…
The further they went, the more the cavern changed. Smooth walls gave way to fractured stone, the floor dipping and rising in harsh, uneven steps. The glow in the rock became a quiet companion, thin veins appearing and disappearing along the walls, sometimes vanishing entirely only to reappear stronger a turn later.
The air cooled. The underground river that had been following beside them for hours now ran faster, its flow growing louder, echoing off the walls as if trying to warn them of something.
"This way." Gold turned down a narrower passage, barely wide enough for two to stand shoulder to shoulder. No ore was visible here, but the threads in his chest strained even more.
"Are you sure?" Ferra asked, glancing at the others. "There's no crystal here."
"It's closer," Gold ignored her, almost as if in a trance, he continued. "Straight ahead."
Eyviria stayed quiet. The others trusted his certainty more than the rock.
They squeezed through the passage, backs scraping stone, until it opened suddenly onto a ledge. The air shifted, colder, wider. Sound changed too, losing its tight, contained echo and turning into something else: a vast, low murmur.
Ajit lifted his lantern. The light barely reached, swallowed by open space. "We're near a drop. Be careful."
Gold stepped forward to the edge. His chest groaned, empty air whistled beneath them. He crouched, feeling along the stone with his hand, fingers finding a worn groove. Steps. Worked stone, not natural. Someone had carved a stairway spiralling down along the cavern wall.
"Artificial," Ajit whispered. "This wasn't shaped by water."
Foreshadowed by a tug in Gold's chests, the ore veins near them pulsed like a living being. It travelled like blood throughout this empty space, leading deeper down.
They descended. The stairwell clung to the side of an enormous hollow. With each turn, the view below became less of a blur and more of a shape. Lights. Lines. Towers half-drowned in shadow. The sound of running water grew louder, not from a single river, but many.
At the final turn, the cavern finally revealed itself.
The world opened.
Spread out beneath them was a city, sunken but not broken, cradled in a vast underground basin. Stone structures rose from the floor like teeth, some intact, others cracked and leaning. Many of them vanished waist-deep into black water as lakes and rivers wove through streets that were now canals. From dozens of mouths along the cavern walls, waterfalls poured in from higher tunnels, feeding the dark pools that glimmered faintly with reflected light.
Bridges arched from one half-submerged building to another, some still standing, others collapsed into jagged silhouettes. Pillars thicker than any tree they'd seen held up sections of vaulted ceiling far above, disappearing into darkness. Along those pillars, faint veins of pylonic ore threaded like veins of light, feeding downward, all of them slowly bending toward the centre of this city.
There, in the heart of the drowned city, on a raised platform surrounded by water and fragmented walkways, stood a palace. It rose in segments, every level supported by columns carved with symbols the light couldn't quite reveal, its highest spires almost touching the low-hanging stone above. The faintest glow radiated from within it, as if something inside refused to go completely dark.
Kavi's jaw went slack. "This… This isn't a ruin. It's a buried capital."
Fritt blew out a breath. "No one's ever told stories about this place. Not even the drunk ones."
Eyviria tightened her grip on the railing, eyes locked on the palace. The expresser in her hand warmed, its light answering the distant glow. "The pylons have been growing here for who knows how long."
Gold said nothing. The golden threads in his chest trembled, all of them pointing exactly towards the palace at the centre of the city.
Ajit finally dragged his eyes off the view and back to his instruments. He knelt, spreading his map over a relatively flat patch of stone on the ledge, compass in one hand, charcoal in the other.
"Give me a moment," he murmured.
He checked their bearings, then tilted his head back, tracing the curve of the cavern dome with his eyes. The ceiling here wasn't smooth. It sloped in one direction, the same way the waterfalls were leaning, like the entire basin had been carved from a larger structure and then sunk.
Ajit's hand began to move, marking lines, circling points. "If the sinkhole we descended from is here…" he tapped the page, "and Aridra sits along this axis… then the main pit of the crater should be above that side of the dome."
He pointed to the right, following the arc of the cavern roof.
Eyviria stepped closer, peering at the map over his shoulder. "You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be without seeing the sky," Ajit said. "If we keep to the perimeter on that side, maybe there's a point where the rock wall thins. An opening." His eyes glinted. "If we're lucky, it'll connect directly to the pit."
"So if we can reach it," Kavi added quietly, "we'll know exactly where we are under Aridra and can mark it."
"Then we move along the right flank," Eyviria decided. "Stay high. I want to see as much of this place as we can without swimming."
