Mo woke cold to the bone.
Something soft brushed his face. Then again. Slow. Light. He opened his eyes.
Snow.
He blinked against the pale sky above him, an empty, washed blue that felt impossibly far away. For a long moment he couldn’t move. His head throbbed in dull pulses, each one clouding his thoughts before they could settle.
The guards.
The memory slammed back into him. The chase. The fall. The club.
He sucked in a sharp breath and rolled onto his side, scrambling to his knees. They would be coming. They would finish it this time. He had to move. He had to get deeper into the forest.
Mo pushed himself upright.
And froze.
There were no trees.
No snow-covered ground stretching between trunks. No frozen undergrowth. No wind moving through branches.
Stone surrounded him.
High walls of dark cobblestone rose in a perfect circle, sheer and unbroken, climbing so far upward they narrowed into a distant ring of sky. Snow drifted down through the open top, spiraling slowly as it fell.
Mo staggered back, breath catching in his throat.
The Pit.
He had walked past these walls a hundred times. No, thousands of time. Looked up at them from the outside, wondering what it must be like within.
Now he stood inside.
There was no door. No gate. No stair. Nothing but smooth, towering stone and the pale disc of sky far above, impossibly high, unreachable.
Snow gathered at his feet.
He turned slowly, searching for any opening, any weakness in the walls.
There was none.
Only the long fall of white silence from above.
Snow gathered at his feet.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to breathe slowly. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Again. Again.
Panic would not help. Panic would make him stupid. Panic would make him miss something.
There had to be a way out.
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Mo pressed his palm against the stone wall beside him. It was freezing, rough beneath his fingers, damp where melting snow had begun to slick the surface. Solid. Unbroken.
He began to move, keeping one hand against the wall, sliding his fingers along the mortar lines as he walked. Each step felt too loud, boots grinding softly against packed snow and stone dust.
Don’t think about the height.
Don’t look up again.
Just find the door.
He kept walking.
And walking.
And walking.
Mo stopped.
He turned slowly and stared across the open space behind him.
He could not see the opposite wall.
The chamber stretched outward into dimness, the far side swallowed by distance and drifting white. The curve of the structure bent the space away from him, stone disappearing into haze long before it should have.
His throat tightened.
No prison needed to be this large.
No holding cell needed to swallow sound like this. Even his breathing seemed to vanish before it could echo back.
He pressed his hand harder against the wall, as if confirming it was real. Grounding himself.
This place wasn’t just deep.
It was vast.
Far too vast.
He resumed walking, slower now, fingers never leaving the stone.
If he kept moving long enough…
He would find something.
He had to.
He moved slowly, fingers trailing along the frozen stone.
Then his hand slipped.
Mo froze and brought his other hand up, feeling carefully. The wall dipped inward, the surface broken where every other stretch had been smooth. A narrow seam ran vertically through the stone, jagged, uneven.
A crack.
His pulse jumped.
He leaned closer, pressing his face near the opening. Cold air drifted through from the other side.
Relief surged so sharply his knees nearly gave out.
Not sealed. Not trapped. There’s a way out.
He turned sideways and eased himself into the gap. Stone scraped his shoulders. He had to twist, shuffle, inch forward sideways until the pressure loosened and the passage widened enough for him to step through.
One step. Two. Three.
The ground vanished.
Mo gasped as he dropped hard onto his back, sliding instantly. The stone beneath him angled steeply downward, slick with packed frost. He clawed for anything to grab, fingers scraping uselessly across smooth rock as momentum dragged him faster.
The passage curved sharply, plunging deeper.
Air roared past his ears. His shoulder slammed the wall. Pain enveloped his body that tumbled scraping down the tunnel
He slid faster and faster.
The tunnel ended without warning.
Mo shot out into open air.
For one suspended heartbeat there was nothing beneath him but vast darkness and a distant glimmer of reflected light.
Then he fell.
The impact stole the air from his lungs as he crashed into water. Not freezing, strangely warm, almost tepid, but deep enough to swallow him whole. He sank, limbs flailing, disoriented, bubbles roaring past his ears.
Up.
He kicked blindly and broke the surface with a ragged gasp, choking, dragging air into burning lungs.
Water lapped gently around him.
He blinked hard, pushing wet hair from his eyes and took three stroked until sand was under his feet.
Voices.
Quiet. Casual.
Mo turned.
A few paces away, a man sat at the water’s edge, calmly washing his feet as if this were an ordinary riverbank. Another stood knee-deep nearby, wringing out a soaked shirt and spreading it carefully across a flat stone.
Neither looked surprised to see him.
Mo slowly turned further.
The breath left him again, not from impact this time.
From scale.
The cavern stretched outward beyond sight, a vast cavern unlike anything he could have imagined. The ceiling arched impossibly high above, lost in shadow. Pale light filtered down from somewhere far overhead, catching drifting mist and turning it silver.
Structures clung to the cavern walls.
Not buildings, not really.
Platforms. Ladders. Bridges. Crude dwellings woven from timber and rope, stacked and layered like nests in the stone. Some hung suspended from thick cables. Others jutted from ledges carved directly into the rock face.
An entire settlement, sprawling, chaotic, spreading deeper and deeper into the dark.
Men moved among them.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
The Pit wasn’t just a prison chamber.
It was a whole world.
