Chương 50: The Rules of the Deep

The thing was smiling with Elias's voice. Not with his face. Not with his body. Only with his voice. That was worse. A body, Zayn could have struck. A silhouette, he could have measured. A value, he could have assessed. But at the bottom of the alcove, there was nothing. No number. No breathing. No visible warmth. Not even the precise shadow of a creature. Only darkness. And that voice, which had just said something it should not have known.

"And for one second, you were afraid of being saved." Zayn did not answer. That was the first rule. Do not answer voices. Even when they hit the mark. Especially when they hit the mark. His hand tightened around the dagger until his fingers went white. His side throbbed. His mouth was dry. His back pressed against the alcove's cold stone, and the three small pebbles set before the entrance had not moved. So no one had climbed up. Not physically. Elias's voice came again:"You don't want us to find you.

Not completely." Silence. Zayn stared at the entrance.

"Because if we find you, there will have to be explanations." Silence again. The weaver, or whatever was speaking for it, was adapting. It was no longer using pleas alone. It was using the soft places. Lena for guilt. Harven for abandonment. Daera for debt. Darek for human threat. Elias for the part of Zayn that most hated the possibility of being dragged out of the pit by someone better. The voice continued, lower:"You've already started choosing who can be left behind." Zayn inhaled slowly through his nose. One.

Two. Three. Do not answer. He had killed enough stupid things in this mine to learn that the instinct to react was a leash. The weaver was not only looking for a position. It was looking for a contraction. A word. A movement. Proof that a voice had touched the right place. So Zayn did something else. He picked up a small stone near his boot, lifted it slowly, then threw it not toward the voice, but toward the side conduit to the left of the entrance. The stone rolled. A dry noise. Then nothing.

Elias's voice fell silent. Good. It was listening too. Zayn waited. A long time. A value finally appeared in the left-hand conduit. 6 A small beast. Drawn by the sound. Then a second. 5 Not the voice. But the result of the voice. The weaver did not need to enter the alcove if it could push other things into making him come out. Zayn remained still. The 6 advanced first, low and cautious, sniffing the stone. It did not climb straight up the slope. It circled, searching for a scent, an opening, a sign of weakness.

Elias's voice then whispered:"You're going to wait again." The beast froze. So did Zayn. The voice was not there to make him answer. It was there to coordinate the smaller things. Very well. New information. The weaver did not need perfect control of every creature in the depths. It only had to orient them. Make the right noise in the right place. Create curiosity. Give their instinct a target. The 6 climbed one step. One of the pebbles rolled. Zayn struck.

His dagger came down into the dark, but the creature pulled back at the last instant. The blade only sliced off a black ear. The beast leapt backward, hissing. The 5 tried to circle around on the right. Zayn did not pursue it. He yanked the rope hard. The carcass of the 12 creature, which he had dragged up and positioned to one side while setting up the alcove, suddenly slid down from above. It smashed the 5 against the stone. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Not enough to kill. Enough to pin it for a second. Zayn lunged. Dagger in the throat. [Soul Force Absorbed: +0] Of course. The 6 tried to flee. Zayn let it go. Not out of mercy. Because it was more useful alive for three more seconds. It darted down the slope hissing in panic, straight toward the left-hand conduit. The other values in the wall reacted. 4 7 3 Presences moved, drawn by the flight. Zayn pulled the carcass used as a trap back toward himself. Then he waited. There.

Second rule of the depths: Do not chase small prey. Make them run toward others. Elias's voice came back, but from farther away.

"You learn quickly." Zayn barely smiled. He did not answer. A pity, really, because he had a perfectly valid remark about how being complimented by a demonic imitation of a hero was probably the worst school report imaginable. He swallowed the line. Rules before satisfaction. The 6 reappeared two minutes later. Not alone. The 7 was behind it. Larger, more aggressive, with a skull split by red plates. It bit into the 6's flank before even reaching the slope. The smaller one squealed.

The 7 shook it against the ground. Zayn tossed a bone. Not at them. Behind him, deeper inside the alcove. The sound made the 7 lift its head. It dropped the 6 and came up. Too fast. Zayn backed up to the wall. The beast leapt. He raised the dead carcass between them like a ridiculous shield. Teeth sank into it. The impact slammed him into the stone, wrenching pain from his ribs.

"Very good," he muttered. He let go of the carcass, slipped to the side, and struck under the front leg. The beast twisted, raked his arm, barely missed his face. Zayn backed off, slipped on a pebble, cursed between his teeth. The 7 came again. This time, he did not try to kill it. He guided it. One step left. A retreat. A blade shown. A space left open. The beast followed the obvious opening. Too obvious. It planted its paw on the slab of stone he had noticed earlier, the one that sounded hollow under weight.

Zayn slammed his heel into the slab. The stone gave way halfway. Not a great trapdoor. Just a hole large enough to catch the front leg. The beast screamed, yanked, stayed stuck. Zayn waited. One second. Two. Not for pleasure. Not only. To see whether the voice would react. Nothing. So this one was not a relay. He finished it. [Soul Force Absorbed: +1] Warmth entered. Faint. Enough to matter. Current Soul Force: 36 Zayn exhaled slowly. Thirty-six. Still far. Still ridiculous against the heights.

But more than before. The 6, wounded, was still crawling at the foot of the slope. Zayn looked at it. It was probably worth nothing. It could still attract. He did not kill it. Third rule: A weak living thing can be worth more as noise than as a corpse. He tossed a scrap of dead flesh near it, then turned away. The little beast dragged itself toward it, too hungry to realize it had just been promoted to mobile alarm. He gathered his things. The room was no longer safe. No room stayed safe for long.

