The darkness was a solid thing. It felt like stuffing, thick and rough, pressing against my eyeballs.
It wasn't just the absence of light; it was a hungry, ancient darkness that swallowed the weak beam of Elias's flashlight before it could travel five feet.
"Keep crawling!" Elias hissed behind me, his voice strained and wet. He sounded like he was crying or choking. Maybe both.
I didn't need the order. I was scrambling, pushing myself forward on my hands and knees. The tunnel floor was uneven—wet rock, slick with mud, sometimes sharp with gravel.
I still had the crowbar. It was useless here, just an awkward, cold piece of weight, digging into my hip.
The shouts from the boiler room were fading, muffled by the stone. But they were replaced by a new, more terrifying sound: the harsh, rasping sound of our own breathing.
"We need... we need to stop," I gasped, my lungs burning.
"No!" Elias snapped. "They'll send someone. They'll send the... the thing. They'll find the chute. Keep going!"
I didn't know if the guardian could even exist now that the Core was dead, but I didn't want to find out.
I pushed on, my forehead scraping against the low ceiling. The tunnel was just big enough for a crouched adult, maybe an old maintenance worker, definitely not for running.
We were crawling, scrabbling, slipping. Every muscle in my body screamed.
The air in here was different from the school or the boiler room. It wasn't metallic-sweet. It smelled like deep earth, sulfur, and something sharp, like vinegar.
It felt prehistoric.
I stopped suddenly. My hand hit something flat and hard sticking out of the mud. I fumbled for it.
A brick. Not a natural rock.
"What is it?" Elias asked, bumping into my heel.
I shone the flashlight I was carrying (I'd thankfully grabbed it with the backpack) on the object.
It was a perfectly square, old-fashioned clay brick, covered in dried mud. On its side, etched deep into the clay, was a single, tiny, faded symbol.
The swirling line. The eye. One of the sigils.
"They're here too," I whispered, feeling a fresh wave of despair. "The symbols. Even down here."
Elias pushed past me, scrambling forward a few feet. "Of course they are. This tunnel is the founder's original foundation. It's the source."
He pointed his weak light ahead. The tunnel had been carved, then shored up with crude, ancient timber beams. The rock here wasn't just carved; it looked like it had been scraped, maybe with tools or maybe just bare hands, hundreds of years ago.
"The book says... the book says he used this route for his first experiments," Elias panted. "The ones before the Core. Before the school. He was using the natural earth energy here. Channeling the despair."
"Whose despair?" My voice was dry.
"He was... kidnapping local villagers. Before the students. Before the money. He needed test subjects. He called this tunnel 'The Founder's Throat.' It swallowed them."
I felt a violent shiver run down my spine. We weren't escaping through a utility tunnel. We were crawling through a grave, an esophagus of suffering.
I suddenly felt dizzy. The air was getting thin, thick with that sulfur smell.
"Elias," I gasped. "I can't breathe."
He didn't answer. He was coughing, low and guttural.
"We have to stop. I need air." I pushed myself up, hitting my head on the wooden beam above. I felt hot, dizzy, my skin prickly.
He finally stopped. He leaned his head against the cold rock, panting. "It's the gas. Sulphur. It's trapped down here. It's natural, but... it's also a trap."
He reached into his bag, pulling out the ancient leather book. He flipped the pages rapidly, his fingers leaving smudges of mud on the brittle paper.
"Map," he muttered. "Need to find the break. The book says there's an air shaft. An old well, covered over. Maybe a mile or so."
A mile. Underground. In this air.
"We can't walk a mile, Elias," I choked out, a wave of nausea washing over me. I pressed my palm against the cool, slick rock. "We'll pass out."
I felt a sudden, irrational spike of anger at him. He brought us here. He was the one with the plan.
"Why didn't you tell me about the gas?" I hissed.
He snapped his head up. His eyes were wide and red in the dim light.
"Why didn't I tell you?" he whispered, fury trembling in his voice. "Because I only read the section on the Core! I only focused on the exit diagram! I didn't think we'd have to crawl through the whole damn thing! I was trying to save our necks, not give us a history lesson!"
His voice broke on the last word. He was terrified, and sick. And right. I had been useless, just a panicked follower.
"Okay," I whispered, instantly regretting my accusation. We didn't have time for this. "Okay. Where's the well?"
Elias swallowed hard, fighting down a cough. He pointed ahead, his finger smeared with dirt.
"Ahead. We need to go faster. Before the air gets worse... or before they send the hounds."
"Hounds?"
He looked away, back at the book. "The Founder kept dogs. Genetically... altered. They used scent. The book mentions them near the old well."
I pushed the crowbar down into the mud and used it to lever myself back onto my knees.
We started crawling again, faster now, fueled by the fresh surge of terror. The fear of passing out from the sulfur gas was replaced by the fear of being torn apart by mutated dogs.
My vision started to swim. The weak light from the two flashlights seemed to stretch and wobble. I kept seeing shapes in the dark corners—just shadows, just my mind playing tricks.
Or was it?
The floor changed. The mud gave way to something drier, smoother. I ran my hand over it. It was flagstone. Carved stone blocks, worn smooth by centuries.
We were in a constructed chamber.
Elias stopped, holding his lantern up. We were in a small, circular room, maybe ten feet across. The ceiling was domed. In the center, there was a pedestal—a block of black stone.
And on the pedestal, a small, dried-up, leather object.
It was a shoe. A child's shoe. Tiny.
My breath hitched. The Founder's Throat. The villagers.
I looked around the room. Etched into the domed ceiling, repeating over and over, were the symbols. The swirling lines, the eyes. They were thick with dust, but they were there, watching.
