The boy woke on cold stone. His small hands pressed into the moist dirt as his head swiveled through the darkness. Fear pressed close, thick and heavy, smelling of dew and something faintly sweet. His chest tightened. His breaths came shallow and quick, echoing in the tunnel. The damp air welling in his eyes made him cry out.

  Shapes leaned just beyond the reach of his vision. Pale and still, like the world itself was holding its breath. He understood, and that just made the fear claw higher, curling around him like smoke. The boy’s fingertips were softer than the dirt caking them, smaller than the flower petals that gathered around his feet, and trembling with the sounds of droplets in the cave.

  His expression shifted from one of fear to one of wisdom far beyond his physical age. “Shit,” he babbled.

  A faint shimmer brushed along the edges of darkness. The boy's eyes followed it; an obvious path lay out ahead. The air pulsed, not with the wind, but with a rhythm he could feel in his chest. The light shifted slightly, and for a second, he could see threads stretching like veins through the shadow.

  The boy crawled towards it carefully, soft knees pressing against jagged stones, leaving smudges in the dirt. The threads pulsed faintly as he followed them, whispering something he couldn’t quite hear. Almost like a memory of something he had brushed off when the world was real.

  “Shit.”

  Some crazy writer fell into a coma for ten years. After his long rest, he awoke with tales of a new world. The writer told anyone who would listen: the doctors, nurses, family, friends, news outlets, and even the radio stations that only played the same four songs.

  Nobody believed him. Not really.

  He spoke of dungeons that reached the depths of hell, of rivers that ran with light, of creatures that walked between restless nights. His eyes burned when he talked, alive with something the world has long abandoned: inspiration, wonder, obsession.

  Elias was just a boy when he heard the stories. Written on creepy chatrooms, spoken in the arcade, and laughed about in the karaoke room, the fictions were always close. When Elias became a man, the stories became a lot louder. More people’s eyes saw the writer's inspiration, dragons and elves in worlds we’ve never known, his wonder like a child wearing his father’s shoes.

  The obsession came later, though. Alone in a beating room. Weaving around the words that could only be spoken in a whisper, crawling through the cracks of malnourished eyes, seeping into a hospital bed.

  When the writer died, Elias noticed he left no written work. Which he thought was odd, considering he had time before he fell, and my God, this writer loved to write.

  The death of the writer wasn’t a big event, more of a quiet recital. It didn’t affect Elias’ day-to-day life; it felt more like a fan in the other room had been turned off. You notice the buzz ended, but the quiet is nice too.

  Not that Elias would hear much of a buzz; all this demolition work had shot his ears. The man is half-deaf and barely thirty-two, leaving his mother to nag him about the latest ear protection. “How will you find a wife?” She always teased. Elias found it intrusive at the time, but he longed for such simplicity after she fell asleep.

  The golden threads rounded a sharp curve, rippling like the wind, begging the boy to follow. The cave had a slight breeze, making his bare body shiver. He wanted to stand, but his knees were soft and trembling. Shapes flickered just beyond the shimmer again, and his chest thudded with anxiety. The threads stretched upwards, curling towards something he couldn’t see.

  Then a sound: a faint scraping, uneven, inhuman. The boy froze; his pulse quickened, echoing the rhythmic flow of the threads. The threads were woven across the wall opposite him, through eight red eyes following the boy as he moved, seemingly studying his space.

  He could feel the pulse of the threads beneath his skin, like something alive. Almost a warning, or perhaps closer to a guide, helping the boy who listened. The beast’s red eyes reflected the faint glow, still with impossible patience, ignoring the movement of the air blocked by its massive, dark body. The boy knows what will happen if he’s attacked.

  A whisper past the spider: “Pst!”

  A flicker of green hair, orange light, and long ears appeared. Too deliberate–too bright to be a part of the cave. “Just don’t touch the webs. We’re small enough to get through the cracks.” The boy said, pointing to where the golden light passes through the sticky death trap.

  Eight red eyes glimmered in the darkness, waiting. The boy's chest rumbled. Somewhere between fear and the pull of threads, he crawled forward.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  A sharp drop of water spattered along his bare back. He flinched, almost screaming, but the sound caught in his throat. His tiny palms, slick with moisture, found a narrow gap between sticky threads. He crawled forward, his knees scraping against the stone, the golden threads curling like veins along the walls.

