The darkness of the underworld of Dundan was not merely the absence of light. It was tangible. It pressed against the eardrums with an eternal, ominous hum, seeped into the lungs along with the smell of dampness and sulfur, and felt as heavy as a gravestone.
Seven-year-old Ezekiel sat on the cold, slippery stone, pulling his legs up to his chin. Three days had passed since he fell into this fissure. His cries for help had long since fallen silent—they only returned to him as a mocking echo from the depths of the tunnels. His throat was parched and burning like fire, and his stomach was cramping from hunger so violently that the boy wanted to double over.
The dirty pie, over which he had nearly been killed on the surface, had broken apart during the fall and mixed with the rotten moss. Ezekiel had eaten it on the very first day, choking on tears and sand. Now, there was no food left.
"Anyone..." he rasped into the void. His cracking, childish voice sounded pathetic.
No one answered. Only an icy drop of water broke somewhere in the darkness with a soft, distinct plop.
At that moment, Ezekiel finally understood: his past life in Oakhaven, where he was despised, was over. Here, underground, the rules of men did not apply. There was no Church, there were no dwarven taskmasters. There was only dampness, hunger, and something that rustled deep within the cave every few hours.
The boy reached his hand out to the side. His palm touched the wall. His fingers slid across the smooth, sharp edge of the crystals. This was specular slate—a rock capable of reflecting the slightest particles of mana. From prolonged contact with the cold stone, Ezekiel's fingers went numb, but a strange sensation—a light, prickling warmth—suddenly crawled up his veins toward his head.
His eyes, strained from fruitless attempts to discern anything in the black abyss, began to throb with a dull pain. Ezekiel squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his palms to his face. It felt as though his pupils were turning into molten glass.
Rustle... Crunch.
The sound came from too close. Scarcely ten paces from his hiding spot. It was the heavy, shuffling step of paws equipped with bony claws. A blind subterranean scavenger—a creature the size of a large dog, devoid of eyes but capable of hearing the heartbeat of a terrified child—had come out to hunt.
Ezekiel froze. He stopped breathing. His heart hammered in his chest so loudly that it felt to him as if it were echoing through the entire cave. The beast let out a low, vibrating growl. The air carried the putrid stench of decaying meat to the boy—the monster's maw was very close.
Out of sheer terror, Ezekiel snapped his eyes open and looked at the wall.
The world did not get any brighter. The blackness remained blackness. But the polished obsidian surface of the crystal in front of his face suddenly became shrouded in a silver haze.
[Versum System: Awakening] Branch: General. Passive Skill: Mirror Sight (Level 0).
Inside the smooth black stone, as if in a murky, ancient mirror, Ezekiel saw outlines. It was the silhouette of the monster. The beast looked like a hideous, eyeless intertwining of muscle and bony plates. It stood sideways to him, catching the air with its snout. But the strangest thing was that in the reflection, Ezekiel did not just see the enemy's body—on the monster's neck, right beneath the bony collar, a small, dull-grey light pulsed. The intersection point of energy channels. Its vulnerability.
The beast took a step forward. Its claws scraped against the stone in the exact spot where Ezekiel had been sitting a minute ago.
The boy, without taking his eyes off the reflection on the wall, slowly—controlling every millimeter of his body—dropped to all fours and crawled backward, behind a crystalline pylon. He watched the monster's trajectory through the mirror, even though the monster itself stood with its back to him in the real world.
The scavenger poked its snout into the cold moss where the warmth of a human body still lingered, growled in disappointment, and, padding its paws, ambled further down the tunnel. Its grey silhouette in the obsidian mirror gradually faded away.
Ezekiel sat in the darkness, his breath heavy and ragged. His small fists were clenched until his knuckles turned white. In his black eyes, where before only resignation to fate had been reflected, a new fire ignited—vicious and cold.
He would not die here. He would learn to see this world through its flip side. He would become a predator that would force this darkness to submit.