Page 13 of Waking Her Dragon

“I didn't see Garrett,” Sydney quickly corrected, rubbing her temples as a dull throb began to form behind her eyes. “But I saw where he’s being held. It’s a chamber of weeping black stone. And carved directly into the floor is a sigil. It’s a black, serpent-like dragon.”

Ginnie gasped softly, her eyes darting to Carrick. “Leviathan.”

“There was water, too,” Sydney pressed on, her voice tightening. “Not an ocean, not a river. It was the sound of a crushing, suffocating weight. Like primordial waters shifting in total darkness. It felt like how the Ancients described The Abyss.”

Carrick’s chest rose and fell in a slow, heavy breath. Watching his eyes flash then glow, she knew that his tactical mind was already mapping the coordinates of every ancient text they would need to pull. “It’s a start. We can track the lineage of that sigil. We can pinpoint the entry gates to those waters.”

“That’s not everything,” Sydney said, her voice dropping into a harsh whisper. She gripped the edge of the table beside her. “Right before the connection broke... Right before I was thrown backward... I heard a voice.”

Carrick froze. “Garrett?”

“That's what I thought at first,” Sydney murmured, her thoughts racing back to the phantom chill that had sliced through her mind.

Closing her eyes, she internally reached for the Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul. “Kara, was it Aodhan? Was the King trying to shield us?”

“No.” Kara’s reply was a hiss, completely devoid of its usual arrogant warmth. The Dragon Queen sounded uncharacteristically tense, her mental claws digging into the edges of Sydney’s consciousness. “That was not the Dragon King. And it was not our Mate.”

Sydney’s eyes snapped open. “Well, shit.”

“Sydney, what is it?” Ginnie urged, stepping closer. “Who spoke to you?”

“Kara says it wasn't Garrett, and it wasn't Aodhan,” Sydney replied, a cold dread pooling in her stomach. “Someone else was in that Void with them. A voice from the shadows. When I locked onto the trail, they noticed. They looked right back at me, and they slammed the door in my face.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

No one had an answer. They didn't know if it was Leviathan himself, the Demon Lord of Envy, the ancient guardian of the deep, or someone completely unexpected watching from the dark. But the terrifying truth hit Sydney all at once.

She hadn't just accidentally stumbled upon the hidden coordinates or a map. She had tapped a wire. And whoever was holding Garrett’s soul now knew exactly who was coming to look for him.

Carrick was already pacing the room, his eyes dark as he calculated the logistics of a standard search-and-rescue. "If it's the primordial waters, we start with the ancient gate networks. We force entry if we have to.” Stopping, he looked at his Mate. “Ginnie, can you pull the map of the fractured ley lines?"

“They don't understand,” Kara’s voice rumbled deep in Sydney’s chest, a heavy, vibrating sound that made her ribs ache. “They are thinking like mortals. They think the Abyss is just a deep hole in the ground.”

Sydney rubbed her chest, feeling the phantom pressure of those dark waters returning. “Carrick, wait,” she said, cutting through his planning.

Holding up the index finger of her left hand when he opened his mouth to speak, she focused her thoughts inward. “Kara, what do you mean? What exactly is the Abyss? Is it some version of Hell?”

“No,” Kara spat, the word dripping with ancient disdain. “Hell is a playground for souls who earned their punishment. The Abyss is older. Much older. It is the primordial rot left over from before the universe was even shaped.”

Shivering, the cold truth of Kara’s words echoing in her mind, Syd dropped her hand and explained, “Kara says it’s not Hell.” She had Carrick and Ginnie’s undivided attention. “She says it’s a primordial space between the Realms.”

“Ask her how we get in,” Carrick’s expression demanded, though he spoke aloud to Sydney with a warmth in his voice that she knew he added just for her. “If it’s a realm, it has an anchor point. A door.”

Sydney pressed Kara. “How do we portal there? If we find the sigil's coordinates, can we portal in there?”

“You cannot use a vortex to enter the Void, Mo Nighean Shònraichte,” Kara replied, her internal tone turning uncharacteristically grim. “Light does not behave normally there. It bends. It suffocates. Space and time do not stretch out… they fold in on themselves. When my kind walked the Earth, the oldest Dragon Kings knew The Abyss existed. It was the one place we were strictly forbidden to enter.”

Sydney swallowed hard. “Why? What’s inside?”

“I don't know,” Kara admitted. The confession hit Sydney harder than any answer could have. To hear a proud, ancient Dragon Queen admit ignorance was terrifying. “Those who were cast into it never returned to speak of it. It is a prison meant to dissolve a soul until nothing remains.”

Sydney looked up at Carrick, the gravity of the situation sinking like lead in her stomach. “We can’t just portal in,” she said, her voice dropping. “Kara says the rules of Magic don't apply there. The light suffocates. Space folds. Even the ancient Dragons were forbidden from going near it because it's a metaphysical prison designed to dissolve whatever is trapped inside.”

She paused, locking eyes with Carrick. “There are no back doors, and there are no shortcuts. If we try to just blast our way into The Abyss, we won't be rescuing Garrett. We’ll just be giving whoever is holding him two more souls to destroy.”

The weight of Kara’s warning left the room feeling utterly hollow. A realm where light suffocated, where space folded in on itself, and where a soul was slowly dissolved into nothingness… It felt like trying to wage a war against the ocean itself.

Carrick stood perfectly still in the center of the room, his blue eyes as dark as the night sky were fixed on the floor. Syd knew he was thinking, strategizing their next move. From one heartbeat to the next, she saw his mind pull back from the logistics of a rescue and knew he was staring at the foundation of the problem.