Silence.
It is the first thing I truly register, now that the roar of the waterfall is a distant, thundering memory. The cavern is not silent, not really-there is the constant, soft drip, drip, drip of water from the stalactites far above, each drop landing in the vast, black lake with a tiny plink that echoes a dozen times. But it is a silence of life. There are no cars. No wind. No voices. No demons.
It is a deep, cold, empty quiet that feels older than Tokyo, older than mountains.
I am shivering.
The cold is absolute. It is a wet, clinging, invasive chill that has seeped past my soaked kimono and into my bones. The Phoenix-light, the internal fire that shattered the Heart, is gone. I am just Mizuki. Sixteen, soaked, and freezing in a place that should not exist.
We are a pathetic portrait, huddled on the shore of the black lake. The glowing green moss that covers this bank is surprisingly soft, but it offers no warmth. It only illuminates our misery, painting us in its ghostly, alien light.
Hachiro is on his back, his arms and legs spread wide, looking up at the impossible, rocky "sky" far above. He is not laughing. He is not making jokes. He is just breathing, his chest rising and falling in great, shuddering gasps, his face pale and sick in the green glow.
Yogawa is curled into a tight ball, his knees drawn to his chest, his arms wrapped around his precious grimoire. His teeth are chattering so loudly it sounds like castanets. He is staring at the green-lit water with wide, terrified eyes, as if expecting something to rise from it.
Erima is the first to move with purpose. She is already wringing the water from her long, black hair, her movements economical and precise. She checks her bow-the wood is soaked but the string is taut. She counts her arrows, and I see her shoulders slump. Many are gone, lost in the fall.
Kizawa is beside me. He is not shivering. Or if he is, he is refusing to let it show. He is a statue of blue-haired, rain-soaked discipline. He methodically checks his twin katanas, sliding them an inch from their scabbards, wiping the icy water from the exposed steel on his pant leg, and sheathing them with a quiet, decisive click.
He is armed. Erima is armed.
I look at my empty hands. My daggers, my connection to my grandparents, my weapons of choice... they are at the bottom of that black, icy lake. Gone.
"They are gone," I state, the words feeling heavy and stupid on my tongue.
"I know." Kizawa's voice is flat. He does not look at me. He is scanning the vast, dark shoreline, his eyes missing nothing.
"My gauntlets, too," Hachiro mutters from the ground. "My 'Fist-Friends'. Sunk. Now all I have are these stupid, soft, human hands. What am I supposed to punch? Angry moss?"
"Be quiet, Hachiro," Erima snaps, her voice tight. "Listen."
We fall silent, even Yogawa's chattering teeth seem to pause.
The silence rushes back in, filled only by the drip... drip... echo...
"I hear nothing," I whisper.
"Exactly," Erima says. She stands, her slight frame silhouetted against the green glow. "Nothing. No Gashadokuro. No Onyx Spiders. No Miasma Core. But this place... this is their world, not ours. We are in the nest. Just because we cannot hear the snake does not mean it is not here."
She is right. The victory against the Heart feels distant, hollow. We won that battle, but in doing so, we have been flung off the game board and into the box.
"Yogawa." Kizawa's voice is a command. "Your book. Is it functional?"
Yogawa fumbles with the grimoire, his fingers numb and clumsy. He opens the cover. The pages are a sodden, pulpy mass. The ink is running, arcane symbols bleeding into meaningless, watery blurs.
A small, strangled sound escapes Yogawa's throat. "It is... it is ruined. My spells... my research... gone."
This is a catastrophe. Yogawa without his spells is just a grumpy, frail teenager. Our only magical defense, our only source of magical light, is gone. We are left with two swords, a handful of arrows, and two useless, unarmed fighters.
"So," Hachiro says, sitting up slowly. "To summarize. We are lost in a giant, spooky mushroom-cave. We are freezing. We have no food. Mizuki and I are unarmed. Yogawa is now just... Yogawa. And we have no idea where we are, or how to get out."
He pauses, then a tiny, weak grin flashes across his face. "This is... objectively... the worst field trip ever."
"Shut up, Hachiro!" Yogawa screams, his voice cracking. "This is not a joke! Do you understand what this place is? This is the Under-Road! This is the spirit-vein! This is the place the demons come from! We are not in a cave, you idiot! We are in their highway! We are in their home!"
His panic is infectious. The cold I feel suddenly seems deeper, more malicious.
"He is right," Kizawa says, his voice cutting through Yogawa's hysteria. "We cannot stay here."
He stands and offers me a hand. I take it. His grip is firm, warm, and pulls me to my feet. My legs are shaky, my body feeling like a hollow, frozen reed.
"We are exposed on this shore," Kizawa continues, his gaze sweeping the cavern. "The lake is at our back. We do not know what lives in it. We must find defensible ground. We must find a way up."
"Up?" Erima repeats. She points at the ceiling, a mile of stone lost in shadow. "There is no 'up', Kizawa. There is only 'forward' or 'back'. And we cannot go back."
