Page 32 of The Shattered Rite
Then… you continue with the trials.
She huffed once. “That’s vague.”
Prophecies often are.
She smiled, cracked and tired.
They moved as one. Vaeronth led her from the edge of the ancient pool, its surface still burning faintly with the afterglow of their bond—ripples catching the light like liquid fire before melting back into shadow.
The air grew colder as they left it behind, each step echoing in a silence so deep it felt alive. The stone beneath her boots was damp and smooth, worn down by centuries of tides she could not hear. High above, unseen in the dark, something shifted inthe cavern roof—a sound like the groan of a sleeping god turning in its dreams.
They passed through narrow fissures and chambers vast enough to swallow cities, the walls glistening with mineral veins that pulsed faintly in the dark. Her blurred vision caught flashes of movement in them—light that seemed to breathe, as if the rock itself remembered the birth of magic.
Deeper still they went, until even her own breathing sounded foreign. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in a slow, patient rhythm. Her fingers brushed the stone as she walked, and the runes along her skin answered with a faint pulse, as if the Undermire knew her now.
Then—light. Faint at first, a pale shimmer far ahead.
It was not sunlight. It was the ghost of sunlight, fractured and cold, seeping through cracks in the world above. It painted the jagged walls silver, and for a moment she thought she saw shapes moving in it—winged, crowned, robed in flame—but the images were gone when she blinked.
Vaeronth moved unerringly toward it.
“You know the way back,” she murmured.
I have always known,he said, voice echoing low through the stone.The Undermire keeps its paths for those it remembers.
They wound upward through a tunnel that spiraled like the inside of a shell. The air grew warmer, sharper. A breath of wind ghosted over her cheek—wind, real wind, touched by the scent of pine and rain.
At last, the stone path opened into the shattered ruin where the trial had begun. The air here felt older, heavier—like the space itself had been waiting for her return. Moss clung to the broken pillars in thick green shrouds, and silver lichen crawled over the stone in patterns like half-forgotten constellations. Itlooked as though centuries had passed, though it had been only a single day.
Vaeronth halted at the base of the final stair, his shadow stretching up the steps like the memory of a storm.
Beyond this, I cannot go.
“I know.”
Her throat burned. “You’re too vast for the world above.”
My form would crush the castle.
Her fingers curled around the pendant, feeling the low, steady pulse within—not heat, but the measured rhythm of something vast and watchful.
“Will it hurt?”
I do not believe so,Vaeronth said, his voice shifting to something quieter, heavier.But you will feel me settle.
She rolled her shoulders back, trying to anchor herself against the echoing dark. “Comforting. Nothing like walking into the unknown with instructions that vague.”
You will live. Probably.
Her mouth twitched. “Love that you slipped a ‘probably’ in there.”
I am not in the habit of offering false assurances.
“Ancient and dramatic. What a combination.”
I prefer the term timeless.
A small laugh escaped her despite the knot in her chest. “Of course you do.”
