Everything fading into the mindscape.
Into the work that needed doing.
Into the chasm.
The moment Ryn brushed against its edge, they were plunged into ice-water. An unrelenting cold that burned through every nerve. Pressure crushing them down to a single point of awareness.
Then nothing at all.
Endless, terrible nothing that swallowed them whole.
-
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Ryn woke gasping, torn from the void like surfacing from too-deep water.
Cave walls solidified around them. Fire reduced to embers. Eskarith’s massive form blocking the entrance, his scales catching what little light remained. Real things. Solid. The kind of reality you could press your hands against and know it would hold.
The nothingness clung anyway.
It pressed against the edges of their mind like water finding cracks in stone, seeping in where it shouldn’t reach. They’d tried last night—Eskarith waiting patiently while Ryn closed their eyes and reached for the mindscape. And they’d fallen. Through torn connection into absence that had no bottom, no walls, nothing to catch against. The chasm had opened beneath them and they’d kept falling and falling and falling.
Consciousness fragmenting at the edges, and the terror of it so complete that Eskarith had to pull them back out before they shattered entirely.
Hours ago. It felt like seconds.
Ryn sat up, every muscle protesting. Pre-dawn darkness pressed against the cave entrance. No grey light yet. Just low embers and the steady rhythm of Eskarith’s breathing, deep enough that Ryn felt it traveling through stone.
You need rest. His presence moved through the bond carefully, testing how close he could come without triggering fresh panic.
“I can’t.” Ryn’s voice scraped out rough, like their throat had forgotten how to work properly. “Not again. Every time I close my eyes I’m back there—”
They stopped. Closed their eyes to test it, and immediately the void yawned open in memory—that terrible absence pulling at them, promising to swallow them whole if they let go of physical reality for even a second. Eyes snapped open with their heart hammering.
“I can’t go back in.” The admission came quieter, something that felt like failure. “And I cannot sleep either.”
Eskarith’s presence in the bond shifted—concern, understanding, frustration.
“I’m sorry.” Ryn’s hands clenched in the furs beneath them. “We’re running out of time and I can’t even—”
Then we will not. There was no sense in pushing for results, when their conscious could not access the mindscape in first place and the fraying bond had become a nightmare . Not today.
“But the council—”
Will wait. Eat.
Ryn picked up the waterskin because arguing felt like it would take more energy than they had. Cold water hit their throat and they drank until some of the tightness in their chest loosened slightly. Their stomach wasn’t interested in food, but Eskarith was right about their body needing fuel.
The meat tasted like ash in their mouth.
Eskarith observed them, the sound of his breath filling the cave with a steady rhythm that Ryn found themselves matching without deciding to—inhale, exhale, inhale.
But the restlessness wouldn’t settle. Ryn’s body vibrated with energy that had nowhere to go, every muscle tense with the need to move, to do something, to get away from the memory of falling through nothing with no bottom to catch them. Their hands kept finding their hair, pulling through the crystalline strands without thinking about it, needing the texture of something real beneath their fingers.
You should not be inside of your mind today. Move, explore.
Ryn stood there, trapped between the knowledge that Eskarith was right and the feeling that stopping—even for a day—meant giving up. Meant accepting that they couldn’t do this. That the bond would fail because Ryn wasn’t strong enough to face what lived in the void between them.
“What if I can’t?” The question came out small. “What if tomorrow I still can’t go back in? What if—”
Then tomorrow won’t be the day either. No hesitation in it. No doubt. And today is not the day to answer that question. You fell mid flight, you fell in the chasm between our mind. You should move until your body remembers it’s safe. Until the memory of falling stops controlling you.
This was the most Eskarith had spoken since the fall. The words came heavy, and blurred, as if spoken underwater.
Ryn looked toward the passages branching off from the main chamber. Three different directions leading into the cave system’s deeper reaches. They’d barely explored yesterday—just the main chamber and the immediate passages, enough to know the system was extensive.
Their hands found the medical supplies Lysa had sent. They unwrapped yesterday’s torn cloth from their palms without thinking about it, revealing skin that was angry and raw, the edges crusted where bleeding had stopped during the night. The metal rings from the fall had done their damage. Clean bandages wound around both hands automatically—firm enough to protect, loose enough to let them move. The simple physical task focusing attention on something concrete.
Something they could actually control.
They pulled a branch from the fire’s edge. Ember-bright at one end, the wood warm against their palm through the bandaging. Enough light to navigate by.
Eskarith’s presence in the bond shifted again—not quite approval, but something close. Acknowledgment that this was better than sitting still with terror.
When you’re ready to try again, he said slowly, I’ll be here.
Ryn turned toward the passages. Chose one at random—middle opening, neither left nor right. Didn’t matter which direction. Just that they were moving. That the restless energy screaming through their body had somewhere to go besides circling inside their own skull.
They stepped into darkness, and for the first time since waking, the nothingness’ grip on them loosened slightly.
Cave passages opened around Ryn in ways they hadn’t expected when they’d first entered the system yesterday, without light to see by.
