The steady drip of water against her cheek stirred Sonya into awareness.

Her eyelids flickered and fluttered, her mouth moving with soundless words as her nightmares lost form and her hand dragged against the ground. It was the feeling of loose grit under her fingers that jarred Sonya into opening her eyes, and she scrunched her nose and groaned from the stiffness in her limbs as she looked around.

The water kept trickling, the noise echoing behind her. Sonya rolled to her back and flinched against the feel of cold stone, her mind trying to make sense of what had happened. She remembered the rain, and she remembered—the night. The heaviness of the fog wreathed around the mountain, the dark soaking into the world like hot, blinding tar. She remembered someone else, someone not supposed to be there, someone who—.

Someone who bit her.

Shrieking, Sonya sat up and fumbled at the neck of her windbreaker. To her horror, her fingertips traced the definite, tender impressions of teeth marks. Obviously, she couldn't see the wound, but her front was damp and rust-colored from the blood.

"Good God," she muttered, anxious gaze flitting upward, taking in the dark, rough shapes of fallen boulders and shale. She stumbled to her feet. That man had bit her. Bit her like a—.

No. No, I won't buy into their sick game.

"Everyone's lost their bloody minds." Above her, Sonya thought she detected moonlight, or what could pass for moonlight on such a dreary, waterlogged night. She could see a lighter stripe in the craggy, highlighted outline of rocks—the crevasse, open like a slim maw leading into the mouth of a toothy, horrifying sea creature. It must have been forty feet above her.

I couldn't have survived a fall like that. It's impossible.

Yet, there Sonya stood, sore and bloodied and roughed up, but most definitely breathing with her limbs intact. She touched her neck again, wanting to cover the wound, and inspected the crevasse's bottom.

She and the others had theorized the storm had weathered away the upper crust of a cave system, and the tree's fall had broken the stone enough to reveal it to the light of day. Gazing at it now, Sonya knew she was not in a cave, at least not one that had remained untouched by mankind. She picked up her torch—the glass lens cracked but still intact—and shone it on towering gray walls comprised of brick and mortar, vast beams of dark wood arching under a high ceiling of rotting planks and packed earth. A hall stretched before her far beyond the scope of her light or the watery moonlight above.

Sonya marveled at the austerity, the lack of intricacy or personal touches relieving the stretches of solid brick. There was nothing but dirt on the stone floor from the cave-in, no insect-eaten rugs or busted benches or old pottery. There were no carvings on the beams or artistry in the walls; it was all very utilitarian in Sonya's opinion. It served a function and that was it, though she didn't have an idea what function that could be.

Sonya glanced again at the crevasse above and pursed her lips. What was she meant to do? Stay in place and wait for rescue? Had everything she remembered been a delusion? A kind of dream created from a hard bump to her head? She'd heard stranger stories before, and so didn't discount the possibility out of hand.

Her fingers brushed her neck again. The wound there was real enough, and Sonya decided if anything she recalled from above had happened, she needed to find help. If it turned out to be nothing more than a fevered, concussed dream, she could have a good laugh with her friends when she was found.

That left the dark, silent hall as the only means of possible escape.

Swallowing, Sonya pointed her torch into the shadows and mustered her courage. There had to be an entrance somewhere, though whether it was accessible remained to be seen.

She started walking, ignoring the frightened thumping of her heart and the ache in her neck, letting the torch rove over her surroundings in search of the exit. The first hall gave way to a second, and then a third, and Sonya gaped at the sheer size of the ruin. How had it gone undiscovered? Who had built this?

The farther she moved from the crevasse, the more uneasy Sonya became. She had only the torch in her hand, and it flickered every so often, battered as it was from the fall—and when it finally went out, Sonya would be lost in the dark. The next barren hall she stepped into branched into different passages—and the torch died in her hand.

"Damn it," Sonya cursed, smacking the metal casing, rattling the batteries. Though the torch flickered once or twice, the light didn't come back. "Damn you!"

