The Smoke Below: The Underkin Saga - Book 1

Chapter 1

Villagers gathered along the narrow road, drawn by the roar of the flames and the history they devoured. Once, a lighthouse had stood proudly on the cliff’s edge, guiding ships home through winter storms and fog-thick nights. But the cliff had crumbled decades ago, taking the lighthouse with it. The house had remained — the last remnant of the keepers who had tended the light.

Now it was disappearing too.

Fire chewed through the wooden frame, sending plumes of smoke spiraling into the sky. Embers drifted in the wind like dying stars. The fire engine tore up the hill, siren slicing through the night, and Chief Rowan leaped out before it had fully stopped. He barked orders, directing hoses, pushing villagers back from the unstable cliff. He had fought hundreds of fires in his life, but something about this one felt wrong.

The flames were too fierce. Too fast. Too hungry.

He didn’t yet know that the fire was only the surface of a much deeper catastrophe.

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Far below the cliff, Elder Corin felt the first warning.

She had been walking the Upper Rings, checking the old gate as she did every few weeks. The gate had been sealed for generations, its tunnel collapsed long before she was born. Behind it lay nothing but packed earth and stone — or so everyone believed.

She paused mid-step.

A strange scent drifted through the cracks in the gate. Faint at first. Woody. Sharp. Then stronger. Acrid. It caught in her throat.

Smoke.

Corin’s heart lurched. She hurried to the watcher’s niche where two guards sat in their usual vigil.

“Do you smell that?” she asked.

Both guards inhaled. Their eyes widened.

Before they could speak, a thunderous c***k split the air. The old gate shuddered — then collapsed inward. A rush of smoke poured through the broken stone, thick and choking, carrying with it a wave of blistering heat.

“Get Aren!” Corin shouted.

One guard sprinted down the tunnel.

“To the Lower Rings!” she ordered the other. “Evacuate everyone!”

Cracks spidered along the tunnel walls. The smoke thickened, turning the air into poison. Corin ran, her robe whipping behind her, passing the Moss Gardens platform. The bioluminescent moss — normally glowing soft green — was already dimming under the heat. Soon it would ignite. And when it did, the fire would race through the caverns like a living thing.

She reached the Hall of Echoes, the vast chamber where the alarm bell stood untouched for centuries. Corin seized the rope and pulled with all her strength. The bell’s deep, resonant cry thundered through the caverns.

Aren arrived moments later, breathless and wide-eyed.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“Go up. Assess the damage. If it’s too dangerous, come straight back. We begin evacuations now.”

Aren nodded and sprinted toward the Upper Rings.

People flooded into the Hall, panicked and disoriented. Corin raised her voice above the bell.

“Evacuate to the secondary escape tunnel! Leave everything. Move now!”

Some listened. Some froze. Others — stubborn, terrified — ran back toward their homes in the Lower Rings.

Corin rang the bell again, harder. Smoke seeped into the chamber, curling along the ceiling. The distant rumble of collapsing stone grew louder.

Aren stumbled back into the Hall, face blackened with soot.

“Corin… the Upper Rings… they’re gone. Completely. Fire everywhere. The moss gardens—” His voice broke. “They’re gone.”

Corin swallowed her grief. “Help me get them out.”

Together they guided families through the smoke-filled corridors. Children cried. Adults shouted names into the darkness. The air grew hotter, thicker, harder to breathe.

They reached the secondary escape tunnel — and Corin froze.

Barely thirty people stood there.

“Where is everyone else?” she demanded.

Lira stepped forward, her face streaked with ash. “There is nobody else.”

“What about the Lower Rings? The Deep Chamber?”

Lira shook her head.

Corin felt her chest tighten. Over eight hundred souls lived in the caverns. Eight hundred lives she had tended, guided, protected.

Less than forty remained.

She forced herself to stand tall. “Follow me. Stay close.”

They climbed the escape tunnel, smoke chasing them like a predator. Corin led by memory alone — every twist, every incline etched into her mind from decades of drills. Behind her, hands linked in a chain, people stumbled blindly through the dark.

A deafening crash echoed behind them. The main cavern had collapsed. Corin nearly fell, her knees buckling under the weight of the loss — but the tunnel groaned ominously, and she pushed forward.

“WAIT!” someone shouted.

A figure slipped. Others turned to help.

Corin didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The tunnel gave way in a violent roar, swallowing those who had fallen and those who tried to save them.

She kept moving.

The smoke thinned. A faint glow appeared ahead — pale, unfamiliar.

The surface.

Stories had painted it as a wasteland: poisoned air, ruined land, death above. But death was behind them now, crashing through the tunnels with unstoppable force.

Corin reached the sealed exit gate. Men shoved against it, coughing, straining. The hinges groaned — then snapped.

A rush of cold, fresh air slammed into them.

They stumbled out into the night, gasping. The burning house blazed behind them, lighting the cliffside in orange and gold. Wind whipped across their faces. Voices murmured nearby — unfamiliar voices.

Then bright lights swung toward them.

The Underkin froze.