I
The air near the mine's mouth felt like a damp cloth pressed against the face—warm, scented with wet earth, carrying the deceptive sweetness of spores. Overhead, a forest of giant mushrooms rose like porous pillars, their canopies pulsing with a slow blue-green glow, the breath of some great creature that never truly slept. Each step brought a hoarse squelch from the mud, and in the fresh footprints, a thin mist crept around the ankles, cold as water stored in stone for centuries.
Rae paused at the edge of the work platform, marked by flat stones, closed his eyes, and listened. There was a low hum deep in the earth—a long note barely felt, yet sharp enough to ache in the back teeth. The old hands called it "the stone's scream." The word scream made it sound sharp, but this was more of a groan, channelled through the bones. Rae tried to mimic it in his mind, but some vibration always slipped away, as if he were shining a flashlight into a shoreless ocean.
"Breathe all the way to the bottom," Lua said. Her voice was flat yet gentle, like a knife long sharpened and knowing exactly when to sink in. She stood a little ahead, her left hand holding a rhythm staff of hardened root—its surface etched with fine lines like leaf veins, catching the mushroom light. "If your stomach joins the vibration, you've got it right."
Rae opened his eyes. The work crew stood in a circle, feet sunk deep in mud, shoulders brushing. Some tied cloths over their mouths to strain the spores, others wet their lips with mushroom-distilled acid water. Off to the side, a stack of woven baskets waited to be filled: freshly mined Core Source ore. The pebbles gleamed faintly blue-violet, like charcoal hiding tiny stars within.
Lua lifted the staff. The distant roar of machinery from the rail lines echoed briefly, then faded, leaving a silence that was not empty.
"One," Lua said.
"Two."
On the third beat, she began.
The first note wasn't one Rae recognized. Not the do-re-mi children sang, nor the old verses craftsmen remembered from schooling days. This note dipped and rose, then broke, then found its way again from an unexpected angle—like water in a cave, finding new channels. The crew followed, their voices layering, weaving together. They weren't chasing a clean harmony; instead, they allowed small fractures to blend, creating something like a woven cloth of sound.
Rae swallowed, feeling the vibration enter through his chest cavity. For a moment, his tongue brushed something cold and metallic—and at that exact moment, the subterranean hum eased in his gut, as if the stone itself had swallowed alongside them.
"Holding back the stone's scream isn't about shutting its mouth," Lua murmured between beats, without turning her head. "We just give it another road to take. Like diverting a current."
Rae nodded, though she couldn't see him. In the second stanza, something shifted in the light around them. The youngest mushrooms near the base of their stems tightened, yielding a dark speck that travelled upward to the cap. From beneath those caps, pinpricks of light emerged one by one—like pollen that remembered its way home. They drifted low, unfurling thin wings that shimmered blue-green.
Lumendel, Rae thought—the bioluminous fae said to have no word for sleep, because night was simply another version of day.
The Lumendel circled the work ring slowly. They made no sound, yet their presence added a layer of tone humans could not produce—a sound felt more on the skin than in the ear. As they passed Rae's face, he caught a scent neither sweet nor sour—more a warmth, like cloth dried beside a hearth. He followed their flight with his eyes, the tiny light in his chest answering in return.
The song moved into a long pull, then descended into short, ordered hisses: sss, tss, sss, tss, tucked between syllables. Rae pictured fine cracks in the rock, imagined those hisses slipping in like water that knew how to disarm stubbornness. The deep hum in his gut sank again, now like the whimper of a cradled child. Somewhere beyond, the mining machines adjusted their pace, humming shorter, more precise notes. The smaller mushrooms drew in their spores; the mist thinned, revealing the shining rails of ore carts.
"Hold the rhythm. No heroics," Lua said. "Here, strength belongs to those willing to merge."
Rae noted the quality of her tone—always steady, yet something within it was like a door opened only two fingers wide. Dusk Bloom—the whispered name surfaced in his mind. A small order said to guard the oldest songs. Those who could sing to stone and mushroom alike, who knew the exact moment to listen for water. Lua never claimed it, but everyone guessed.
In the final verse, the Lumendel dropped lower, brushing the tip of Lua's staff with their wings. She ended the song on a hanging note, then cut it short. Silence fell, not like a cloth, but like snow that had never existed—a silence with its own temperature. Someone exhaled. Rae realized his teeth had stopped singing. The scream was gone.
"Take the baskets," Lua said, smiling for the first time—quick as lightning that chose not to burn anything. "We've got three hours before the mist rises again."
They nodded in unison. Heels pressed into the mud. The forest of mushrooms seemed to part slightly, granting leave.
