Then, three years later, a group of cave explorers entered a remote chamber deep beneath the mountains.
There, sitting quietly in the darkness, was a young woman.
She was alive. Her clothes were surprisingly clean. Her face showed none of the obvious exhaustion the explorers had expected from someone who had supposedly survived underground for years.
And she was smiling.
But when a flashlight illuminated her eyes, she did not blink.
One explorer whispered her name.
“Layan?”
She stared back at him.
Then her smile vanished.
She seized his wrist with astonishing strength, turned toward the darkness behind them, and whispered five words that would make everyone freeze.
“Please don’t go out there.”
Before anyone could ask what she meant, footsteps echoed through the chamber.
Slow footsteps.
Heavy footsteps.
And the unmistakable tapping of a wooden stick against stone.
Someone else was coming.
Someone who, it seemed, had been living with Layan all along.
