Darkness was not the absence of light.
It was a presence.
Aurelia felt it before she opened her eyes, heavy, layered, old. The kind of dark that had memory. That pressed against her skin not to suffocate, but to recognize.
When she inhaled, the air tasted like stone, dust, and something faintly metallic. Ancient.
Her body ached, but not the way it had during the fall. This pain was quieter. Deeper. As if something inside her had been rearranged and had not yet settled.
She opened her eyes.
The cavern stretched endlessly in every direction, its ceiling lost to shadow. Massive pillars bone-white and fractured rose from the ground like the ribs of a dead god. Symbols were carved into every surface: spirals, breaks, jagged circles split down the middle.
None of them glowed.
They waited
