Chapter 16 #2
Before I can finish, Malachi surges forward, bracing the door before it can seal us out. I extinguish the fire against my palm and scrape the shards back into their compartment, then follow him through. The darkness swallows us whole. The tunnels open before us, vast and cathedral-like.
Ribbed vaults arc overhead, supported by pointed arches that march into the darkness like sentinels.
The air is cold and still, carrying the faint mineral scent of ancient stone.
Old texts claim the founding family wanted their burial chambers to mirror the city they built above, a kingdom beneath a kingdom.
They succeeded. But how they expanded from a few crypts beneath the university to this labyrinthine network that stretches beneath all of Lunaris remains a mystery.
Some scholars believe the tunnels were built to transport wine from the docks without taxation.
Others say the founders used them to move valuables past bandits on the northern roads.
A few darker accounts suggest the tunnels served a different purpose entirely: hiding things that should never see daylight.
"My brother used to say these tunnels stretch all the way to Vindariel," I murmur as we walk, our footsteps silent on the ancient stone. "That somewhere beneath the Shroud, there's a passage to the outside world."
"Do you believe that?"
I glance at him. "If I did, I wouldn't still be here."
"You would leave?"
The question catches me off guard. "Why does that surprise you?"
"No. I suppose it doesn't." He tips his head back, studying the vaulted ceiling. "There's no echo."
"The Order's doing. Some enchantment woven into the stone." I shrug. "I've had it explained to me a dozen times. I still don't understand it."
"How do you navigate without a map?"
"Practice." I trail my fingers along the wall as we walk, feeling the grooves worn smooth by centuries of hands doing the same. "The first 'important task' the Sages gave me was ferrying texts from the House of Truth to the vault. I was young enough to think it was an honor."
"How old were you?"
"I'm not sure. We lose track of age in Lunaris. The residents who arrive already have their gifts, and those of us who came as children..." I shrug. "We mark time by festivals, not years."
"But you have some idea."
"If we were truly five when we arrived, then I'm twenty-five. Give or take." I glance up at him, curiosity getting the better of me. "How old are you?"
He huffs a laugh, but there's something hollow beneath it. "That's ... complicated."
The way he says it makes me wonder just how complicated. Centuries, he'd said. The curse has lasted three hundred years, and he's been trying to break it since the beginning.
I decide not to push.
"To answer your question," I say, "I was too young and naive to care what the texts contained. Which is probably exactly why they chose me for the task."
"Who does it now?"
"The luminaries, I think. Initiates waiting for full membership. They're too focused on proving their loyalty to question what they're carrying." I pause. "Mother relies on that. On people being too afraid of disappointing her to ask dangerous questions."
"Sounds like a High Sage."
"You've known others?"
He nods, his expression unreadable. "A few."
We turn right at a fork in the tunnel and emerge before the first burial chamber. Malachi slows to study it: marble columns flanking iron doors twice his height, the metal worked with symbols I've never been able to decipher.
"Have you ever been inside?"
"A few times." I smile despite myself. "Arlo was terrified of the hupia legend when we were children.
Convinced the spirits of the dead would drag him into the crypts if he got too close.
Once, I hid inside and jumped out at him.
" The memory surfaces, bright and warm. "I thought he was going to die of fright. Or murder me on the spot."
"Arlo." Malachi's voice is carefully neutral. "The legion guard."
"Yes." The word scrapes against my throat. "He's my best friend. Or he was." I swallow. "He was raised in Veritas with us. By the Sages."
He says nothing, but I feel his attention sharpen. Another piece of the puzzle, clicking into place in that calculating mind of his.
I keep walking. Past the other chambers. Past the stairs that spiral up to the Noxbridge Library. Toward the massive torch that burns at the end of the hall, its flame casting dancing shadows on the ancient stone.
I stop beneath the archway and study the three staves mounted on the wall. The central one burns eternally, its flame blue-white and unwavering. The flanking torches remain dark, their braziers cold.
"I've never actually opened the vaults," I admit as Malachi comes to stand beside me. His presence is warm at my back, solid and grounding. "But I understand the mechanism is similar to the doors. Fire and intention."