Fritt grunted in agreement. "Fine by me. I'm not keen on finding out what else lives down there." He jerked his chin at the dark water. "I despise the thought of going for a swim" He shuddered.
They followed the curve of the basin.
…
The route along the dome's right side was a jagged procession of balconies, broken terraces, narrow ledges and sloped roofs. They kept moving across the upper levels of the drowned districts, keeping to a stable surface when they could, a step or two away from a drop at times.
Below, the city sprawled like a fossilised memory.
From above, they could see the shapes of plazas, now shallow lakes, with statues rising out of their centres like inspiring corals. Streets that had once been avenues were canals, threads of dark water weaving between half-buried doorways. Here and there, archways still held, connecting rooftops like old bridges.
No one spoke much as they walked. The place inspired quiet.
"What era do you think this is from?" Ferra asked eventually, her voice low, as if afraid to disturb the air too much. "Before the Eclipse? Or… somewhere between?" She gazed with intrigue. "It doesn't look like any architecture I've seen."
Kavi scanned the nearest column, fingertips brushing the carved patterns near his shoulder. "Stonework is… alien to me," he admitted. "Tool marks don't match Aridran work. Or the Spires. Or anything we've catalogued." He examined, "They built their city around a centre. This palace."
Eyviria followed his gaze. "They built everything around it," she said. "Everything leads towards the middle, the streets and even the ore." She looked at the faintly glowing veins that slithered down pillars and walls. "This whole place is like a throne."
Gold listened in silence, the pull in his chest a constant, quiet drag. Every time he glanced toward the palace, it tightened. Whenever he looked away, it tugged him back.
The path narrowed, forcing them to pass single-file along a ledge no wider than a man's shoulders. To their left, the drop plunged to a submerged plaza, the tops of old market stalls just visible beneath the surface. To their right, the cavern wall curved up into darkness.
After another hour of careful progress, the wall changed.
The rough stone gave way to a smoother face, as if something had eroded the rock. Ajit raised his lantern, revealing a wide opening in the cavern wall further along - a rocky entrance cut cleanly through, its edges not natural, but worked. The rock there bore the chisel lines of deliberate labour.
"There," Ajit said. "That's not erosion. That was carved."
They approached carefully. Cool air breathed out from the tunnel, tinged with something unfamiliar - dust untouched by the city's damp.
"Stay alert," Eyviria warned.
They stepped inside.
…
The tunnel curved gently upward, hugging the outer edge of the basin. The floor sloped in a long, steady incline. On one side, alcoves opened into small rooms or dead ends - storehouses, perhaps, or maintenance niches. On the other, narrow slits looked back into the cavern, offering glimpses of the drowned city through stone teeth. It was a rough staircase but it served its purpose.
As they ascended, the air grew subtly drier. The sound of water receded behind them, replaced by a deeper, more distant hum. The kind of sound that came from open spaces rather than enclosed ones.
After a while, the tunnel widened. The ceiling lifted, then broke away entirely.
They stepped out onto a platform carved from the cliff itself.
The world fell away.
It was like walking to the edge of the world. The platform ended in a clean, sharp line, beyond which there was nothing but vertical drop. The cliff curved out of sight to either side, forming a colossal cylindrical shaft that seemed to fall forever. The air that rose from below was cold and hollow, carrying no scent of life.
Ajit walked forward slowly, the lantern held out. The light felt like a tiny flicker, a spot of dust on a picture.
Gold felt like an ant in the face of this massive pit, a well of pure darkness no matter where you look.
He looked up.
Far, far above them, a distant circle of light burned. Beams of sunlight bled down into the shaft, catching edges of broken rock and some other smaller cliffs leading into other caverns. He could just make out the topmost rim, where Aridra's crater centered from.
"Yeah, this has got to be the main pit…" Fritt said under his breath.
Ajit stood near the edge, the map in his hands trembling slightly from excitement rather than fear. "This is it," he said. "We're on the inner cliff of the Cradle's pit. Here." He stabbed a point on the map with his charcoal. "We can mark this alignment. From the surface, we'll be able to find this ledge apart from the other ones."
"Imagine a lift anchored here," Eyviria murmured, stepping up beside him. Her eyes tracked the height, measuring distances in her head. "Stations at intervals. Rope elevators and pulleys. We could move ore, equipment, and people straight from Aridra to the city below."
"That's a long drop," Ferra said, peering over. Pebbles loosened under her boot and skittered off the edge, vanishing without a sound. "One wrong step…"
"I'll make it work. There's a reason I'm on the committee for staff safety." Eyviria replied.
