It was colder down here than on the bitter surface. Up there, a dying red sun still offered its fading warmth. Down here, beneath the spiraling layers of the city bored into the earth, there was no light-only the glint of sapphire, ruby, and amethyst sparkling like errant stars in the absolute dark. The walls were the color of soot, the ceiling lost in shadow, and if you peered far enough, it seemed as if there were nothing at all.
The soldiers' boots scraped against the charcoal-stained floor. Occasionally, a faint shimmer glowed within the rock-a diamond no larger than a freckle catching some impossible trick of the light. That was all they could see: sharp points in the darkness, like a fallen constellation.
The air felt thick, like smoke swallowed without fire. Chains clinked behind the soldiers-a constant, metallic whisper dragged through the planet's dark veins. Fifty slaves walked in uneven lines, their footsteps heavy, sometimes slipping on the slick black coal that coated everything.
Liam's breath plumed from his nostrils like steam. He adjusted the rifle strapped to his back and grunted, "Keep your eyes up. Don't trust the dark here," said to the old man and the young one who trailed him.
A shout echoed from up ahead.
"I found something!"
It was Gorran,the scout, his voice bouncing between the stone walls. "A long vein. A rich one."
The soldiers quickened their pace, boots thudding, splashes from hidden puddles sharpening each step.
They found Gorran kneeling beside a jagged stretch of coal-veined wall, his fingertips brushing over a thread of diamonds as thin as frost, winding deep into the rock.
"Bring the slaves,"he muttered. "We dig here."
Liam nodded. "Circle up. Make a fire; we rest here." He gestured to the new recruit, a young man named Jan-small, still growing, the beard under his chin a failed sprout.
The shining line was long and it overlooked a cavern that was too deep to know how vast it could be; from the empty
chamber cold wind would flow and put shiver to the bones of the slaves. It couldn't perplex the guards or their fire; they were well wedged where the wall would turn to cliff.
The coal underfoot was layered thick as skin, dry despite the damp air. As always, it didn't take much. A spark and a few shreds of fabric caught, and the fire roared to life as if it had been waiting. It cast flickering gold across the soldiers' faces and the tunnel's curve.
"Whole damned planet's made of coal," Liam said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Hardest thing here isn't makin' fire. It's unmaking it."
Jan crouched near the flames, stretching his hands toward the warmth. From the
corner of his eye, he glimpsed the cliff edge, the void that plunged even deeper into shadow. "You ever think how deep it goes? I mean-what if we fall through?"
"You think too much," Liam replied. "That's your problem. Falling isn't as easy as it seems."
Jan chuckled and leaned against the wall. The cold stone felt like charcoal left in the rain-gritty, wet, and ready to stain.
Liam took a long sip from his flask, then gave Jan a thoughtful look. "And don't spend all your credits on brothel girls, boy. You ain't even got a year down here. You don't want to stay forever."
Jan smirked. "Better than drinkin' it all away like the rest of you."
Stam snorted-a dry sound, more exhale than laugh. "He's right, though. I was your age when I started. Thought I had time to burn." He scratched the side of his nose, eyes half-lidded in the firelight. "Burns quicker than you think."
"Hard to find a planet to live well," Liam said woefully. "Aztalan's the cheapest it can get."
"You went there last month, right? How much?" Gorran asked.
"One million, one hundred thousand credits," Liam answered.
"Oh, that's too much," Stam said.
"Three more years, and I've already spent
fifteen here," Liam replied.
"Hey, old man, have you saved up anything?" Gorran asked Stam.
"For me, it would be fifteen more years to afford Aztalan," Stam murmured.
"You don't have fifteen years in you, old man," Liam said, a hint of a smile on his lips.
"I wanted to go to Hassar when I was young," Stam said, and they all shared a laugh.
"Dead Man Stam in Hassar-that's a haunting image," Gorran said.
"Are you the Dead Man?" Jan asked, with his feverish voice.
"You've heard of me, boy?"
"Yes," Jan said, brushing coal dust from his sleeve. "They call you the Dead Man."
Jan sat forward, elbows on his knees, staring into the flames. The heat licked at the tunnel ceiling, and the faint glow of diamonds spidered through the black stone like veins of starlight.
"So why do they call you that?"
Stam didn't answer immediately. He pulled out a pipe, letting the firelight dance along its bowl, and flared it up. A habit that he had grew in with his long days down in the mine.
"I was on corpse duty,"Stam began, his murmur tinged with mortification. "Hauled dead soldiers up to the surface. Long
walks, heavy loads, quiet shifts."
Jan blinked. "That's it?"
The others laughed-a deep, echoing chorus. Liam smacked Jan on the back. "You sweet idiot."
Stam didn't laugh.
"Orders were to carry soldiers only.But... now and then, I brought a slave up, too."
Liam snorted. "Yeah, the pretty ones."
