With his eyes closed, it was both a relieving and incredibly painful realization when Kellen struck the rock ledge. He’d turned sideways as he fell and landed hard on his hip and shoulder. There’d been no point bothering with a shield. In a state of terror and given the relatively short fall, he couldn’t have channeled mana in time even if he’d wanted to.

The blow forced the wind from him in a violent gasp. A second later, his head cracked against the stone. For an instant, Kellen wondered if he shouldn’t have just leaped into open air. Falling hundreds of feet might have been an instantaneous death, instead of the agony coursing through him now.

As it was, he barely noticed the whoosh of air as the massive boulder rocketed past the ledge. Two points of tiny, piercing pain, hardly noticeable in Kellen’s concussed state, flared from his arm. He cracked an eye open and saw Vex’s mouth latched onto his hand, the little fox doing everything in his power to drag Kellen under the shelf. A moment later, Shani crawled towards him on hands and knees and pulled the same arm. Together, they dragged Kellen into safety and out of the falling rocks.

Falling rocks. Kellen giggled.

“I have no idea what’s so funny,” Vex said. He glanced up at Shani. “Maybe he finally snapped?”

“Falling in love rocks,” Kellen spluttered out, barely able to speak over the rising giggles. Somewhere, his conscious realized he’d hit his head and wasn’t making any sense. He laughed and tears ran down his face.

Like a switch, the pain in shoulder, ribs and hip ended comedy hour. The giggles turned into moans of pain. Everything felt broken, his entire left side a mass of throbbing pain. Kellen managed a weak cough despite his vehement ribs and felt something trickle out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, blood,” Vex said. “This is… this is bad.”

Shani grasped his shoulder. Vaguely, Kellen felt her grip. It felt faint, like she’d grabbed him through a thick coat. “Use your mana, Kellen! Cleanse your body with your mana or you will die!”

“That’s the…” Why was it so hard to talk? Or breathe? “… first time you’ve said my name.” Kellen knew he was talking nonsense. Coherent thoughts were harder to come by than death bed ramblings at the moment.

Vex padded forward until his golden fluff filled Kellen’s vision. Bright green eyes watched Kellen with concern, no, agony, as if they shared the pain. Vex pushed forward until the tip of his cold, wet nose touched Kellen’s.

A moment of clarity flooded Kellen. His head cleared just enough for him to sense his beast heart and the distant pool of mana within. He reached for it, picturing a pond of golden, dancing liquid. The mana responded, flowing through his veins. Instead of being satisfied with the usual refreshing feeling, Kellen willed the mana deeper, focusing on his areas of pain.

Kellen gasped, feeling his minor injuries knit themselves. The sharp aches in his head, shoulder and hip faded to a dull, manageable pain. He sat up, blinking.

“I did not know you could heal yourself,” Shani said. Kellen thought he caught a hint of surprise in her words, bordering on awestruck. It was gone before he could reply, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined it or if he’d hit his head harder than he thought.

“Me neither,” Kellen admitted. “I’m not exactly sure how I did it, I just focused the mana on the areas that hurt instead of letting it run from my beast heart on its own.” It wasn’t so much as digging a ditch to move the flow, more like placing your finger in the path of a trailing raindrop and watching as it meandered down a different route. Explaining that out loud to someone who’d never felt mana before wasn’t easy.

“That was awesome!” Vex said, bouncing up and down with pride. Aside from dusty, ruffled fur, he looked no worse for the wear after the rock slide.

A groan cut their celebration short. Obishi leaned against the cave wall a little farther inside. He sat slumped forward, cradling his right arm in his lap. Kellen didn’t need to get any closer to see the unnatural bend and know it was broken.

“Can you help him?” Shani asked.

Kellen didn’t answer and rose on shaky legs to walk to Obishi. He knelt down next to the boy, who let out a hiss of pain through his gritted teeth. The boy also had a shallow cut across his forehead that dripped blood onto the stone floor every few seconds. That appeared to be the worst of the damage.