She nods toward the thundering sound of the waterfall we came from, a distant, muffled roar from the direction of the lake. We cannot swim back up a waterfall.
"Then we go forward," Kizawa says.
Erima nods, nocking an arrow-not to fire, but to have ready. "I found something. While you were all... appreciating the view."
She points down the shoreline, away from the waterfall. The bank of glowing moss continues for perhaps a hundred yards, and then it ends at the mouth of a new tunnel. It is not a smooth, carved spillway like the one that brought us here. This is a natural, jagged opening in the rock, like a gaping, dark mouth.
"It is the only way off this beach," she says. "It leads... somewhere."
"Somewhere dark," Hachiro mutters, getting to his feet and wringing out his shirt.
"As opposed to... this?" I ask, gesturing at the vast, green-lit darkness around us.
"At least here," Yogawa whispers, "we can see. In there... who knows what is waiting in that dark."
"What is waiting here is hypothermia," Kizawa says, his patience clearly gone. "We are soaked. If we do not move, we will freeze. We walk. We generate heat. We find shelter. That is the only plan."
He does not wait for an argument. He starts walking.
His boots make soft, squelching sounds on the wet moss. One by one, we fall in line behind him. Erima takes the rear, her bow half-drawn, walking backward, watching the black, silent lake for any sign of movement.
I am in the middle, behind Kizawa, my empty hands feeling strange and light. I feel naked. Vulnerable. Every drip from the ceiling sounds like a footstep.
The tunnel mouth looms. As we get closer, I see that Yogawa is wrong. It is not completely dark. The same pale-green moss creeps just inside the entrance, offering a faint, ghostly light for the first twenty feet or so.
Kizawa pauses at the entrance. He listens.
The cavern behind us is silent. The tunnel ahead of us is silent.
"Kizawa," I whisper, "I am... I am useless. I have no weapons."
"You are not useless," he replies, not looking at me. "You are alive. That is enough for now. You are the one who got us here. You beat the Heart. Your fire is just low. It will come back."
"And until it does?"
He finally turns his head. His blue eyes are intense, unblinking in the green light. "Until it does... do not leave my side. I will be your daggers."
The simple, unadorned promise settles something in my chest. The shaking in my limbs does not stop, but the shaking in my soul quiets.
"Okay."
He turns back to the tunnel. "Hachiro. You are with me. You are our 'shield', if we need one. Erima, watch our backs. Yogawa... try not to scream."
"I do not scream!" Yogawa protests weakly.
"Let's go."
Kizawa takes the first step into the tunnel. The green light of the great cavern is cut off, and we are plunged into a much tighter, more intimate darkness. The air changes instantly. It is no longer cold and open, but warmer, more humid, and it smells of damp earth, of roots.
We walk for what feels like an hour, in near-total blackness. The only light is the faint, residual glow from the moss on our clothes, and the barely-visible phosphorescence of strange, tiny insects that cling to the walls. We are walking on a level, rocky floor. The tunnel is wide enough to walk two-by-two.
My senses, deprived of light, are screaming. Every scuffle of Hachiro's boot, every drip of water, every time Erima stops to listen-my whole body tenses.
"Wait," Kizawa says. His voice is a low hiss.
We freeze.
"What?" Hachiro whispers.
"Light," Kizawa breathes.
I see it too. Up ahead, around a bend in the tunnel. It is not the pale green of the lake cavern.
It is a faint, flickering, warm orange light.
The light of a fire.
We look at each other, our faces barely visible in the gloom. Fire means one of two things.
It means demons, a patrol, an outpost of the Under-Road.
Or... it means someone else is down here.
I do not know which possibility is worse.
Kizawa motions with his hand. Slowly. No sound.
He inches forward, his swords now in his hands, the steel whispering as it clears the scabbards. I am right behind him, my heart hammering against my ribs, my empty hands balled into useless fists.
We round the corner.
It is not a campfire.
It is a city.
Or the ruins of one. We are standing on a cliff edge, looking down into another cavern, this one smaller than the lake, but still vast. And it is filled with impossible, crumbling towers, carved out of the rock itself, connected by delicate, arching bridges of stone.
And the orange light? It is torches. Hundreds of them, flickering in the windows of the towers, lining the bridges, illuminating a central plaza far below.
In that plaza... things are moving.
They are too far to see clearly, but they are humanoid, walking on two legs, carrying spears, tending fires.
Yogawa makes a small, choking sound. "By the... Archives... it is... it is a settlement."
"Demons," Kizawa breathes, his knuckles white on the hilts of his swords.
"No," Erima whispers, her eyes, sharper than any of ours, narrowed. "Look. They are... they are not demons. They are... small. And... hunched."
As we watch, a group of them-perhaps a dozen-emerges from a building, dragging something.
It is a massive, thrashing, insect-like thing, a demon of the Under-Roads. They surround it, stabbing with spears, and the creature goes still.
A cheer, thin and reedy, echoes up from the plaza.
We have found the inhabitants of the Green-Lit World.
Hachiro squints. "Are... are those... goblins?"