"Anyhow," Stam continued, ignoring him, "one time I brought up this woman. Pale thing. Pretty-too pretty for me to leave behind. I'd been carrying her for miles. Shoulders burning, legs giving out. There's only three things that give a man rest when he's bone-tired."
He held up three soot-stained fingers.
"Sleep.Booze. And sex."
Jan scratched his head. "So, you went to a brothel?"
"Not quite." Stam leaned back. "I've learned to stay away from those establishments. Bad business you will learn too once it's late. And besides... I already had a beautiful woman with me."
Jan's brow furrowed with disgust. "You mean the dead one?"
"Sure," Stam said without blinking. "She was gone, but still pretty. Cold, but warmth comes in many ways. I figured, after carrying her all that way, she owed me. So I drank deep and climbed on top of her."
Jan's mouth fell open; it looked as though he wanted to puke at Stam's words. "What if someone saw you?!"
This time, the laughter was rowdier, bouncing off the walls like thunder. Even Stam laughed, a shrug in his voice.
"They saw me,kid. But that's not the story."
The fire cracked sharply.
"As soon as I set down my pack and reached for my pants,I saw her limbs twitch. Just slightly-but enough."
"She was alive?" Jan whispered.
"I wish," Stam said, his voice turning cold. "But no. Her face had changed. Shifted. Hair that was black was now blonde-or red-something in between. Eyes that were dull and dead opened... and they were blue. Bright as flame."
Gorran and Liam exchanged a glance.
"She was the prettiest woman I'd ever seen. I looked into her eyes... and they changed again. Not blue. One turned gold. The other turned a burning, scarlet red-glowing like searing coal."
The fire gave a long hiss, as if listening.
"She looked at me. Not just at my eyes-through me. I felt her in every cell. And then-I passed out."
Liam clapped his hands. "And we found the old drunk lying on top of a dead brunette, his pants half-down. And that's when 'The Dead Man' was born."
The others roared with laughter again, Jan
included. But Stam didn't smile.
"Those eyes,"he said softly. "They weren't human. When I saw her, I felt death's chill inside and a burn on my skin."
Jan sat up straighter. "So... do you still carry bodies out?"
"Gods, no," Liam cut in. "After that, the dead wanted nothing to do with him. Now he's just a regular guard."
"Now I understand why they said better not die on Dead Man Stam's watch," Jan declared.
Once again, laughter echoed.
Warmth clung to the fire's edge. Beyond it, the slaves trembled from cold and fear, their chains shivering. Pickaxes rang out,
rhythm-less, against the black walls. Sometimes the rock gave way, and a spray of gem fragments rained down like shattered glass. Small, grimy hands gathered the fallen diamonds into worn baskets, the crystals sparkling for a moment before vanishing beneath coal-smudged cloth.
Liam walked over to inspect the work. He peered into a basket-barely half full. The vein was drying up.
"Shit,"he said. "We need to find another line."
A young slave rushed past him toward the basket.
"Watch where you're going,dog."
Liam's boot lashed out,catching the boy in the ribs. He fell, rolled, and without a sound, crawled to the basket. Blood
trickled down his forehead. His eyes remained downcast.
The gems clattered from his hand into the basket. But as his gaze passed over the stones, he saw something.
A shadow.Behind the basket. Behind Liam's legs.
There was nothing there.And yet, there was.
It didn't stretch from anything;it consumed the light, a hollow wound in the air.
The boy blinked. He should have looked away. He should have gone back to work.
He turned.One step. Two. Three. Then a sharp, familiar, yet distant pain lanced through his chest.
He turned back.He didn't know why.
Liam was talking with the others, their
voices echoing low and empty. But the boy wasn't listening. He was peering at the shadow. It wasn't on the wall but near it-hovering, impossibly wrong. And it wasn't entirely he who wanted to look, but something else, something that scratched at his lungs from the inside.
He crept closer.
"What are you looking at?" Liam's voice snapped.
The boy didn't answer. He could not.
"Are you deaf?"
Liam's boot lifted,a hammer poised to blot out the world.
But it never fell.
He didn't know why.
A sensation crawled over his throat-soft, almost gentle-yet it choked him. His breath grew dry. Liam stepped aside, away from the basket. Away from the boy.
He didn't know why.
None of them did.
One by one, the guards turned. The slaves turned. They all saw the same impossible shape.
The shadow twisted,pulsed with forms the mind could not hold. Everyone watched, captive.
Maybe it was nothing.A trick of coal dust and firelight.
But it had fooled them all.And it wasn't just being seen.
It was peering back.
It vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Not just from the boy's sight,but from all of theirs. Gone like breath in the cold.
Yet they kept searching, their movements slow and strange, eyes blank. They no longer looked human.
They looked like puppets.
And they were beginning to understand-or at least feel-that they were no longer acting on their own will.Their thoughts weren't quite theirs. Their fear wasn't quite theirs. Something was inside them, watching, pulling their strings.
They didn't know what to fear more:
Something they couldn't see...
...or the nothing they just had.
Then they saw it.
