Page 134 of The Light Within

Cinn lay still for a moment, gasping for breath, his heart pounding in his chest as a horrible realisation sunk in—he was in complete darkness. No light, no sense of direction, just the thick, oppressive blackness pressing in all around him.

“Holy shit.”

The blackness ate up his words.

Cinn sat up, resting his head against his legs. He allowed himself a low moan. That experience had been far worse than the Displacement Baths earlier. There, he’d felt weightless, fluid, whereas now he felt like he’d been a heavy stone that’d been repeatedly knocked against a wall.

He rubbed at his head, where a headache was forming. Then Cinn forced himself to his feet. The air here felt different—denser, older, filled with a deeper sense of dread. It was so dark, you could almost smell it.

Cinn pressed his hands against the rough, damp walls of the tunnel, the cold stone biting into his palms. The darkness was suffocating, swallowing everything in its path; he couldn’t even see his own fingers in front of his face. He let out a slow, shaky breath, forcing himself to focus on the sensation of the walls, the uneven texture of ancient limestone beneath his fingertips. With each step, his heartbeat pounded louder in his ears, a frantic drum beat that matched the panic rising in his chest. No shadow cat to guide him now—only his gut, a primal instinct urging him to keep moving, keep searching, to find Julien.

His mind raced with images of the labyrinth stretching endlessly, trapping him down here forever, forgotten in the shadows, his body never found. The thought gnawed at him, a tightness coiling in his stomach.

But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t let the fear paralyse him. Julien needed him. Nothing would stop Cinn from getting to him.

“Get it together,” he muttered, voice small in the consuming dark. Each step forward felt like a battle, the silence around him heavy.

A song burst to life in his head—“Dead,” one of the tracks on his beloved Pixies cassette. The one that he’d worn out to the point of ruin. Then Julien’s gifted replacement had burned alongside Maz, the precious treasure reduced to ash.

Cinn laughed to himself, the sound echoing wildly off the stone walls, a stark, jagged edge of hysteria in his voice. He pressed his fist to his mouth. Although he felt alone down here—truly, terrifyingly, utterly alone—he had no idea who was close by.

So, he mimed the song lyrics, imagining the frantic baseline thumping in his veins, the distorted guitar slicing through the air, drowning out the silence and the creeping fear. The song playing loudly within him felt gloriously comforting—his only possible defiance of the crippling terror threatening to consume him.

Armed with his music, he moved slowly onwards, feeling his way along the wall, praying his gut wouldn’t betray him, knowing that if he stopped now, he would never find Julien.

Then he heard it—the soft, almost imperceptible patter of paws somewhere ahead, followed by a low, rumbling purr that seemed to vibrate through the walls themselves.

Cinn froze, his heart pounding in his throat, just as something sleek and cold brushed against his ankles. He flinched, feeling the unmistakable shape of the cat slide between his legs, her shadowy form curling around him like smoke. “Béatrice,” he whispered, a shaky grin spreading across his face. She was there, waiting, guiding him again. Her presence was a lifeline, a tether to something other than his own fear. “I missed you, friend.”

He paused to stroke her, scratching between her ears. She purred, a grateful sound which quickly deepened into something more urgent.

“Take me to him, please,” Cinn urged. “As quick as you can! Go, go!”

Because, as he followed Béatrice through narrow tunnel after narrow tunnel, the feeling that they were running out of time only intensified.Every distant echo of his footsteps became a relentless reminder of the urgency, each sound a reminder that they were racing against an invisible, unforgiving clock.

“Hold on, Julien,” he said, to the skeletons of the catacombs. “I’m coming for you.”

thirty-three

Julien

Julien wasn’t dead.

Yet.

At least, he presumed he wasn’t dead. The afterlifecouldeasily consist of being locked in a catacomb cell, but somehow, he doubted it.

A heavy fog clouded Julien’s thoughts, making it difficult to piece together the events that had led him here. His head throbbed with a dull ache, each beat of his heart sending a wave of nausea through him as the lingering effects of Jonathan’s special compound refused to fade.

The prison he lay in was a narrow, suffocating space carved out of the ancient stone, its rough, damp walls pressing in on all sides. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and earth, almost tangible in its heaviness. Nothing was visible to him, not even a single speck of dirt—the darkness was absolute, swallowing everything in its path. A constant reminder he was miles under the ground.

Composed of sharp, jagged objects, the disturbingly uneven floor moved under him as he shuffled.Bones. He was lying on a bed of bones.

The only sound was that infuriating drip of water. Distant, rhythmic. But at least it gave him something to focus on. It was easier to drum his bound hands against his back in time with the drip, rather than think about other things.

Like the fact he’d allowed his father to trick him so easily.

Like the fact he was going to be buried amongst the bones of strangers, forgotten and alone.

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