Tyros was running in his neighborhood, his mom was sculpting something in front of their home, she had a smile on her face. He couldn’t exactly see her face, it was blurred. He simply knew. He was being chased by Erely. She was one of them, a kid taken in by the people of Sunhaven. She was taller than him, with golden curly hair. Like them, she had amber eyes. Tyros was giggling while running and escaping the young girl when she fell. That’s when he saw it, she wasn’t having fun, she was despairing. She tried to reach out to him with one of her hands, her eyes pleading for help. Right when he tried to reach her hands, Nici and Niror appeared on the floor. All three of them with the same look in their eyes, they needed his help. He was about to reach them when, out of nowhere, a big monster made of rock, five meter tall appeared. His jaw opened and right when he was about to eat them, Tyros woke up.

He bolted from the floor and pain assailed him. The pain mainly came from his back, it made him lie down again as he tried to remember where he was. He could feel that his bottom half was immersed in some kind of puddle while the upper part of his body was on the floor. As he remembered the situation, he tried to analyze the state of his body. His lower back was in pain, it could be permanent for all he knew. He tried to move his legs and his hands, all his limbs were responsive and unlike what he remembered, they all seemed healthy.

Slowly, he sat down, bringing his legs out of the puddle. He noticed that the water was pinkish. The unusual color came from the pink stalactite popping out of the water. This weird kind of crystal let out a soft light, which allowed him to see around.

He was extremely thirsty. He didn’t want to drink from this, it looked unhealthy but at the same time, his throat was so dry it was painful.

“just a little bit” Tyros muttered to himself.

He drank a little bit, kept it in his mouth to taste it before swallowing. The water didn’t really taste good but it was bearable. As soon as he swallowed he realized his mistake: his throat was on fire. He coughed and gagged, tears forming on his eyes.

His feelings overwhelmed him, once more he cried all he had, wishing for all his misery to end. It was all so unfair and unrealistic. He was only 11 years old, and because some bad guys decided to attack them, moreover by surprise, he had to endure all of this hell. He wallowed for a few minutes before he became conscious that he needed to do something, he couldn’t stay here.

He managed to stand up, his lower back complaining, but he still got up and started to walk. He could notice a speck of light coming from very, very far upward. He wouldn’t be able to climb there, he had to find another way. Tyros decided to keep going down, the only option available to him in his condition.

Tyros kept walking in the cavern, trying to keep his tough focus on the present and not on how he ended up in this situation. The light was scarce as the more he went on, the less crystals were present. He kept going anyway, not like he has any other options. He didn’t know for how long he walked, but he felt like he never walked for this long in all his life. And after so many hours walking, he heard water. He rushed toward the sound of the rushing water to find a narrow underground river. He ran toward the rapids and drank, feeling like it was the best water he had ever tasted in all his life. While bringing his hands toward his mouth to greedily drink this divine liquid he glanced at his hands, they were dirtier than they have ever been, and that was saying something. There was some blood on one of them mixed with dirt and gods know what else. Tyros washed himself in the water the best he could, luckily it wasn’t winter, or he would already have died because of the cold. When he went to retrieve his pants, two beady eyes were staring right at him. Tyros froze, his mouth opened, astonished by the situation. And he laughed. After being chased by threats so humongous that they didn’t even seem real, watching a rat trying to steal his stuff looked rather comic. He picked up a rock and aimed at the rat, chasing him away. Watching the rat run away, he realized how hungry he was. Maybe he should have tried to hunt it. Maybe not, he hasn't fallen this far yet. But if there were animals, there must be food in this cavern. Tyros dressed up and kept following the stream, his eyes wandering around trying to find something he could eat. The vegetation was scarce, he could see some roots here and there but he didn’t recognize them. The main issue was that he would need to make a fire to eat most of the things he knew about. Tyros didn’t know how to make a fire.

The best solution was to keep going on, if he managed to find a way out, things would resolve themselves.

Therefore Tyros kept walking for hours. As the luminosity in the cavern was not linked to the sun he had no idea to know for how long he kept going on. But as he went on, the number of cristal illuminating the cavity went down. The darker it became, the more tiredness overwhelmed him. He decided to find a corner near the walls to lay down and curl in a ball. He was so tired that he fell asleep quickly despite the despair he felt.

This time Tyros didn’t dream, but his sleep was not as restful as he would have liked. First, even if he wasn’t frozen to death, the cold was barely bearable and woke him up a few times. When trying to fall asleep again, the noise of the cavern was nerve wracking. He could hear some rodents nearby. He wasn’t afraid of them, not when he was awake, but sleeping near those pests was hard.

Finally he woke up with a rat the size of his leg walking on him and sniffing around like he was a dead body. The boy jumped and tried to kick the offender but failed miserably. He noticed that his back pain was barely noticeable anymore.

Tyros was famished, and almost let it get the better of him when he spotted a bunch of mushrooms. He didn’t know which mushrooms were good and which weren’t.

The boy kept walking along the stream until the crystals were so few that it was too dark to see the ground.

Slowly and painfully he kept going until, after more than a hour stumbling in the dark, he noticed some light further away.

When hope surged again, Tyros realized how desperate he had been since being chased away from the village, finally he could literally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

He threw away his mushrooms and rushed toward the light, it was a small opening toward the exterior. He began crawling in the shallow water, the opening was barely twenty inches. When he finally made it outside, he became aware that his hurdles were not over. He was at the top of a waterfall, the flow of the water should have tipped him, but in his excitement he didn’t make the connection.

He decided to take a breather. He laid on his back, squinting his eyes and trying to get used to the light coming from the sun. After a few minutes, he gave himself some ted talk:

“Alright Tyros, you can do this, you are this close to surviving this whole mess.”

He got on his knees, standing up was too scary, the more contact he had with the ground the safer he felt.

He gazed at the landscape. He could see the river lazily making its way toward the horizon. On his left was a forest, not lush enough to be in the Plateau. Finally on the right of the river he noticed a big house, easily larger than the biggest building in Sunhaven. He didn’t see anyone, but if there was a building, there were people. He could be rescued.

He crawled toward the edge and looked down, he was something like fifteen feet up. He could make the jump, he simply feared possible rocks hidden under water.

He was not a fervent believer, like his mom was, but he prayed and decided to stop thinking.

He stood up slowly, took a deep breath, and jumped.