  The cave narrowed towards a distant blue glow. Water dripped faster, and the red eyes flickered behind him. “Careful…” The green-haired boy’s whisper floated over. “You’re so small…” He frowned. His green hair was long, draping across his oversized, patchy tunic.

  “Are you from Earth?” The smaller boy babbled, looking down. Crawling was difficult enough; holding up his head was another challenge. The boy's neck and skin ached as if he had been working out for hours. His small body had just bloomed, clearly not yet fit for such a perilous journey.

  “Of course I am! I’ve been asleep for two days down here; talk about unlucky.” The green-haired boy whined. “Just up there is a health stone, y’know, like in the forums. I can’t believe this is really happening to us!” He walked just ahead of the boy who was crawling.

  The littler boy blinked. “Forums?” His voice squeaked, thin and high. He slowed to look up at the elf boy. “You read those too?”

  “Obviously.” He grinned down over his shoulder, his orange light flickering around him like a stubborn ember refusing to die. “You think I figured out the health stone all on my own? I’ve read tons of novels,” the elf boy smiled. Reminiscing about all the ridiculous tales he’s heard. He laughed softly, “My mom used to tell me, ‘Mijo, you’re gonna go blind staring at that damn screen!’”

  The younger boy laughed at his impression, “My mom would buy all the expensive noise-reduction headphones, saying stuff like, ‘So you will listen to your future wife!’” Both boys giggled at their nostalgia. The air was damp and heavy with reminiscence and new beginnings akin to the first summer after a long school year.

  The spider shifted behind them, a slow, deliberate scrape of chitin against rock.

  The elf boy whipped his head around to watch the spider, while the boy on his knees froze in panic.

  The threads in the air tightened sharply.

  “So creepy, man…” The elf boy continued to walk forward, whispering. Slower than before, watching the spider with both eyes.

  The younger boy looked up, trembling, “To your left…”

  The elf boy's big tunic brushed against a web on the wall, catching his steps. The spider’s massive body shifted as he tried to pull away from the webs.

  No use.

  The web twitched violently.

  The cave exploded with motion.

  The spider lunged.

  The elf boy yelped, instinctively twisting, tangling more into the web. The younger boy pulled at his legs, letting the elf boy fall out of that big tunic. The golden threads flared, bright and anxious.

  The spider reached the cloth as he fell, and the elf boy hit the cave floor with a sharp groan.

  The small boy trembled in fear at the huge spider less than a meter away. Golden threads shone brightly in the corner of his eye. He swallowed his anxieties and yanked the older boy towards a narrow crack just as fangs snapped inches from where his shoulder was.

  Stone tore skin from the boys’ knees as they tumbled into the fissure.

  The spider slammed against the rock, legs scraping, unable to force its giant body through the small opening.

  For one horrifying second, eight red eyes filled the crack.

  Then it withdrew.

  The boys lay there, tangled together in the small crevice.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  The elf boy started laughing.

  Not hysterically, not broken, just… incredulous.

  “That,” he said between breaths, “was insane.”

  The smaller boy pushed himself up slowly. His small body trembled from something sharp. “You almost died.”

  “So did you,” the green-haired boy argued with a grin, although his eyes were wide and gleaming. “And yet, here we are. Two legends.”

  “Legends,” the younger boy repeated quietly. Golden threads welled around them; the warm essence escaping the elf boy's skin was calmer now, steady and gentle, like a heartbeat without anxiety.

  The little elf stood and pressed the wound at his kneecap with his palm. “Back to bare skin, I guess.” He paused for a moment, looking down at himself and at the younger boy. “Hey, what’s your new name?”

  The younger boy leaned his back against the wall, catching his breath. “What?”

  “We don’t have to keep our old names.”

  The young boy blinked.

  He continued, hands moving as he spoke. “Think about it. Forty percent of the planet is asleep. The world up there is miserable and sad and everyone thinks this is a disease or the apocalypse or punishment or whatever.” His grin softened. “But down here? We get a fresh start.”

  His hands settled at his sides, looking into the younger boy's eyes. His words sounded nearly as youthful as he looked. He spoke brightly, defiantly.

  “In the real world, I was just some part-timer dodgin' my student loans, but down here?” He spread his arms wide. “I could be a hero. I could rename myself something awesome. Like… Braveheart.”