“Stuck my arm out to catch myself, like a fool,” the boy grunted.

“You’re alive, that’s what counts,” Kellen said. He hesitated just as he’d been about to touch the arm. Living on a farm meant he’d learned some rudimentary veterinarian practices, but setting a bone in an animal, let alone a person, was far beyond his capability. Unless he could use mana to do it.

Kellen closed his eyes to aid his focus on the golden pool of mana again. He held both his hands just over the break in Obishi’s arm and this time, focused the mana out through his palms without trying to shape it. Imagining the free-flowing liquid, he willed it to gather in his hands. Once he’d collected enough, he sensed it pushing it to the break to mend the bone and ease the pain would be an easy task.

When Kellen opened his eyes, however, his palms were empty. He hadn’t even channeled any mana to his hands, let alone everything he’d pictured in his head. Frowning, he tried again. Nothing happened.

“I… I don’t think I can do anything for you, Obishi,” Kellen said. “I’m sorry.”

The words sounded lame, and Kellen felt all the worse when he looked down at the fractured arm. He’d really thought he was on to something that time — it had all felt to right, so natural. Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought.

“Don’t feel bad,” Vex said, giving Kellen’s hand a reassuring nuzzle. “I thought it was going to work, too!”

Kellen stood and surveyed their surroundings for the first time. Aside from the wide ledge they’d dropped to, the cave wasn’t much bigger than the inside of a truck camper, about four paces across and maybe seven deep. The back was obscured in shadow but enough moonlight shone into reveal a solid wall of rock. Vex bounded for it, growing a sphere of light in his mouth as he did so. When he reached the rear of the cave, he tipped his head back, revealing the wall. To Kellen’s surprise, a number of semi-detailed paintings appeared in Vex’s light.

Walking forward to study them closer, Kellen saw a line of small figures painted on the stone to show them climbing up the side of the mountain. The line of people stopped between two large peaks and a break in the drawing appeared, suggesting a new scene. Going from left to right, the next scene showed a single person with a small, generic animal at their side — Kellen thought it might be a badger or perhaps a rabbit. This person, which Kellen guessed was a beastcaller, stood with a raised hand. In the last section of art, the same line of people looked like they were filing through a cave.

“What do you think this means?” Kellen asked Shani, who’d joined them and was studying the paintings in silence.

“Maybe this cave did not use to be on the side of a cliff, or perhaps there was once a ladder or rope to reach it,” Shani said. “We are taught that the Wild Mother led our first grandparents out of caves to the land of Oras, but this does not look like that story.”

Nodding in absent agreement, Kellen wandered back to the center of the wall. He looked down and found a circular area about waist height. The circle was drawn in black with a series of different symbols placed outside but around it: a sun, stars, a wave, lightning, a leaf, flame, what might have been a rock or a piece of ore and… a smaller circle with a wide y-shape set in it that divided the circle into thirds. It didn’t take years of experience as a beastcaller to realize they were the different elements of mana, but the last symbol, the circle divided in thirds, was the odd shape out. It reminded Kellen of a peace sign without the straight line between the forks of the y.

“What is that?” Kellen asked Shani, pointing to the smaller circle.

Shani glanced at it. Her arrows narrowed as she studied the group, then at last she shook her head. “I do not know.”

“Hmm,” Kellen brushed his fingers over the symbols. Bending down to eye level with the circle, he discovered it had an indentation in the center — a hole that disappeared out of sight. It reminded him of a keyhole. He turned to Vex, who was sniffing around the ground at the base of the back wall.

“Can you sense any mana?”

Vex raised his head in an extending smell, held the nose-up position for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. Look down here, though.”

Kellen went down to his hands and knees and studied the space where the back wall and the cavern floor met.

“What is it?” Shani asked.

Running his finger along the line, Kellen’s excitement grew. He twisted around to look at Shani, unable to cover his smile.

“There’s definitely a seam here. I think the back of the cave is a wall, not a natural part of the stone!”

