The cavern shuddered again.
A deep, groan from the ice above sent a fresh cascade of powdery frost drifting down on them. Kain barely breathed. Every sound felt like it could be the last thing that they ever heard.
A single wrong move, a whisper too loud, and the entire space could come crashing down, crushing them before they even had the chance to run.
After this round of shaking, the silence that followed was thicker than the ice above them. Kain's pulse roared in his ears, his breath coming in short, controlled bursts—as if exhaling too hard might bring the entire mountain down on their heads.
Then—
A voice, muffled but unmistakably alarmed, filtered through the pencil-thin hole in the ceiling. "You… alive?" The words were stilted, heavily accented since he was attempting to speak a language he was unfamiliar with instead of relying on Kain to translate, but the concern was genuine.
