Page 276 of The Ascended
I followed, instinct driving me deeper into the palace, away from the celebration and the guards. The hall grew increasingly quiet. Increasingly still.
And then I felt it—a faint, thread-thin pulse of energy. Not our bond, not exactly, but something unmistakably Thatcher. It vanished almost instantly, but it had been there. A trace. A trail.
I raced forward, my senses straining for another glimpse of him—of anything.
And then I saw it—a gleam of gold on the floor ahead. I dropped to my knees, snatching it up with tremblingfingers.
Thatcher's ceremonial pin. The symbol of Sundralis.
He had been here. Recently.
"Thatcher!" I called, both aloud and through our silent bond. "Thatcher!"
Nothing. But the pin was warm in my palm, still carrying traces of his energy. I pressed it to my chest, using it to focus my senses, to search for any hint of where he might have gone.
There—ahead. A tapestry on the wall.
But it wasn't the image that drew me. It was what lay behind it—a current of air where there should have been none, carrying the faintest trace of Thatcher's scent.
I lunged forward, yanking the tapestry aside to reveal a narrow passageway carved into the stone wall, descending into darkness. Without hesitation, I plunged in, one hand summoning starlight to illuminate the way, the other clutching Thatcher's pin like a lifeline.
The passage twisted downward, the air growing colder and heavier with each step. My mind screamed warnings.
I ignored them.
The passage opened suddenly into a vast chamber. And all the golden grandeur of Sundralis vanished. This was dark and damp and made the hair on my arms prickle. At its center stood a stone dais, and upon it, a swirling, black vortex.
And it was closing.
The edges contracted even as I watched, reality knitting itself back together. But in that moment, I felt it—the faintest echo of Thatcher, a flicker of our bond coming from beyond the portal.
I hurled myself toward the dais.Thatcher?
No response. But I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that he was there. Somewhere beyond that collapsing gateway.
There was no time to find Marx. No time to get help. No time to think about what might wait on the other side.
I leapt through the closing tear, power surging around me as reality screamed in protest. The transition was violent. My body wasstretched, compressed, twisted in ways that shouldn't have been possible.
Then, with a sickening lurch, I was thrown forward onto cold stone. The portal snapped shut behind me with a hiss.
I pushed myself to my knees, gasping.
Before me rose a structure—a grotesque thing of black stone and twisted metal, its spires reaching toward a sky that contained no stars, no moons, no sun—only a vast, empty nothing.
An emblem was carved viciously into the stone. A circle with a crack splitting it.
A temple. But for who?
I had no idea where I was. This place matched no realm I'd ever studied, no domain I'd ever heard described. It existed nowhere in the maps of Voldaris.
A spark at my fingertips tore my gaze down. Starlight crackled and hissed around my hands.
It had only done that once before.
At the ruins of the Primordial War.
Chapter 64
