41. Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty One
Evandra
“When a Riftborn reaches their awakening, it is not gentle. It is not kind. The Rift does not ask permission—it tears the truth from your bones and burns it into light. What rises after is not the same soul that entered.” —The Magic of Edralis, Vol. VI
The stairwell twisted endlessly upward, the stone beneath my feet worn slick by time and worse. Every step sent a bolt of pain through my thighs, but I didn’t dare slow down. Not because of the guards. Not because of the growls echoing somewhere below.
Because of the bond. It had gone quiet.
Not silent—no, I would’ve felt that like a blade—but quiet. Distant. Like Drake was underwater. Like something was muffling our connection, softening it until it was barely more than a breath brushing across my mind.
We weren’t going to make it to him in time. Not like this.
“Eva, hold up.” Fen’s voice cut through my spiral, sharp and low. I turned on the landing, panting. She wasn’t even winded. Of course she wasn’t. She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “You feel that, right?”
I nodded. “The bond. It’s—fading.”
“No.” She stepped closer, lifting a hand toward the wall. Her fingers hovered just above the stone. “This. All of this. The air’s thick.”
“It’s the Wards,” Felix muttered behind her. “ I think there’s a source nearby.”
My stomach dropped. “How close?”
“Close enough that I can feel it crawling under my skin.”
Fen looked at me pointedly. “We find it. We break it.”
The hall stank of mildew and rust. Each step down the spiral staircase was colder than the last, the air thinning with every turn.
“I’m still worried about losing time,” I muttered.
“No magic, no chance,” Fen snapped ahead of me, torch in hand. “You want to storm the dungeon blind and useless? Be my guest.”
I bit my tongue. She was right. But we were losing time. Every second we spent chasing this ward room was a second Drake spent in chains—another second I couldn’t reach him. Another second we risk Vyper finding us roaming his tower.
If we didn’t take down whatever was suppressing the Rift, we wouldn’t just be fighting blind—we’d already lost.
Felix limped along behind us, squinting at the walls. “It should be here. Somewhere low and central. They’d want to anchor it close to the rock itself—keep it grounded.”
“Like a root,” I said absently.
He paused. “Exactly.”
We turned down a narrower passage. It sloped sharply, half-collapsed in places. Vyrmin claw marks scarred the walls. A door appeared at the end—iron, corroded, no light seeping beneath.
“This has to be it,” Felix whispered.
Fen kicked it open without ceremony.
Inside was a low, damp room—no guards, no throne of bone and glass, no glowing sigils carved into obsidian. Just stone. And moss. And quiet.
I hesitated on the threshold, frowning. “No one guarding it?”
Felix’s voice was low. “Vyper wouldn’t have bothered. Not if he believed no one could reach it. Or if he trusted Azh’raim to protect it by sheer fear alone.”
At the center—etched deep into the floor—was a single rune. Blackened. Burnt into the rock. A shape that shimmered faintly, like something watching us from beneath the surface.
“That’s it,” Felix breathed. “The suppression point.”
“That one glyph?” I frowned.
“It’s not the mark itself—it’s what it’s connected to. Like a taproot. Everything else—the wards, the dampening fields, the anchors—they all feed into this. Break it, and the rest unravels.”
He crouched, pulling a flask from his belt and pouring a few drops onto the stone. Steam hissed where it touched the glyph.
Fen backed away, eyes narrowing. “How long?”
“Minutes,” Felix said. “Maybe less. But when it goes—” he looked up, his face grim, “it’s going to feel like the Rift is trying to claw its way through your bones.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
Felix drew a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and pressed both palms to the stone. The second his skin touched the glyph, the air changed.
It got heavy.
Not magically, not exactly—just… wrong. The pressure mounted in my chest like a held breath stretched too thin. Like the entire room was waiting to split open.
Felix’s body tensed. Sweat poured down his temples. The glyph pulsed once—then began to hum. Light bled from the stone. First blue. Then white.
Felix’s fingers curled into claws, his body beginning to shake. The magic was fighting back.
“Felix,” I said, alarmed. “You’re burning?—”
“Don’t—” he gritted. “Don’t touch me. Almost—” The glyph sparked. And something broke open inside me.
My knees hit the floor. My body bowed forward as the Rift slammed back into me—power roaring into every cell like liquid lightning. I gasped, clutching the ground. My vision blurred. And then— The bond. Drake. He was alive. Still shackled. Still hurting. But no longer distant.
The bond flared like a silver tether drawn tight between stars. I felt him stir, somewhere in the depths of the tower. Felt him feel me .
