It was almost like Menzoberranzan. The cave walls sweated with cold, their slick sheen catching faint veins of phosphorescent lichen that pulsed like dying embers. Outside, the rain fell in silver sheets, hissing where it met the rocks. The air was damp and close—heavy enough to muffle the sound of their breathing.

Drizzt Do’Urden drew it in slowly, letting the familiarity unsettle him. The smell of wet stone, the weight of shadow, the way even silence seemed to carry a whisper of threat—it was all too close to home. Only the faint rumble of thunder above reminded him this was the surface, the realm of stars and wind, not the dark cradle of Lolth’s domain.

Across from him, crouched near the narrow slit that served as an entrance, was another drow. Her armor was etched with the spider sigil, cracked where a blade had cut too close. Blood—hers and someone else’s—darkened the leather. A priestess, perhaps, or an emissary. Certainly one of the Spider Queen’s daughters, judging by the way she held herself even now—poised, proud, and dangerous, though the tremor in her limbs betrayed her exhaustion.

They had not fought in earnest, though the temptation hung in the air like venom. Her eyes had burned when she’d first seen him, filled with the disgust reserved for heresy incarnate: a male who had turned from the web. When her hand had gone for her blade, he’d not moved to stop her—only watched, until the exhaustion of their flight from the storm broke through her fury. She had followed him through the trees, through the downpour, perhaps out of duty or pride, perhaps because the surface was as alien to her as it once had been to him.

Now they sat in uneasy truce. The storm outside clawed at the world, and the cave—small, narrow, wet—closed around them like a memory neither wished to recall. Shadows twisted with the flicker of distant lightning, their silhouettes merging and splitting against the stone. Water ran down the walls in fine, glistening threads, pooling near their boots. The steady rhythm of it filled the hollow where words might have been, a fragile calm built on the edge of violence.

Drizzt’s voice came quiet, almost thoughtful. “You followed me.”

Her eyes, crimson in the dim light, flicked up sharply. “You fled. I pursued. It is the way of hunters and prey.”

“Then you are far from your web,” he said, gaze steady. “And far from your goddess’s sight.”

Her lips curled into a faint sneer. “She sees all. Even here.”

He looked toward the cave mouth, where the rain thinned just enough to reveal a slice of the world beyond—a sky roiling with storm clouds. The light that came through was gray and uncertain, a mere ghost of the day. Yet even that small, muted glow reached further into the cave than any glowstone or faerie fire of the Underdark could. It carried something her world never knew—an openness, a reminder that the ceiling of this world was not stone, but vast and endless.