44. Seren
SEREN
A deep, cavernous space burns behind my eyes—blood-red water, a stark echo of where my journey began.
We venture deeper into the tunnels. Kael takes the rear, his light a fading pulse, while shadows slither ahead like silent guides. Eira prowls beside me, her hackles rising with every step.
“Here,” Kael says, indicating a dark offshoot to the right.
A black, gaping mouth of a tunnel opens before us. The sound of trickling water grows into a roar. Without pause, the floor vanishes, and we slope into the sluice.
The surge is merciless. It steals our footing and pitches us forward into the churn.
I fight to keep my chin above the black liquid as it rises, cold and suffocating.
Kael’s light streaks behind us, a wild amber spark in the dark, as my shadows clutch Eira and the staff to keep them from being swept away.
Our ragged breaths join the cacophony of the gushing tide. We are thrown every which way, the world tilting until up and down lose all meaning.
The sluice finally spits us out—a mouth vomiting its contents into a half-lit gutter. We crawl on hands and knees through the stinking silt until the tunnel widens and the damp gives way to a hollow breath of older stone.
Eira shakes her fur free, spraying my face with cold water. As I palm the moisture from my eyes, something catches the light: a flash of black set into the rocky floor.
It can’t be.
The onyx ring. Ma’s ring. The one I dropped weeks ago, miles above this place.
It lies there, half-swallowed by lichen, looking as if it has waited for a century. My heart trips. How is this possible?
Nyx’s voice rolls over me like wind through reeds: It has found its way home to you. To us.
“What is it?” Kael sputters, hands on his knees as he coughs up the last of the water in his lungs.
I crouch, my joints locking. I dig the ring free; its metal bites with a cold so sharp it feels angry I left it waiting. I trace the black stone—a void in a silver embrace. My pendant ignites in a burst of heat, answering the call of the stone.
“My ring,” I whisper.
“How is it here?” Kael asks.
“I—I don’t know.” I slide the ring on. The tunnel dissolves.
I am nowhere—and everywhere.
* * *
A small room carved from the rock. Herbs drying in bunches over a narrow bed. The air smells of milk, iron and smoke.
A woman kneels, cradling a newborn. Her face is drawn with exhaustion and awe; dark curls cling to her damp forehead. She hums a lullaby that falters between notes, the sound of someone trying to memorise love.
“You’ll forgive me,” she whispers into the child’s ear, her mouth lingering at her cheek. “You will achieve great things.”
Another figure moves from the shadows. Yara—younger, her hair black as pitch, eyes like chips of blue ice. “It must be now,” she says, her hands steady, yet her voice trembles. “Before the Great Pale Mother falls behind the smoke.”
The mother nods, pressing one last kiss to the baby’s brow before placing her into Yara’s waiting arms. The child whimpers once, then stills.
The air changes—thick, expectant.
The face of the mother shrinks smaller and smaller, as Yara carries her through a narrow passage to an altar cut from obsidian. A silver crescent gleams above it, faint light pulsing.
She lays the infant on the stone, wraps a black cloth around her tiny chest, and begins to chant. The words are older than language; each syllable tasting of ash and lavender.
The shadows stir, gathering like breath drawn in. A wind that has no source curls through the room, tugging at Yara’s hair, rustling the herbs above. The blue flame in the lamp bends low and dies.
From the darkness, a shape made from smoke steps forward—a woman made of woven night and starfire. Her eyes are eclipses ringed in violet. When she speaks, the sound is both thunder and a lullaby.
“Step into the night, my child.” The woman murmurs. “For you are mine.”
She touches the infant's heart. Violet and gold light spirals into the tiny ribs. The baby exhales—a sound like a sigh crossing centuries.
“Sleep, my daughter,” the woman murmurs. “When the Light forgets itself,” she whispers. “You will wake.”
She turns to the shadows who peer over the stone, like a mother admiring a newborn. The shadows intertwine in her long, slender, smoke-like fingers.
“Take good care of her. She is the future of our people, and there will be a time when we need her most.”
She turns to Yara and nods.
Yara places her hand through the goddess’ smoky chest, and the other over the child’s heart.
