Mira struck the match. It flared—a tiny, furious sun. The creature recoiled, hissing without sound. But the match was already burning down, curling toward her fingers.
Leo threw his phone into the right passage. It sailed end over end, screen still glowing, and the creature whipped around, drawn to the brighter, more frantic source. Mira dropped the match into the lantern’s wick.
“The phone,” she said. “Throw it into the right tunnel.”
The world exploded.
Mira lay on her back, laughing. Leo just breathed.
She was alive. Kneeling on the stone floor, the massive lantern beside her, unlit. In her hands, she held a match. Her face was calm, almost serene, as if she’d been waiting.
“I can’t.” She nodded toward the far wall. The phosphorescent thing had arrived, its glow spilling across the chamber. And there, carved into the stone, was an inscription: Into pitch black
Mira. She’d had the old camping lantern. The one that took six D batteries and could signal ships. Leo’s stomach dropped. “Where is she?”
The sun had set. But the stars were out. Thousands of them. Billions. All that ancient, scattered, peaceful light.
“You brought the wrong light,” it said. Not with a mouth. The words simply appeared inside Leo’s skull, cold and precise. Mira struck the match
Leo’s phone trembled in his hand. “I—what?”
Light—real, roaring, daylight-mimicking light—filled the chamber. The creature shrieked across dimensions, unraveling like a ribbon of smoke. The tunnel walls cracked. The ceiling rained dust and roots.