The ceiling always drips here.
It's not water. Not really. Water has weight. Purity. A beginning and an end. This stuff? This stuff just clings. It slides down the walls like it's listening. Like it knows you're trying not to make noise.
My name doesn't matter.
Down here, we stopped using names the way people above used to. Names are dangerous. Names carry weight, and weight makes noise—and noise is the fastest way to get us killed.
But I keep one for myself.
Tera.
It used to be short for something. Or maybe someone. I don't remember anymore.
It's day 1,194 since I went below.
That's how we track time now. Not in months. Not in years. In how many days you've survived.
The Underground isn't a place—it's a wound. Cut deep into the bones of the old world. Left to fester when the rest of the surface went cold. We built tunnels and homes down here. We carved safety into the earth with our fingernails and prayers.
But we're not safe.
Not really.
You can't be safe when the sky has eyes.
The Dracus patrols don't just fly. They scan. They listen. I've seen entire caverns turned to slag because someone above sneezed too loud, or cracked open a ventilation hatch at the wrong hour. I've lost people. Everyone has.
We stay hidden.
We stay low.
We breathe through filters and speak through tapped metal lines that vibrate like Morse code in the dark.
Every night, the elders light the same old relics—soul-lamps carved from the last days of the fallen sanctums. The light they give off is faint. Blue. Cold. But it's still light.
And every night, someone stares at that ceiling and wonders if it'll be the last time they get to.
Lately, more people have started whispering again.
Not in fear.
In hope.
They say someone's coming.
A Runner, but not like the ones who abandoned us. One who doesn't answer to the Guilds. One who doesn't need NULL to survive the surface.
They say he fights with a blade that remembers everything the Dracus tried to erase.
They say he's not afraid of the sky.
They say he was made in the dark, and now he's coming back through it to finish what they started.
I don't know if I believe any of it.
But when I stare at the ceiling, and the false wind whistles through the vents like a sigh from the old world...
I pray anyway.
Because if someone doesn't come soon...
There won't be anyone left to remember why we hid in the first place.
I pass the old sentry post on my way back to the lower quarters. No one mans it anymore.
Not since Alen.
He was the last to volunteer. Said he liked the quiet up there, liked feeling close to the surface. I think it made him feel taller, stronger—like just by being near the old world, he was still part of it.
They found what was left of him two days later. Just the scent of ash and a smear across the ceiling.
No one goes near that tunnel now.
We don't even seal it. What's the point? The Dracus don't use doors. When they come, they come like thunder—immediate. Violent. Final.
I keep walking.
The main chamber of the quarter opens up around me, and for a moment, I can almost pretend it's not hell down here. Small lights strung across the ceiling like constellations. The old kind—handmade, wire-fed, humming faintly from patched batteries and salvaged junk.
Kids run past me, barefoot and reckless. They're too young to remember the last purge. They don't know what it feels like to be the only survivor in a three-house radius. And I hope they never do.
The kitchens are active tonight. People lined up, bowls in hand. Root stew, maybe. If we're lucky, there'll be bone broth. If we're really lucky, the power won't flicker halfway through dinner.
A few people nod to me as I pass.
Some look away.
That's how it is when you've been here too long. You become part of the walls. Familiar, but not safe. Everyone wonders when you'll be the next to vanish.
I stop by the old message board. It's not paper anymore. Paper's a memory. This thing is metal—scavenged from a decommissioned mining rig. Etched over and over with news, rumors, graffiti.
And prayers.
Lots of prayers.
Some written. Some carved. Some just finger-traced in grease and dust.
Most are the same.
"Find us."
"Bring the sky back."
"Save us."
I add mine beneath the others.
One word.
Matte.
The name doesn't mean much to me. Not yet. But it's what they're whispering through the tunnels now. Not just as a person—but as a possibility.
A myth with a heartbeat.
I don't know if he's real.
But I know we need something.
The air down here is running out. Not just the oxygen. The will.
And myths, even when they're lies, can keep people breathing a little longer.
So I write the name.
And I walk away.
Because hope doesn't have to be loud.
Sometimes, it just has to be written down by someone who still believes the ceiling won't fall in tomorrow.
Back in my corner of the quarters—Unit 9B, a rusted-out maintenance tunnel repurposed into something between a closet and a coffin—I sit on my cot and watch the soul-lamp flicker.
It's almost out again.
Everything down here is always almost out.
Supplies. Light. Breath. Faith.
They say The Underground used to be thriving. Back when the Guilds still traded with us. Before the Dracus made examples of the upper caverns. Before we became ghosts in our own world.
I remember when Scarlett came through. It was months ago. Maybe longer. She didn't stay. Said she had to find someone. Someone important. Her eyes looked like she'd seen the edge of the sky—and wasn't sure it was still there.
Some people down here talk about her like a legend now. Another maybe-savior. Another knife-edge of hope we never got to hold.
But now they say she's found him.
The one with the blade.
The one the NULL doesn't devour.
The one who survived the Wastelands. Who faced the High Captains and didn't break. Who killed Ren.
That last part gets whispered like a secret, because no one really believes Ren could be killed.
But hope doesn't need proof.
Just enough.
Outside my door, someone laughs—sharp, sudden. Probably Mari again, cracking jokes with the runners. She's one of the few who still knows how. She lost a leg to a NULL trap three years ago and started making jokes that day. I used to think it was denial. Now I think it's the only thing that's keeping her sane.
I envy that.
I reach beneath the cot and pull out the only thing I own that still connects me to the world above—a shard of mirrored glass. Warped, scratched, no real reflection anymore. Just glints of who I used to be, twisted into angles that don't fit.
I stare at it anyway.
And I whisper the name.
Matte.
Not because I believe he's coming.
But because maybe if I say it enough, he'll believe it when he arrives.
Because when the time comes, when he stands in front of us—cracked but standing, haunted but alive—I want him to know that someone was down here, waiting.
Not just to be saved.
But to remember him.