Page 35 of What Blooms from Death

I shoved the garment back into the bottom of the trunk. After grabbing a few simpler articles of clothing—which mercifully caused no visions—I crammed them into my bag, slung it over my shoulder, and hurried from the room.

On my way out, I nearly collided with Aleksander.

He started to reach out as if to catch me…only to realize who I was at the last instant. He quickly pulled his hand back, though not before his fingertips brushed mine.

The touch sent an itch crawling through me. Shadows briefly arched up from my arms like the fur of a startled black cat. In the same instant, his skin cracked slightly and light bled through, shimmering faintly between us.

Chapter Nine

Nova

We stared at one another,our disdain thickening the air along with our magic.

He settled his magic quickly. In the darkness that followed, his golden eyes seemed to glow. He needed no words to explain the turmoil and fire in his gaze; he hated the effect I had on him and his power. It was a hatred I felt in return—an increasingly tangled web of animosity that made my heart pound.

Phantom growled low in his throat. When Aleksander’s attention shifted to him, I seized the opportunity to break free from our locked gaze, pushing my way past him and hurrying to meet Zayn in the front yard.

The king followed a few minutes later, along with his three most capable soldiers. The others would stay behind, it was decided, both to continue to tend to the outpost, and because traveling in a large group was more likely to attract unwanted attention from whatever spirits and beasts haunted these depths. My magic alone would undoubtedly draw some of those fiends; we didn’t need anything else increasing our chances of trouble.

Of course, I had my own reasons for insisting on a smaller party: It meant fewer people to outrun should my new companions prove as untrustworthy as I feared.

For now, though, I put on a façade of compliance, blending into the team. Zayn had a clear destination in mind, and the confident manner in which he struck out onto the road was contagious, urging me and everyone else onward.

I felt a flicker of relief as I realized his chosen path aligned closely with that of my own original plans; if the theory about the mirroring between the living world and the dead one held true, we were heading toward the parallel of Rose Point that lay somewhere in the darkness ahead.

As the six of us—seven, counting Phantom—walked, time stretched into what felt like hours.

Above, the sky unfurled in a tumultuous canvas of swirling colors, dominated by deep violets and somber greys, occasionally illuminated by flashes of crimson and cobalt. The ground rolled endlessly beneath us, a mixture of dark stone and ashen soil that swallowed the sound of our footsteps. The air was heavy, pervaded by a sense of melancholy, as if it bore the weight of all the former lives of the lost souls around us. We passed only a few of those wandering souls, and they all kept their distance.

But it felt as if countless more were watching us, lingering just out of sight.

I looked frequently to the sky. Violent as it was, it was still less unsettling than the ghosts drifting around us. When the flashes of blue overtook it, it occasionally reminded me of the sky in the living world—albeit one still streaked with foreboding colors and clouds, hinting at storms to come.

Several times, I thought I caught a glimpse of what looked like a sphere of fire peeking out of the tumbling waves of chaotic energy.

“Is there a sun in this sky?” I wondered aloud.

“If it can be called such a thing,” said Elias, one of the soldiers accompanying us. “It hasn’t moved since we’ve been here, though. Least, not that I’ve seen. Only the clouds around it shift and change the amount of light it gives off—but that shifting does seem to stick to a pattern that mimics the day and night of the living world.”

I kept watching, hoping for a clearer glimpse of this ‘sun’ that never came.

Finally, we slowed to a stop. Ahead of us, a strange structure stretched as far as I could see in both directions. It looked like it might have been a grand, protective wall at some point, but now it was nothing more than unevenly spaced piles of cracked and broken stone.

The physical damage it had sustained didn’t seem like the kind that could be caused by mere weathering, nor inflicted by wandering ghosts and incorporeal beings…

So what had destroyed it?

Zayn took a piece of parchment from his bag, consulting the notes and diagrams on it for a long moment before seemingly making up his mind about where to go next. He led us to one of the largest openings between the rubble piles, but he stopped short of trying to pass through it.

No one else dared to step forward, either; even Aleksander had exchanged his usual arrogant demeanor for a look that could almost be mistaken for concern.

I chanced a few cautious steps closer, studying the twisted scraps of iron scattered among the broken stone. It looked like the remnants of a gate. As I stared at it, a foreboding feeling took root in my gut and began to grow.

“This is as far as most of our expeditions have ventured over the years,” Zayn said. “A few went beyond this wall in the earlier days, but…”

“They didn’t make it back?” I guessed, glancing over my shoulder at him.

He shook his head slowly. “No…they did come back.” The words slipped from his lips with reluctance, like heavy stones forced uphill, fighting against the gravity of what he truly meant to say.

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