He wakes slowly, joints aching and arms in an unnatural position that causes him to grunt in pain as he tries to move. His knees are shoved up to his chest, and he groans in a mixture of pain and relief as he stretches them out.
His legs hit a wall.
Golden eyes snap open and are greeted with a solid wall of darkness – it smells earthy, and a bug is currently making its way across his hand, so he knows the darkness must be dirt. Jerking upwards into a sitting position, he disrupts a thin layer of dirt covering his body, causing him to cough. It echoes back to him.
Up above him is a square of light, though it's not bright and he realizes it must be nearing dusk. He stands and realizes that the opening is several lengths above him, much higher than he'd had to jump to escape the Malachi Configuration. A quick calculation is done in his mind – at least 20 feet higher than what he'd had to jump before.
Jace curses in annoyance.
The walls around him are narrow, and he realizes that he barely fits – his shoulders brush the dirt on either side. He reaches out a tanned hand to brush against the wall and is met with yielding dirt – it crumbles beneath his touch and rains down on his shoes. He couldn't climb this. A small snort is heard from the blond haired boy – this reminds him, morbidly, of a not-so-shallow grave.
Jace thinks about calling out, but before he can he sees something cast a shadow down into his prison. It seems vaguely human – humanoid enough that Jace thinks it must be – but it utters not a sound, content to stand at the edge.
"Hey! Can we talk abo -!"
He's cut off when the shape from above kicks more dirt into the hole, and Jace coughs and wheezes as he tries to clear his throat. Dust rains down on him from above, scratching his eyes and making it difficult to see, but so far the shape seems content to watch him hack and gag.
"What the hell? Who are you?!"
His words come out scratchy, but they easily carry up to the shape. The sun's behind the person, and he can clearly see them shrug their shoulders in response. He's about to open his mouth again, because something is seriously wrong and Jace has a nagging feeling that he should be trying to escape right now, but the shadow up above kicks down more dirt and Jace is forced to raise his arms to block his eyes.
He waits until the dirt and dust stop cascading down on him, arms raised above his head to try and ward it away from his face, but he realizes something very peculiar.
It's not stopping.
Indeed, it's only increasing, and Jace's gold eyes immediately lock onto where the humanoid shadow should be kicking dirt into the whole, but it's gone now and he realizes the walls around him higher up are caving in instead. A loud curse leaves his mouth – it's echoed back to him somehow, and this makes him angry – and he begins to try and climb the crumbling dirt.
It's nigh impossible, even for the famous angel boy, and very soon he's fighting to keep the dirt off of him because he knows it would be all too easy to bury him here. If he can get it piled up in a different area, he can climb out.
The sides of his prison are collapsing too fast though, raining down and around him and with a jolt he realizes that his feet have already been covered. He tries to calm down, tries to think calmly and rationally and like a Shadowhunter should, but the sound of dirt falling is in his ears and it's all he can smell.
He's panicking now, and the dirt is already at his waist, and the more he tries to claw his way out the more it seems to cover him. He can't move rationally, can't think of anything clearly – he knows there are important reasons for him to live and survive, things he wants to protect and things he loves, but all he can think about is breathing and getting out alive.
A scream is torn from his throat, but his mouth quickly fills with dirt and dust and he chokes and spits it out, swallowing some of the disgusting substance. It scratches his throat, causes him to stop and cough and now he can feel it pressing down on his abdomen. Jace struggles, but it gives around him and offers him no suitable footholds or handholds, and he resorts to breathing harshly through his nose as his blunt nails scratch against rocks and chunks of earth.
And then he hears something – a soft noise. Almost a laugh.
Jace's golden eyes are cast upwards, full of fear and terror and helplessness and it's so out of character for him that he probably wouldn't even recognize himself in a mirror. The ground is now around his neck, and he's already having trouble sucking in breaths because each precious spot of space he gives up is filled with dirt, almost as if it were a living entity, greedily eating away at him.
He sees a flash of black – it looks like hair, and it looks familiar somehow – and he realizes the shadow is back but on the opposite side from before. It stands there, making no move to worsen Jace's condition, nor help.
Jace's eyes widen, and he makes one last desperate act as he strains to move, to live, to survive. His hand reaches up, grasping at the sun and the sky and the damned shadow, and he shouts out a plea for help. Tears dot his cheeks, drawn out by the strain of trying to breathe through the dirt.
The shadow disappears.
"No! No, damn it, come back here! You bastard, come ba -!"
His words are swallowed up by the dirt that fills his mouth, and this time he can't spit it out because it's suddenly around him everywhere, in his mouth and his eyes and his nose and he can't breathe can't even think -
An icy finality strikes him suddenly as he fights for air and sun and suddenly the world is dark and cold, and Jace knows that there's really no point in struggling anymore. This had become his actual grave.
He can't move. He can't breathe.
He wants to scream, wants to shout out that this isn't right and that none of this is fair, that Clary still needs him, that he stills wants to live and that he wants to live. He wants Clary in his arms again, wants to have the rays from the sun rain down on them both and light up their days.
Everything goes dark.