How long I fall is anyone's guess. Long enough that I can't make out the sky when I drag myself upward, cannot even try to escape because there is no sense of direction in this depthless hole. To try would be to dash myself against the stone, to fail before I'd even begun. Violent tremors wrack my limbs as the darkness bleeds into the crevices of my mind. I have been here before. I have lived in this darkness and watched as it destroyed me from the inside out and I have only just returned to the way I once was.

But I digress. The light, it is so faint at first, only existing in phantom blurs at the corner of my eyes. Perhaps it is my eyes adjusting to the dim, perhaps the glow grows stronger the longer I stand still. Sickly blue-white, damp and milky. It clings to the stone walls, gives me an outline I can work with. A larger space than I had realized, the dim glow dots and splashes on the rocks in random ways, a constellation I don't know how to read.

She has taken us down some side tunnel, heedless of my pleading for explanation. Not another word from her pale lips. Soon enough, I stop asking. My head is pounding with a dull staccato beat, too much has happened in too short of time. The little girl is leading me on, never looking back to see if I am still there. The dull phantasms that paint the walls throb and pulse in the corners of my vision.

Smiling vacantly. Staring at me with sunken eyes that I think have not blinked once since she has found me.