Page 115 of Soul Forge

“Okay, what isthat?” Julian asked, peering up at the wall behind them. It was pure moonstone, painted with shining gold enamel to accent the edges and curves, carved with symbols written in a language Elda had never seen before. A thin slit, barely the width of a strand of hair, ran down the middle.

“I think it’s a door,” she murmured, reaching out to touch it. There were no handles, no mechanisms to grant entry. It stayed firmly shut when she pushed it. Gira, Reiner, and Julian tried as well, pressing their shoulders against it and heaving, to no avail.

“A little help, saviour of Valerus?” Reiner asked, raising a brow.

Sypher didn’t answer, staring up at the door with a ridge between his brows. Elda’s breath caught at the sight of him – he was unsettled, his wings shifting uncomfortably. She saw his lips press into a thin line.

“Are you alright?” she asked gently, laying a hand on his arm. The contact seemed to bring him back to the present, and his crimson eyes turned down to look at her. The flames in them flickered with his emotions.

“I feel like I’ve been here before,” he murmured.

She watched him step away from her touch and approach the pale doorway. It towered over him, at least ten feet tall and just as wide, yet when he slipped off his glove and laid a hand on the carvings, it swung open like it weighed nothing.

Sypher blinked. “I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”

“Well, shit,” Julian murmured.

“How did you do that?” Reiner frowned. “You barely touched it. Three of us couldn’t budge it.”

“I don’t know.” Elda watched his throat bob, and her heart squeezed for him. She could see it in the clenching and unclenching of his fists, in the shifting of his wings and the downturn to the corners of his mouth – he was afraid of whatever waited beyond that door.

But he squared his shoulders and passed through it, moving into the courtyard beyond. Elda followed, the doorway looming overhead. What waited on the other side made all the blood drain from her face.

The courtyard from her premonition was revealed in all its decaying glory, built into a vast cavern hollowed out of the mountain. Ancient runes carved into the high ceiling illuminated the moment Sypher set foot on the tiles, their light bright enough to highlight the flecks and motes of dust spinning in the air around them. Their age was obvious from the way theywere faded, some of them so old they’d turned smooth and could no longer emit a glow.

The tiles beneath her boots were cracked and coated in a layer of dust; white marble shot through with veins of gold that looked like they might have sparkled even in low light but now were weathered and faded by time. The planters she’d seen still lined the central walkway, the skeletal trees from her premonition held aloft by square white pots decorated with whorls of pale gold and carved with images of outstretched wings. A couple of them were shattered, the trees collapsed on the ground, the dirt long-since dried and turned to dust.

Elda faltered when she saw the rivulets of red dripping down the walls. Fat tears of crimson liquid seeped from cracks in the stone walls, too thick to be water. The rock around them was scarred with claw marks like some ancient beast had run wild in the chamber. The red flow crept down them, highlighting the deeper ones before running off into a worn channel set all around the outer edges of the courtyard.

Unlike the rest of the chamber, the channel didn’t appear to be handmade. The steady supply of liquid had ground down the stone over time, creating its own pathway that disappeared into the bowels of the mountain on either side of the archway.

“Tears of blood,” she whispered, her eyes on that dark passage. It called to her, mocking her with the screams she’d heard since the Spirits had sent their terrifying message into her dreams.

Something had blown the archway wide open. The walls and ceiling were scored with more welts left by ancient talons, like the creature that had scarred the chamber had dug its way through to whatever lay beyond. Chunks of rock had been torn from the ceiling, their remains shattered against the tiles surrounding the entrance and disappearing into the dark.

With sudden, alarming certainty, Elda knew whatever was beyond that arch was awful. Fear settled in her bones, trailing itsfingers over the back of her neck until she shivered and reached for Sypher’s hand to stop him.

When he turned to look back at her, Vel looked back, too. That thing inside her that drew her to the demon soul, the part of her that wanted him no matter what sort of monster the world told her he was, ached for him. She knew then that the Soul Forge feared whatever waited for them just as much as she did.

“Don’t go through that arch without me,” she pleaded, twining their fingers and laying her other hand over his. All thoughts of nerves or embarrassment were far away, her mind focussed only on the horror they were no doubt about to face. “We need to do this together. All three of us.”

His brows crept up at her inclusion of the demon soul, but he nodded. “Alright.” She felt him squeeze her fingers gently. “This place has Vel wanting to bolt.”

“It hasallof us wanting to bolt,” Gira replied, glancing at Julian who was trying to coax Nox further across the courtyard. Reiner stood by Atlas’ side, patting his flank with one hand, her mace already clutched in the other, watching the vampire speak softly to his mount. Nox walked a few more wary steps, then planted her hooves again and pulled against the reins.

“We have to go in,” Sypher told Elda. “I’m right here with you. I won’t let anything happen to you.” She looked up at him and swallowed, a fist clenching around her heart when he smiled faintly.

“It’s not me that I’m afraid for, Sypher.”

His smile became rueful. “I know.” He opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped, his face turning slack. The colour drained from his skin, though the demon soul stayed put, and he turned to face the open door leading back outside. Elda turned with him, and the sound of huge, beating wings reached her ears.

They’d been followed.

Reiner moved like lightning, swinging up into the saddle and turning Atlas to face the doors the moment the rush of air became clear to her, brandishing her mace. Her Pegasus ignited, his feathers an inferno of violet lightning that matched the power illuminating her veins and shining from her eyes. Her braids swung loose down her back; the hair tie cut through by the energy crackling around her.

Gira drew his claymore and shifted, his muscles bunching and expanding, fine black fur sprouting to cover him from head to toe. His lips lifted from his muzzle to reveal glistening white fangs, thick tail swishing slowly back and forth behind him. Claws sprouted from his fingertips, and a low growl rumbled through his chest.

When a looming black shape blocked the light pouring in from outside, Julian climbed back into the saddle and urged Nox closer to Elda, settling himself on Gira’s other side with Elda and the Soul Forge behind them.

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