It was massive, its head a mere mouth
lined with pointed teeth; all the other features were gone. It had climbed from the cliff unseen. It stood two men tall and equally wide, its skin the color of tar. If not for the lingering fireglow, it would have blended into the sooty walls. Its head was snake-like, but it walked on four limbs, a thick neck inflating and deflating as it did.
A roar erupted-a sound not made for this world. It went deeper than the mines were ever meant to reach. It shook the chains. It rattled bones. And it made Jan run.
He didn't make it twenty steps.
There, ahead of him, stood a woman. She hadn't been there a moment before. She wore a white dress, the skirt torn at the edges like petals burned by ash. Her legs were bare, strong, and unblemished. The
curve of her chest caught the scant light, and her face...
Her eyes.
They were a glacial,pristine blue-the kind poets die chasing, too clean for this place.
His gun, where was his gun? Oh, back there near the fire, already too far. Stam was the only one armed and he was closest to the beast; maybe Stam has shot it down, Jan thought.
Jan couldn't see anything else, but he could see her. She was flawless, pure. But pure of what?
And she saw him.No-she saw through him. But it wasn't Jan she wanted. It was the shadow behind him.
He was paralyzed; was it her seduction or its terror he didn't know.
He looked again. Was her hair red? Or blonde? Something in between. He couldn't tell that too. The slave boy screamed behind him, a sound that folded into something unnatural.
Jan tried to move. His legs disobeyed. Then he heard Liam chuckle.
A bang.
Something wet thudded near his boot.
He looked down.
A round shape.Grey hair matted with blood.
Dead Man Stam's head.
Jan's gaze snapped back to the woman. Her eyes had changed. One burned red. The other, a sickly yellow. They burned in the shape of fire, of life and death.
And then he turned. Not of his own will. Something turned him. Something claimed his body.
Everyone was dead.
The slaves.The slavers. Liam stood upright, but the light was leaving his eyes as half of his neck was gone and the air flew out of his open neck and the other half drooping on his shoulders; one shrug and his head would fall, but even he didn't make a sound.
Only the boy kept screaming.Why was he the only one?
How much time had passed? Jan didn't know.
All he saw were shadows, thick and crawling-shadows that cast the light away. The air warped around them. Among
them, the creature feasted on what little remained of Stam.
Jan's legs moved, not toward the tunnel's turn, but toward the monster.
"Why?"he whispered. "Why am I not running?"
Every instinct screamed for flight, but his limbs were traitors. He tried to stop, and for a moment, he thought he could. Then he saw it: ash drifting in the air, shimmering, resolving into a wing of yellow and red, then another, a tail, and finally a head. A butterfly, the most diligent he had ever seen, glowing with its own impossible hue. It flew as it wished in the wind. Then another formed on the wall, and another materialized from thin air, flying to the creature's foot.
He looked down where it had landed. There were chains. Slave chains. Still fastened. Still binding.
They never had a choice,Jan thought. What chain stops me?
He moved closer to the beast, its unnatural features now horribly clear. Behind it, the woman hovered in mid-air. Jan couldn't see much of anything; the fire was dead. All he could see were the butterflies and the woman.
The woman was watching the creature; like the butterflies, she had her own hue. A legion of butterflies were swirling around her like living wings. Jan didn't know her. He could see the curve of her breast beneath the white dress, both rigorous and full. Her lips were blood-red against her pale skin, and they were curved into a smile
-the kind of pleased, lustful smile a woman gives a lover. But why was she pleased? With their suffering? Their death?
As he stared, words rose to his lips: "Like fire, red fire... this fire in my skin."
A fire he wished would consume him before the cold could settle,but it was too late. The creature had no ear, but it was plain it had heard his call.
It raised its head. It had no eyes, yet its gaze fell upon Jan's rigid frame.
He stood at its mouth.
And something shifted in its eyeless stare.
Curiosity.
As if it, too, wondered: Why didn't these
fools run?
Jan's hand lifted. He tried to jerk it back, pouring every muscle, every thought into resistance. But the butterflies circled his arm, an invisible force screwing his hand toward the beast's open maw. He felt the sickening sensation of bones shattering and flesh tearing, though no tool was visible, and no blood yet flowed. The mouth widened as his hand plunged through its teeth and into its throat.
And then it closed.
Jan wanted to cry. To scream. To faint. To wake. But none of it came.
The creature swallowed, the cold a shock. Jan saw the beautiful butterflies fly from his open arm, swimming with his blood
into the creature's mouth. They flew with excitement, as if they were the ones feasting on his blood. He wanted to close his eyes, to believe it was a dream that would vanish with a blink. He didn't want to see his half-eaten arm, the beast, the woman, the unreal butterflies. But even his eyelids heeded the butterflies' command. He had to face his death with open eyes.
The woman was still smiling, a pure, lustful smile.
It shouldn't hurt this much,Jan thought. A simple smile shouldn't hurt this much maybe it hurt him because it was so cold down here.