Instead, we were here. Together. We were alive.
“You did it,” I croaked.
She blinked at me, eyes bright with adrenaline and somethingdeeper. “We did.”
I had been prepared to drown. Instead, I had followed her and lived.
And in that moment, soaked and shaking and utterly undone, I knew with terrifying clarity that there was no version of the future where I walked away from her.
I had just enough time to register that we were still breathing before I heard a wet, hacking cough.
It cut through the ringing in my ears like a blade.
I lifted my head, muscles screaming, water still dripping from my hair, and saw Hadrian pushing himself upright at the edge of the chamber. He was a wreck, soaked robes clinging to him, hair plastered back, hands shaking as he braced himself against the stone.
I had momentarily forgotten about him.
Artemis shifted beside me, still half-curled against my chest, and I tightened my arm around her automatically. My body moved before my mind did. Protect. Shield. Place myself between her and whatever came next.
Hadrian didn’t look at us.
He looked past us, toward the center of the chamber, then began to speak.
The language was wrong. Old, yes, but more than that. It scraped against the inside of my skull like something alive. Each syllable dragged the air tighter, heavier, until my scales prickled beneath my skin and the stone beneath us began to hum.
“No,” I said hoarsely, trying to force myself upright. “Hadrian. Stop.”
He didn’t hear me.
Or he did and didn’t care.
The water that had drained moments before began to creep back toward the center, flowing uphill, pulled by something unseen. The torches along the walls guttered and dimmed. Shadows stretched in impossible directions.
Chains burst up from the stone floor with a shriek of tortured metal, blackened and ancient, glowing faintly with runes I recognized from the journal. Binding glyphs. Old ones. Desperate ones.
And between them?—
The entity did not rise so much as force itself into existence, like reality had been peeled back and it was clawing through the wound. Jaws unfolded first. Too many jaws. Layered and snapping, each ring lined with teeth that glistened like wet obsidian. Its body was vast but ill-defined, a mass of shadow, muscle, and writhing appendages that never quite settled into one shape.
Eyes opened across it in a slow, awful bloom.
Every one of them fixed on Hadrian.
It was chained. Thank the gods.
The chains bit deep into whatever passed for flesh. They strained and groaned as the thing surged forward, radiating hunger so sharp it made my vision blur.
Malevolence rolled off it in waves.
Hadrian smiled.
“My bloodline,” he said, voice tremblingwith awe and desperation. “Restore what was taken from us. Give me what was promised?—”
I launched myself across the chamber and hit him full force, driving him away from the summoning circle and into the far wall. Stone cracked under the impact. He gasped, shock flashing across his face as he scrambled to defend himself.
“You don’t get to do this,” I snarled, shifting mid-stride, claws tearing free, wings flaring wide in the confined space.
He recovered quickly. My thoughts were spiraling. So this… this monster is what he wanted to bind our clan’s magic to? This was how he sought to restore our power?