Before leaving, he flipped over the flat stone on which he had written his rules, then carved a new one underneath. 7. Do not stay where a voice found you. He hesitated, then added: 8. Monsters learn. So do I. He put the chalk away. Then he left the alcove. This time, he did not follow the cold air directly. He took a detour through the passage where the 6 had fled, walked through its blood to blur part of his own scent, then descended through a corridor of black stone where the red veins grew more numerous.

The lower level was not empty. It was patient. Zayn was understanding that better and better. The creatures moved there in layers. The smallest near the fissures, the middling ones around remains, the stronger ones in wider zones. They did not form an army. Not a single pack. An ecosystem. Dirty, hungry, violent, but logical. And anything logical can be used. He passed a cavity where three small values were fighting over something unseen. 3 4 5 He did not attack them.

Instead, he threw a scrap of hard hide taken from the earlier beast into a side tunnel, then scraped the stone twice with his blade. The three values followed the sound. A few seconds later, a sharp crack rang out. A natural trap. Or an old one. Stone spikes had erupted from the floor. Two values went dark. The third writhed. Zayn approached, studied the mechanism, noted the angle, then finished the survivor. [Soul Force Absorbed: +0] He did not even get angry. Not this time. Zero was an answer too.

It meant: no point wasting time on these things except to trigger the terrain. So rule nine. He wrote on the wall: 9. Small lives open paths. The sentence made him stop. It was ugly. Not false. Ugly. He could have erased it. He did not. Farther down, the gallery descended toward an ancient stone door. Not a human door. Too low and too wide. Framed by two black pillars covered in white markings like the ones he had seen near the dry canal.

A slit ran through the center of the door, and from the other side came a steady draft. Air. Not much. But real. Zayn laid a hand against the stone. Cold. He searched for a mechanism. Nothing obvious. He traced the frame, found three notches, then noticed old claw marks around the base. Something had tried to get through. Maybe long before him. He slid the broken blade into the first notch. Nothing. Into the second. A click. Into the third. The door vibrated. Then opened a few centimeters.

Enough for the air to come through stronger. Enough to hear, beyond it, a distant sound. Not a voice. Wind. Real. Zayn felt his heart speed up. No value just behind it. No weaver. No small presences. An exit? He did not smile. Rule five. Never believe an exit is an exit. He forced the door with his shoulder. Mistake. Immediate pain. He cursed, then used the rope and a piece of metal as leverage. The door opened slowly, enough to let his body slip through sideways. Beyond it, a natural corridor climbed.

Climbed for real. Not much at first, but the incline was clear. Zayn stood still for a second before it. His whole body wanted to move forward. His mind refused. He picked up a small stone and threw it into the corridor. It bounced. Nothing. He threw a bone. Nothing. Then he took the dried carcass of a small dead creature near the trap and shoved it into the passage with his foot. Still nothing. Good. He went in. The corridor climbed for dozens of meters. Each step grew harder. His legs trembled. His side burned.

His throat screamed for water, but he refused to drink until he had reached a stable point. He advanced with the slowness of a wounded animal, one hand against the wall, the other around his dagger. Higher up, the stone changed. Less black. More gray. Then he saw a glow. Not red. Not from his lamp. A pale light. Zayn stopped. He almost did not dare breathe. The glow came from an oval opening at the end of the passage. He went forward. Ten more steps. Five. Three. The light widened. He felt fresh air on his face.

Real air. Not from conduits. Not from the mine. The outside. He reached the opening almost staggering. And found the grate. Thick. Black. Sealed from the other side. Beyond it, he could see a strip of gray sky. Very far above, between two cliffs. The outside world existed there, less than two meters away. Two meters. And a grate engraved with old royal seals, reinforced by three bars of metal that someone had added later from the outside. Not to stop what was outside from coming in.

To stop what was inside from getting out. Zayn stood motionless. For a long time. The outer light touched his face through the bars. He laid a hand against the grate. Pulled. Nothing. He forced it. Nothing. He used the short blade as a lever. The blade bent before the bar did. He struck the grate with the metal shard. A dull sound answered him, ridiculous and tiny. He struck again. Again. The pain in his bandaged hand turned sharp. He kept going once too many times. Then stopped. His breath was too short.

The exit was there. Condemned. Not by the weaver. By humans. Of course. Even when the depths offered a route, someone on the surface had long ago decided that route was not meant to exist. Zayn pressed his forehead against the cold bars. Outside, the wind moved. It smelled of stone, dry grass, maybe distant rain. He closed his eyes. For one second, he imagined Elias on the other side. Lena. Mira. Even Jonah, who would probably have found a way to insult the grate as hostile metallic administration.

Then he opened his eyes. No one was there. Only the sky. Inaccessible. A voice rose behind him. Not Elias this time. Not Lena. His own.

"Never believe an exit is an exit." Zayn did not turn around. The weaver was far away, but its voice knew how to travel. He looked at the grate. Then, very slowly, he smiled. Not because it was funny. Because otherwise he might have screamed.

"All right," he murmured. He stepped back once. Then again.

"Rule ten." His voice was rough. He took the chalk, and on the stone beside the sealed grate, he wrote: 10. If the exit is closed, find who kept the key. He put the chalk away. Then he turned his back on the sky. Hunger twisted his stomach. His wounds throbbed. His lamp was fading. His Soul Force had risen to 36, and it still was not enough to open a grate set there by dead or cautious men. Very well. The depths had just refused him the outside. So what remained was to learn more of the inside.