Strain burned through Jezara’s shoulders. Her hand, already mangled by glass, throbbed with each frantic pull. Ilyas was a leaden weight, his body warm with seeping blood. The ceiling above groaned, a sound of grinding rock and shearing crystal. Dust billowed, thick and acrid, stinging her eyes. She hooked her arm beneath Ilyas’s shoulders, his obsidian armor scraping her skin, and dragged. Tivon, pale and small, scrambled ahead, his slight frame surprisingly agile through the rubble. “This way!” Tivon shrieked, pointing a quivering hand towards a jagged fissure in the cavern wall, barely wide enough for one. “The Blind Seer’s Crevice! It’s small, but deep!” She shoved Ilyas forward, the sheer will to survive overriding the poison's lingering tremor. A thunderous crash echoed behind them as the entire Null-Stone chamber imploded. The blast threw them forward, tumbling into the narrow opening. Sharp crystal scraped her face, but she held onto Ilyas, using her own body to protect Tivon. They landed in a heap on cold, damp earth, the fissure sealing behind them with a final, echoing rumble, leaving them in absolute blackness. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and copper. Jezara fumbled in the dark for the small, flint-and-steel kit she always carried, her movements slow and precise despite the adrenaline. A spark, then a weak, flickering flame illuminated their surroundings. They were in a small, cramped cave, stalagmites like petrified fangs reaching from the ceiling and floor. Ilyas lay prone, his breathing shallow, a dark, viscous puddle spreading beneath him. Three crossbow bolts protruded from his back, stark against his blood-soaked tunic. “Tivon,” Jezara’s voice was strained, her gaze fixed on the dying man. “Help me turn him.” Carefully, they rolled Ilyas onto his side. His face was ghostly pale, streaked with dirt and blood. His lips moved, a faint, incoherent mumble. Jezara tore strips from her tunic, pressing them against the punctures, but the crimson flow continued, relentless. He was mortal now, terrifyingly so. Every drop of blood was a direct threat to his life. “He’s losing too much blood,” Tivon said, his voice unusually steady. He knelt beside Ilyas, his small hand hovering over one of the pierced entries. A faint, crimson glow emanated from his blood-link mark, spreading across his palm. “Maevio taught me… for healing. It draws out impurities. Blood magic… it can mend.” Jezara watched as the light bathed the stone. This was the magic Maevio had twisted for sacrifice, now being used to save the man he wanted dead. Tivon closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration. The glow intensified, pulsing. Slowly, impossibly, one of the crossbow bolts began to retract, sliding free of Ilyas’s flesh, pulled by an unseen force. A gasp escaped Ilyas’s lips, a convulsive cough rattling his chest. “He knew I lived,” Ilyas mumbled, his eyes fluttering open, unfocused and glazed. “Knew you were alive, Jezara. Faked your death, clever girl. But I couldn’t… couldn’t come for you. Not then. Not when the Resistance was watching. They would have used you against me. I had to let you be safe, even if it tore me apart…” His voice trailed off, a pained moan escaping him as Tivon expertly extracted a second bolt. Jezara froze. He had known. All this time, the Demon King, the architect of her torment, had known she was alive and had *chosen* not to act? Her throat tightened. It didn’t make it better; it made it infinitely worse. His love wasn’t just possessive, it was a calculated, patient siege. “The third one is deeper,” Tivon stated, his small face streaked with sweat. “It’s near his spine. It will hurt.” He looked at Jezara, seeking permission. She nodded, her gaze hardened. She needed him alive, if only to fulfill her own vengeance. Tivon’s hands shook, but the crimson light from his mark pulsed with renewed vigor. Ilyas arched his back, a guttural cry escaping him as the final, deepest bolt was slowly drawn out. A fresh gush of blood followed, but as Tivon pressed his glowing palm to the wound, the blood flow visibly lessened, the torn flesh beginning to knit, slowly, miraculously. The boy slumped back, exhausted, but a flicker of pride shone in his eyes. He wasn't just a vulnerability anymore. Minutes stretched into an hour. Jezara tended to Ilyas's lesser injuries, her touch impersonal, efficient. The air in the pocket grew heavier, colder, permeated by a strange, metallic tang. A faint, inky luminescence began to emanate from Ilyas’s torn skin, a shadowy tendril uncoiling from the deepest one Tivon had healed. The shadow grew, snaking across the cavern floor, intertwining with the stalagmites, growing denser, darker. Ilyas’s breathing deepened, his eyes still closed, but his expression shifting from pained delirium to a chilling, placid calm. The Null-Stone’s effects were waning. His immortality, his demonic power, was returning. The shadows spread, coalescing into solid, obsidian-like masses. They crawled up the fissure they had entered, sealing it completely. Another exit, a narrow crawl space Jezara hadn’t noticed, was likewise consumed, becoming an impenetrable wall of living darkness. The stone hollow was becoming a prison. Ilyas’s eyes snapped open. The familiar, chilling gold of his demonic gaze pierced the gloom, locking onto Jezara. He sat up, his movements fluid, the blood on his tunic already fading, his wounds mere silver lines. The shadow-tendrils that sealed their exits pulsed with his power. He rose to his full height, eclipsing the small flame, his presence filling the cramped space, suffocating and vast. He stepped towards her, one hand reaching out, a dark promise in his eyes. “Jezara,” his voice was low, resonant, no longer weak. “My love.” She stepped back, Tivon pressing against her side. Her fingers closed around the hilt of the concealed dagger at her belt. He paused, his gaze sweeping over the sealed chamber, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his lips. “The gates to the surface are closed,” he whispered, his voice resonating with an unholy glee, the shadows around them deepening. “We are locked in here with him… but he is locked in here with me.”

In the Dark of the Grotto