Chameleon Magazine

Deep in the belly of the mountain, miners worked by touch alone. Their picks struck stone like blind men tapping canes, the dark pressing in so thick they could feel it in their lungs. For years, they believed nothing lived deeper than shadow.

Then one day a boy, no older than sixteen, carried down a lantern he had built himself. Not with oil, but with fire caught from lightning and stored in a glass coil. When he cracked it open, the cavern bloomed. Walls glittered with hidden veins of silver. Pools mirrored back constellations that no eye had ever seen.

The older men fell silent, blinking as if woken from a lifelong dream. For the first time, they realized the mountain had never been empty—it had only been waiting for someone brave enough to bring light.

“Darkness is not the absence of treasure, only the absence of sight.”