Page 162 of The World Undone

“Get them out,” she said, her words stiff, filled with gravel. She tensed, head tilting to the side. “It’s here. The stone. I’ll retrieve it.” She took a deep breath, shivering slightly. The dark edges of her irises started slowly bleeding through with familiar threads of brown. She reached her hand forward, the tips of her fingers gliding gently against the wall. “So much death, so much torment within these walls.”

“Well, we didn’t leave much standing upstairs. Might as well finish the job with style.” Darius grinned. “What do you say, Little Protector? Are you in the mood for one final Guild-worthy bonfire?”

33

MAX

The stone sat on our kitchen table. It was larger than I remembered, and far heavier than I’d anticipated.

The stone itself was tall and jagged, encased in a large basin that seemed to be made of the same iridescent material that Lucifer’s blade was composed of. The base of the stone was submerged in a shimmery, thick liquid that seemed to swirl and move of its own accord, the colors shifting and metallic, almost like an oil slick.

In some ways, it reminded me of The River Styx, which made sense—everything seemed to go back to that river.

“So this is it?” Izzy arched her brow, bending over to study the mesmerizing liquid in the basin, but making sure she didn’t get close enough to touch it.

It was early, the sun only just rising, but The Lodge had a stillness today that was unusual. I’d gone for a walk earlier and the place felt like a ghost town.

When I realized that the lake was going to be the center of the ritual, I had Charlie clear out everyone staying too close to the shoreline. I had no idea what kind of recoil there’d be with power this uncharted and unpredictable.

I didn’t want to have any more blood on my hands than I already did.

She was hesitant at first when I told her my plan, but with The Guild taken care of, there was less reason for us all to remain packed so tightly together. The community had spent the months we’d devoted to training building more lodging further out into the woods. It would be enough to house everyone. At least until things were handled here on my end.

Most people had already begun avoiding the lake after Darius ripped open the portal—something I was belatedly grateful for.

Izzy was one of the few who hadn’t been able to resist walking along the water’s edge. Like Charlie, I often found her out there in the mornings watching the sunrise, either oblivious to, or unafraid of the portal that occasionally shimmered on the skyline.

Izzy had been working odd hours in the med ward, which meant that her sleep schedule was as unbalanced as mine. She’d found me wandering out there early this morning and brought me some fresh coffee—a gesture that had clogged my throat with gratitude.

I wish I’d spent more time with her, that the time we did spend together hadn’t been so bogged down in planning out missions and chores.

“This is it,” I whispered, trying not to wake the others.

I couldn’t pull my eyes from it, the urge to run my fingers over the stone almost impossible to resist.

Last night, after healing Dec and filling Charlie and the others in on what had happened, I fell asleep, exhausted, sandwiched between Dec and Eli.

But I only slept for a few hours. Between the remnants of anger and power flooding through my veins, and the constant urge to keep checking on the stone, sleep had proven nearly impossible for me, no matter how tired I was.

Every breath I waited felt too long, every second a lifetime of too late, too late, too late echoing through my mind.

I’d crawled out from Eli’s limbs several times, just to come look at the stone, to make sure it was here, that we’d really found it.

It was mesmerizing, the way the moonlight pouring through the window highlighted the strange, swirling colors that seemed to be in constant motion. And then, from some angles, it would look entirely ordinary—so ordinary that I was almost convinced we had the wrong thing, that this rock couldn’t possibly be the key to saving so many lives.

As if it heard me, the stone answered my doubts by sending a gentle thrum against my skin, like livewire.

Around midnight, I overheard Wade, Darius, and Atlas whispering together in one of the other bedrooms.

They were too quiet for me to catch more than a stray word here and there, but I knew they were up to something, that they were going to try to stop me from going through with it altogether. Finding the stone and identifying the nexus changed everything—moved things along far more quickly than they’d been hoping for.

But they didn’t feel the same urgency that I did, they didn’t taste the sour twist of magic in the air, didn’t feel the plane between realms pulsing with breath.

They were out of time.

I was out of time.

Izzy shivered and stepped back from the rock. “Can’t believe this is what they’ve been using to forge bonds. So surreal.” She turned to me, her hand unconsciously hovering a few inches above one of the jagged ridges of the stone. When she noticed, she flinched, and pulled her arm back, folding it over her chest. “And you’re sure it will work for the ritual too?”

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