Her cry echoed and seemed to mock her. Sonya panted in fear and turned in place, meaning to return the way she'd come, but the dark disoriented her, and she froze, gasping.

My phone!

She knew she wouldn't have reception so deep in the earth, but Sonya did have a light app, and she quickly turned it on after abandoning the dead torch. Her phone had a sizable crack in the screen as well, but that didn't impede the light from shining, and she wanted to burst into tears from sheer relief.

Sonya turned again. The passages all looked the same, meaning she couldn't remember the right way.

Brilliant, Sonya. Simply brilliant.

Hand to her sweaty brow, she closed her eyes and tried to think.

"This way."

Sonya squeaked. She almost dropped her phone, convinced she'd heard someone call out to her, but no voice lingered in the hall, no sound aside from her own heavy breathing. What in the world?

"Hello?" she said, uncertain, and the word fell flat in the still air. The voice returned, weaker now, and it seemed to play against her cheek like a finger drawn under her jaw, tapping her chin.

"This way, this way."

Sonya let the voice draw her toward a passage on the right with a long, narrow corridor beyond it, and she paused at a wooden door, ancient and withered despite the lack of elements.

The voice had to be the wind—that, or madness was catching. Sonya hoped it to be the former option and that her ears, no matter the tricks they played, were leading her toward the exit.

"It's the wind," she murmured to herself, searching for a way to open the door. "And where there's wind, there's a way out."

She found the lock—a latch driven into the stone somewhat higher than she would expect for a normal door—and pushed the barrier inward. The doweled hinges crackled, and Sonya had to throw the whole of her weight into the shove to get the door open enough to pass through. It slammed shut behind her, and she had the terrible premonition of it sealing closed like the lid of a suffocating tomb.

I have to get a hold of myself.

"This way, this way."

"Well, if you are a ghost, you're very pushy," Sonya muttered, using her phone to illuminate the new room. It was massive—a huge, gaping chamber with a ceiling too high for her eyes to reach, the whole of it encircled in several levels of unembellished mezzanines with dozens upon dozens of arches leading into countless rooms. The architecture was clearly Viking in design—early Scandinavian, if she had to guess, timed to those first invasions well over a thousand years ago—but nothing in Sonya's studies compared to the structure of this place. What on earth had they used it for?

Sonya walked, and again came the persistent touch of fingers against her cheek. This time she stopped because the feeling felt too real, and it sent shivers skittering down her spine. That pleasant, warm sensation had to be the wind, had to be air moving somewhere on ahead, but Sonya couldn't shake her fears.

She paused—and the soft, muffled sound of footsteps continued without her.

Dread turned her stomach. Someone—something—was following her, and instinct drove Sonya to stop herself before calling out. If it'd been someone from the expedition, they would have made themselves known. They would have shouted her name or for help, and they wouldn't be moving so...steadily. So confidently. It was not one of her friends.

She broke into a light jog and then a faster run, desperate to put space between herself and whatever trailed her in the dark.

At length, Sonya came to a set of stairs and wanted to cry, as the stairs led deeper into the unknown instead of upwards toward the surface. She nevertheless took them because going back would mean confronting whatever had wandered in behind her, and Sonya did not want to meet it. She didn't know why; the rational side of her brain shrieked that she was a daft cow and it was most likely her bloody rescue attempting to find her, but a seemingly more intrinsic part of her seized control and forced Sonya forward, memories of pain and blood gushing under her hand acting like a stick at her back.

"This way!"

Something tugged on her wrist, a hand on her own, pulling her to the side once she reached the last step. Sonya took a long, stuffy tunnel, barely able to see a thing even with her phone held out before her. There was yet another room at the tunnel's end, and Sonya cursed her own luck when she noted the lack of available exits. At first glance, the room looked much like the others, comprised of thick, molded stones and heavy cross-rafters. The blandness was why Sonya could not help but stare at the single carving on the wall.

It was above an iron door—an oddity in and of itself, considering the size and material rendered it too heavy to be usable, the top welded to a chain pulley system with ancient gears attached above and to the bronze pulley stationed by the door. It didn't match the date of the architecture despite its ancient patina. As far as Sonya understood, the technology and physics displayed here were beyond the Vikings' time.

