The cave mouth opened onto a sheet of black glass. Water had smoothed the rock over centuries until it looked polished, and Aresa stepped across the surface without sound. Her bare feet left no prints. The salt crust crunched at the edges where the tide had receded, but the center was clean. Smooth. Cold enough to ache.
"Here," she said. It took them two days to find a place she deemed okay.
Kaelen followed her in. His boots scuffed against the stone. The sound was too loud. It bounced off the walls. Like something was answering him from deeper in the dark.
The cave opened wide. The ceiling rose above them in a dome of basalt. Cracks ran through it like veins, and in those cracks, something glowed. Faint. Phosphorescent. The light had no source. It came from the rock itself. From the life growing in the stone.
