The tunnel spat me out into open water again. We’d made it. Ahead, faint golden light filtered up from below, the same glow as the ruins above. A chamber. I kicked forward, blade still in my fist, the big fish's blood still clouding the water behind me.
Naeris.
I was coming.
And when I found her, the first thing I was going to do was snarl at her for making me feel this way—this terrified, this desperate, thisalive—after less than a couple of days in her presence. Then I was going to make sure nothing in this cursed place ever touched her again.
The dust was still settlingwhen I rounded on Rylan. He was coughing, brushing dirt off his shoulders with that same cocky grin, clearly proud of himself forsealing the tunnel. I didn’t even think. I just punched him, hard, right in the jaw. He stumbled back and crumpled to the ground with a surprised grunt.
“Dumb ass!” I snarled. “You could have killed us all!”
He stared at me in shock. That was the last I saw before every light went out. The drones died first, their blue-white beams flickering and vanishing one by one like snuffed candles before gravity pulled them down. Then our palm tops went dark. Complete, absolute blackness swallowed the chamber. The kind of dark that pressed against your eyes and made your skin crawl.
I froze, blaster half-raised, with my heart hammering and my ears peeled to make out any out-of-place noise. Breathing from the others, some harder, some shallow, a rustle on the ground,Rylan, doubtlessly. I tilted my head, but there was nothing else. No telltale sign of dirt crunching underneath feet. My nose scented the air, but no foul odor reached me. The rebels from the top had reeked of sweat and other unpleasantness. I was sure I would smell them a mile away if they were lingering here.
Just as suddenly as the darkness had surrounded us, light bloomed. Soft. Golden. Alive. It started on my arms, visible below my short-sleeved shirt, delicate, glowing glyphs and starmap lines unfurled across my skin like liquid starlight. The patterns traced over my wrists, up my forearms, across my collarbones, and down my ribs, pulsing gently with inner fire. The same ancient symbols I’d seen in old rebel archives. The starmap.
I wasn’t the only one.
Ella rolled up her sleeves to expose the intricate pattern I had noticed on her and Nadine earlier. Like delicate constellations, they danced over her neck and hands. Nadine’s glowed too, sharper and more geometric, as she, too, rolled up her sleeve.
I stared in wonder at the lines and symbols that hadn't been there before. There wasn't time to ask why or contemplate the meaning. That would have to wait until later, although the thoughts that accompanied the thread weren't reassuring.
The three of us stood there, glowing like living starmaps in the pitch-black chamber, casting warm golden light across broken crystal columns and ancient, dust-covered floors.
Ella stared at her own arms in pure wonder, turning them slowly. “Oh… they've glowed before, but never like this. This is… this has to be Ashera’s doing. We must be close.”
Nadine looked equally stunned but managed a shaky laugh. “The ruins must have triggered it. Some kind of resonance with our bloodlines.”
I flexed my fingers, watching the golden glyphs pulse in time with my heartbeat. The light felt warm. Right. Like somethingdeep inside me had finally woken up after millions of years of sleep. The resonance in my bones sang louder now, harmonizing with the glow. We were exactly where we were supposed to be.
Another thought hit me: Thyros was probably losing his shit up there. I could still feel the faint pull of the golden thread between us, muted by stone and distance, but burning with his fury and fear. He’d seen the collapse. He knew we were down here.
Good, I thought fiercely. Let him rage. Maybe it would teach him I wasn’t some fragile thing he could wrap in protective shadows.
Rylan groaned from the floor, pushing himself up on one elbow. “Commander… what the hell is happening to you?”
“Shut up,” I muttered, still staring at the glowing patterns on my skin. “And stay down before I hit you again.”
Ashley’s voice cut through the dark from a few feet away, calm and steady even though she wasn’t glowing. “Everyone okay? No broken bones? Good. Then let’s move. Whatever just turned you three into human night-lights… it’s coming from deeper in the chamber. I can see a bigger structure ahead.”
Ella was practically vibrating with excitement again, her glowing hands tracing glyphs in the air like she could read them. “This changes everything. We’re not just exploring anymore. We’re part of it.”
I took a slow breath, and the starmap pulsed warmer across my chest. And suddenly my own words,not my harvest, not my reaping,turned into a moot point. Because here I was, glowing like one of Ashera’s own daughters in the dark heart of a lost civilization, with three human women who were quickly becoming something like friends, and four overprotective alien males probably tearing the plateau apart trying to reach us. I holstered my blaster and stepped forward into the ruins. Ashleywas right, from up ahead we could make out a faint glow that grew brighter with every step we took.
“Stay close,” I ordered quietly. “And watch your step.”
Because something ancient was awake down here. And I had a feeling that it was watching us right back, like it had been waiting for us for eons. We moved deeper into the chamber, our glowing skin casting long, golden shadows that danced across the walls like living things. The starmap on my arms and chest pulsed warmer with every step, as if the place itself was answering.
Then the space opened up. What lay before us wasn’t just a room. It was acity,or what remained of one.
Half of it lay buried under ancient rubble, great slabs of fallen crystal and stone piled in silent heaps. The other half had been claimed by the mountain itself. Towering structures of pale, luminous crystal and white stone seemed to melt straight into the surrounding rock, as though the earth had slowly grown around them over millions of years, embracing and swallowing them in a gentle, geological embrace. Smooth, seamless transitions where man-made walls became natural cavern stone. It was beautiful in the most unsettling way, like the planet had decided these buildings belonged to it now.
There was almost no dust. The air was still and clean, as if the chamber had been sealed and forgotten the moment the last inhabitant walked out two and a half million years ago. Every surface looked freshly abandoned, untouched by time in any ordinary sense.
I stopped, and my breath caught in my throat. I wasn’t an archaeologist. I was a soldier, a rebel, a survivor. But standing here, surrounded by the faint golden glow of my own skin, I couldfeelher. Ashera. A soft, ancient presence humming just beneath the surface of everything, like a lullaby half-remembered from a dream. It settled into my bones, warm and familiar and heartbreakingly sad.
Ella let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh and bolted forward, nearly tripping over her own feet in her excitement.