The anachronism set her teeth on edge.

Brow furrowed, Sonya approached the door, her eyes fixed on the carving chiseled into the rock as she nervously pondered its significance. She recognized it as a symbol denoting the Web of Wyrd—nine intersecting lines coming together in the form of a net. Nine was a powerful number for the Vikings—a good omen, some would say, and the Web of Wyrd was meant to contain all iterations of runes inside of itself. A kind of pot wherein all possibilities swirled.

Historians and anthropologists had come to associate the Web of Wyrd with the Viking insistence of fate, both the promise and the doom of it. It could be found with records of births and with records of deaths. Fate presented hope for something more—but as Sonya had learned through her years studying folk customs and legends, destiny could be a double-edged sword. There was hope for some and penitence for others, a reminder that fate was inescapable—for good or ill.

As someone trapped underground with someone—something—following her, Sonya did not appreciate the message of inevitable doom.

Tap, tap, tap.

Startled, Sonya stepped back. The sound came again, an impatient rapping against the metal barrier separating her from whatever made the noise. Tap, tap, tap!

"Open it, open it," the voice crooned in Sonya's ear. That was most definitely not the wind, and Sonya decided she had no desire to find out what the ancient Vikings decided to seal behind that door and leave to its wretched fate. It could stay there for all she cared.

"Now that's just rude."

Sonya stopped. The phone shook in her hand.

"Open it," the voice said, sterner now, louder, so much so Sonya realized she could actually hear it resonating from behind the barrier. Footsteps clattered in the long tunnel, and she choked, looking for somewhere to hide. "They're coming for you."

"T-they?" Sonya stuttered.

"Mmm, aye," the voice agreed. "Not long now."

A flash of pain went through her, the phantom lash of rain and sharp, sharp teeth.

"Open it, and I'll protect you. I promise."

Invisible fingers curled around Sonya's and blindly turned them to the bronze lever.

"Open it. Please."

Beyond the hysterical thought of my hand is moving on its own, holy shite, Sonya reasoned the force had to be all in her head, else it wouldn't need her at all. If a ghost or whatever this was could move a person like a puppet on strings, then it could pull a blasted lever on its own. Indeed, the sensation fell flat the moment she realized this, and she swore she heard an impatient sigh.

The footsteps came closer. Sonya shut her eyes and yanked on the lever.

She didn't know why she did it. Releasing whatever waited inside should have been terrifying, but the steps in the tunnel and the memory of the golden-haired man frightened Sonya more. She pulled the lever and thought the door would rise like a portcullis—but instead, the chains lurched, and the gears whirled, clattering like thunder. Sonya yelped when the barrier came crashing down like a drawbridge, her phone slipping from her grasp, covering the light. Dust exploded into the air from the disturbance, burning her eyes, and Sonya barely had time to blink before the figure was upon her.

She stumbled. Slim, warm fingers brushed against the line of her jaw and tucked into her hair, pulling her head back—and hot breath pooled over her shoulder. The figure inhaled—and froze, an unseen mouth hovering over the open wound on Sonya's neck.

"Oh," a male voice remarked, surprised. "Oh, well, that won't do at all."

And then he was gone, Sonya falling to her backside with a grunt. Someone shouted in the tunnel, snarling, and Sonya covered her ears against the sudden shriek and clattering of metal. Her pulse thrummed heavy under her palms, roaring like a river, and her neck burned.

Then, the snarling and banging and foreign cursing stopped. The footsteps returned, but softer now, moving quickly. Sonya scrambled back to her feet and snatched up her phone, nearly tripping over the fallen iron barrier in her haste. Whoever had been pursuing her in the tunnel had stopped moving, everything quiet once more—but that left Sonya alone with the thing she'd released.

Gulping, Sonya's shaking hand lifted the phone and directed the light toward the tunnel's entrance. A man stood there, waiting, and when the light found him, he smiled.

"Hello."