Talia nodded, but her hand trembled.
Behind them, Resh hesitated only one more heartbeat.
Thessia did not look back at him as she spoke.
“Go.”
Her voice was final.
Sharp.
A severing.
He obeyed—cradling Auryn against his chest, running through the smoke-filled hall toward the lower veins. Auryn’s sobs echoed behind him, thin and breaking, the braid clutched to her heart.
The barricade exploded inward.
Thessia inhaled deeply, tasting the last moment of stillness before the world collapsed.
She met Zarrek’s eyes.
He nodded once.
She smiled—the kind of smile only the dying can afford.
“For the Riven,” she said—her ancestor’s shadow warming her spine.
“For the little star,” Zarrek answered—his voice breaking just once.
And together, they stepped into the breach.
39
Broken Descent
The stairwell trembled under Kailorien’s boots as he descended into the chamber of the Oathgate. The heat from the battle above followed them—thick with ash, veiled with blood. He held Auryn close, one arm steady beneath her knees, the other cradling her back. She’d gone limp against him at some point. Black veins crawled up her neck.
The braid pressed between them—Thessia’s braid. Still warm from Auryn’s palm.
The entry gate groaned shut behind them as they crossed into the chamber—the stone heart of the old fortress. A wide hall carved into the mountain’s ribs, where Mirror Shafts once turned with crystalline precision and where, in times of siege, the Veinroads could be sealed. Violet veins pulsed faintly through the walls like a weak heartbeat, leading toward the massive stone door at the far end.
The Veinroads seal loomed from the dark—black stone, towering, alive with searing runes. At its center, a star-sigil blazed cold and blue. Moss clung to its edges, but the Wards still burned bright, whispering a warning only he could silence.
Only him. Only the Resh’Agar.
He pressed his palm to the ancient column. Blue fire rippled across his rune-branded skin. The mechanism hissed awake—crystal plates shifting, arcane channels sparking to life along the floor. The Shield conjuration responded; ancient gears turning with the creak of slumbering giants. Therunes screamed as he activated the core sigil, unraveling in a cascade of furious light.
The air cracked open. Radiance poured outward, then inward, as the Veinroads door split like a ribcage forced wide. Behind it spiraled darkness and light in equal measure.
The path home—if home still existed.
The moment the locks sealed into place, a howl shattered the chamber’s brief silence.
Behind the upper gate, the battle had turned.
Warning horns split the air—first one, then three in rapid succession. Perimeter breach.
The monsters had reached the inner fortress.
