Though my heart still beats steadily, something stirs deep within my blood.
From the soulless darkness, a round door appears, more than two times Zarrek’s height.
Sealed withstrongermagic this time.
Zarrek pushes me aside. “Let me handle this.”
Holding out a hand, the Reskala warrior whispers ancient words, each syllable a wedge against the seal—deliberate, devastating. Twisted symbols take shape as the breath leaves the Runetongue’s lips, pulsing as they unfold and shatter all nine locks.
The door groans—then opens.
Zarrek draws his colossal battleaxe while I reach for the sword at my hip. We enter back-to –back, like the old days, when it was just us against armies of varkhounds and riftspawn.
The chamber before us pulses with its own beating heart of mana, radiating a cerulean light outward from a central pillar. Our breaths turn to vapor; the metal of our armor groaning as it shrinks back against a sudden biting frost.
The pillar is ice, but not. Something foreign…somethingdifferent.
We approach the structure with measured steps until I can make out something floating in the pillar’s depths.
My breath freezes when my eyes focus on the blur of color within.
As though a hammer slams into it, my heartlurchesin my chest. I stumble forward. Not from clumsiness, but shock. For nothing has ever stirred the core of me into motion before. Not beating drums of war. Not screams of the dying. Not thechant of my people as they worship my name in bloodlust and ruin.
Butthis…
A woman, encased within the crystal like a child within Ennea’s womb, glowing from within. Dressed in clothes of a style I’ve never seen on any of my travels.
Small. Still. Silver-haired. Not peaceful. Not afraid. Just…waiting.
I step forward, entranced—drawn not by logic, but something older. Deeper. Primal as the elements.
Elegant lines in her shape send a flicker of awareness crawling up my spine.
“Resh,” Zarrek says behind me, voice sharp, “stay back.”
I ignore him, still moving forward. “She’s breathing.”
“No, it’s—wait.” Zarrek’s tone shifts. “Void take me.”
A faint mist at her lips.
“She’s sealed.” I examine the crystal. “Containment web, but not the usual leys. Something twisted.”
I reach into my coat.
“Tell me you’renotabout to pull out that cursed scrap of rock.”
“It isn’t cursed,” I tell him, taking a long crystalline stone from my inner pocket. The Void Seed shimmers in my palm, humming. “It’s a resonance artifact. Interferes with a ward’s ley and dissolves mana channels. Effective in this case.”
“Every time you mess with that thing, it corrupts my runes. Thrums like it’s alive.” Zarrek scowls. “Makes my teeth itch.”
“Let’s try it.”
Zarrek rushes to me, grabbing my arm in a bruising grip. “Stop. Don’t you think there’s a reason thatthingis bottledup in there?”
I ignore him, unable to tear my eyes away from the woman—from the way her hand stretches towards me, pleading.
“She’s meant to wake,” I say. “She’s waiting.”
