His boots crunched on loose rock as he led the two miners upward. The tunnel's air grew thicker. Every few minutes, the darkness swallowed a strange, distant clatter or a wet slap, sounds that echoed without source. Tom flinched each time, and Jace kept his shoulders hunched, his gaze darting into the black side-paths. But no new goblins appeared.
Lucian broke the tense quiet. "How did it happen anyway?" His voice was low, "The mine fell to goblins. How?"
The two miners exchanged a look Lucian caught in the corner of his eye. Tom's mouth opened, then closed. Jace stared at the path ahead, his jaw tight.
"Come on," Lucian said, irritation creeping into his tone. "I just led you out of a cave full of corpses. You can tell me."
Jace sighed, "It… it was the night shift, milord."
Lucian's pace didn't falter. "And?"
"The watches. There aren't enough men for a full rotation. Not with the ore shipments thin and the money…" Jace trailed off.
Lucian waited a beat. "So someone was watching, yes or no?"
"S'posed to be," Tom muttered, his voice barely audible over the shuffle of their steps. "But… not always."
Lucian stopped, turning to face them. The pale light from the tunnel mouth was just visible ahead. His face was shadowed, eyes sharp. "Not always?"
Tom swallowed. "The foreman… he let us have… a bit of fun. After the day's haul."
Fun. Lucian turned the word over in his mind, tasting it. He'd heard the term before in the old life, in hospital rooms where nurses whispered about patients who 'wanted to have some fun' with their medicines.
"What kind of fun?" Lucian asked, his voice flat.
Jace winced. "A party. The foreman brought a few barrels of cheap ale. Said it helped morale. Said it was fine, long as the work got done before dawn."
Lucian let the silence stretch. The dripping water seemed louder now.
"In the caves?" he finally asked.
Tom nodded quickly, desperate for it to be over. "We'd light a small fire near the main shaft. Drink. Sing a little. Sleep in shifts."
They slept in the mines. Drunk, defenseless, with only a handful of men pretending to watch. The goblins didn't need to be strong or coordinated. They just needed a darkness to creep into, and a handful of sleeping bodies to cut down.
He turned back to the tunnel mouth. "Morale of the story, the overseer is a dumb-ass," he muttered to himself, "And how both of you got captured exactly?"
Neither miner answered.
Lucian started walking again. "Forget it... When we reach the manor, you two will tell Hildebrand himself exactly what happened. But you will not mention Finn. He is missing. That's all."
The tunnel widened, opening into a secondary cavern. A flicker of movement made Lucian's hand twitch toward his empty belt, but the shapes on the floor were inert. Bodies, goblins, littered the ground, a chaotic trail leading deeper into the darkness.
Lucian crouched, inspecting one corpse. The wounds were deep, clean cuts, not the sloppy thrashing of a panic-stricken miner. "Did you guys have weapons hidden?" he asked, his voice low.
Tom shook his head. "Just tools. Pickaxes. Shovels. Nothing sharp like this."
Don't pickaxes counts as sharp?
Jace stepped closer, his breath shallow. "We were all drunk. Even the foreman. If there was a fight, we'd have been butchered."
Lucian's gaze swept the cavern. Dozens of dead goblins, scattered like leaves in a storm. He straightened up, "Everyone was drunk," he repeated, "Every single watchman, every miner. All asleep." He looked at the dead goblins again. "And yet, these guys got cut down. Who did this?"
The miners stood silent, eyes wide. They had no answer.
"Fine… Which way is the exit?" Lucian demanded, his patience thinning.
Both miners pointed toward a narrow archway on the far side, "There, milord. The main shaft."
Lucian took a step toward it, then froze. A sound cut through the cavern, a ragged, desperate gasp. From a dark branch tunnel to their left, a figure burst into the light.
It was a goblin. Short, wiry, and bleeding from a wound that drenched its side in dark fluid. It didn't advance. It didn't even hiss a threat. It just stared at them, its red eyes wide with pure terror, and scrambled backward on its hands and knees, trying to flee back into the darkness from which it came.
Tom flinched back. Jace grabbed Lucian's arm, his grip surprisingly strong. "What is it doing?"
Lucian watched the creature, his brow furrowing. Fear, not aggression. It was fleeing something. Or from someone.
He took a careful step forward, ignoring Jace's grip. The goblin shrieked, a high, thin sound, and turned to run, stumbling over its own feet in its haste.
Lucian didn't follow. He stood still, listening.
"Something scared it," Lucian stated, his voice calm despite the chill spreading down his spine. "Something that is a bigger threat in his eyes than us."
The goblin's terrified squeal cut off abruptly as a slender dagger thudded into its skull. It collapsed face-first onto the cavern floor, dead before it hit the ground. The blade had come from the same dark branch the creature was fleeing. Lucian didn't move.
He held up a hand to Tom and Jace, a silent command that sent them scrambling behind a pile of rubble, their breathing shallow. Lucian stayed where he was, his weight settled into the balls of his feet. The fear that had driven him earlier was a distant thing now. He was already dead once today. What was one more? And if this thing was to kill him, it would leave room to escape for the two miners.
Footsteps echoed from the branch tunnel. A shadow marched into the light, long and distort. Then the figure emerged.
Lucian's breath hitched. It was Yelena.
She moved with economy, her gray eyes scanning the cavern, lingering on the pile of dead goblins before finally locking onto him. Her face, usually a mask of cold indifference, showed a flash of genuine surprise. Her lips parted slightly. She held a long, single-edged sword at her side, its tip dripping dark fluid.
She didn't ask for explanations. Her gaze swept him from head to toe, lingering on the cut across his palm and the dark stains on his tunic. She took a single step forward, her focus entirely on him.
"Lucian," she said, her voice clipped, all business. "Your hand."
He looked down at the bleeding cut. He'd forgotten about it. "It's fine."
Yelena sheathed her sword in one fluid motion and reached into a pouch at her belt, pulling out a clean strip of cloth. She didn't ask for permission; she simply took his wrist and wrapped the gash with efficient movements. She was a ex soldier after all.
"You're injured," she said. Not a question.
"Goblin cut," Lucian replied, watching her work. "I'm alive." Even if I did die once…
Yelena tied off the bandage, her knuckles brushing his skin. Only then did she look up, meeting his eyes. Whatever surprise had been there earlier was gone now, replaced with something calmer.
"I was instructed to meet you at the mine two days ago," she said. "You left before my arrival. Your father was notified. A search party was formed, with me at its head."
Two days.
For him, it had been hours. His death. The memory replay. Waking up. The goblins. The fighting. All of it had blurred together into one long, exhausting stretch. But for the world, a day and a half had simply vanished. The time he spent trapped inside his own dying memories had bled into reality.
He had been missing.
Presumed dead, or worse.
"Where are the miners?" Yelena asked, breaking the silence. Her eyes were already shifting toward the rubble-strewn tunnels.
"They're back there," Lucian said. His voice sounded far away, even to himself. "Safe. Mostly. One of them… didn't make it."
Yelena nodded once, her expression giving nothing away. "I cleared the entrance tunnels. There were a few stragglers." She tilted her head toward the goblin corpses scattered nearby. "I thought they had taken you. I assumed I was too late."
"Not too late," Lucian said. The words felt thin as they left his mouth. He looked down at his freshly bandaged hand. "It's… fine."
He hesitated, then added, quieter, almost to himself, "Maybe even better than fine."