FAR BELOW THE earth, beneath even the deepest of the Dathmari Fissures, something stirred. At first, it was only a flicker. A small sound in the darkness. Then came the horrid movement of ancient souls stirring, slowly at first, those long-starved creatures rippling against one another like oil slick fish, netted by time.

Something had happened to cause this disruption, the movement of it felt so far as those unreachable spirit realms that could only be described as beyond. There had been a change in the world, a shift in the natural order of things. It was not something sharp or sudden, like an explosion or decimation of great proportions. Instead, it was merely a ripple, a small prod, something that simply said 'wake up.'

Her eyes flew open, though the vision of blackness remained the same. Uncertain whether she had imagined that distant call, that voice that had sounded so familiar as it beckoned her from the abyss. For so long she had wallowed there, in that small, dark corner of her mind, tried so many times to find a route through that all-consuming night that the memories blurred and merged and she sometimes wondered if she had ever tried at all.

How long had she been there? — Here; in this darkness... Alone.

Months? Years? It could have been decades for all she knew. There were no days or nights that far underground, and silence was her only friend. As far underground as her crypt lay, no sounds penetrated the sediment, not even the distant buzz of city bustle as the people went about their days to break the monotony of time. Nothing moved in the heart of the crypt. No life could thrive here. Not even the worms could survive this cursed soil.

For all she knew, this newly found sense of self could all just be another figment of her imagination. After all, by now she had fallen for the manipulations of her mind too many times to count. She had lost track of the times she'd dreamt of waking up, the darkness ending, the coffin opening to see her mother's face beaming down at her, radiant as the sun. Then her mother would hold her, the touch so seemingly familiar, and whisper that it was all over now, and she would never have to go back in that box again. There was comfort the regression, a calming in the holding, where once again she could be a child in her mothers arms. And then those dreams would end and every time she would curse herself for falling so willingly into the lie. But still, every time the dreams came she still threw herself wholly into that fantasy, let herself believe it, and feel less alone, if only for a moment.

But with time even her own mother's face had faded from her memory. The hallucinations still came, only the creature staring down at her became a thing of nightmares, something so far removed from what her mother once was. So she made herself create a new mother, a patchwork amalgamation of all the features she knew her mother to have, almost the mirror image of her own. Then as time had continued to bleed unchallenged, each agonising moment building to the arrest of her sanity, she had forgotten that too.

When combined the jumble of features never seemed to fit right, the shape where her mother had once been became distorted in the grief of her absence, and it felt like something had been stolen from her.The image of her mother decayed, day by day, year by year, until she became little more than a shadow and leaving in her truancy, a pit. A black massless shape where her mother should've been but wasn't and would never fit again.

She though that this must be what death felt like; that her body would expire and rot but her mind would remain. That would surely be the cruelest curse of all.

Then out of the darkness and sharp as a lightning bolt, blinding pain flashed through her skull, and with it, a vision. A tableau of resolve. A gnarled and bloodied hand reaching up through the earth, a corpse reanimated—or perhaps—a monster awakened. The jolt made her flinch, drawing her hands to her head in an instant to salve the stab. She had not known tangible pain in what felt like a millennia.

She held her hands out before her, seeing nothing in the dark as she tried to flex her fingers. They felt stiff and her grip weak and claw-like after so long curled around the sacrificial dagger at her chest. The blade weighed heavy as a millstone against her breastbone. She ran a haphazard finger down the wicked length of steel, fumbling blindly for the hilt. The jewelled haft fit perfectly in her grasp as she held it tightly between both fists, sucking in a deep breath as she angled it upwards, feeling her strength and dexterity return with every fine movement, then thrust. The blade lodged deep in the roof of her coffin, wood splintered and small clumps of dirt and debris rained down through the hole she had created as she yanked the blade back out.

Again.

And again, she struck. Slamming that ancient blade into the confines of her grave, until piece by piece it gave way. Until her arms ached and the soil inside the coffin began to build enough that she had to push it aside. Then she dug her nails between the fragments of wood, ripping and tearing like some frenzied animal. The wood came away with great difficulty, the shards sharp and stained dark with blood she could not see.

Then the dirt caved in. She had not a moment to heave a breath before the earth rushed in, a dam unleashed, stealing the breath from her and weighting her movements as she struggled to force her arms up, burrowing as a seed through soil. When the earth became too dry or hard to tunnel through she stabbed at it with her dagger until the clumps loosened, until she'd managed to carve out a space in the casket just large enough to squeeze through.

Even as she forced them shut, the dirt and grit stung her eyes and when she could no longer breath sufficiently through her nose, she resorted to open mouthed gasping, flailing like a fish out of water as the earth poured down her throat. The earth dampened her cries, no matter how hard she gagged or screamed, above the surface not a sound was heard. White-noise blared in lieu of silence, swallowing that malformed chrysalis of a creature. Stay, it whispered in her ear. Stay.

No matter how hard or fast she dug, whatever space she managed to clear was almost instantly swallowed up by the loose soil collapsing in. A horrid feeling awoke inside her, clawing at her eyes and throat and dancing like a wild thing in her stomach; she would die here.

Up — she had to go up. Her feet impelled her towards the surface, whilst her hands stretched upwards, nails clawing through the rocks and dirt in search of release. Panic swelled in her chest. There was no end to this. She couldn't breathe — couldn't see... For all she knew she was buried miles deep and would suffocate long before she ever reached the surface. But still, she had to try, surely she had not awoken only to die.

The more her mind raced the more frantic she became. It wasn't long until the lack of oxygen had her head spinning and her movements becoming slow, sluggish and failing.

Was she even sure which way was up? — What if she was digging in the wrong direction?

Even the ringing in her ears began to fade as fatigue found her. Perhaps this was not so bad, she thought lazily, savouring the last feelings of wriggling her fingers in the soft earth as she began to still once more. Then as she moved her fingers a little more, she broke the surface.

The effect was immediate. She came alive, a jolt of energy bursting from beneath her skin as she thrashed her way upwards. Piece by piece she came free, and as her hands found purchase on the surface she hauled herself from the grave.