"Similar enough." He moves past me, close enough that I catch his scent, cedar and rain, and surveys the hall. "Which side is the Veritas vault?"
"The right." I watch him take the torch from its bracket and light it from the eternal flame. "The left was meant for the Council, but they have no access to the tunnels. Part of the treaty. Their vault is in the House of Knowledge."
"Interesting," he murmurs, and I can practically hear him filing the information away.
I watch the door, expecting a click, a groan, something. Nothing happens.
Malachi crosses to it without hesitation. He sets the torch into the cradle beside the frame and turns it, slow and deliberate, until something within the mechanism catches. Then he presses his palm flat against a dark square of stone I hadn't noticed, and holds.
The door sighs. There's no other word for it. A sound like ancient lungs releasing centuries of held breath. Then it swings inward, revealing only darkness beyond.
"How did you do that?" I whisper.
He glances back at me, firelight dancing in his eyes. "Magic."
I snort, but my heart is racing.
I follow him in. The door swings shut behind us, and the darkness is immediate and absolute. I can't see my own hand in front of my face. Jordi always told me fire was forbidden inside the vault, the risk to the texts too great, but standing here in the black, I don't know what else to do.
I open my mouth to ask, and then the lights begin.
One by one, sconces flare to life along the walls. Blue-white flames, cold and strange, climbing from darkness to illuminate the space around us. They spread in a slow wave, circling the rotunda until the entire chamber glows.
I gasp. I can't help it.
The flames burn without heat, without smoke, without any fuel I can see. Some ancient enchantment I couldn't begin to understand. The lantern above the archway ignites next, then the lights in the chamber beyond, a cascade of illumination that feels almost like a welcome.
"Incredible," I breathe, and start forward.
The second rotunda steals what's left of my breath.
Books. Thousands of them. They line the walls from floor to domed ceiling, leather spines and cloth covers and materials I don't recognize, stacked and shelved and organized in ways that suggest centuries of careful curation.
Spiral stairs climb both sides of the chamber, leading to a second level where glass cases hold artifacts that glint in the strange blue light.
At the center of it all sits a round table surrounded by eight chairs, as if scholars might return at any moment to resume their work.
"Jordi's descriptions don't do it justice," I whisper.
This isn't just a vault. It's a temple to knowledge itself. And it's been hidden beneath Lunaris this entire time. We find the maps with surprising ease, organized by era and region.
I pull a stack of books from the shelves labeled "Lost Histories" and "Pre-Treaty Records," then settle beside Malachi at the table.
We work in companionable silence. Him spreading maps across the worn wood, me turning brittle pages with careful fingers.
The weight of centuries presses down around us, but it's not oppressive. It's almost peaceful.
A splash of color catches my eye. I look up to find Malachi unrolling a map unlike any I've seen: creatures swimming through painted oceans, winged figures soaring through illustrated skies, the cartography itself a work of art.
"Is that a forgery, or genuinely ancient?"
He squints at the script along the bottom. "It’s around 350 years old, by my estimation."
I lean closer, bracing myself on the table's edge to study an island marked near the coast of Arusha. The script beside it is elegant, deliberate.
"The Island of Larimar," I read aloud. "I've never heard of it."
"Your maps are limited by design." He traces the island's outline with one finger. "And Larimar no longer exists."
My stomach drops. "The way Lunaris 'no longer exists'?"
"No." His voice is quiet. Final. "Larimar is truly gone. Cato destroyed it." He meets my eyes. "That's where the original healers came from. It was their homeland."
"What?" I sink back into my chair, the room tilting around me. "What do you mean?"
"The full history is probably in those books." He nods at the stack I pulled. "The short version is this: Cato wanted to marry Larimar's princess. She refused him. So he sent his army to slaughter everyone on the island and take her regardless."
The words are so simple. So matter-of-fact. And so utterly horrifying. For years, I've heard that healers were hunted to extinction. That unicorns were poached until none remained. I never understood how such things were possible. How an entire gift could be erased from the world.
Now I understand.
People like Cato made it so. He destroyed an entire civilization, murdered every soul on an island, because one woman denied him. Gods. That poor woman. To watch everyone she loved murdered, and then be taken by the man who ordered it.