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.

***

  SHE CAME TO the surface gagging and retching. Coughing up clumps of soil and scrubbing at her eyes until she lost consciousness.

  Hours later when she awoke still gasping for breath, she opened her aching eyes to torchlight. Flames danced up the walls of her crypt, incremental divots carved into the rock, homing the small bowls of seedless fire that illuminated the otherwise dank expanse.

  There was no headstone, no obvious plaque or sign to mark her grave, only the small dirt circle set into the centre of the stone floor, surrounded by a ring of fist-size rocks. A thick layer of dust had settled over everything in the crypt, entirely undisturbed. How many years had passed?

  At one end, a wide stone staircase ascended into fading darkness whilst the other bore what was perhaps supposed to be her effigy. A looming stone guardian, blazing-eyed and pious if not for the sneer of cold command. Two glittering violet gems glared down at the girl, admonishing her state of undress, the dirt matted into her hair and the generous layer of filth coating her skin. It wore its golden horns like a crown, chin tipped high and proud, swaths of delicate cobweb-ridden gold chains looping between the spiking goat horns. By instinct her own hands wandered up, to her own skull, poking at the bony protrusions. No wonder her escape from the grave had felt so impossible. Though her horns were not nearly as curling as her mourners had carved her stone-like's to be.

  Her eyes clung to the long sword in its grip, held out before the effigy in almost offering. Tucking her dagger into the folds of what she could only suppose had once been a white dressing before she had had to claw her way up from hell but now was torn and dirt-covered. She leaped upon the stone-woman, attempting to wrench the sword free of her grasp only for it to hold strong. She cursed, then paused to think for a moment, returning to the small circle of dirt to collect one of the surrounding rocks which she then used to smash off the figure's outstretched hands. They came away still clasped around the blackened hilt, the jewelled tip twinkling so brightly it felt like a taunt.

  It was so much heavier than she had expected, so much so that she nearly dropped it and her arms trembled with the effort to keep it raised. The sword felt much lighter the second time she wielded it, after she had thrown it against the stone wall a couple of times and dashed the hands from the handle.

  Then she cast one last glance to her effigy, mutilated and downcast as she stole the torch from above its head. It watched her all the while she ascended into the light.

***

  THE WARMTH FELT foreign, the sunlight so strange that at first she dropped her sword and grasped at her exposed skin, certain she was dying. When she failed to burst into flames or start hissing with smoke, she shamefully reclaimed her bade, feeling foolish as she stared up the steep walls of the tremendous fault in the earth.

  She had been right to think she could have been miles beneath the ground, she had, her crypt by far the deepest of all of those she had passed on her return to the surface. Though it had not occurred to her then to loot the graves on her ascent, the thought crossed her mind as she stood at the bottom of that fissure, armed only with a small dagger and sword against the world. The dead had no use for gold, that much she knew. Though the thought of venturing back down into that darkness made her skin crawl and blood pulse anew. No matter how she tried she could not bring herself to do it. The mouth of the ravine allowed her a glimpse of freedom; a jagged smile lit with sky and sun. She could not—would not step back into the shadows now that she had witnessed the light.

  There would be other ways, other opportunities, for now she had to focus on getting out of this place. She did not know why or how she had awoken, but she was not about to give this up, would not let anyone or anything take this away from her.

  The staircase to the mouth of the crevasse was worryingly narrow, hastily borne into the rock face so that she climbed it with her back pressed against the wall in fear of falling. Each step felt like her last. Her leg jolted out from underneath her as the edge of the rock crumbled away and she fell, tailbone slamming into the ledge and palms grating over the uneven stone before managing to secure herself in place and clamber to her feet.

  She reached the surface and collapsed into the arid grass heaving. Balling her fists in the brittle strands and trying to ground the swaying of her vision.

  Even so the horizon was bleak, mountain flecked but otherwise empty and the sun little more than a blanch speck in the sky. Sweat beaded at her brow. Gods, it was hot. The air dry and abrasive, a cruel and unforgiving heat.

  She stood, a lone pilgrim to those slanting grasslands where nothing grew and few survived, before one of five savage gouges into the land, vaguely parallel and each like a tear in the earth. She imagined that from the sky they would look like claw marks. Or like someone had seized either end of the land and pulled until the ground ruptured. A feat in the land created by the fury of a feckless god. But there had to be some significance to it, and the fact that she and so many others had been buried beneath this Devine strike. Yet far as she could see; nothing. Only the few remaining stones of a city lost long, long ago.

  A horrid thought began to sink into her skin, feeling like she had been doused in cold water as she stared at those sun-bleached cobbles littering the grass, vaguely arranged into what had once been a city. The world beyond echoed with only a warm whisper of wind, drawn in from the distant mountains over the grassy planes. Her blood turned to ice. What if she was the only one left?

  What cruel divinity had awoken her after all these years — after all else had long rotted to nothing and life had ceased to exist. No matter her crime, no matter what she had done before, surely nothing she could have done deserved a fate like this. She would not condemn anyone to this...

  Her grief was a wild thing, tearing at her lungs and ringing like a bell in her ears. What kind of monster had she been? And worst of all, the thought she could no longer ignore; had she done this?

***

  THE FIRST NIGHT was the hardest. She chased the setting sun, sprinting over grass hills and tripping over herself until the night came in full thickness and there was no light left to be found.

  She slept only in short, fitful bursts. Unable to shake the terror from her bones as the dark settled. When she closed her eyes she was back in that box, clawing at the empty air. Suffocating in that grave—only now the most terrifying part about her confines was the endlessness. She felt mocked by those starless nights, where not one light dared guide her.

  She made no effort to collect the time that passed, not after she had missed so much of it, there were no days and nights—only the hours she spent petrified and the hours she spent dreading the dark.

  The one small relief in the days following had been discovering that some life may yet prevail. She survived off the small creatures she managed to hunt, mostly using her dagger as a throwing knife. She drank the blood of the creatures for fluid, more often than not the small moles and ground squirrels that roamed in abundance and made their burrows all over the steppes. She could not go twenty feet without almost twisting an ankle in the surplus of warrens. And though the rodents were plentiful, there was little else to the steppes.

  She walked for what felt like months, when the longsword became too heavy she stashed it in the hollow of a tree and marked the belly with ash. Then onwards, taggering and delirious, yet no matter how scarce the food and water became, no matter how far she pushed her body, irregardless it refused to fail. Her weight dropped, sallow eyed and delirious she wandered the grass dessert, ribs pushing through her skin like the ruts of a washboard, and skin burned and peeling from the relentless sun; and yet her body refused to die.

  When she weakened to the point she could no longer stand, she crawled; like some half-rotted creature of nightmares, a story told by only by the cruelest nursemaids, and still, she would not die.