For a second, I allow it.I allow myself to feel the comfort he’s willing to offer.His scent—hints of parchment and honey—hums beneath the surface of the decayed water.It grounds me, and I want nothing more than to smell more of it.
The frantic pace of my lungs eases.Then reality hits.I recoil, a knife-edged break that leaves me breathless and the tunnel's silence deafening.My gaze drops.
Kael rubs his jaw, adjusting his glasses.“Sorry, I just—” a hand smooths the loose strands of his hair back.“—Lightbornes are trained for this.That’s all.”He crosses his arms, but his voice trembles.
“Thank you,” I stutter.“It helped.”
“What did you see?”
“My mother.I—I think she sacrificed herself to make me…this.”
Kael goes quiet.His jaw goes slack.“I’m sorry,” he says.“I’ve never heard of power like this.”
I release a breath as tension melts with the force of the exhale.Muffled sounds carry through the tunnel.Our heads whip toward the noise.Like a soft flame, the connection between us flickers to life—a charge of energy rippling through the link.
Move,his words echo in my mind.Now.
* * *
The tunnel yawns open,and I’m back—back in the space where the faces of my loved ones screamed beneath the glassy surface of the water.
Eira’s cries grow louder, the vibration shaking the loose stones at our feet.My shadows surge into the distance, hunting for the source of the noise.
Footsteps answer—soft, rhythmic and sure.The air shifts with a hundred small exhalations.Figures peel from darkness behind the jagged rocks.Not soldiers, but ragged, familiar shapes: lantern sellers, market folk, a woman with arms knotted like old woodwork and hair threaded with grey.
Yara.
I drop to my knees, stone crunching under the impact.Her face seems smaller, older than my memory, but when she sees the ring on my finger, she smiles—a braid of apology and guilt.
“You came back,” she says, her voice as low as a smudge of soot.Her fingers close over mine, not with the touch of a stranger, but with the weight of someone returning to a lost child.
Around her, more of the acolytes step forward, towering over us both before they too, sink to the floor.Their milky eyes fix on me as they bow until their foreheads scrape the rock.The cavern hums, charged with a palpable, expectant energy.
I close my eyes, the last few hours threatening to crush me under its dense weight.The map in my mind burns—a single, blinding line pointing toward the black pool at the cavern’s centre.
My eyes flutter open.I stare into Yara’s unwavering, cloudy gaze.
“We’ve been waiting for you, child.”Yara says.“You were lost, but now you are found.”
Nyx’s voice threads through the air—throughme.It’s warm and hungry, and it speaks only one word.
Begin.
45
RIVEN
The tunnels devour sound.
We have walked for three days without rest, the glow from our sigils thinning to a sickly ember.The men mutter that the light is dying—that the Goddess’s breath lingers here and chokes it.
I tell them to pray louder.
My joints feel resinous; every step is a negotiation with pain.Iron and rot coats the back of my tongue as my silhouette flickers along the tunnel wall, cast by runes carved into my armour—lines that should blaze, but only sputter now.
The Light does not dim,I repeat, tracing the glyph of Solan across my palm.It flares for a heartbeat before fading.The Light is tired, just as I am.
Behind me the soldiers drag their feet.Their miren crystals barely pierce the gloom.These stones draw on belief and rays from the sun; the weaker the heart, the weaker the light.I can almost hear their doubts hissing through the cracks.