⸻
II
The Core Source pebbles felt cold in the hand, but not the kind of cold water brings. It was a chill that gave the skin a pause, holding back sweat before it could turn to panic. Rae shifted the small ore pieces into the woven basket with careful hands. Each pebble's fall gave a sound like glass—fragile, unbreaking—adding another subtle thread to the room's tapestry of noise.
"If you move too fast, the mushrooms protest," said Tio, the broad-shouldered man beside Rae, ten years his senior, always carrying humor at the corners of his eyes. "But if you go too slow, they sulk. Like everything down here."
"Up on the surface, there aren't mushrooms the size of houses," Rae replied—half joking, half studying his own wrists, slick with spores. "The ones that sulk are usually people."
Tio chuckled quietly. "Underground, people learn mushroom manners."
Rae was about to answer when something touched his ankle—cold, slick, like a tiny oil-covered finger. He looked down. Something in the mud was moving slowly, coaxing the light from above to cling to it. Rae crouched. On the dark surface, lines formed a small circle, then a smaller one inside, and outside them—spiraling flashes radiating from the center like a road waiting to be taken.
A spiral.
"Lua," Rae called, his voice dropping without his consent. "Look."
Lua approached, crouching without touching. The Lumendel drifted closer, several hovering directly above the spiral, their wings giving off a fine hum, reflecting green light across the mud. The spiral seemed to draw itself, yet Rae knew no hand had made it. Perhaps water, perhaps pressure from the deep, or perhaps something else—something that didn't like the word perhaps.
"This isn't the first," Lua murmured, so softly it was as if she feared waking something that was only pretending to sleep. She knelt, pressed the back of her fingers to the mud, feeling. "Did you hear the missing note earlier?"
"At the end," Rae said. He felt it too—that final phrase of the song seemed to leave a tiny gap, one left on purpose. "Like an old television when the signal's just off."
"Like a point where the current is given room on purpose," Lua replied. She twirled the root staff in her fingers, testing how easily the air passed through. "Spirals like to come when there's space."
"Like to?" Rae lifted a brow. The word felt too friendly for a shape that appeared in the mud without hands.
Lua glanced at him, a rare flicker of humor in her eyes. "You know how, down here, we sometimes use words that are too human for things that aren't? It's so we can rest a little."
Rae exhaled slowly. He studied the spiral again. Each ring was slightly uneven in spacing, like breathing—some long, some short, some holding still in the middle. "Is it… a repeating pattern?" he asked, keeping his tone even.
"From the barracks' entrance to the third shaft," Lua said. "Some are small, some… far larger than human eyes could see. The old hands call them water runs, but the Dusk Bloom has another word for them. An older one." She didn't speak it. Rae waited, but Lua stood, adjusting the wet hem of her work robe. "We mark it, but don't touch with bare fingers. Down here, touch is a kind of contract."
Rae nodded. He took a small stick from the basket—a dried mushroom spine, hard enough to draw a line without cutting the surface. He marked the ground half a meter from the spiral, making a small triangle as a watch sign. The Lumendel followed his motion as if they liked human shapes, as long as humans didn't mimic shapes that weren't theirs.
In the distance, a short bell chimed several times from the rail lines. Not the danger bell—this was schedule. An ore caravan from the right-hand shaft would pass, heading toward the Webspire silk bridge to the north. Rae's eyes shifted before his thoughts did—sight was always faster than intention. Between the mushroom caps, a long tear stretched, called by some the gorge patched by wind. There, the bridge coiled itself, binding two stone cliffs with threads invisible until mushroom light clung to them. Only when certain mushrooms glowed did the bridge reveal its bones.
"Webspire," Tio said, half proud, half disbelieving. "Say what you will, the first ones to cross were braver than any preacher."
"And madder," said a woman behind them, hoisting a basket onto her shoulder. "The threads were still wet back then."
Rae watched the pale lines of the bridge sharpen. Nearby stood a thin tower overgrown with spiral mushrooms, from whose stem fine filaments spilled like hair. People called it the Weaver's Spire—not built by human hands, but chosen by the creatures that wove the silk threads on nights darker than most. No one knew what they were. Once, Tio had told him, We call them spiders only because it's safer to use words we already own. Rae laughed at the time, but didn't sleep that night.
The low drone of ore carts grew closer. Lua glanced at her crew and nodded. "Short break. Watch the caravan pass," she said. "And listen carefully. Sometimes a line you've seen only becomes a sentence when something crosses it."
The group set down their baskets, straightening their backs. The Lumendel drifted higher, forming small glowing thickets in the moving air. The spiral in the mud stayed as it was—neither growing nor fading. The mushroom forest held still, like a cathedral willing to host human ignorance.
