniting in his hand, illuminating the place I’ve found. The glow dances across the wall, revealing… nothing useful. Just a shallow indentation in the stone, a place where the rock has worn down slightly over time.
Not a tunnel. Not an opening. Just dirt. Hope rises for a heartbeat… then disappears.
Ashton exhales sharply. “Of course.”
I press my hand against it again anyway, like maybe I missed something, like maybe if I try hard enough it will turn into something more, but it doesn’t.
“There’s nothing,” I say quietly, the words tasting wrong in my mouth.
I don’t stop searching. None of us do. We keep moving along the walls, checking every inch, every shadowed corner, every place the light barely touches.
But it’s all the same. Solid. Unyielding. Trapping us in.
Ashton drags himself back toward the center, leaning his head against the wall with a quiet exhale.
“If I had more in me,” he says, voice rough with exhaustion, “I could try to lift us out. Catch the air, push us up like I did with the worm.” He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh.
“But right now… I’d barely get myself a few feet. ”
“No,” Sylvian says immediately. “You’ll collapse before you make it halfway. The same with me if I used my earth magic right now. Unfortunately.”
Oberon doesn’t argue. His gaze lifts once toward the opening above us, then drops again, calculating, measuring, already knowing the same thing.
“Then we wait,” he says.
The words settle over us, heavy and unavoidable. Wait?
“Rest,” he clarifies. “Until maybe their magic can get us out of here.”
I guess there’s nothing else left to do.
Sinking back against the wall, my body aches, my hands still stinging from the search. The pit feels deeper now. Smaller somehow, even with all the space around us. The darkness presses in at the edges, thick and quiet.
I hate it. I hate being down here. I hate the dirt, the shadows, the way the world narrows to this hole and nothing else.
The silence stretches, broken only by breathing. By the quiet, restless shifts of bodies that should be resting but can’t quite manage it.
We wait. Hoping and praying that with enough rest, Sylvian and Ashton might just be able to get us out soon.
And if not? I have no freaking idea.