Lumen ties a mycelial cord around her wrist, says goodbye to the Pale child she rescued, and begins climbing upward through the ancient strata of the Hollows. Above the Cradle's safety lie sealed classrooms where children once wrote essays about a sky they'd never see, and corridors no one has walked in millennia. Guided by an AI that flickers in and out of relay range, Lumen ascends toward something the underground has only whispered about: the surface.