III
The ore caravan did not arrive like a parade, but like a long breath borrowed from the forest's lungs. Low carts, each drawn by a small, soft-voiced machine, glided along wooden rails sheathed in hardened roots. In their baskets, Core Source ore glimmered blue-violet, casting ink-like shadows across the ground as though the earth itself was trying to write something. A few Lumendel descended, hovering above the loads, tracing small loops with their wings—like sleepless children in need of a bedtime story.
Rae's eyes followed the bridge's threads as the first cart touched them. The silken lines didn't just tighten—they vibrated, singing patterns that could be heard if one listened with the right part of the body. A faint tone surfaced in the air, deepening as more carts followed. It wasn't a song, yet it wasn't merely mechanical noise. Something was recognizing something else. Rae turned to Lua.
"You hear it?" he asked.
"Don't rush to call it a song," she replied calmly. "Let it introduce itself first."
Rae swallowed the comment that came to mind. He was too quick to name things so he could hold them. Here, a name given too soon could end the conversation. He shifted to the platform's edge, studying the bridge's anchoring knots—woven into fibrous stone. At some knots, spiral mushrooms turned right; at others, left. The pattern was like… He glanced down at the spiral in the mud. A center calling the rings, and rings calling the path outward.
Tio gave a low whistle—one long note that didn't disturb the air. "You ask me, this is too neat to be an accident," he said to no one in particular. "If it isn't a hand weaving it, it's intention."
"Sometimes intention is the hand," Lua replied, allowing the wisdom to settle without demanding praise. "And here, intention rarely belongs to just one side."
The sixth cart crossed. At that moment, the flat undercurrent of air—the underground wind that usually clung to the skin like fish scales—shifted, swirling around the bridge. Cold. The Lumendel seemed to shiver, their wings beating faster. The silk's pitch climbed a half-step, dropped three-quarters, then returned to its original tone. Rae felt it in his shins. This wasn't imbalance. It was a change in rhythm.
"Quiet," Lua ordered, lifting a single finger. All conversation stopped. Even Rae stopped thinking for a breath. When thought went silent, the ears had a chance to become a mouth.
From the left side of the gorge, where the slender tower clung, came a sound so faint it was like fabric being drawn across wood. Not from the machines, nor from any breathless human, nor from the Lumendel. The rasp formed short syllables—not mechanical repetition, but a clear etiquette: greeting, permission to pass, something like an answer.
"Webspire is speaking," Lua said, so softly Rae wasn't sure if she had spoken aloud or only thought it.
Rae closed his eyes for a moment, letting the map of his body be written over by the sound. Granite in his jaw, clay in his belly, long bones in his legs. The stone's scream they'd calmed earlier hadn't vanished—nothing ever truly vanished here—it had shifted, moved into the bridge that knew how to share its burden. He opened his eyes just in time to see a new line appear in the mud at the platform's edge: not a new circle, but a small tail pointing toward the bridge.
"Lua?" Rae's voice betrayed the urge to name it.
She glanced, measured it, then fixed her gaze on him. "Keep it in your head for now," she said. "Don't put it in the ground." Then, after a pause, "Some things like it when we point. Others take it as a command. And we haven't earned the right to command."
Rae pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, holding back words. Something in him loved patterns too quickly, like a child racing to finish a maze in a book just to prove he understood. But here, the wrong kind of speed could be like pouring oil onto a lamp that should never be lit.
The caravan kept crossing. One cart hesitated in the middle—the silk threads tightened, the sound rose, the Lumendel dove, and Lua pressed her staff into the ground. She didn't sing loudly, just released a sound half-laugh, half-sob—something that prickled Rae's skin because it borrowed a voice from a place he didn't know the door to. The cart moved again, as though someone had removed an invisible stone from its wheel.
"Good breath," Tio said in admiration.
"Not the breath," Lua replied without looking at him. "The timing."
Rae tucked the words into his mind like a small nail—something that might one day hold weight.
⸻
IV
The break ended quickly. They returned to work, but it wasn't the same work as an hour before. There was the work of the hands, and then there was another kind—the work done by ears, skin, and that small space in the chest usually left empty. Rae found himself filling that space with a different kind of caution—not fear, but respect.
"If you're going to ask," Lua said suddenly as they hauled the next baskets, "ask now. On the bridge, the voice needs to be cleaner."
"Dusk Bloom," Rae said, keeping his tone from turning into a demand. "You… you're the ones who keep the songs?"
Lua arched a brow, then gave a short laugh—not mocking, but not confirming either. "You like saying 'you' about things you don't know yet," she said. "Dusk Bloom isn't a group that looks for members. It's more of… an event that chooses someone ready to be struck by light at an impolite time."
