The darkness inside the cave was absolute, a stark contrast to the storm's grey fury. The only sounds were the drip, drip, drip of water seeping through the rock and the harsh, ragged sound of our own breathing echoing in the confined space. We pressed ourselves against a damp wall, hearts pounding, listening for any sign of pursuit. The roar of the storm was a distant, muffled thunder now, and the telltale hum of Magi energy was gone. For the moment, we were safe.
"They won't follow us in here," Kael whispered, his voice strained. "Too easy to get lost. They'll assume we're trapped and will set a watch on the entrances."
The relief was quickly replaced by a new kind of dread. The open, violent danger of the storm had been replaced by a quiet, claustrophobic uncertainty. We were alive, but we were lost in the echoing deeps of the earth.
We rested for a few minutes, a necessary pause to let the adrenaline fade and our trembling limbs recover. My body ached with a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. The desperate act of raising the seabed had drained my reserves to a perilous low. My connection to the Sandsong felt like a frayed thread, thin and weak.
"The maps showed this cave system connecting to an old smugglers' tunnel that leads inland," Kael said, his voice a low murmur in the dark. "But the passages twist and turn. We need to find the right one."
We began to move, our hands trailing along the wet, slimy walls. Kael produced a small, smooth stone from his pouch. He whispered a word to it, and it began to glow with a soft, pale light, no brighter than a candle, pushing back the oppressive darkness just enough to see a few feet ahead.
We were in a network of natural limestone tunnels, carved by millennia of water. Passages branched off in every direction. Some were wide and tall, others so narrow we had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Every tunnel looked the same. It was a perfect labyrinth.
"Which way?" I asked, my voice sounding small and lost in the vast silence.
Kael stopped, studying the rock formations. "I don't know," he admitted. "The map was ancient. The caves could have shifted."
We were at an impasse. Choosing the wrong path could lead us to a dead end, or worse, into a deep pit or an underwater passage. We could wander for days until we starved.
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the feeling of the immense weight of the rock above me. I tried to reach out with my Sandsong, but there was no sand here, only solid, damp limestone. But the Library had taught me a deeper lesson. It wasn't about the sand; it was about the listening.
I pressed my palm flat against the cool, damp floor of the cave. I silenced my own thoughts and listened, not for a song I recognized, but for any song at all. I felt the deep, slow, ancient song of the limestone itself. But I was searching for something else. A whisper of something that didn't belong.
Air.
I focused my senses, searching for the faint, almost imperceptible vibrations carried through the stone by a draft of air. A current. Most of the passages were still, their songs stagnant and quiet. But one, a narrow, unassuming tunnel to our left, carried a different vibration. It was a tiny, high-frequency hum—the song of moving air. It meant the tunnel led somewhere, not to a dead end. It led to the surface.
"This way," I said, my voice filled with a newfound confidence. I pointed down the narrow passage. "I can feel a breeze."
Kael looked at me, then at the tunnel, and a slow smile spread across his face. He nodded, trusting my new sense without question.
We turned and entered the narrow passage, Kael's glowing stone lighting our way, following the faint, invisible thread of a song that promised a way out of the darkness.