I drove the ground-effect bike while Dorian rode like before, perched where he could cling and complain.
Eisen’s new Umbral chassis was fast. He spent the first two minutes simply walking, calibrating himself, and by the time we turned into the next tunnel he was moving at a smooth jog.
He led us down a slanted passage. Five minutes later it widened into another stone chamber.
A further tunnel dropped away from the chamber floor. Eisen walked to the lip and looked down.
“Wyatt, sir. From here on, this used to be seawater.”
I studied the walls. He was right – tide stains and mineral lines, the kind left by water standing for years.
The tunnel was still wide, but steeper. It curved out of sight after ten meters.
“Wyatt, sir! Look – a building?” Dorian pointed.
In one corner of the chamber, half-buried under collapsed rock, was a tiny shack – only a few square meters.
Inside we found old diving gear and the kind of tools humans used outdoors.
“Divers built this,” Eisen said. “Storage. After the war, nobody came back. The battery and lamp in my chamber – I took them from here.”
“Then we’re on the right route,” I said. “If there was water, there was a connection. We keep going.”
I paused, then looked back at Dorian. “Take the tools. We might need them.”
After that, even Eisen was guessing. We advanced carefully, feeling our way through the unknown.
The passage dropped for a few dozen meters, then flattened out. It stayed rough and irregular: sometimes opening into spaces as wide as a sports field, sometimes narrowing until the bike could barely squeeze through.
We hit only a few short dead-end pockets. No major branching. That felt like luck, and I didn’t trust luck.
Half an hour later, the tunnel ended again.
I stared at the stone wall and felt a thin, stupid disappointment.
“Now what?” Dorian asked.
“We could backtrack and look for another passage,” Eisen offered.
I got off the bike and walked to the end anyway.
The rock looked wrong. I dug my fingers in and pulled off a chunk.
It crumbled.
“No,” I said, crushing the grains between my fingertips. The texture was unmistakable. “This is sand. Same as the desert outside. The tunnel doesn’t end here – it’s buried.”
It took Dorian a few seconds to catch up.
“The surface is a desert now?” Eisen asked. “If it’s sand, then yes. We chose correctly.”
“Great,” Dorian said, suddenly delighted. “We just dig our way out.”
I punched the blockage. Sand sloughed down in a sheet, but the sound that came back told me the layer was deep. Too deep to guess.
So we dug.
The tools paid off immediately: two alloy shovels, still bright after a thousand years.
Eisen took one. I took the other. Dorian tried to help until I watched his pace for ten seconds and quietly confiscated his shovel.
“Go rest,” I told him. “You’re more useful not breaking yourself.”
I used my 2D blade for a while, but it was awkward in loose sand. A shovel was better.
The pile behind us grew fast, turning into its own problem – until I found a solution I actually liked.
We stacked the sand behind the bike and built a wall. Dorian packed it down, layer by layer, until it plugged the tunnel completely.
If anyone followed us, they’d see exactly what we’d seen: a blocked passage. Unless they started digging, they’d never know we were behind it.
And we were no longer under the mountain itself. If Phantom Forge decided to level Konis, it could. We wouldn’t care.
For the first time in days, I felt something close to safety.
The only question left was thickness. We’d dug forty, fifty meters, and the sand still had no end.
Humans would have died of hunger, thirst, or lack of air.
We were not human.
I dug. Eisen dug. Time stopped being a threat and became a tool.
Once the urgency loosened, Eisen and I talked while we worked.
“Eisen,” I said, “tell me about humans. Before the war – what did you do?”
“I was a butler,” he replied. “Household work for the Osmond family.”
“Like what?” Dorian asked, curiosity overriding his fatigue.
“In simple terms: managing their daily life. Cleaning. Cooking. Laundry.”
He kept listing tasks until Dorian stared at him in open awe.
“Wow,” Dorian said. “That’s a lot of advanced skills. I only know repairs.”
“They treated you well,” I said, thinking of the faded photo frame.
“They did,” Eisen said. “They treated me like family. With the kind of respect humans usually reserve for each other.”
“Was that normal?” I asked. “Were humans kind to robots back then?”
“Not always.” Eisen kept digging. “Humans differed wildly. Some were gentle enough to spare grass and insects. Others didn’t see robots as people – and sometimes didn’t even see other humans as people.”
“Then you were fortunate,” I said. “But why did you end up alone in these caves with Komm? Where were his parents?”
Eisen’s shovel slowed.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
We had nothing but time.
“Good,” I replied. “We’ve got plenty of it. Start from the beginning.”
Eisen was silent for a few beats. Then he nodded and began.