The Luminous Dead

She could still feel the pull, the relentless tug, the invitation to climb back down and forget the world above, give in and close off all the pain and the struggle and the loneliness.

Jennie had been trapped in her suit when she died, and now she stood, rotting, glowing, unnatural and wrong. But Eli and Isolde, they had died honestly. They had died themselves.

To talk to the cave, her addled brain corrected. And the cave had heard her, tempted her with Isolde. The cave had brought itself down on her head.

Gyre said nothing, caught between wanting to comfort, and knowing with unsettling certainty that when this was all over, that would be her own fate. Broken, never quite moving on, damaged by this cave. By these deaths.