Deep inside the cave.
There was no light. Not the darkness of night, not the gray of an overcast sky, but absolute, pure blackness in which not even a sliver of light could exist.
The rock had existed here for countless tens of thousands of years, silently bearing the weight of the mountain overhead, without complaint or sigh, simply waiting quietly in the darkness.
The air did not move, like a pool of stagnant water forgotten in a corner, cold and heavy. With every breath, one could feel something pressing against the chest, making it impossible to breathe.
Then light appeared in the darkness.
It did not shine in from outside, but surged up from somewhere deeper-from an unknown number of meters underground, somewhere even water could not seep into.
Purple light, initially no more than a point as fine as a needle tip, like a star about to go out in the endless darkness.
Then it grew, not slowly, but as though something below were pushing hard against it, squeezing it out through a crack in the earth's crust.
The purple light began spreading through the cave, following the patterns on the stone walls, the fissures in the strata, those ancient veins sealed away by time for countless tens of thousands of years, extending bit by bit.
The light was not harsh. It was even somewhat soft, like a thin purple veil gently draped over the rough rock.
But that purple was not a calming violet. It was deeper, richer, like the color of congealed blood left in the dark too long, slowly turning from dark red to dark purple.
Ugh...
A low, muffled sound came from deep inside the cave, as though forcibly squeezed out of a throat. Not speech, not a roar, but something more primitive, more instinctive-the sound of awakening.
Like the indistinct, disgruntled mutter someone made after being woken by an alarm on a cold, gloomy morning, not wanting to open their eyes, get out of bed, or face another day, yet having to get up anyway.
Ugh... ugh...
The sound grew louder and clearer. It was no longer a muffled noise squeezed from the throat, but a rumble resonating from the chest, the abdomen, the deepest reaches of the entire body.
There was no pain or anger in that sound, only the flatness of someone woken from sleep, not particularly pleased, but not angry enough to lose their temper.
Deep underground, something moved.
It did not roll over or stretch. It was a slow, sluggish movement against resistance, the kind made after sleeping so long that the joints had stiffened and the whole body felt like a rusty iron plate-but still had to move.
The sound of cracking rock came from underground. Crack, crack, crack, as though someone were breaking apart a shell encasing something, layer by layer.
Aboveground.
Dezi crouched on the rubble pile at the mine entrance, one hand braced against his knee and the other holding a crumpled roll of plans.
The plans showed the layout of the mine tunnels, with rough lines and densely packed annotations. Some areas had been soaked, blurring the writing into a mess. He traced over the plans with a finger, muttering something, his brow twisted into a tight knot.
A few miners nearby were moving rocks. Not the huge boulders that required crowbars and several people working together, but medium-sized rocks pinned beneath the larger ones, which had to be removed before the clearing could continue.
They bent over, wrapped both hands around the rocks, and called out together. One, two, three, lift. They heaved the rocks out of the rubble pile and tossed them aside. The rocks struck the ground with dull, heavy thuds, throwing up clouds of dust.
Everything was just as it had been over the past few days. There were no omens, no strange phenomena, no signs that might warn anyone of danger.
Then Dezi felt something.
It was not an earthquake. An earthquake came from beneath your feet, a sudden, violent shaking that made it impossible to stand steadily.
This was something rising from very, very deep below, as though something were slowly, steadily pushing upward-a faint, continuous trembling that could be felt through the soles of one's feet, though the eyes could see no change.
Dezi raised his head.
It was no illusion.
His pupils abruptly contracted.
The small stones on the rubble pile began bouncing. They were not sliding down, but springing upward, as though something had pushed them from below, bouncing up, dropping back down, then bouncing up again.
They bounced faster and higher, going from almost imperceptible movements to stones visibly jumping up and down.
"Run!" Dezi leaped off the rubble pile. His voice was not loud, but sharp, like a needle piercing the ears of everyone present. "Everyone! Get out!"
The miners froze at first. One man's hand stopped midair as he dug at the rocks, another stiffened in the middle of lifting a stone, and another straightened up and stared blankly at Dezi.
Then they felt it-the ground beneath their feet was shaking, not violently enough to make them lose their footing, but with a continuous, increasingly powerful vibration, as though something were beating a drum underground.
No one asked a single question. Everyone dropped their tools and ran toward the edge of the mine. Someone stumbled in his haste, fell, then scrambled up and kept running.
One man did not even have time to put down his shovel and ran dragging it behind him, its head scraping a long, crooked trail across the ground. Dezi ran at the rear, looking back as he went.
Cracks began appearing in the ground.
They were not narrow fissures slowly opening, but broad, straight rifts over a meter wide, as though something below had violently torn them open.
