Deep beneath the earth, where miners stained black with the work of their hands had once bartered their lives for anthracite rock, all was silence, and had been for over a century. Unknown to the miners, their picks and hammers had stopped centimeters away from a bubble in the rock. Who knows what would have happened if they had broken through that thin shell. Certainly this tale would have a very different beginning - and ending.
But the coal stopped, and so the picks stopped as well, and the mine had closed. It sat, empty and forgotten, until one day the silence was broken.
Deep beneath the earth, a heart began to beat.
He woke to darkness. The only sound he heard was his own breathing, harsh in his ears. His hands curled, and he felt stone beneath his fingers.
For a brief moment, he remembered nothing. Not his name, or where he was or how he got there. Then a voice floated through his memory:
You will sleep. You will pass the centuries in nothingness. And when the spirits will it, the time will come: Your salvation. Your redemption. Your damnation.
Memory battered his mind, and with it, horror. Screams echoed in his ears. He saw flames shooting into the night sky. The dead scattered about his feet. And blood. The taste of blood filled his mouth.
He screamed, and bolted upright. His hands reached up to cover his face, trying to block images that existed in his mind. Unable to bear the horror he tried to run, only to be stopped by the rock of his cage. Fear turned to anger, to rage. He beat against the wall, pounding the rock until his hands ran with blood.
Was it dumb luck, that his blows landed on that thin shell of rock between his cage and the old mine? Did his spirits guide him? Did fate or destiny take a hand? Perhaps only the stone itself knows the answer.
Whatever the cause, he loosed his fury on the weakest part of the wall. For minutes, maybe hours, he beat against it. Horror, rage, grief, fear, despair - all poured out and assaulted a thin skin of stone that had already been weakened by picks and hammers. The rock cracked, and broke. Slowly, pieces broke away, scattered across the cave floor.
He felt the rock give way beneath his fists, and froze. Listened. Then, he began tearing at the hole, pulling it wider. He strained his eyes to see something - anything. On the other side of the wall was the same utter blackness he awoke to, but something whispered in his mind that this was the way out. The way to freedom, and his destiny.
After a timeless time, he saw the first hint of light. Too dark to be called a shadow, he could see the outline of his hand in front of his face. Even with only touch to guide him, the cave was strange. There was a track of some sort - old and worn but still clear under his fingers, through the center of the cave. And there were places on the walls that felt like tool marks. But why would anyone seek to knap a cave? Shaping an ax head or spear point was one thing - but a whole cave? In several places he felt wooden poles set against the walls. . .
The strangeness of it distracted him from the horrors in his memories; and the track and tool marks told him that people had once walked this cave. He had been certain he would find a way out. Still, when he held up his hand and saw that faint outline he nearly wept.
A few minutes further on, and he saw the outline of the cave entrance. He hurried forward, eager - desperate - to smell open air, to taste green life on the winds.
He froze as he came to the lip of the cave, looking out over a wood at night. An owl ghosted across his view, something held firmly in its talons. For a moment, he felt like the owl's dinner. His past, with his horrors, had led him here. Somehow, he could not believe that what waited would be any less horrifying.
