I was too distracted to show my solidarity. From somewhere in that darkness came a rhythmic sound accompanied by a wet, tearing noise that made my stomach turn. "They're not just guarding the Scythe," I whispered, horror creeping up my spine. "They're using it. Right now."
The door behind us buckled again, the metal screaming under the assault. I looked at my team. "Let's finish this," Aidon said and stepped into the dark.
CHAPTER 13
"Ibet the penthouses have terrible feng shui for storing ancient death artifacts," Stella chirped from ahead of me. Her voice was somehow still bright despite descending into literal darkness. "All that natural light would probably make the evil vibes super uncomfortable. They'd have to install blackout curtains, and where's the ambiance in that?"
"Oh, sweetie," Nana's voice drifted back, dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sure it has nothing to do with trapping us underground with nowhere to run and everything to do with interior decorating choices. And here I thought evil masterminds cared about tactical advantages. Silly me—they're probably just really committed to the aesthetic."
I couldn’t help but laugh with Stella at that. It eased the tension enough that each of my steps wasn’t so shaky. We fell into silence then and descended for what felt like forever. Nana’s words played through my mind as we spiraled down into the earth.
Stella conjured a ball of light, so we weren’t going in blind. The magical pressure mounted until my ears popped from the sheer density of accumulated power. It felt like diving deepunderwater, except instead of water crushing my lungs, it was raw magic suffocating me.
"How far down does this go?" Stella's voice was thin and strained. Unlike the sunshine-and-rainbows of a moment ago.
Behind us, the door we'd locked was still holding. The sounds of Thessmark battering against reinforced metal echoed down the stairwell like war drums. It was a countdown to our deaths if we didn't move faster.
"Far enough that we're definitely not under the building anymore," Nana replied, her breathing surprisingly steady for a woman her age. "This is dimensional magic. Space folded in on itself."
“We can possibly use that when it comes time to escape,” Aidon replied. “I can manipulate some dimensional magic.”
“It’s about time you being a god came in handy,” Nana told him as we reached the bottom.
Stella’s ball of light illuminated as we emerged into a massive circular chamber. There was no way it could possibly fit under the Corvus building. The room was perhaps two hundred feet in diameter, with a ceiling lost in shadows above. Emergency lighting ran along the walls at regular intervals.
And in the center, mounted on an altar of black stone that looked like it had been carved from a single piece of obsidian, was the Essence Scythe. It wasn't what I expected. The "Scythe" was actually a staff, about six feet long.
It was made of something that looked like petrified heartwood with spirals in the grain. The color shifted between deep plum and gray depending on the angle. Threaded through it were veins of what could have been mother-of-pearl. Runes were carved into the surface.
At the top of the staff was a blade composed of jagged formations resembling calcified coral. And it pulsed with the same nauseating orange as the energy lance that had nearlykilled Melaina at the farmer's market. Each pulse sent ripples through the air.
With each pulse, I felt a tug against my magical core. A pull. Ahunger. It was trying to drain me from ten feet away, and the worst part? I could feel it working.
"Don't get close," I warned, pulling out the protective stone Clio had given me. I clutched it tightly. It was working overtime to shield me from the Scythe's influence.
My gaze skipped around the chamber's perimeter, and my heart stopped. There were hundreds of glass containers. Each about the size of a large mason jar lined the wall in neat rows. They were three deep and stacked on shelves that ran the entire circumference of the room. And each one glowed faintly with stolen essence.
Holy fucking shit. Each one represented a murdered child. The room tilted sideways. My knees threatened to give out entirely. The only thing keeping me upright was Aidon's hand on my elbow. However, his fingers were digging in hard enough to bruise.
Stella made a sound somewhere between a sob and a retch, doubling over like she'd been gut-punched. "Oh Jesus," she choked out, her eternal sunshine fully eclipsed. "There are so many."
I couldn't speak. Couldn't process the sheer scale of what I was seeing, what it meant. Jean-Marc had only been able to connect eighty-three deaths to the medical group. But there had to be at least five hundred containers in this room. Maybe more.
So many lives snuffed out and distilled into—intothis. Fuel. Power. A means to an end. My magic writhed inside me, furious and sick.
"I've lived through the fucking Holocaust," Nana said, her voice low and shaking with a fury I'd never heard from herbefore, "and this—this—might be the most evil thing I've ever laid eyes on."
She wasn't wrong. We were going to make them pay for every single one. Aidon's hand found mine. Through our bond, I felt his fury—cold, controlled, and absolutely lethal. "We need to end this," he said quietly.
I walked closer to the nearest shelf, making myself look at the contents. The essence inside swirled with faint colors. Blues, greens, and golds. Each one was unique. It was five hundred murdered children, reduced to fuel.
I forced myself to keep looking when my stomach heaved. I had to bear witness to what these monsters had done. Each container was labeled with a date and a number. There were no names. Names would make them human. It would make what the Thessmark had done real in a way that numbers couldn't.
I pulled the bag of enchanted chalk from my pocket. It was ordinary white chalk that we had soaked in a potion that made it glow faintly purple in the darkness. Before we'd left, we had walked through a containment circle design that would keep the Primordial fire contained.
"Twenty feet from the altar in all directions,"Tarja reminded me, speaking directly into my mind."The chalk is infused with binding magic. It will hold the flames along with most of the discharge when you destroy the Scythe. It has never been tested on anything on this scale."
None of us had asked what would happen if it failed. We already knew.