The cracks spread outward from the mine entrance like a hideous mouth opening, swallowing rubble, dirt, broken support timbers, and scattered tools.
Dezi reached the edge of the mine and threw himself behind a jutting rock.
He lay against the rock, gasping for breath, his heart pounding as though it might leap out of his throat. He turned his head and saw a sight unlike anything he had witnessed in his life.
The earth subsided.
It did not crumble. It subsided. The ground of the entire mine-the area hundreds of meters across where they had spent three days clearing rubble and reopening tunnels-sank downward in one piece, like a plank whose supports had been pulled out from underneath.
Only then did the rumbling catch up. Not a single crash, but a continuous, deafening roar, like thousands of tons of rubble falling at once.
The sound was so loud that Dezi instantly lost his hearing. The world became a film with the sound muted-he could only see billowing dust, collapsing rocks, and shattered support timbers tumbling through the air, without hearing a thing.
Once the dust cleared, the mine was gone.
In its place was a vast, bottomless pit with jagged edges. Its diameter was greater than the entire mine, so enormous that Dezi, lying behind that jutting rock, could see only a small stretch of its rim.
There was no water in the pit, no rubble, no dirt-only darkness so dense it seemed capable of swallowing every trace of light.
Then purple light shone within the darkness.
It was a dazzling light that seemed to erupt from a single point, as though someone had ignited a purple sun deep in the darkness.
The light shot upward from the bottom of the pit, illuminating its stone walls, the torn strata along them, the rock against which Dezi lay, and the terrified faces of the miners in the distance who had yet to get far.
The light lasted about three seconds, then dimmed. It did not go out, but grew darker.
From dazzling bright purple to dusky purple, from dusky purple to deep purple, and from deep purple to a faint, flickering glow like embers about to burn out.
Something was moving inside the pit.
It was not falling rubble or collapsing strata, but a steady, heavy sound, as though something enormous were climbing up from the bottom.
Thud, thud, thud. Every step made the ground tremble slightly. Every step made Dezi's heart skip a beat.
Clack.
A hand-no, a claw-reached over the edge of the pit.
The claw was enormous, so large that Dezi had to tilt his head back to see all of it. It was blackish gray, not the blackish gray of metal, but the rough, cracked blackish gray of scorched rock.
Scales covered the claw, but they were not smooth, orderly, overlapping scales like those of a dragon. They resembled pieces of stone haphazardly fitted together, their edges uneven, some jutting up and others missing chunks.
Most striking were the purple crystals embedded in the claw. Not one or two, but dozens, hundreds, large and small, covering every corner of the back of the claw and its knuckles.
The crystals were irregularly shaped, some sharp as blades, some round as pebbles, some half-buried beneath the scales, others fully exposed to the air, gleaming with an eerie purple light in the sun.
Clack.
Another claw emerged.
Both claws gripped the rocks along the edge of the pit and pushed hard. The rock shattered, and the claw tips sank deep into the ground, leaving several deep gouges. Then the head rose from the pit.
Dezi stared, dumbfounded.
Was that... a dragon?
He had seen pictures of dragons. The imperial Tower Mage Corps' emblem bore a golden dragon with its wings spread, the symbol of the Karelia Empire.
He had also seen stone carvings of dragons, on the triumphal arch in the imperial capital, in the viscount's garden, and flanking the gates of noble estates.
Those dragons had long, slender necks, elegant horns, smooth scales, and spread wings like those of angels, mighty, solemn, sacred.
The thing before him bore no resemblance whatsoever to those pictures, those stone carvings, those dragons of legend.
Its head was enormous, so large that Dezi thought it could swallow an entire cow in one bite. Its surface was not covered in scales, but an uneven rocky shell like something scorched by lava and left behind after cooling.
Cracks covered the shell, filled with purple crystals whose light pulsed in the darkness like so many strangely colored hearts.
Its eyes had no pupils. No, it was not that they had no pupils, but that the pupils were covered by crystals.
A fist-sized purple crystal sat embedded in its right eye socket, its surface smooth as a mirror, reflecting the surrounding scenery like some eerie, one-sided mirror.
There was an eye in its left socket, deep red, with a vertical pupil, dull and glasslike, utterly devoid of warmth.
Horns grew from its head. They were thick, twisted stone spikes that seemed to grow out of the rock, thrusting menacingly in every direction.
Purple crystals were embedded in the tips of some spikes as well, their light leaping between the spikes as though silently passing along some message.
"Is that... a dragon?" In the distance, a young miner stared blankly at the behemoth climbing out of the pit, his lips trembling, his voice so quiet that only he could hear it.
"I don't know." The older miner beside him swallowed, his voice shaking. "But were dragons this ugly all along?"
No one answered him. Because no one knew the answer.