Ten789 Now

Ten years of guilt. Seven kilometers of descent. Nine minutes of mercy turned to seven seconds of truth.

Ten years of drills. Seven kilometers of pure dark. Nine minutes of oxygen buffer once he hit the bottom. ten789

"Oxygen reserve?"

The bottom was not a floor. It was a mirror. Ten years of guilt

Six kilometers. His heads-up display flickered. Pressure warnings blinked yellow, then orange. The singing glass here was black as obsidian, and silent. Dead. That was wrong. Every sample from the upper shaft had sung. Why were these dark? Ten years of drills

Then he saw it: a single crystal, no larger than his thumb, floating in the exact center of the space. It was transparent, almost invisible, but it hummed at a pitch that made his joints ache.