Branches leading to branches. Some widening into chambers where pale crystal grew in luminous clusters along the walls, catching torchlight and holding it, giving it back altered. Others narrowing until Ryn had to turn sideways, shoulders scraping both walls at once. Mountain interior followed its own logic, carved by water that had found different paths over centuries. Ryn followed them deeper and deeper down, without thinking much about destination. Just moving. Staying ahead of the thoughts that wanted to catch up.
Eskarith’s presence sat distant—a thread of warmth somewhere higher, nothing more. Aware without actively watching. Enough connection to find the way back when needed, but giving Ryn the space to be alone with the restlessness driving them forward.
The movement helped. Not much, but some. Their body knew how to do this—navigate stone, read air currents, follow passages that might lead somewhere or might dead-end in solid rock. Simple. Physical. The kind of knowing that lived in muscles rather than thoughts.
Time passed in the rhythm of walking. Torch burning lower. Passages splitting and Ryn choosing their way at random—left here, right at the next junction, straight through when a chamber opened up with multiple exits. No map. No plan. Just the act of covering ground until their body stopped screaming to run.
Then a passage Ryn almost walked past.
They’d been following a wider corridor, one hand trailing along the wall out of habit, when their fingers found a change in texture. Smooth stone where everything else was rough. A smoothness that came from centuries of hands touching the same place, skin oils gradually polishing away the natural grain of rock.
Ryn stopped. Brought the torch closer.
A gap in the wall where two surfaces met at an odd angle. Barely wide enough to turn into. Easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention, and the stone around it told a story. Worn smooth on both sides of the opening. Countless hands reaching for purchase as they entered this passage. Countless people who had come this way before.
Something pulled at Ryn.
Coming from somewhere behind their ribs. An invitation. Or maybe a question being asked in a language Ryn’s body understood even if their mind didn’t have words for it.
Ryn’s hand explored the worn stone. Fingers sliding over the surface. The pull intensified—gentle but insistent, enticing.
They turned into the passage.
Stone closed in around them immediately. Ryn angled sideways, holding the torch high as they could, as the space compressed. Going down—steeper than they’d expected. Each step feeling for solid ground before committing weight to it. Their free hand still tracking on the wall. The passage descended in a spiral, walls close enough that Ryn could brace against both sides, torch licking the ceiling, working their way deeper into the mountain’s interior.
Soon, still air replaced the subtle currents that moved through the main cave system. Sealed. A smell arrived that Ryn hadn’t encountered in any of the other passages—mineral and musty, something that had been locked away for a long time and was only now being disturbed. Damp stone and trace metals and underneath it all, something Ryn couldn’t identify. Waiting.
The torch flame guttered in the stillness, as if the space itself was breathing. Shadows jumped and twisted across walls that pressed closer with each downward turn. Ryn’s breath came louder in the enclosed space, each inhale and exhale amplified by stone.
Almost turned back. Almost.
Then the passage opened.
Ryn stopped at the threshold, torch held high, and stared.
Space expanded around them in proportions that felt wrong. Enormous, yes, but that wasn’t what made Ryn’s skin prickle. It was taller than it had any right to be—ceiling vanishing into blackness the torch couldn’t reach, as if the chamber extended up into the mountain’s heart. Walls curved inward slightly, like cupped hands holding something precious. And overhead, visible now that Ryn’s eyes adjusted to the scale—two openings. Perfect circles cut through stone, revealing strips of grey dawn sky.
Ryn stepped forward onto the chamber floor. Raised the torch higher. It barely changed anything. The space swallowed light without effort, hungry for it in ways that made the flame seem small and inadequate.
Air pressure shifted around them. Ears popped from the sudden change, the close press of the narrow passage releasing all at once. Sound behaved strangely here. Ryn’s footstep hit stone and came back at them sharp and close, as if the chamber had leaned in to listen. But everything beyond that single echo vanished into silence. Absorbed.
And underneath everything—a hum.
Low enough that Ryn felt it before they heard it. In their teeth first, then settling into the base of their skull. A vibration that had nothing to do with their torch or the wind or anything human. It had been here before Ryn arrived. Before the passage. Before whatever hands had worn the stone smooth at the entrance.
It felt like it would be here long after Ryn left.
The more their eyes adjusted to the blue-grey light filtering through the overhead openings, the more details emerged from the shadows. And Ryn finally saw the far walls.
Crystal. Veins of it flowing floor to ceiling—massive formations thicker than Ryn was tall, with no visible beginning or end. Pale in the weak dawn light. Almost colorless. But something moved beneath the surface. Deep reds and golds buried in the stone, shifting sluggishly like embers banked under ash. Waiting for something.
Heavy air pressed against Ryn’s chest. Each breath took more effort than it should. The hum in their bones intensified—not louder, but deeper. A frequency that resonated with something in Ryn’s own body they hadn’t known was there.
Ryn moved deeper into the chamber, their hand reaching without permission.
The hum centered behind their ribs—deeper than muscle, deeper than bone. An ache that wasn’t quite pain yet, and still felt wrong in the way a dislocated joint felt wrong. Body recognizing something out of alignment before mind caught up.
Another step forward. They hadn’t meant to take it. Feet moving of their own accord, drawn toward the walls by something that bypassed conscious decision entirely.
