PROLOGUE
579 Words
PROLOGUE
It was the pain that woke her—a dull, throbbing ache in the wrist pinned behind her back. She tried to pull the arm free, but her wrists were bound together.
That was when the memories flooded in: stumbling along the rocky path, her face covered by a hood (the same one that now pressed against her nostrils every time she inhaled), a hand shoving her forward whenever she paused.
The next thing she remembered was waking to the pain in her wrist.
I must have fallen, knocked myself out, she thought.
Something cold and smooth pressed against her head. She rolled, feeling the bar of metal with her bound hands. It was shaped like a T and bolted to planks of wood.
A rail. That means this must be a mine shaft!
Her excitement at this discovery faded as quickly as it flared up. She had been discarded like a bag of trash, left somewhere nobody would find her.
Left to die.
Her heart beat violently as she pushed herself to her feet. She was not going to die here, not without a fight.
She twisted her wrists back and forth, ignoring the pain. She felt the knot loosening. Suddenly it came free, and she pulled at the hood. Her hair stuck to it for a moment – she dared not think how much blood she had lost – but she gave it a tug and it slipped off.
All she had to do now was go back the way she had come.
She hesitated, knowing one way would take her deeper into the mine shaft. But how to tell which was the right way? In the end she went with her gut, trotting through the darkness, barely able to keep herself from a panicked sprint.
She tripped over something soft and fell headlong, landing on her injured wrist, which flared with pain. Her good hand quested over the object that had tripped her.
Fabric. The cool roundness of a button. Then the cold, bony protrusion of a chin, the skin shriveled and tight.
She jerked her hand back with a scream, but not before brushing against the corpse’s long hair, fine as spider-silk. A woman, then, she guessed, which meant—
I’m not the first one.
She shuddered at the realization. Did that make this place a graveyard? How many other victims might lie in the darkness, forgotten and unburied—no, not unburied. This might not be a traditional burial, but it was a burial nonetheless.
Every nerve in her body screamed at her to get moving. She rose, hurtled herself through the darkness, unable to slow down despite the possibility there could be a hundred corpses littering the floor of the tunnel.
With a surge of hope, she discovered the ground was rising. Yes! She was climbing back up! Now she could see a single medallion of light emblazoned high on the wall.
Tears of relief and terror rolled down her cheeks as she hurried forward, unable to slow herself before she collided with a wall of loose rock. She began scrambling up it, trying to reach the light. If she could just feel that sunlight on her skin, if she could just taste that fresh air—
She had only climbed a few feet when an avalanche of dirt submerged her. She fought her way out, coughing and sputtering, but the light was gone.
And with it, her only hope of escape.
- Writer