This was a ritual space.
"Keep going," I urged Elias, my voice barely a squeak. "We don't need to look at this."
He nodded, visibly shaking, but he pointed the flashlight beam to the far wall. There were three openings. Three small, dark tunnels.
"The paths diverge," Elias breathed, his voice flat. "The Founder wanted to confuse anyone who got this far."
He looked at the book, his hand shaking too much to hold it steady. "Which one... which one is the right one...?"
I leaned closer to the book, trying to read the spidery script, but the sulfur gas was making my head pound. The words blurred into gibberish.
"Look at the direction of the symbols," I suggested, desperately. "The carving. The eye always points... somewhere."
We studied the small room. Sure enough, the largest, boldest sigil on the wall above the pedestal had its "eye" pointed. It was aimed at the middle tunnel.
"That's too easy," Elias muttered, his voice full of doubt. "He wouldn't make it that obvious."
"He made the school obvious, Elias! He just hid the fact that it was a concentration camp! He wants the followers to know the way, not the victims!" My head was spinning. I felt like I was arguing with a phantom.
"It's the only lead we have," I insisted. "Go!"
I pushed him towards the middle tunnel. We plunged back into the dark.
This tunnel was immediately different. It sloped steeply upward. The air was noticeably, thankfully, fresher. Thin, but clean.
"The shaft!" Elias gasped, adrenaline surging. "It's working! We're under the well!"
The tunnel ended abruptly, not in a wall, but in an open, square shaft that went straight up. It was shored up with old, rotting wood.
And at the top, faint, distant, was a circle of grey light. Night sky. Rain. Freedom.
"We have to climb," I said, looking up the smooth sides of the shaft.
There were old, wooden rungs hammered into the side of the shaft, spaced too far apart and looking dangerously weak.
Elias, still clinging to the book, stepped up to the first rung. He pulled. The wood creaked ominously.
"They're rotten," he whispered. "We fall, we break our necks. We stay, we choke, or the hounds get us."
He looked back at the entrance we had just come through.
I listened. I didn't hear breathing. I didn't hear crawling. I heard... whimpering.
A low, wet, sniffing sound.
And then, a horrible, sharp click of claws on stone.
The hounds.
"Elias, now!" I screamed.
He didn't hesitate. He grabbed the rotting wooden rung and started climbing.
I watched him go, counting. One. Two. Three. Each time his weight hit a rung, the wood protested loudly.
He reached the top, twenty feet above, and scrambled out of sight.
"Your turn, Kaito!" he yelled, his voice echoing down the shaft.
I grabbed the first rung. My foot slipped on the damp wood. I gripped it tighter, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it would tear through my ribs. I had to do this.
I hauled myself up.
One rung. Two.
Halfway up, the wood under my hand suddenly gave way. It snapped with a loud, sickening crack.
I fell, my body slamming back against the stone wall. I cried out, the pain a white-hot spear in my shoulder.
I clung to the shaft, scrambling for a purchase, looking down.
The whimpering was closer.
A pair of bright, yellow eyes appeared in the black mouth of the tunnel below. They glowed with an unnatural, hungry light.
And then, a dark, hulking shadow began to squeeze itself through the narrow passage.
It wasn't a dog. It was too big. Too thick.
I didn't wait to see more. Driven by pure terror and blinding pain in my shoulder, I scrambled, using the slivers of remaining wood and the tiny crevices in the stone to pull myself upward, clawing my way toward that blessed circle of grey light.
One hand, then the other. Pull. Push. Ignore the screaming in my shoulder.
Claws on stone. The sound of the beast entering the shaft below me.
I reached the top. Elias was there, leaning over the edge, his hands outstretched.
"Grab my hand!"
I reached up, my fingers brushing his.
The wood under my feet snapped completely.
I swung wildly, my foot dangling in the empty space above the abyss. I grabbed Elias's wrist with a desperate, white-knuckled grip.
He hauled. He pulled with every ounce of his small, terrified strength.
I tumbled out of the shaft, hitting the cold, muddy ground with a gasp.
I looked back. The shaft was gone. Elias had used his crowbar, the old, rusty one, to smash the rotten wood, causing a controlled collapse. The opening was choked with mud and rubble.
The whimpering and the growls from below were muffled, trapped.
"We're out," Elias gasped, collapsing beside me in the mud. He was shaking violently, tears running streaks through the dirt on his cheeks. "We're out."
We were in a small clearing, surrounded by skeletal, rain-lashed trees. The rain was still falling, a relentless, cold downpour. In the center of the clearing stood a stone structure—an old, collapsed well. The school was nowhere in sight, hidden behind a thick curtain of trees.
We were outside Academia Umbra.
I looked at my hand. My wrist was scraped raw, bleeding onto the muddy ground. My shoulder throbbed. I was alive.
But where were we? And what came next? Blackwood's reach wasn't just limited to the walls. We were still prey. Still running.
I looked at Elias. He was pulling the leather book out of his drenched backpack, trying to shield it from the rain.
"Now what?" I whispered. "We go to the police?"
He laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "The police? Kaito, they own the police. They own the judges. We break the school, they own the consequences."
He pointed to the book. "There's a note here. A final message. The founder wasn't just a monster. He left a fail-safe. A contact. Someone who knew the full story. Someone outside the system."
"Who?"
Elias looked at the page, then up at the bleak, rainy sky. "A reporter. Decades ago. He called him... the Watchman."
He crumpled the mud-soaked paper. "We have to find him. He's our only chance."
We stood up, two bruised, broken, terrified boys in the freezing rain, and started walking toward the only thing that felt real: the endless, skeletal trees.