"Light?"
"Sometimes darkness," she said, softer now. "You heard it once today."
Rae stayed quiet. He half-understood, half didn't. Above them, the Lumendel dipped now and then, brushing fingertips before rising again—perhaps curious, perhaps checking whether humans still remembered how to make peace with stone. One caught his eye: its wings traced a line that, if seen quickly, looked like an unfinished circle. A spiral left open on purpose.
"What does the spiral mean?" Rae asked at last, barely above a whisper.
Lua thought for a moment. "Our people have three answers that manage not to kill each other," she said low. "First: it's a road sign. Second: it's a water store. Third: it's an ear without a face."
Rae waited.
"There's a fourth," Lua said, "but it's not time yet." She glanced sideways at him. "You think I didn't see how you were hearing earlier?"
Rae almost laughed at the backwards phrasing—how you were hearing—but then he understood: here, the senses didn't like walls.
"Maybe I was just lucky," Rae said. He almost added, Maybe the stone liked my voice, but thought better of it. Too many maybes already.
Lua didn't answer. She pointed at the bridge, now clearer. "We'll carry two baskets to the middle, load them into the waiting cart, then come back. Don't linger at the third knot. It likes to hold."
"Who's 'it'?" Rae asked, startled by how simple the question was.
"The knot," Lua said, splitting the word. "Knots find their own way to become creatures. Like us."
Rae looked at the gorge. The silk threads stretched, swallowing shadow. Below, the dark wasn't black—it was deep blue, holding false stars the stone kept for itself. He imagined falling. Fear didn't come. Instead came the sense that down there, shapes were waiting for a name they'd been denied for a long time. He shook the thought away like a persistent fly.
They stepped onto the bridge in careful sequence. Their boots met wide planks lined with fiber, the sound beneath like a whisper against the soles. The Lumendel kept pace alongside, a small procession of light without heroics. At the first knot, Rae felt a short pulse, like someone tapping with knuckles. At the second, he caught the scent of the sea—impossible underground, but here, scents often took misleading routes to remind humans of something.
"Third knot," Lua said.
Rae stopped tracing the rope. The third knot looked ordinary. No special mark, no differently turned mushroom. But the air was heavier. He felt his shins tether to something soft. It likes to hold, Lua had said. Rae placed his basket down, resisting the instinct to press harder. He set it gently, like laying down a baby pretending to sleep but needing an extra reason.
Something beneath the plank exhaled. Not wind. Not machine. More like… intention.
"Good," Lua said, and gave nothing more. They passed, and the knot let them go without further ceremony.
A cart waited in the center. A guard sat at its edge, legs dangling, wearing a mushroom-cap hat frayed at the rim. He raised a hand without speaking. "Two baskets," he said. "Not three. The third's for the Lumendel."
Lua nodded. Rae set his basket down, then studied the ropes. He wanted to ask about the third—whether there truly was a Lumendel that liked to ride atop ore like a lazy cat. But here, explanations were often heavier than the things they explained. He stayed silent.
As they turned back, Rae glanced down again. Briefly. Just enough to catch something moving at his left ankle: a line—no, a flicker of light—climbing from the gorge up to the third knot before vanishing. Or perhaps it had never been there. Rae decided to call it a note in his head, not a sighting. The second word was too hungry for stories.
Back on the platform, their work slowed. Sweat gathered at Rae's temples, salty, sweeping away spores too light to count as a burden. He glanced at the spiral site. Nothing had changed—yet as he approached, the Lumendel on watch there traced another small arc with its wings—not touching the ground, just mimicking, like a teacher writing a word in the air so a student could remember the spelling. A reply spiral. Distant. North.
"Webspire," Rae said, this time not as a question.
Lua said nothing. She read the ground like a letter left unsigned.
V
By the turn of the hour, the mist began to rise again. The mushrooms slowly tightened, dimming part of their glow. The temperature dropped by a single degree that felt like five. Collars were drawn close, and other work crews began to return from the third shaft, their steps heavy.
There are moments underground when every sound seems invited to become silence. In such moments, even a cough feels ashamed.
"That's enough for today," Lua said, standing at the center of the circle they'd sung in earlier. "The stone's scream has moved to another house. We shouldn't overstay as guests."
Rae nearly laughed at the gentle, playful choice of words—but something in the air kept him from breaking the stillness. There was something unfinished here.
He stepped to the platform's edge and looked at the spiral in the mud. A faint sheen ran along the outer ring, as if the thinnest liquid had just brushed it. He crouched and inhaled. Not fishy. Not sweet. A metallic tang cleaner than steel—familiar, though he couldn't place when he'd last met it.
