Xiaodan sinks into a crouch with his back against the wood, hugging his knees as the rain begins to come down harder, while Zhong continues howling, trapped on the wrong side of the door.

It’s cold and damp inside the mine. Even with the door bolted shut, water drifts in through the cracks and pools on the floor as the downpour picks up and the wind quickens its pace. The air smells faintly sour. It’s hard to see. There’s just the last of the daylight from outside, visibly fading as the sky clouds over.

He can hear Zhong outside, splashing closer through the mud. The other man’s voice has given out, and all that’s left is a hoarse whimper. Xiaodan tries to breathe as quietly as he possibly can, making himself even smaller, like a frightened child. His knee is in agony. He closes his eyes.

The door shakes.

“Open the door.” The voice is hardly recognisable, a dry, choking whisper that breaks off into a spasm of coughing. “Open the door, you gutless little worm, open the door, open the door, it’s coming, gods have mercy, open the door -”

What she never understood was, Xiaodan thinks, in the furthest corner of his mind, you’re a coward.

“You’re done for, boy,” Zhong rasps, achingly slowly. “Finished. No more marriage. No more money.” The older man is weeping now. “I’ll see your mother and father served up to those things on a platter if you don’t open the door -”

Footsteps, as if approaching rapidly through the rain, and Zhong shrieks. The sound is abruptly cut off, and then recedes very quickly into a despairing wail. There’s an ugly crunching sound, and then nothing further. It threw him, Xiaodan realises. Picked him up and cast him aside like a toy.

He bites his lower lip so hard he tastes blood, and stays resolutely silent.

“Not a worm,” the Yèkǒng says. “More like a rat?” It laughs. “Come on, little rat. Open the door. Gǔhuī’s tired, see? Wet through, too. Open the door and he’ll kill you quick.”

Xiaodan says nothing.

He can hear it, pacing up and down in front of the minehead. The sky flashes – for an instant the light through the cracks glows a brilliant white – and then, seconds later, a crack of thunder sounds, so loud it seems to shake the mountain.

“Open the door!” the Yèkǒng howls.

The door shivers so hard Xiaodan’s thrown clean off balance. He scrambles forward on hands and knees, splashing through the puddles, then rolls over, watching as the door rocks on its hinges under the creature’s blows. His heart feels too big for his chest, and his jerkin, soaked with sweat, clings to his back.

But the door holds. Xiaodan swallows. The door holds.

“Clever little rat.” The Yèkǒng strikes the door one more time. “Lot of good it’s done you.”

Kept you out there, though, Xiaodan thinks.

It’s not the comfort it ought to be. All he has in his satchel is a day’s food and water, bandages, a few simple poultices, flint and tinder and his sword, useless against that thing. He screws his eyes tight shut, struck by the sudden urge to burst into tears. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

A scuttling noise, and Xiaodan realises, to his horror, that he passed out. Slumped sideways on the muddy floor, dead to the world. It’s anyone’s guess how long he was unconscious, or if the Yèkǒng’s still outside. He’s only seen these creatures making war. There wasn’t much opportunity to find out how long it takes them to get bored.

He can hear that scuttling sound again. Something clawing at the rock. It sounds ominous, for reasons he can’t place. Is it the Yèkǒng? What’s it doing? What other options does it have, if it can’t come through the door –?

And then he looks up.

It’s almost dark, but half the height of a man above the top of the doorway Xiaodan can clearly see there’s a hole in the mountainside. It’s not a very big hole, admittedly, but easily wide enough for somebody to squeeze through, and if that somebody happened to be light enough to climb up there –

A clawed hand clutches for purchase in the gap, talons scraping along the rock.

“You there?” The Yèkǒng sounds barely out of breath. “You still there, little rat? Lot of good it’s done you, see?” It laughs, another of those ghastly blares of triumph. “Lot of good –”

Xiaodan screams.

He’s running at full pelt, deeper and deeper into the mines, crying out at the pain in his knee, sobbing in fear. He barred the door but the monster still found its way in regardless and he’s all alone and hopelessly lost and gods have mercy he’s going to die here –

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Nobody’s been down these tunnels in a very long time. The air stinks like a beach at low tide. Water dribbles constantly from the ceiling. Dimly Xiaodan glimpses passages where the roof has caved in entirely, with the rotting supports snapped in two and the way blocked by an avalanche of wet soil.

Rusting minecarts loom up out of the shadows. Old tools lie where the last workers downed them, ancient picks and shovels with the handles withered, black and spongy. He notices what look like bones; are they human? Were these looters turning on each other? Or…?

And then people started seeing ghosts up there, the innkeeper said, but it’s hard to worry about that when – 

“Long way to go to ground!” the Yèkǒng calls out, somewhere behind him. “Little rat. Is it worth it? Is it really? Gǔhuī doesn’t give up just like that, you know?”

Xiaodan slows, then stops. It sounds markedly less confident, despite the bravado. How well do they see in the dark? He found some details in the archives, but these weren’t exactly scholarly texts. That name – the Yèjiān Kǒngbù – was just convenient shorthand for a bad dream come to life.

His muscles are begging for a reprieve. His head is swimming, and his heart is beating so hard it feels as if the creature must be able to hear it. Not much point going any further down these tunnels. There’s every chance he’ll end up stuck in a dead end, rather than find a way to double back. Better to wait it out.

He fumbles in his satchel for his tinderbox, and gingerly spins the wheel. The smell of the oil stings his nostrils. The flint sparks, the wick catches –

And it’s waiting right there, back the way he came, a hunched silhouette at the other end of the tunnel –

It’s toying with us –

“Too easy.” The Yèkǒng shakes its head. “Again.” A brisk snap with two of those long, clawed fingers. “Again. Come on, rat. At least make it a challenge –”

By this point Xiaodan is no longer capable of worrying about where he’s going. His only thought is to get away from the thing dogging his heels. He’s less a man, more a puppet staggering forward on wobbly legs, eyes wild, one hand still clutching his satchel.

He slams bodily into one of the mine carts, nearly breaking a rib. Still no reaction; he merely spins, arms flailing, then collides with the wall of the tunnel, trips, flails for purchase and almost goes down on his face. All he can do is plant one foot after the other on the floor.

And then suddenly the floor

isn’t there –

Xiaodan falls, tumbling through the air, down and down and down, impossibly far and there’s still nothing beneath him, just darkness, an ocean of night so absolute he can’t make out anything of what he’s plummeting towards, and he realises, subconsciously, that this is it – he’s going to die and he won’t even see it coming –

And then he really starts to scream.

He shrieks until his voice is nothing but a feeble breath of air, inaudible over the wind rushing past him on all sides and then, mercifully, he faints dead away.

He never feels the impact.