The entrance to the Echoing Caverns wasn't a grand gate. It was a jagged crack in the rock at the back of the training chamber, a dark mouth that seemed to swallow the torchlight. Kael led the nine of us who had survived the first day to its edge. The air that breathed out of it was cold and ancient, carrying with it a faint, low hum that vibrated deep in my chest.
"The Caverns are a test," Kael said, his voice unusually subdued. He wasn't sneering or shouting now. He spoke like a man describing a force of nature, something beyond his control. "There are no monsters in these tunnels. There are no traps. The only thing you will face in there is yourself."
He looked from face to face, his obsidian eyes lingering on each of us for a moment. "The magic of this place is old. It finds what is in your head—your fears, your regrets, your attachments—and it gives them a voice. You will hear things. Things that will try to break you. Your only task is to walk. Find the passage marked with a white stone. It will lead you to the exit chamber. You have until the next dawn."
A girl with wide, frightened eyes, the one with the rock band t-shirt, raised a trembling hand. "What happens if we don't make it out?"
Kael's face was a stone mask. "Then you become another echo for the next group."
He gave us no supplies, no torches, no guidance. He simply gestured to the dark opening. "Go."
One by one, we shuffled into the darkness. The moment I stepped through the crack, the familiar sounds of the training chamber vanished, cut off as if by a closing door. I was plunged into absolute, disorienting blackness. The air was heavy and still. The only sound was the frantic pounding of my own heart and the shuffling footsteps of the others nearby.
I put a hand out, touching the cold, damp wall of the tunnel to guide myself. The floor was uneven, and I stumbled, catching myself before I fell. For a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of our own nervous breathing and movement. Then, the first voice came.
It wasn't a human voice. It was a whisper that seemed to slide directly into my mind, bypassing my ears entirely. You're weak, it hissed. You should have been the one broken on the first day. You don't belong here.
I flinched, my steps faltering. I knew it wasn't real. Kael had warned us. But knowing and feeling are two different things. The voice felt more real than the stone beneath my fingertips.
Then other sounds began. A girl somewhere behind me gasped. "Mom?"
A boy to my right let out a choked sob. The Caverns had found their targets. The assault had begun.
I focused on moving forward, on placing one foot in front of the other. The hum I'd felt at the entrance grew stronger, a constant, low-frequency vibration that seemed to loosen the seams of my thoughts. And then I heard it. A voice I knew better than my own.
"James? Honey, where are you? Dinner's getting cold."
My mother's voice. It was so clear, so warm, so full of the casual love I had taken for granted my entire life. I stopped dead, my throat tightening into a knot. It sounded like she was standing right behind me. I wanted to turn around more than I had ever wanted anything.
It's not real, I told myself, my own thoughts a frantic scramble against the tide of emotion. She's not here. She's in another world.
"James, please answer me," the voice came again, closer now, laced with a growing panic. "We're so worried. The police don't know anything. It's like you just vanished. Please, just come home."
My father's voice joined hers, strained with a grief that felt like a physical blow. "Your mother hasn't slept. We just want to know you're safe, son."
Every word was a perfectly crafted dagger aimed at the softest parts of me. My resolve began to crumble. Maybe Kael was lying. Maybe this was a way home. If I just turned around, if I just followed their voices…
Then a new sound cut through the darkness. It wasn't an echo from my past. It was a scream. A real one. It was raw and full of terror, and it was cut off abruptly. One of the others had broken. They had listened, they had believed, and they were gone.
The scream was like a bucket of ice water thrown on my face. It shocked me back to a cold, brutal clarity. The Caverns were a predator. Hope was its bait. My memories were its weapon. To survive, I couldn't just ignore the voices. I had to kill them.
I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. I forced myself to take another step forward, into the suffocating dark.
"We miss you," my mother's voice whispered, full of tears.
She's not real, I thought, the words a silent, desperate chant.
"Your room is just how you left it," my father pleaded.
They are not real.
Then the voices changed. They weren't from my past anymore. They were from my present.
I heard Lucas's easy laugh, echoing down the stone corridor. I heard Lilly's bright, cheerful voice. "Oh, Lucas, you're amazing! I knew you could do it!" I heard the soft, melodic tone of Aurora. "His control of aura is remarkable."
They were living an adventure. They were becoming legends. And what was I doing? I was stumbling through the dark, haunted by ghosts, becoming a killer in a dungeon run by monsters. The cold knot of rage in my stomach twisted tighter. The injustice of it all was a poison, and the Caverns were forcing me to drink it.
Good, a new voice whispered in my mind. The Curator's voice. Let the hate fuel you. Let the unfairness sharpen you. A hero can afford love and friendship. A shadow needs nothing but a target. They are your target. The world that chose him over you is your target.
The voice was seductive. It offered a purpose for my pain. It felt good to hate. It felt powerful. It was a shield against the grief and the loss. I clung to it.
I walked for what felt like an eternity, the voices of my past and the whispers of my new masters weaving a tapestry of psychological torture around me. I learned to separate myself from it. I imagined the James who loved his parents, the James who felt a pang of longing when he heard Lucas laugh, and I locked him in a box deep inside my mind. I sealed the lid and refused to look inside.
The person who kept walking was someone else. Something else. Colder. Harder. More empty.
Eventually, my outstretched hand felt a change in the wall. It wasn't a different texture. It was a single, smooth stone, set apart from the rough rock around it. The white stone. I had found the passage.
I followed the new tunnel, the voices slowly beginning to fade, the oppressive hum lessening. A faint grey light appeared ahead. I stumbled towards it, my legs weak, my mind scoured raw.
I emerged into a small, circular chamber, identical to the one where we had started. A few other figures were already there, slumped against the walls. I counted them. Four. Including me, that made five. We had lost four more.
Kael stood waiting for us, his arms crossed. He looked at my face, at my eyes, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something that might have been approval in his gaze.
"You survived," he said, his voice the familiar, guttural rumble. "Good."
He stepped forward and tossed something at my feet. It landed with a metallic clatter. A rusty dagger, its edge pitted and dull.
He looked down at me, his face impassive. "Your physical training was a lie to test your endurance. Your mental training was a lie to test your will." He crouched, his face inches from mine. "The only real training is a life-or-death fight. Your first mission is tonight. Not against a demon. Against another trainee."
He gestured with his chin towards the other four survivors, who were now looking at each other with dawning horror.
"The one who enters the pit with you," Kael finished, his voice dropping to a low, final growl. "Only one of you gets breakfast tomorrow."