Chanting fills the room once more, as the goddess fades in a plume of black smoke. The child’s gaze tracks the path of the smoke entering into her heart, as a ring of violet flares within her eyes. Gone as quickly as it arrived. Nothing but the hum of power and the scent of lavender fills the room.
Yara swaddles the child back in the black cloth, and walks her out toward the mother waiting at the end of the tunnel.
Tears well in her sunken eyes as she accepts the child.
Her fingers tremble in the metalwork as Yara hands her the black onyx ring.
“This will feed on your life,” Yara says quietly. “You must wear it to complete the sacrifice.”
The woman nods, tears streaking her face as she looks at the innocent face of her child staring back at her.
“The Divine Mother thanks you for your offering. Only time will tell if it was a success.”
* * *
“Seren?” Kael shakes my arm. The memory clears like smoke from the pyres. I stumble, my tongue too thick to speak.
“What did you see?” He steps closer, his finger guiding my chin toward him. His eyes are laced with pointed concern. Warmth spreads at the point of contact.
This all feels too much.
I back away, staring at the ring now glued to my finger and the cost that came with it. The sacrifice.
My eyes squeeze shut as I fight my way through the red veins of the map, until I land on the scene of the mother cradling her child, and the lullaby she attempts to sing. The gnawing pit in my chest widens; a black hole sucking in the despair from the kneeling mother.
My mother.
She gave up her life for me?
The need for air becomes an ache—a crushing weight pinning my chest. I drop to my knees.
“Breathe Seren! Talk to me!” Kael’s boots slap through the ankle-deep water. Arms envelop me, pinning me with a warmth that fights the coldness within.
“It’s okay…breathe,” he mutters into my hair. “I’ve got you.”
For a second, I allow it. I allow myself to feel the comfort he’s willing to offer. His scent—hints of parchment and honey—hums beneath the surface of the decayed water. It grounds me, and I want nothing more than to smell more of it.
The frantic pace of my lungs eases. Then reality hits. I recoil, a knife-edged break that leaves me breathless and the tunnel's silence deafening. My gaze drops.
Kael rubs his jaw, adjusting his glasses. “Sorry, I just—” a hand smooths the loose strands of his hair back. “—Lightbornes are trained for this. That’s all.” He crosses his arms, but his voice trembles.
“Thank you,” I stutter. “It helped.”
“What did you see?”
“My mother. I—I think she sacrificed herself to make me…this.”
Kael goes quiet. His jaw goes slack. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve never heard of power like this.”
I release a breath as tension melts with the force of the exhale. Muffled sounds carry through the tunnel. Our heads whip toward the noise. Like a soft flame, the connection between us flickers to life—a charge of energy rippling through the link.
Move, his words echo in my mind. Now.
* * *
The tunnel yawns open, and I’m back—back in the space where the faces of my loved ones screamed beneath the glassy surface of the water.
Eira’s cries grow louder, the vibration shaking the loose stones at our feet. My shadows surge into the distance, hunting for the source of the noise.
Footsteps answer—soft, rhythmic and sure. The air shifts with a hundred small exhalations. Figures peel from darkness behind the jagged rocks. Not soldiers, but ragged, familiar shapes: lantern sellers, market folk, a woman with arms knotted like old woodwork and hair threaded with grey.
Yara.
I drop to my knees, stone crunching under the impact. Her face seems smaller, older than my memory, but when she sees the ring on my finger, she smiles—a braid of apology and guilt.
“You came back,” she says, her voice as low as a smudge of soot. Her fingers close over mine, not with the touch of a stranger, but with the weight of someone returning to a lost child.
Around her, more of the acolytes step forward, towering over us both before they too, sink to the floor. Their milky eyes fix on me as they bow until their foreheads scrape the rock. The cavern hums, charged with a palpable, expectant energy.
I close my eyes, the last few hours threatening to crush me under its dense weight. The map in my mind burns—a single, blinding line pointing toward the black pool at the cavern’s centre.
My eyes flutter open. I stare into Yara’s unwavering, cloudy gaze.
“We’ve been waiting for you, child.” Yara says. “You were lost, but now you are found.”
Nyx’s voice threads through the air—through me. It’s warm and hungry, and it speaks only one word.
Begin.