Lua came to stand beside him, silent.
"Why hold back from following that direction?" Rae asked at last. "If the spiral points, why not go?"
She crossed her staff before her, the tip not touching the ground. "Because every direction is both an invitation and a test," she said quietly. "If we answer too quickly, we're just greedy guests. There's an old habit here—when a sign points far, we send word ahead with the caravan. Let the news go first."
Rae met her gaze. "What news?"
Her eyes, under the shifting mushroom light, were like two pieces of obsidian hiding a small flame. "That we heard," she said. "Sometimes, that's enough."
From the distance came the schedule bell again—the same tone, the same pattern. But Rae caught something new: a short syllable at the end that hadn't been there before. He turned toward the bridge. Webspire was tangled in what little light remained, yet its lines were sharper than before. The air carried a gentle scent, like water long kept in a stone jar.
"We're going to Webspire?" Rae asked, carefully.
"The next caravan will carry ore and news," Lua said. "And maybe a person."
"A person?"
She nodded. "Someone waiting there. A knot-keeper. They rarely come here, but news makes the bridge a two-way road." She glanced at the mushrooms bowing at the platform's edge, as though waking from a strange dream. "We'll go with them."
The words were like warm bread split open in cold air—sending out a steam unlike the surrounding temperature. Rae felt his chest expand and tighten at the same time. Tio drew in a deep breath, his face holding a kind of happiness that didn't want to be called happiness. Above, the Lumendel wheeled once, all at once, like people about to clap but wary of stirring the air.
"When?" Rae asked.
"Not tonight," Lua said. "Too many other eyes in the mist. We wait for the round-cap mushrooms on the west side to open their yellow spores—that's the sign the oldest threads are drowsy. Tomorrow, maybe the next day. Depends on the bridge's breath."
Rae nodded. He looked again at the spiral in the earth. Blue-green light skimmed across it, highlighting the edges before fading. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a Lumendel's path: a line in the air, not quite a full circle, drifting back again. He resisted the urge to touch it.
"Mini-payoff," Tio muttered behind him, using one of his phrases for teasing his own seriousness. "Stone's scream is quiet. We've still got all our fingers."
Lua's mouth tilted halfway. "And the hook?" she asked.
Tio pointed at the bridge with his chin. "The news on its way. And the one waiting."
Rae didn't laugh. Something heavier than laughter was settling at the base of his throat—a feeling rarely named: fear, but also longing for something he didn't yet know. He looked toward the mushroom forest. If the mushrooms had eyes, he was sure they were watching him back through their pores.
Lua's hand landed lightly on his shoulder. "You've heard enough for today," she said. "Save what's left of your ears for tomorrow."
He nodded, this time truly feeling the weariness. They packed up—extinguishing the small helper lights, coiling the ropes, covering the ore with the fibered skins of mushroom fruit. The hum of the rails receded, leaving a dense murmur that slowly returned to the texture of ground, no longer a threat. One by one, the Lumendel rose to the mushroom caps, tucking themselves into folds that might be called home here.
They filed back toward the barracks, passing slick, thick roots that gripped back when held. Rae glanced once more—just once—at the spiral in the mud. A faint shimmer played along its edge, or perhaps it was only his own reflection. He wanted to believe it was more than shadow.
Behind him, Lua walked in steady rhythm, her staff tapping the ground: tak-tak-tak—pause—tak. A rhythm that neither hurried nor forgave delay. Woven into that beat were words unspoken: Dusk Bloom, Webspire, knot-keepers, news that would travel first. Seeds tucked under the tongue, waiting for the right moment to sprout.
Far off, the schedule bell rang once—brief, like a nod. The mushroom forest replied with light, just slightly brighter than it should have been.
Perhaps it was a greeting.
Perhaps it was a warning.
Rae heard both, and for the first time since coming below, he felt no need to choose.
That night, when the barracks doors closed and the sounds thinned to the breathing of those learning to sleep with a scream that couldn't always be silenced, Rae lay on his side, watching the faint glow on the wooden ceiling. In his chest, the song they'd sung earlier refused to end. One note lingered at the edge, trembling softly—not insisting, just reminding.
That note, somehow, was pointing north.
Outside, among the mushroom caps wrapped in mist, a fine path formed in the air, almost invisible.
Not for humans.
Not for machines.
A path for news.
And when dawn—sunless, as only the underground knew it—arrived in its own way, with a slower cold and light that came from the side rather than above, the first caravan moved. Wheels met the rails. Lumendel rose.
The silk threads drew taut and began to sing.
Toward Webspire.