Then clouds shifted overhead.
Keth emerged from behind their cover—visible through one of the circular openings, the red moon catching the edge of dawn. Its light fell through the openings and hit the crystal veins.
Color exploded.
Reds and golds sleeping in the formations woke all at once. Crimson blooming through pale stone like blood through water, spreading from where Keth’s light touched and racing along the veins faster than Ryn could track. Gold followed—deep and amber. The massive formations blazing with light that moved through them rather than reflecting off them.
Ryn’s hair flamed as well.
Light scattering off each filament in prismatic fragments that shifted across the chamber floor with every breath Ryn took, with every small movement of their head. Their own body responding to whatever the crystals were responding to. Recognizing something. Or being recognized.
Another step, and Ryn felt it behind their eyes now. In their jaw. The vibration building with nowhere to go, pressure increasing like water behind a dam.
Their hand moved the final distance. Fingertips meeting the crystal surface.
The chamber went dark.
All at once, as if something between Ryn and the light had closed its fist. Shadows swallowed everything. Keth’s red-gold glow vanished. The blazing crystal veins extinguished like snuffed candles. The darkness was total and immediate and wrong.
And Ryn saw.
Bypassing sight and bond both, images from a reservoir the crystal had held for longer than mountains had been mountains.
Water. Vast and black, deeper than any ocean Ryn had ever seen from dragonback. Depth that went down and down with no bottom, no light penetrating more than a few feet below the surface. A depth that spoke of things that would never see sun, never touch air, never know anything but pressure and darkness and cold.
A ship rode the swells. Wooden. Storm-battered. Riding waves that came from nowhere visible, heaving up and crashing down as if riding something massive beneath the surface. Deck slick with spray. Rigging creaking.
A man stood on deck. Hair loose in the wind, eyes crazed. Looking down into darkness.
And beneath the surface—rising.
Serpentine. Enormous. A body that went on and on, coiling through depth the way a river coils through valleys. Scales catching what little light the twins gave. Too big. Too long. The body kept coming, kept rising, and the ship above was nothing. A toy. A leaf on a shivering puddle.
Dragon-like, but no wings visible, body too continuous, moving through water with the ease of something that had been born to it.
The man shouted something, the words garbled by the blood coming out of his mouth. His visage split between anger and resignation. His gaze honing onto something hiding in the darkness behind the creature and his hands spasming around something hidden beneath his shirt.
Aria.
The vision fractured.
Edges breaking up like ice cracking, the images scattering into fragments that Ryn’s mind couldn’t hold onto. Water and ship and serpentine form and the man’s face all breaking apart, and underneath—
Pain.
Sharp and invasive in their head, pushing to get deeper with no care to the damage brought. The crystal wasn’t just showing them visions—it was searching for something. Reaching into Ryn’s consciousness trying to find what it needed there.
The bond flared in Ryn’s mind—sharp and sudden.
Eskarith registering the pain. Alarmed by what was happening to Ryn’s mind, his concern spiking through the connection.
The feeling of some alien presence digging into their mind intensified. Ryn gasped. The torch slipping from their hand, clattering against stone. Guttering, dead.
Trying and failing.
Ryn could feel that too—the mismatch. Whatever this place was waiting for, Ryn wasn’t it. Close enough that the chamber recognized them, maybe. Close enough that the crystals blazed in response to their presence. Yet something was off.
The vision had been meant for someone else. The search had been meant for someone else. And finding Ryn instead—wrong, inadequate, not enough—the crystal rejected them.
Pain spiked in their skull, sharp enough to white out their vision.
Ryn tore their hand away from the crystal, backing away blindly, and ran.
Through the passage entrance—scraping shoulders, following the incline back up by feel and memory and desperate need to get away.
The pull lessened with distance. The pain in their head receded with it. But Ryn kept running anyway, through passages that all felt the same in the torchless dark, taking turns at random, putting as much stone between themselves and the crystal chamber as their body could manage.
Still the humming persisted in their bones, even after the passages had widened again and the air had changed back to normal cave air. Ryn pressed against a wall, breathing too hard, the darkness total and absolute around them.
Lost. No sense of direction. No idea which passages led back to the main chamber and which went deeper into the mountain’s maze.
But away. At least away from whatever lived in that chamber. Away from the pull and the pain and the terrible sensation of being recognized and rejected all at once.
Ryn slid down the wall. Let their breathing slow. Let the panic drain away enough that they could think again.
The vision stayed, burned into awareness. Water and ship and the serpentine form rising from impossible depths. The man’s face. Aria. All of it fragmentary, broken, like trying to remember a dream that scattered the moment you reached for it. Yet real. Undeniably real.
As they got used to the darkness, they realized they could see the faint outline of their hand. Light from somewhere ahead. Warmer than what they had encountered until now. Natural. It would be full daylight by now.
Ryn followed it, hoping to find themselves back in the main cave system.
-
to be continued…
Read Mountain Bond Part One - The Severance or Download it as an ebook |
Start from the beginning of Part II or Read the previous chapter |
Discover more about the Dragon-Human Bond ||
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