There is a muffled tapping of paws against stone. A shadow of a cat slips through one of the tunnels. Their gait is as slow and steady as a heartbeat—their face, an endless pit.

They count their footsteps in the back of their mind, the stone cool against their paws. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. They rely on the flicker-flash of a time long gone as their guide; the whispers of other footsteps through the tunnel guiding theirs.

They are surrounded by ghosts they cannot see. Their vision fades to nothingness, between sparks of magicka; they can almost imagine others reaching out to them, forms unknowable, the weight of silhouettes promising to brush against fur—a promise that is never kept.

It is almost maddening, the constancy of it, but they cannot help but reach out into that endlessness nonetheless. They do not know what they would do, without the constant beat of magic; they do not know what they would do without sight. Without it, their gaze plunges into an abyss.

The air changes. Something distant hums; their ears prick, and they pause, waiting for a vision to let them know to continue.