The sound comes again: a slow, wet inhale.
Not water. Not wind. Something breathing.
I freeze. The rock in my left hand turns heavy. My right hand finds the sabre's grip, not drawing yet. The dark ahead shifts—low to the ground, pale against pale.
It steps into the weak spill of light from the ceiling crack. Four legs, long body, white hide stretched thin over muscle. No eyes—just milky scars where they should be. Whiskers like wire sweep the air. Its jaws open and I see too many teeth, all the same size, like a zipper made of knives.
A cave lurker. Blind. Hunts by sound and air.
Good. That's honest. Not a dragon. Not a boss fight. Just teeth and meat and a job.
I slide my back to the wall. Angle right—don't stand centerline. Let it pass, make it show me something dumb.
It tests the air again. Whiskers twitch. Head lifts. It hears where I was, not where I am.
I slow my breathing until I barely move. Count. One. Two. Three. On four I toss the stone to the left. It clacks off rock and skitters.
The lurker snaps its head toward the noise and surges. Fast.
I step in the other way.
Boxing first—outside angle, head off the line, shoulders tight. The move is old muscle memory: past the teeth, onto the neck. My forearm frames under its jaw, my shoulder drives the side of its head, hips low, feet set. I don't draw steel yet; I don't want metal pinned between us. I jam my knee into the shoulder joint like a Muay Thai check and shove.
It doesn't give like a man. It rolls, slamming its ribs into the wall to shake me off. Hide cold and slick. My forearm skids. It snaps past my face by a thumb's width. Stale meat breath, a tooth catching my sleeve. Cloth tears.
Easy, I tell nobody.
We're clinched—my world. I switch grips without thinking: wrestling underhook on its foreleg, whizzer pressure with my shoulder, head post to keep the muzzle from finding my throat. It's not built like a man, so jiu-jitsu strangulations are useless; there's no neck to circle the way I want. I try to lever the jaw like a crossface and it thrashes, slamming us both into stone.
I need weight. I need grip.
The thought arrives with the taste of cold. Not a decision—more like a door swinging open. Something in the air slides into me when I breathe the way you do before a trigger pull. The chill drops behind my ribs.
Down, I tell my legs.
It answers. Badly, at first.
It's too much. My feet glue to the floor and my timing turns to mud. My next step is heavy and late. The lurker swings its head and I feel teeth brush my sleeve again. That's the wrong way to use this. Power isn't useful if it tramples your rhythm.
Reset. Boxing breath. In through the nose, slow. I don't flood myself with cold; I sip it.
Pulse, not pour.
The lurker gathers itself and dives low, trying to scythe me off my legs. This time I drop just a notch and pulse the weight only when my heel touches stone. The floor keeps me for that one beat and then lets me move again.
Now.
I catch its foreleg above the paw. My fingers go numb across the pads as the cold pools there, but I don't squeeze; I frame bones to bone like an escrima trap. For a heartbeat the limb goes slack, a muscle after a cramp. Its weight stutters. Window.
Judo takes over. Hip in. De-ashi barai won't work on paws, so I trade it for a rough osoto—my thigh blocks high against its limb while my shoulder turns. The throw is ugly in books and perfect in caves. Its own momentum trips it over my leg and I drag its shoulder into the ground. Air blasts out of it in a grunt that sounds wrong in a mouth full of knives.
Stay.
I don't try to muscle the pin. I pulse the cold again, just in my posting hand and the knee riding its jaw hinge, and my body feels heavier exactly where it must. The sabre slides free without a song. I jam the flat across its throat and lean with everything I've got. It thrashes. Claws screech grooves in stone. Teeth snap at air inches from my face. I keep my head posted, wrestling 101, and don't let it get an angle.
The edge bites, but shallow. Hide's tough where it counts.
Fine. Adapt.
Hard strikes don't work; attack joints and seams. I bully its muzzle up with my knee like a dirty clinch, switch my blade to a short escrima grip along the spine for control, then drive the point under the jaw and rake back across the soft hinge behind the mandible. Hot blood sheets over my hands, hissing on stone. It convulses. I shoulder in and hold. One, two, three. Wait for the second ending that comes after the first.
It goes still.
I don't move for three breaths. Some fights think about getting back up when you think about relaxing.
When I ease off, my hands shake now that they're allowed. The cold that gave me precision slips out of me like water dumped from a bucket with a crack in it. My legs remember they're young and not mine. I sit down hard. The cave floor is rude. It doesn't care.
The lurker lies half-curled, chest hitching, then not. I stare at the corpse and listen for guilt or triumph. Neither shows. Only the old soldier's relief: the thing that wanted to eat me won't.
I take inventory by habit. No cuts. No bites. The sabre's guard is nicked. Sleeve torn. My left palm is pale, a frost-print fading as I watch. My breath steadies. My heart slows from banging to knocking to something that might pass for normal.
So darkflow isn't a faucet you open and become a superhero. More like sand you pour where you need a sandbag. Too much and you drown in it; too little and it doesn't matter. Timing over volume. Placement over pride.
I test that theory on empty air. Small things. A boxing step with a pulse only in the heel. Crisp. A Muay Thai low kick feint dies halfway through because the beast can't see and kicks make noise; I file that away. A blade feint on the exhale with a touch of cold only in my fingers—steadier, yes, but numbness creeps in if I hold it. So: no holding. Short pulses, then off. Structure first, then current.
I try a quick chain for the next time something blind and rude decides I'm lunch. Outside slip. Anchor the front foot for a breath. Underhook if it closes. Hip turn. Knee ride on the hinge. Edge through the seam. Every pulse timed to contact, not movement. The cave watches me practice, unimpressed.
Pain shows up late the way it always does. My forearm will be a rainbow in an hour where the jawbone ground along it. The numb patches in my fingers prickle as they thaw. My back complains about the full-body shove against stone. All acceptable bills.
I wipe the sabre on the lurker's hide and slide it home. The sound is small and neat. My shirt sticks to my back. I roll my shoulders. The joint clicks the way it has since a judo match in a gym that smelled like bleach and sweat years ago.
I could cut the beast for bone and tooth. I could experiment. Not yet. I don't know the rules of this place beyond what my brother laughed about between slices of cold pizza. He loved systems that told you what to do with confidence. I loved walking out of rooms everyone else swore were deathtraps. Different hobbies. Same goal.
The cave breathes. So do I. In. Out. The rock smells like wet coin. Somewhere water keeps time.
I lean back until the wall finds me and then farther until it keeps me. The pulse in my neck slows. The cold under my ribs lingers like a houseguest who doesn't know if they're invited to stay. I close my eyes. One beat. Two. Three.
Not dying in a random dungeon, I tell the ceiling crack. Not today.
A thought drifts up, small and irritating: if that cold can make my heel stay, maybe it can make other things stay. Knots. Stitches. People. Dangerous thought. Put it aside. Learn to walk before you sprint.
I open my eyes and stare at the corpse again. Bones are bones. There's a dog shape hiding in there if you squint. The idea sits in my head like a stone dropped in still water. Rings go out. I ignore them. For now.
The numb patch in my left palm finishes fading. I flex my fingers. The cave stays a cave. The dead thing stays dead.
I let my head tip back, let fatigue wash through, let memory try to climb out of the places I keep it. Lila's voice telling me to come home with nothing fancy, just myself. Nora's careful questions. Max's dinosaur insisting on rawr. I breathe around all of it and don't drown.
I close my eyes for one beat, then two, then three—
Ding.