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Balmo skittered ahead, claws clicking over the worn stone. Its ears twitched constantly, catching every creak, every distant echo.
The nave stretched endlessly, pews shrouded in shadow. When Balmo stopped at the altar and hissed, the stone beneath them shuddered. With a lurch, the floor behind the dais split apart, revealing a spiralling stair descending into darkness.
“Great,” Lysander muttered.
“Deeper,” Balmo croaked, grinning as if pleased.
They followed the imp down. Lance hesitated, then dove after them with a low hiss, his scales shimmering faintly in the gloom.
Balmo darted ahead, pausing frequently, turning its head as if listening for the unseen currents of the daemon plane.
Stone walls closed in around them as they wound deeper, the air growing cooler, tinged with the metallic scent of hidden Current veins. Shadows shifted unnaturally, as if aware of their intrusion. Idonea held her hand forward, feeling the Current hum in response to her presence.
“Something is off,” Lysander said. “The air itself … it’s heavier here.”
“Yes,” she replied, scanning the walls. “The daemon’s influence … it’s buried, layered beneath wards. It’s hiding deeper than I expected. But it is here.”
The passage twisted suddenly, leading into a wide corridor that split into three near-identical archways. Idonea hesitated. “This is exactly why I needed the imp. I would never find the right path without it.”
Balmo clicked its claws and leapt to the central arch. “This way,” it rasped, voice low but authoritative.
Lysander’s brow furrowed. “You trust it implicitly?”
Idonea shot him a glance, tension coiling around her ribs. “I don’t have a choice.”
They followed Balmo, twisting through the corridors. The walls narrowed and widened unpredictably, and the ceiling hung low in some areas, forcing them to duck. Stone stairs led down and then back up, sometimes with hidden landings covered in centuries of dust.
Time stretched in the maze-like corridors. Lance occasionally hissed at shadows, wings brushing the walls, while Balmo darted ahead, clearly impatient but attuned to the hidden energies. Idonea’s legs ached, and she could feel sweat matting her hair to her forehead, but she pushed on. The corridor seemed longer when she looked back.
Balmo chittered, perching on a ledge above them. “There. Below.” It pointed with a clawed hand towards a narrow corridor veiled in shadow. The stone floor sloped downward, disappearing into pitch-black. Lance hissed once, clearly reluctant, but he remained obedient.
They broke into a cavernous chamber at last, its ceiling swallowed by shadow. The lantern’s glow barely touched the upper reaches, leaving the stone above them to loom like the underside of a great ribcage. The walls were etched with glyphs so old they no longer sat still beneath the eye; they crawled when the light passed over them, lines flexing as if remembering motion.
At the far end yawned an archway sealed by three concentric rings of dark metal.
A pressure sat behind her eyes, a tightening low in her ribs, the familiar ache of something warded too tightly for comfort. The metal exuded cold, but at its centre burned a heat that licked at her skin, sharp and intimate, like breath against a wound.
Balmo let out a low, delighted cackle. “Old door,” it croaked. “Hungry one. Likes pain. Likes truth better.”
“Charming,” Lysander said, eyeing the daemon.
Idonea stepped closer.
The outer ring was carved with resonant glyphs, smooth and precise, their symmetry soothing. They hummed faintly at her approach, a sound too low to hear properly, more vibration than noise. The inner ring was jagged, scarred with Riven marks cut deep into the metal, each line sharp enough to catch the light like a blade. The third ring lay between them, blank but for fractured grooves that looked less carved than broken open.
A lock, then. A cage within a cage. Her fingers hovered inches from the metal. She didn't touch it yet.
“It’s like the Lodamante,” she murmured. “Layered. Built to choke the Current unless it’s coaxed exactly right.”
Lysander shifted beside her. “And if it isn’t?”
“It pushes back.”
She didn't add hard, or cruelly. The door already knew.
She laid her palms against the outer ring. The glyphs shuddered beneath her skin, warmth blooming through the cold as the metal recognised her. A thin thread of Current stirred, tentative as a waking limb. The hum deepened, vibrating up her arms and into her chest.
The door breathed.
