A Betrayal of Faith ✔

TWENTY-THREE: Flames

Nerin was burning. He could feel it, like his insides were burning up. He should have said something to Rina and Isiah earlier, but they'd wanted to keep going and turning back meant possibly facing Jonin again. There was no way he could go on anymore, it was too hot for him.

Rina and Isiah hadn't been able to feel it. They weren't burning like he was. Maybe there was something wrong with him, a sickness or an injury he couldn't feel. He couldn't very well check, not in the minuscule light from the strange plants on the walls. If he made it out of the cave, he could check himself over then.

That was if he made it out. With whatever was wrong with him, there was a chance he wouldn't. The thought alone made him feel sick to his stomach. He was thirteen, a child still, and he had no idea what was wrong with him. He'd never heard of anything like it in his books, but he'd barely had the time to read enough to know even a fraction of the diseases that existed.

He didn't want to die. Panic rose within him, clogging up his throat and chest. It only made the burning feeling worse. Sweat poured down his body, sticking to his clothes and hair. Never had he felt so hot before, as if the fyrite in his bag had taken all of his power and thrown it back at him one hundredfold.

Rina kept a hand on his back. Her touch was cool, the one comforting thing in the pain and heat that was his body. She handed him her own water canteen, his now empty. As he drank, guilt flowed through him, but he needed the water more than she did. She couldn't even feel the heat in the same way as him.

"Come on," she whispered in his ear. "We should head back to the entrance. It was colder there, right?" He nodded slowly. The further they'd walked, the hotter the cave had gotten. Touching the walls had been like touching metal from a furnace, but there were no burn marks on his skin.

He couldn't tell if he was cooling down as they walked, everything still felt too hot. Cool tears ran down his cheeks, staining his red skin. He was grateful for the lack of light, it meant he couldn't see what he looked like. It would only make him panic more if he could.

He didn't know what they would do if Isiah found an exit. Going any further than they had would seriously hurt him, maybe even kill him. Rina would be able to leave, but he would be stuck behind. The idea of being stuck in a pitch-black tunnel determined to burn him alive only made him panic more. Breathing became a struggle and his hands shook at his sides.

"Nerin?" Rina said, fear and concern lacing her voice. "What's wrong?"

He let out a whimper. At any other moment, he would have been ashamed of the sound. "I- I don't want to die. I feel like I'm dying."

Rina muttered something in her language, a word he hadn't learned yet. "You're not going to die, alright? We just need to get you somewhere cooler," she told him, but she sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than him.

Nothing seemed familiar as they walked, even though the tunnel had been one continuous stretch. There'd been no other paths branching off as far as he'd been able to tell. If they'd somehow wandered down one, how would Isiah ever be able to find them again? That was if he even came back.

The pain in his skin and body slowly began to subside as they walked back the way they came. When he finally noticed, Nerin let out a loud sigh of relief. It still hurt, but nowhere near as much as it had. The air around him felt cooler, not exactly a relief to his skin, which still stung, but it was a start.

His panic felt almost silly as the pain and heat lessened, but he still knew that walking further into the cave was impossible for him. Sol and Lune felt miles from him, but he still prayed for them to help him. He prayed as hard as he could in the hopes that once Rina and Isiah left for the exit, the door in the stone would open again.