Shani knelt beside Kellen and Vex and felt across it with her fingertips. “I think you are right.”

She stood up and threw her weight against the painted rock wall. Nothing happened. Kellen joined her and together they tried pushing straight ahead and to the side, as if it were a great sliding door. The rock didn’t budge. Recalling all the movies he’d seen with hidden latches, Kellen felt along the paintings and the empty spaces for any kind of break that could indicate a pressure pad. But even if the stone from the wall and the cave floor were separate, they seemed solid as the rest of the mountain. Abandoning his search, Kellen sat back down in front of the circle while Shani handed Obishi her water canteen that had somehow survived the fall.

The hole in the center of the circle was large enough to fit a finger through, but too small for Kellen’s knife. He was curious to know how deep it went into the rock. In his short time in Oras, he’d learned enough to know better than to stick his finger inside or to even cup his eye to see if he could see anything beyond.

“What if I shed some light on the matter?” Vex said in a level enough tone Kellen couldn’t be sure if he’d intended the pun or not. Kellen picked up the little fox and Vex let out a long, slow breath. Tendrils of golden light twisted toward the hole and disappeared inside. Vex and Kellen peered inside. The string of light was barely visible now and still moving. In the tiny space it was hard to judge distances, but Kellen guessed the rock to be thicker than he was tall. He’d just asked Vex if he could send another light through when the ground shook.

Scrambling to his feet, Kellen stumbled backwards as the entire back wall of the cave shuddered and sank into the ground. A rumbling filled the cavern, and bits of rocks and dusty sprinkled down from above. Too drained to channel a mana shield, Kellen threw his hand over his head and ran toward Obishi, cradling and protecting Vex with his body in case of a cave-in.

Kellen just reached Obishi’s side when the rumbling stopped. He looked back and saw the back wall had completely sunken into the ground, revealing another chamber on the other side.

When the last tremors in the stone faded, Kellen opened his eyes and raised his head like a turtle coming out of a shell. Aside from a few loose rocks the size of gravel, nothing had collapsed. Nothing except the entire back wall of the cave.

“Are you okay?” Kellen asked Obishi.

The boy nodded, ashen faced but no worse than he’d been before with his broken arm. Kellen looked at Shani, unsure if she might be offended if he asked how she was. She nodded, apparently deciphering his look.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Vex said in a shaken voice Kellen couldn’t tell was fake or not. “You’re just lucky that I can’t pee when I’m scared.”

Kellen almost dropped him out of reflex.

While Obishi watched from behind, his pain outweighing his curiosity, Kellen, Shani and Vex approached the slab of stone that had once been the back wall of the cave. Kellen leaned out and tapped a foot on the top of it, then pulled it back right away. He’d seen enough archaeological adventure movies to know how careless people lost limbs in situations like these.

Shani let out a huff that might have been a sigh of impatience and stepped on the stone. Kellen’s shout of warning died on his lips as nothing happened. She looked back at him with a blank expression Kellen swore held a hint of self-satisfaction.

“You are too careful,” she said. Without waiting for his response or to see if he was following, she walked down the tunnel revealed by the secret passage.

The walk didn’t take long. The cave ended with an apparently bottomless pit, although in the faint flow of a golden bauble created by Vex, they could see a path on the other side.

“Blah!”

Vex spat out the golden orb he’d found, so it dropped into the chasm that prevented them from venturing deeper into the cave. The light fell and fell and… winked out without hitting the bottom.

Kellen sat the little fox on the ground and channeled his own ball of light. Holding it stretched out in front of him, he examined the cave walls for any clues or additional paintings. Both side walls were bare. Acting on a flash of inspiration, he hauled the ball of golden mana back like a baseball and pitched it across the chasm. It hit the ground and bounced. A second later, the cavern shook again.

“Get out of there!” Obishi shouted.

Kellen and Shani just had time to turn around before another massive slab of stone fell from the ceiling, trapping them.