Chapter 4: The First Cut
The tunnel was a throat. Narrow, wet, and constricting. They stumbled through it, half-crawling, propelled by adrenaline and the fading shrieks behind them. The only light came from the faint, dying glow on Milly’s hands and clothes where the jellyfish fluid smeared, casting ghostly shapes on the walls.
Y/n moved stiffly, her left arm clamped against her side. In the chaotic retreat, a shade’s claw, more like a fragment of solidified despair, had raked across her ribs. It hadn’t felt like a physical wound at first. It felt like a sudden, localized winter.
After what felt like an hour of blind, scrambling progress, the tunnel widened into a pocket of stagnant air. A dead end, but a larger one. The sounds of pursuit had dissolved into the general drip and sigh of the mountain.
Milly slumped against the wall, her chest heaving. “Okay. Okay. We’re not dead. That’s a positive.”
Y/n didn’t answer. She leaned against the opposite wall, her head bowed, the scythe held loosely in her right hand. Its blades seemed to absorb what little light there was.
“Y/n?”
“I’m functional.” The words were gritted out.
Milly pushed herself up, the blue glow on her hands illuminating the space between them. She could see it now—dark, viscous fluid, not quite blood, soaking through the side of Y/n’s tank top. It seemed to smoke faintly in the cool air.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s ichor. It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t look fine.” Milly stepped closer. The casual, almost flippant bravery she’d mustered in the cavern was gone, stripped away by the sight of that wound. This was real damage. “Let me see.”
“Milly, don’t.” Y/n turned her face away, but it was a weak protest. The pain was evident in the tight line of her jaw.
“Shut up. You just carved up a bunch of ghosts for me. The least I can do is look at it.” Milly’s tone was all false briskness, the one she used when a dig volunteer sprained an ankle and she had to keep them calm. She reached out, her fingers hovering over the torn fabric. “Can I?”
A long pause. Then, a barely perceptible nod.
Milly carefully peeled the wet fabric back. The gash was long, from just below her armpit down across the defined muscles of her side. The edges weren’t clean like a knife wound; they were ragged and livid, tinged with a greyish, necrotic hue. The ichor that seeped from it was the color of old wine under moonlight.
“Jesus,” Milly breathed.
“It’s a shadescar. Their touch doesn’t cut flesh. It… unravels it. A little.” Y/n’s voice was strained. “It will heal. It just takes longer. And it hurts like a bastard.”
Milly rummaged in her small, battered backpack. She pulled out a mostly-clean bandana and her plastic water bottle. “Right. Well, I don’t have any divine ambrosia or whatever, but I’ve got one-point-five liters of Evian and this. It’s clean. Ish.”
Before Y/n could argue, Milly poured water over the wound. The ichor thinned, running in dark rivulets down Y/n’s torso. Y/n hissed, a sharp intake of breath that was the first truly vulnerable sound Milly had heard her make.
“Sorry, sorry,” Milly muttered, patting the area gently with the bandana. The act was intimately practical. Her fingers pressed against the cold, hard plane of Y/n’s stomach, felt the powerful muscles jump under the skin. This close, she could smell the unique scent of her—damp earth, ozone, and something sweet, like pomegranate seeds crushed understone.
“Why did you do that?” Y/n asked suddenly, her voice low.
“Do what? The jellyfish thing? Seemed obvious. Big light show. They didn’t like it.”
“Not that.” Y/n finally turned her head to look at her. In the gloom, her eyes were just two points of faint green embers. “You refused to run. I told you to run. You never do what I tell you.”
Milly finished dabbing, folding the bandana into a pad and pressing it gently against the worst part of the gash. She held it there, applying pressure with her palm. “You were busy. And… I couldn’t. Just leaving you there in the dark with those… things.” She shrugged, a helpless gesture. “Not my style.”
“Your style is going to get you killed.” There was no anger in Y/n’s words. Only a profound, weary fear.
“Maybe. But your style of grimly shouldering the entire world alone looks fucking exhausting.” Milly met her gaze, not flinching from the otherworldly glow. “You hesitated back there. With the blood. Why?”
Y/n looked away again, focusing on the dark ceiling. “Because mortality is not a theory to me. It is a fragile, fleeting flame. I have held it as it gutters out. My mother… she is Spring. She returns. You?” Her eyes flicked back to Milly. “You wouldn’t. A shade’s touch would not just kill you, Milly. It would unmake you. There would be nothing left to even ferry across the Styx. The thought of being the cause of that, even indirectly…” She trailed off.
The admission hung in the damp air, bigger than the cave around them.
Milly’s hand was still pressed against Y/n’s side. She could feel the slow, steady pulse of life—or whatever passed for it—beneath her palm. It was reassuringly solid. “I’m tougher than I look.”
A sound escaped Y/n. A choked, rusty thing that, after a second, Milly recognized as the beginning of a laugh. It died quickly. “I know.”
They stayed like that for a long moment, the pressure on the wound the only conversation. The immediate terror had receded, leaving a raw, shared exhaustion in its place.
“We can’t stay here,” Y/n said finally, her voice regaining some of its strength. “This pocket is safe, but it’s a trap if they find the entrance. We need to keep moving. There’s another way out.”
“Of course there is,” Milly said, removing her hand. The bandana was already soaked through with dark ichor. “Lead the way, Achilles.”
Y-n pushed herself upright, testing her weight. She winced but didn’t falter. She glanced at Milly’s hands, still faintly glowing. “Wash that off in a pool ahead. It’s a beacon we don’t need.”
They moved on, slower now. The tunnel began to slope upwards. The air changed, losing the heavy salt and death scent, gaining a dry, mineral smell. After another twenty minutes of quiet walking, a new sound filtered back—not the sea, but wind. Fresh, moving air.
They rounded a bend.
A slit of blinding, white-gold light cut through the darkness ahead—a crack leading to the outside world. The relief was so potent it felt like a physical blow.
Y/n stopped, putting a hand out to halt Milly. “Wait. Listen.”
They listened. Just the wind, whistling through the narrow exit.
“It’s clear,” Y/n said. She turned to Milly. Her face, lit from behind by the distant daylight, was all sharp angles and shadow. The warrior was back, but something softer lingered around her eyes. “The exit is treacherous. A cliffside scramble. You’ll need to follow my exact footsteps.”
Milly nodded, wiping her now-clean hands on her jeans. “Just get me to a place where I can get a souvlaki and a pint. I’ll follow you anywhere.”
Y/n studied her for a second longer, then gave a single, slow nod. She turned toward the light, a dark silhouette against the promise of the world.
As she took the first step, a low rumble passed through the mountain. Not from behind them, from below. A shower of fine dust and pebbles trickled from the ceiling of the tunnel.
Far, far beneath their feet, in the roots of the world, something ancient shifted in its sleep.