This one's a little long:
Gaeda raises the lamp, and shines it on one wall. It’s covered with carvings; names laboriously scraped into the stone, perhaps by a spare bit of metal such as a belt buckle, or a rock chip. Maybe, I don’t know, by their owners’ fingernails.
“Why have they carved their names here?” I ask.
“Perhaps to reassure themselves that they exist. To imagine someone coming after them, and saying ‘this person was here, they were alive once.’ To have faith that they did not disappear into nothingness.”
I look over the wall, searching for a name. Ah, there it is. The letters are large, and somehow defiant. “GETHELREAD WOLFWIND.”
Below it, I find a further inscription in the same hand. I have to stop for a second, and take a deep breath. “I WILL NOT DIE HERE.”
“Yes,” I say to Gaeda, as I trace the runes with my hand, “I see.”