The world was two sounds. Outside was the all-consuming roar of the Shard-Storm, a sound so immense and so constant it ceased to be noise and became a physical pressure that vibrated through the stone, through Kael's bones, into the very marrow of his being. Inside was a collection of small, terrifyingly intimate sounds that cut through the external chaos with the precision of a sharpened blade.
Kael was frozen, his back pressed hard against the rough, cold wall of the cave near the entrance he had just blasted open. The irony was a bitter acid in his throat. He had used his power to save himself from the storm, only to trap himself in a tomb with a monster. He was caught between two certain deaths: the swift, shredding oblivion outside, and the slow, stalking terror within.
The darkness was absolute. In the Grey Wastes, there was always the pale, ambient light of the sky-crystal. In Lumina, light was a constant, shimmering presence. Here, in the belly of the rock, light did not exist. It was a perfect, suffocating blackness that rendered his eyes useless. He could see nothing. He could only listen.
He tried to control his breathing, to slow the frantic hammering of his heart, to make himself as small and silent as a dust mote. But his body betrayed him. The frantic rhythm of his pulse was a drumbeat announcing his fear. The sharp, hitching sound of his own breath was a beacon in the dark.
From deeper within the cave, the creature responded.
A low growl rumbled through the stone floor, a vibration he felt in the soles of his feet before he heard it. It was a sound of deep, resonant power, the sound of a predator disturbed from its slumber and deeply displeased.
There was a heavy thump, as if a massive limb had been shifted and dropped onto the floor. It was followed by the sharp click-scrape of claws on rock. The creature was moving. It took a single, deliberate step closer.
Kael squeezed his eyes shut, as if that could somehow make him more invisible. He could smell it now. It was a dry, musky scent, the smell of old stone and something else… something metallic and coppery, like old blood. The smell of a lair.
He knew he couldn't stay blind. He couldn't just wait for it to find him. To fight, to flee, to do anything at all, he needed to see what was hunting him. He slid down the wall into a crouch, his hands fumbling in the stolen pack at his side. His fingers, numb and clumsy with terror, searched for his fire-starting kit—two specific types of crystal, a shard of flint-like ironstone and a piece of sulfur-rich fizz-crystal.
His trembling hands made the simple task an ordeal. The scraping sound of his own frantic search echoed in the small space. It was answered by another growl, lower this time, and much, much closer. It was questioning. Curious.
His fingers closed around the two crystals. He pulled them out, his palms slick with sweat. He held them up in the darkness, positioning the sharp edge of the ironstone against the rough surface of the fizz-crystal. He took a shaky breath and struck them together.
Nothing. The stones glanced off each other with a dull clack.
He tried again, his movements jerky. Clack.
The creature growled again, a low, impatient sound. The scraping of claws on stone began again, a slow, deliberate stalk. It was triangulating his position from the sounds of his failure.
"No," Kael whispered to himself, a prayer to no one. He took one more breath, held it, and with a final, desperate motion, struck the stones together with all his might.
A shower of brilliant orange sparks erupted into the darkness.
The light flared for only a second, a brief, glorious, and horrifying instant of illumination. But it was enough.
In the brief, flickering light, he saw it. And the sight was worse than anything his imagination could have conjured.
It was a Jag-Wolf. A creature of nightmare, a legend brought to life from the Elders' darkest cautionary tales. It was massive, its shoulders higher than his head, bigger than any pack-beast he had ever seen. Its powerful body was not covered in fur, but in jagged, interlocking plates of black obsidian-crystal that seemed to drink the light. Its powerful legs ended not in paws, but in long, dagger-like claws that were already digging into the stone floor, ready to spring.
But the worst part was its head. Its maw, slightly open in a silent snarl, was filled with long, serrated fangs. They were not dull like normal teeth; they seemed to shimmer, to vibrate with a faint, internal energy, a visible manifestation of deadly resonance. And its eyes—not two, but six of them, three on each side of its monstrous head—were multifaceted orbs that glowed with a cold, hungry, predatory intelligence. They were not the eyes of a dumb beast. They were the eyes of a killer. And they were locked directly on him.
The light from the spark died, plunging him back into the terrifying, absolute blackness. But the afterimage of the Jag-Wolf was burned onto the backs of his retinas, a glowing, multi-eyed phantom of his own impending death.
The creature did not wait for another invitation. It had seen its prey.
It lunged.
Kael didn't think. He reacted. He threw himself sideways, scrambling away from the wall, his hands slipping on the dusty floor. He heard a tremendous CRUNCH as the Jag-Wolf's fangs slammed into the rock where his head had been just a moment before. The impact was followed by the sound of stone shattering, not just breaking, but exploding into fragments. The shockwave of the impact buffeted him.
He understood now. The legends were true. It wasn't just a bite. The creature channeled a destructive frequency through its fangs. A bite from a Jag-Wolf didn't just tear you apart; it unmade you at a molecular level.
This creature was a living, breathing, hunting version of his own destructive power, perfected over millennia for one purpose: to kill. And he was trapped in the dark with it.