Page 224 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

Something tickled her palm.

Alora mindlessly traced her fingers across her lips where his had just been as she glanced down. Within her tightly closed fist, a pearl-petal flower rested. She let her arms hang by her side, feeling all the blood draining from her limbs, and held onto that flower as if it were a long-lost, treasured, precious lion trinket.

She should have gone with him.

Why didn’t she go with him?

Rotting, cracked wooden boards twisted in a jagged path across the putrid swamp. Garrik was deep within the dark forest. And because of the ancient magic surrounding this swamp, he was only able to dawn to the edge of its waters.

He would have to cross by foot.

Overlooking the mist and fog that rose as far as his eye could see. Every few feet, torches were aflame, and the only movement was their reflection in the lifeless waters. Not even a breeze shuffled its stinking liquids. Decomposing carcasses and deadwood floated but never so much as twitched. It smelled like death. Worse than death. No corpses he ever had the displeasure of smelling had a stench quite like this.

And if the rumors were to be believed, this swamp was not only filled with decay.

But souls too.

Who knew the decay of stolen souls stunk so terribly?

Garrik fought back a wave of nausea while his boot took the first step on the creaking board. It instantly crumbled beneath his weight and caused him to stumble back. The water rippled where the wood fell, and underneath, something moved beneath the grime.

He twisted his mouth. Navigating this treacherous path was fools play. One slip, one ill-placed step, or rotten piece of wood, could be his doom.

The legends foretold that no living creature made the putrid waters its home. No. As lifeless and unmoving as the swamp was, so were the souls that remained trapped there. One brush of their essence and he would become one of them. Trapped for eternity and ruled by the immortal beyond its shores.

Seeking out Kerimkhar somewhere in this wasteland would not be easy, he knew as such, but did the pathway have to be so decrepit that he could not cross?

With no choice but to move forward by foot, Garrik took another wide step. This time, the wooden board groaned but held.

From the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw a shadow move. Only it was not a shadow. He controlledthe shadows. Whatever this was scuttled away and remained cloaked within them.

It moved high above the trees. When he pivoted his gaze, it had gone still. Whatever it was. It was watching. Waiting.

The wooden boards made one last jarring turn around a half-sunken tree, rotting with algae growing up its trunk. At the pathway’s edge, slick and sludge-covered stones were etched into twenty rounded and wide steps.

Two colossal stone pillars flanked the entrance parallel to the doors of a mausoleum. Hewn walls of unforgiving stone enclosed the top of the staircase. The crypt’s double-doors shone pale alabaster, engraved with a visage of otherworldly, chilling beauty. A cruel smile curled upon male, carved lips, as though delighting in a sinister joke—forever captured as a herald of startling beauty and malevolence. It marked a boundary Garrik had no choice in crossing.

He stepped onto the stones and began his ascent. Beside the steps, ivory sand settled and disappeared far behind into the forest. But when his silver focused, the ivory was not dust at all. He had split open flesh, cut through limbs, and shattered bodies with airwaves enough times to recognize these ivory shards and dust fragments.

Bone.

The shore was swallowed in it.

Something like a deathly chill climbed up the back of his neck. Like an entity brushed his skin, or a presence was standing directly behind him. Garrik gripped his sword and slowly turned back to the water, his boots resting on two separate steps.

His breath went shallow.

The calm water that he slowly crossed, empty, without a trace of life. Now waited in the eerie, iridescent green glow of thousands of floating, staring, life-hungry bodies.

Souls… they hovered, shoulder to shoulder. Waiting for him to return.

Not a chance in Firekeeper-filled-hell.

He would take his chances with Kerimkhar.

Garrik stood outside two doors made of dripping, graybones, half-opened as if he was expected to walk inside. Self-preservation shot through his body, pleading with him not to take the steps inside and down the long dark staircase to where the myth of trickery awaited. But he had no choice.

A deal is a deal.And as he pressed his hands into the doors, a smile crept up his face when a Smokeshadow danced across his palm. Only the swamp full of souls had been guarded by magic.Good.He would need every ounce of his power to deal with the monster inside.

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