A second heartbeat pulsed inside my chest. My lips parted on a soft cry, and my body arched. I reached toward him instinctively— And my vision snapped white.
The magic inside me wasn’t leaking anymore. It was blazing .
Something cracked in the air around me, and Felix gasped—not from pain, but awe. “Her eyes?—”
I could feel it too. Light radiating from me. A burning behind my eyes that wasn’t fire or tears or fatigue.
Star-glow.
My heart stuttered.
I looked up—saw the mirrored sheen on Felix’s wide eyes. Saw the reflection dancing in the blade Fen instinctively raised. They were staring at me.
No—at my eyes. Burning. Glowing. The Rift had awakened in me completely. My body trembled as the bond pulled tighter. I felt Drake’s breath catch somewhere in the distance. Felt his shock, his recognition. He knew. He knew I had found him.
A tremor rocked the chamber. The glyph cracked.
Felix screamed—and the stone split in half with a flash of brilliant light.
We dove for the hallway just as the floor gave way behind us, stone collapsing into a spiral of debris and flame. The blast roared up the corridor, but this time the magic didn’t burn—it surged.
When it passed, the air felt… different. Brighter. Cleaner. Alive. The Rift was no longer caged.
I turned back to Felix. He’d collapsed to his knees, arms limp at his sides, body shaking.
“You good?” Fen asked, not unkindly.
He lifted his head, pale and soaked with sweat. “I’ll live. Might puke on you, though.”
I helped him to his feet, my own limbs still trembling. The glow in my eyes hadn’t faded. It flickered behind my lashes like starlight.
“I can feel him,” I whispered, pressing a hand to my chest. “I know where he is now.”
“Then let’s go,” Fen said. “Let’s bring him home.”
We didn’t speak as we climbed. The stairwell twisted upward, air thinner but clearer now—like someone had opened the sky inside the mountain. I could feel every Riftborn in the tower stir. Not literally—but magically.
A hundred smothered sparks had caught flame.
“They’ll feel it,” Felix said hoarsely. “All of them. Every Riftborn locked up. Every one of us trying to fight. It’s ours again.”
Fen drew her daggers. “Then we don’t waste it.”
I touched my chest where the bond thrummed like a vow.
“We’re coming for you,” I whispered. And this time, I knew he’d hear me.
The stairwell shuddered around us as the last echo of the glyph’s death rippled through the tower. Dust bled from the seams of the stone, and the air tasted new—bright as cracked ice, sharp as clean steel. The Rift wasn’t a far hum anymore; it was a river just under my skin. I felt powerful.
We’re coming for you, I whispered into the bond. I felt him hear it—like a hand closing around mine.
We had time to take three steps.
Something roared up from the newly gaping chamber below—deep and wrong, like a cavern clearing its throat. The stairwell shook hard enough to throw us against the inner wall. A rain of debris fell from the ceiling; shards of stone pinged down the steps.
“Ah,” Felix panted, bracing with a palm. “Note to self: when you kill the giant ominous glyph, be prepared for the giant ominous guardian .” He squinted over the edge of the collapsed floor. “And by ‘guardian’ I mean ‘abomination.’”
“What?” I demanded, pushing to the balustrade.
The chamber we’d just fled had become a bowl of ruin. Where the glyph had split, the floor sank inward into a spiral, fractured slabs leaning like toppled teeth. At the bottom of the new crater, something made of nightmare unfurled.
It was Vyrmin, but not like the guards. Bigger—worse.
A body like a centipede crossed with a stag, plated in slick, black chitin.
A skull-mask crowned it, horned and veined with dim runes, and beneath that bone face, a mouth of too many glassy teeth clacked and clicked as it tested the air.
Eight long legs ended in hook-claws that found purchase on bare stone; a second set of arms tucked close to its thorax, each tipped with delicate needle- talons meant for carving sigils into living things.
Under its shell, Riftlight pulsed—faint bands of green and red circling a core in its chest where a web of lines crossed and knotted.
A knot . The place the wards had once fed. It’s weak point.
Whatever this was—used to be—it was so far gone, fed with so much evil, it no longer resembled anything natural. The evil had corrupted it beyond recognition. This is beyond the work of Vyper—this must have been a creation of Azh’raim himself. Decay, darkness, dominion, personified.
The Warden of the wards.
It lifted its skull and stared up the stairwell at us. No eyes, just hollow bone and humming runes, but I felt it’s heavy gaze anyway. Like rot discovering fresh fruit.
“Back,” Fen snapped, shoving me up a step. Her daggers spun into her hands like they’d been waiting.
Below, the Warden gathered itself and leapt.