Down in the deep, down in the dark, beyond where his sweet cousins laid their dead, interred and tended by the blind. But time had stolen his gaolers’ sight over the slow crawl of centuries, or war savaged them with smoke and iron, making them as blind as he. But they came blind to the darkness. And would never see again. But he would. He did. Every day. Once every day. Three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and twenty days.

He could still summon the Fire. Call forth the flame to fight the darkness. But Fire burned; flame consumed, demanded sacrifice of its own and hungered for fuel. They kept him smothered deep in the Earth, miles of ancient rock and dirt pushed in around him, dampening his power. His gaolers were warded against him, hidden by the darkness. It was all he could do to summon a spark, barely an ember, a pitiable gnat of flame. But he could feed it. Feed the flame and starve himself. They brought him food, once a day. Three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and twenty hunks of dry bread. And he gave them all to the Fire.

They burned. And the burning sated him more than a hundred feasts.

An itch in the darkness. A single star in an endless sky. Ash in the eye of the blackness. An ulcer in the gullet of his prison. And he lived. He awoke. His eyes were restored and his ears returned to the sizzle of burning bread. He had only a moment. Quick. Painful. Ecstasy. Enough time to feel, to be whole, to breathe, to mark the wall, to count the days. Three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and twenty days. Then the flame died. And he died with it. The darkness returned and he slept again. Three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and twenty deaths.

Every one thousand four hundred and sixty days, he cut his hair, gnawing through the filthy strands with his teeth. He mixed it with the contents of his slop bucket and summoned a true fire, a blaze to illuminate his cell fed by his leavings, the waste from a wasted body. He danced and he cheered, cursed the darkness and counted the marks on the wall. Tallying the cost. Totaling his captivity. Three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and twenty days.

And one day the meal did not come. No bread. No Fire. No count. No life. He was blind. He was deaf. He was asleep. He was dead. And he would not live again. He started to panic. The Earth would claim him; the darkness would digest him, to be shit out into oblivion.