Chapter Sixty-Four
THE TUNNEL REEKED of wet stone and oil-soaked dirt, the kind of smell that clung to skin and lungs until it felt like you were draggin’ ghosts with every breath.
The walls pressed close, drippin’ with damp, and every step stirred old nightmares I’d thought I’d buried deep enough to never claw their way back up.
Ash moved at the front, his flashlight dark, one hand trailin’ the wall as though he could read the story etched into the stone by memory alone.
He didn’t falter. Didn’t pause. The man carried this path like it had been carved into his blood.
Chain shadowed him, quiet and constant, rifle close but ready.
I brought up the rear, pistol loose in my grip, blade strapped tight against my thigh, safety already off.
My jaw ached from clenchin’ it too hard, and every footfall pounded against my ribs like a warning drum I couldn’t ignore.
We’d split at the fork. Mystic, Bolt, and Gearhead had peeled off toward the dorms, their orders clear: get the kids, get my momma, get anyone innocent who still had the sense to want out.
Our trail was narrower, hotter, cuttin’ straight through the gut of the beast. The Flame Hall.
The place they built for worship and fear, the heart of the fire we’d come to rip down.
Ash slowed as we neared the end of the passage. Above us, a steel grate opened into a storage room stacked with neat rows of folded robes, basins polished to a shine, incense bowls piled high like offerings for a god who’d never given a damn. Ash glanced back, lifted two fingers.
Chain gave a single nod, and before another breath passed, I pushed the grate up and hauled myself through. My boots hit stone without a sound. Chain followed, then Ash, all of us movin’ like smoke, quiet, coiled, knives for teeth.
The hallway beyond was narrow and dim, the air stale with wax and sweat.
The first guard caught a glimpse of Ash, just long enough for the panic to show in his eyes, his mouth shaping the start of a warnin’ as he raised his gun.
He never finished it. Chain’s blade slid fast and sure across his throat, his hand mufflin’ the sound as he lowered the man’s body to the tile.
The wet rasp of breath leaving lungs, the soft thud of flesh meeting stone — that was all. And then silence again.
I stepped over him without a glance. Couldn’t afford one. Not now.
That was when the sound reached me.
Chantin’.
Low at first, muffled through the walls, then rising, layered voices climbin’ into something sick and steady.
“She returns…”
“Wayward flame…”
And beneath it all, rising above like venom poured into a chalice, came the voice that split me in ways bullets never could.
Gabrial.
Smooth. Measured. Poison in silk. The same sickness I’d heard once before in a past I’d done my damndest to bury.
My pulse kicked hard.
We pushed faster, followin’ the sound, until the corridor twisted and ended at a door of oak thick enough to withstand storms, its surface studded with iron, its warmth radiatin’ into my palm when I pressed it flat.
Heat pulsed from beneath like the breath of a dragon. Behind that door waited fire. And her.
I drew a breath deep enough to burn my chest, held it, then let it out slow.
And I kicked the goddamn thing in.
The crash cracked through the chamber like thunder, splinters flying, stone shudderin’ with the force of it.
The congregation broke.
Men leapt to their feet, fists tightenin’ like they were weapons worthy of us, eyes wild and bloodlit under the torch glow.
Women gasped sharp, clutchin’ their hands to their mouths, some duckin’ low while others pressed their palms together and muttered prayers so fast they tangled into noise.
A child cried out in the back, high and thin, cut off when a hand clamped over their mouth.
The fire behind the altar roared higher, hungry, as though it knew violence had finally come to meet it.
And then I saw her.
Sable.
She knelt at the center of it all, draped in red, her veil slid just far enough to bare her face.
Her eyes snapped to mine the instant the door burst, and for one suspended heartbeat the rest of the chaos drowned out.
The screams, the chantin’, even the roar of the flame, all of it blurred into nothin’ under the weight of that look.
She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t beggin’. She wasn’t even afraid. She was steady. Waitin’.
And somethin’ in me split wide open. Every ounce of fury I’d been carryin’ since they took her twisted with a rush of relief so sharp it near brought me to my knees. My chest hollowed out, my throat burned raw, and I swear I finally understood what salvation must feel like.
Her lips parted as if she wanted to speak, but she didn’t need to. I knew what she was sayin’ with her eyes alone.
You came.
And mine answered back without a word.
Always.
The spell broke when Gabrial spun on the dais, red robes slicin’ the air, his face twisted into a snarl too sharp to be human. His voice cracked through the noise, venom drippin’ from every word.
“You don’t belong here.”
I raised my gun, sight locked steady between his eyes, my voice low and lethal.
“I do now.”