Page 84 of Ashen Wings

“Fine,” I reply. He scrutinizes my shaken gaze, but I offer a quick smile of assurance. “I’m fine Is, I promise.”

“Alright, let’s go.” Jace appears from the tomb’s entrance, clutching a velvet satchel with both hands. “We have only moments before the eclipse is in full. My connection to Tenebris is starting to wane.”

The four of us retrace our steps back through the tomb, climbing the endless stairwell until the air cools. With Roe and Isra in tow, Jace turns the corner and disappears.

A silvery light, glowing through the cracks of an empty tomb, stops me in my tracks.

What the fuck?

Maybe the ceiling has caved in, allowing moonlight to fill the chamber. A shallow whisper, easily mistaken for a whistling draft, slithers around me, and goose flesh puckers on my arms. I risk a glance into the tomb. A sigh of relief escapes me when I find it silent and sleeping.

The glow—as suspected—is from a crack in the ceiling. Starlight washes the black satin in an eerie light, almost like a beacon, marking safe passage back to land.

I glance down the hall. The others have already disappeared out of sight, and I know I should run to catch up. There isn’t much time before this place turns deadly.

But something about this chamber keeps me still. It’s not unlike any of the others I’ve seen tonight—stone-carved walls, low ceiling, and a single candle. But the moonlight shining in paints a landscape of something ethereal. Something cosmic.

Before I can even register the motion, my boots sneak through the entrance, and I approach the casket. My palms tremble as I brush a thumb along the funeral shroud, cold and smooth to the touch. A delicate breeze brushes the hairs on my neck.

Then a voice, low and liquified, whispers against my ear. “Nova Lindwen,” it says. “I’ve waited a lifetime for you.”

Unsheathing my blade, I spin to face the imposter, but I’m greeted only by fallen dust and a dim vacancy.

“Show yourself.”

“I am nothing more than a voice, nothing more than a whisper of wind and starlight,” it says, now from behind me. The tickle of breath on my neck spikes my pulse, and I whirl around again. Still, only the empty tomb awaits.

“Tell me who you are,” I demand, my voice quivering like the candle beside the casket.

“I have no body, no soul, I am no one. Not yet.”

The words caress my arms, my shoulders, my cheeks, with a reassurance of safety. Something in it assures me I’m safe. It means me no harm, and unlike so many before who’ve feigned the same sentiment, I believe it.

“Find me. Find me in the stars. Walk the plane. I wait for you there.”

“What? I don’t understand. Are you a spirit of a fallen Ashborne? Of a rider?”

The candle spikes until its flame licks the cold stone above us. I shield my eyes from the heat. Fuck, any closer and my damned eyebrows could’ve singed off.

Then, there’s nothing. Nothing but blood-stained light, once silver, gleaming in from the caved in ceiling. Oh shit.

Shaken from whatever gravity I’ve fallen into, I turn on my heels and plummet down the corridor.

“I can’t hold this much longer, rider! Go! Get the silver haired human!” Tenebris’s strained voice echoes through the passage as I barrel toward the door.

Gone are the shadows, and darkness.

Gone is the silence.

Now the walls bleed and the stone quakes with deafening howls of the dead. They cry and growl and roar with glee as transparent bodies appear shoulder to shoulder at the entrance.

I’m suddenly in a sea of spirits, wriggling and writhing like a building storm. My pulse booms in my ears, but I focus on the exit, barely glancing at the nightmarish souls clarifying in my periphery.

“Nova! What the fuck?” Jace booms through the closed door. The crowd of translucent figures builds like the tide, solidifying and swarming.

All snap their heads toward me.

All have glowing red eyes.