They pulled back from the brink and began to make camp a safer distance from the edge, choosing a section of the tunnel where the rock was broad and flat.
Ajit and Kavi planted flags near the mouth that opened onto the cliff, bright strips of cloth tied around hammered pitons, marked with both the Cognis insignia and the Kalim household's crest. Ajit took extra care with his map, drawing the shaft, the ledge, and the angle of the distant light above.
"This will be our reference point," he said. "Once we're back in Aridra, we can guide crews here."
By the time they finished, the light from the distant rim had dimmed. Night had fallen above; only a remnant of glow remained at the very top of the shaft. Down here, they relied on their own lanterns and the muted shimmer of pylonic veins in the rock.
The updraft of the pit was intense, constantly blowing freezing air. Fritt was snuggling with the fire, literally holding his hands in the fire from how cold he was feeling, "Oh the flames, I'll wither away before we get back at this rate." His voice shivered.
Eventually they prepared their meals, getting ready to eat.
They ate in a loose circle near the tunnel entrance. The cliff sat at their backs like a silent, watching beast.
Fritt tore at a strip of dried meat and glanced at Eyviria. "You look pleased," he said. "Is it the bottomless death hole, or the glowing rocks that's doing it?" he teased even as his body freezed and voice quivered.
Eyviria stared at the darkness a moment longer, then exhaled slowly. "Both," she admitted. "But mostly the rocks."
That earned a small laugh from Ferra and Ajit.
Eyviria sat straighter, folding her gloved hands over her knees. "If we can prove the scale of this network," she said, nodding back in the direction of the city, "and secure this route… I can petition the Supremal Cognis for an official branch in Aridra. Not just a field outpost, a proper department lab."
Kavi's head lifted. "A permanent annex?" he asked. "Here, in the Sunder Plains?"
"Yes," she said. "Pylon extraction and application. We'd be the ones cataloguing, cutting and testing every vein in that city. Developing tools, defences, mechanisms powered by stable pylons instead of unreliable flares of mana."
She glanced at Gold. "That lift I mentioned? I can imagine an entire line of pylons arranged like vertebrae in the shaft, tuned to lift and lower platforms. Controlled, repeatable, safe. Aridra would become the gateway to the undercity. Trade, research, power, all flowing through it."
"And you'd be at the centre of it," Fritt said, smirking and laughing. "Head of the shiny new branch. Fancy office. More special coats."
She gave him a flat look. "I'd be in a position where no one could reassign my work to Spire towers on a whim," she corrected. "I'm tired of sending discoveries away and getting scraps of data back. This-" she gestured broadly, as if encompassing both the city and the shaft- "is enough to build something lasting."
Ferra nodded slowly. "You'd also be putting a lot of control in Cognis hands," she said. "Over a city that sits above a lost capital and a living pylon network."
Eyviria didn't flinch. "Someone will try to take control," she said. "If it's not Cognis, it will be an aspiring reckless leader from who knows where, or a warband from the outskirts, or worse. I prefer the institution that at least pretends to be about knowledge."
Ajit snorted softly. "That's the most honest endorsement of Cognis I've heard."
Gold listened, gaze half on the fire, half on the curve of the tunnel leading back toward the basin. The golden threads in his chest hadn't eased since they left the city. Even here, at the cliff, they pulled, not upward, not along the shaft, but sideways. Back. Toward the palace.
"You're really going to push for all that?" Fritt asked. "Labs, staff, lifts. That's a lot of stone to move."
Eyviria's eyes were steady. "We have the ore. We have the access," she said. "And we have witnesses." She looked at each of them in turn. "Once we return, I can submit a full report. Ajit's maps. Kavi's samples. Your testimonies. With that, they can't ignore the opportunity.
"And if they try?" Ferra asked.
Eyviria's mouth curled very slightly under her collar. "Then I'll find other allies," she said. "Aarav, for one, understands what this means. Aridra won't let a resource like this slip away."
The fire crackled, throwing sparks that drifted up and died long before they reached the tunnel ceiling.
Gold leaned back against the rock, feeling its cool press through his shirt. The pull in his chest throbbed in time with his heartbeat, a constant reminder that their work here, Eyviria's plans, Ajit's maps, all of it - was only one layer of whatever this place wanted from him.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Below them, a city slept under water and stone. At its heart, the palace waited.
Tomorrow, they will go back.