Page 274 of Caged

As I walk, the sun beats down on my shoulders, and the wind whispers through the trees.

It feels so similar to the meadow, right down to the oddness of the too-perfect dirt beneath my feet. It’s a vivid brown, not a rock or pebble to be found. Even the leaves are perfectly symmetrical, untouched by time or rot.

After about twenty minutes, the feeling that something is off has only grown more intense.

“This is stupid,” I whisper to myself. “This feels too real to be a dream.”

I bite my bottom lip, looking around, trying to figure out where I am. All I can see are trees and more trees.

The bird chirps again, expectantly.

I sigh. “Alright, fine.” Lifting my hand, I watched as it flits from my shoulder to my fingers, then trills.

Speaking to it feels oddly normal. Natural, even.

I should be able to speak to the bird. Shouldn’t I?

“We are going to follow this path for ten more minutes,” I say firmly. “But after that, we’re turning around.”

It zips around my head in a tight circle, then resumes its perch on my shoulder.

A few minutes later, I round a bend in the path. A large cave looms ahead, its shadowed mouth carved directly into the hillside.

At this point, I’m weirdly calm.

And increasingly sure I’m not really here.

This isn’t real life, or one of the normal, hazy dreams that fade upon waking. It’s one of those too-real dreamscapes like I shared with Caelan. My body’s in the attic, but my mind and soul have somehow been transported here.

So, with that figured out and nothing else to do, I keep walking. After all, I’ll wake up eventually, and who knows what kind of hell I’ll be facing once the other Alphas hear what happened.

I try to replay the events in the attic, but my mind is oddly disconnected. The memories slip through my hands like water, and I have the strangest feeling that wherever I am, it’s preventing me from concentrating on anything except this place.

The moment I step inside the cave, the air around me becomes wet, thick, and heavy.

The temperature drops significantly. Even stranger is that despite it being pitch black, I can still see almost perfectly.

More proof that this isn’t normal.

A few more steps in and I’m ankle deep in water that’s still as stone and clear as glass.

The silt on the bottom is soft like silk between my toes.

The bird gives one last happy chirp and nuzzles its beak into my neck in farewell. It launches off my shoulder and takes off back the way we came. I watch with an odd sense of melancholy as it soars out of the cavern entrance and disappears into the trees.

“Alright,” I mutter. “Apparently, I’m on my own.”

It’s pointless to turn back now. Another twenty feet in, and the water is up to my knees.

The cave walls are the kind of dark that swallows the shadows. The black is deep and endless, with an odd sensation of falling into something I’ll never crawl out of.

I run my fingers along the slick walls, and when I pull my hand away, it’s coated in a fine, dark powder. I rub my fingertips together, and the powder floats down and lands in the water, where it vanishes like smoke.

The further I walk, the colder it becomes, until I can see my breath fogging in front of me. The water, however, remains comfortably warm. Tiny ice crystals have formed on the walls, acting as mirrors and providing natural light. I search, but can’t find the original light source.

So strange. Even for a dream, this is, oddly, specifically abnormal.

Eventually, the walls narrow, and I’m forced to turn sideways to fit my body through the tunnel. My hands scrape on the stone and come away covered in the dark, ash-like substance.