The descent swallowed sound.
Stone walls closed around him as he eased down into the earth, rough and slick beneath his palms, the air growing colder with each meter. Above him, the jagged crack of sky shrank to a sliver, then to a single, unwavering line. Then it disappeared entirely.
Darkness came not with violence, but with ceremony.
The kind of darkness that had never known light. Not absence, but origin. Primeval. Complete.
Caliste didn't stop.
Each foothold was a negotiation with stone, a test of faith in the unseen. His fingers found cracks where there should have been none, as if the earth had prepared this path long ago and only now remembered it.
The relic nestled against his chest like a second heart.
It pulsed slower now, heavier. Not warning. Guiding.
When he reached the cavern floor, he paused.
Not to rest. To listen.
The silence here wasn't empty. It was full. Full of pressure, of waiting. Of something ancient breathing without breath.
