Chapter 5: Secrets in the Dark
Konah woke on a stone floor, battered and bruised, in a narrow, hidden chamber lit by flickering torchlight.
"You're lucky they thought you were dead," the girl from the alley said, crouching beside him.
"I might be," Konah muttered. "Who are you?"
"Elara," she said. "I pulled you from the gutter before the corpse carts arrived. You're with the resistance now."
"Resistance?"
She nodded. "We're small. Hidden. But growing. Some of us believe the divine order can fall."
Konah laughed bitterly, wincing at the pain in his ribs. "I'm just a miner."
"You're more than that. I saw what you did in the alley. The ground cracked. You didn't touch it."
He froze. "That wasn't me. That couldn't have—"
"Don't lie," Elara said, softly but firmly. "There's something in you. Something the gods didn't give. And we need that."
She brought him to the heart of the hideout—a forgotten crypt deep beneath the lower city. There, he met Varan, a scarred, iron-eyed man whose presence filled the space like thunderclouds.
"You're the boy the gods overlooked," Varan said. "That makes you the most dangerous thing in Miori."
Varan spoke of plans—sabotage, infiltration, revolution. "The Blessed think power defines worth. We'll show them what real strength is: unity."
But Konahaki wasn't ready. He thought of his sister, his mother. What good was a revolution if it got them all killed?
"I can't join you," he said.
Varan's stare was unreadable. "You already have."