Aras ran. Not with direction, but with the raw instinct of survival. Looking back meant seeing death moving on dry stone with almost no sound.
The tunnel pulled him forward like the throat of a beast, the air growing heavier with every step. Ash thickened around him, clinging to his breath, scraping the inside of his lungs. Each inhale burned like swallowing hot sand.
Behind him, the footsteps had changed.
TOK… tok… tok… TOK.
No rhythm. No hesitation. A predator closing in.
The light inside his chest flickered violently. For a moment it rose, trying to flare upward.
"No… not now," Aras whispered.
His new, fragile ability—Light Suppression—shuddered awake. It pressed down on the rising glow like a thin, trembling hand trying to hold a door shut against a storm. The light retreated, leaving only a faint pulse beneath his ribs.
Not control. Barely obedience.But enough.For now.
The ground slanted beneath him as he ran, sending him stumbling forward. The tunnel split—one path collapsing inward with slow, groaning defiance, the other narrowing into a tight, spine-like corridor.
Aras froze for a heartbeat.Left?Right?
There was no Lira to guide him. Only stone, ash, and the frantic hammer inside his chest.
Then—faint, almost imagined—a vibration pulsed from the right wall. Not a word. Not a call. Merely a pull.
As if the stone had nudged him.
Aras turned right.
A cold breath brushed the back of his neck. Not a draft—no wind could reach this deep.
The breath of an Ashbound.
Dry. Cold. Carrying the scent of ancient soot.
Aras's spine locked. "They're too close," he gasped.
He forced himself into the narrow passage, scraping along the stone, hearing fabric tear against jagged edges. Ash churned around him with every desperate step.
His light trembled again. Suppression wavered.
"Stay—down—" he hissed.
The glow dimmed, but each use of the ability left an ache, like something inside him was tiring, thinning.
The tunnel pressed in tighter. At one point he had to turn sideways just to continue. As he shifted, the stone beside him shivered.
A line appeared.A shadow.The faint outline of a face.
Lira.
Her silhouette pulsed gently with the rhythm of his steps, watching him from within the wall. No words. No gestures. Just presence, silent and heavy.
Aras swallowed hard. He couldn't afford to stop. Couldn't afford to speak. He pushed forward—
—just in time to see it.
A shape slid across the tunnel floor behind him. Not fully formed. A distortion of shadow and ash. Tall. Narrow. Wrongly proportioned.
Within the shadow, a slit of glowing void appeared.
Not an eye.
Something worse.Something that perceived.
The Ashbound inhaled, and the sound was like stone cracking under pressure.
Aras froze. The tunnel was too tight to run properly, too narrow to turn and face it. Even breathing felt like a mistake.
Behind him, the creature inhaled again—closer now.
The right wall trembled. A deep hum vibrated through the stone, crawling along its veins. Thin gray lines spidered outward across the surface, splitting into deliberate, branching cracks.
Aras stared as the cracks connected, forming a symbol.
He didn't know it.But his chest reacted instantly.
The Ashflare Seed pulsed—once, sharply.
The symbol pulsed back.
Aras's vision dimmed. For a moment he wasn't in a tunnel; he was suspended between two resonances—stone and light calling to each other.
Either the tunnel was awakening…or the Ashbound had fully locked onto him.
Maybe both.
His light surged involuntarily, answering the symbol's call. Cold fire spread across his chest. Despite suppression, a faint gray glow spilled outward.
The tunnel flickered with light.
And the Ashbound…stopped.
The footsteps fell silent.The tunnel turned cold and still.
Aras couldn't breathe.
For the first time, his light had caught the creature's full attention.
On the wall beside him, Lira's silhouette sharpened—still silent, still unable to intervene. But her faint expression, barely etched into the stone, carried something he had not seen from her yet.
Fear.Not for herself.For him.
Aras tried to steady his breath. He had to suppress the light again. He had to. But his body trembled, his lungs refused to fill, and the walls around him seemed to squeeze tighter.
Behind him, the Ashbound inhaled once more.
Closer.Too close.
A cold truth slid down Aras's spine:
If he couldn't control this light, it would call them every time it rose.
And the tunnel felt smaller with every heartbeat.