Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SANORA
A cave.
That was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.
There was a cave right in front of me. My gaze swept across the landscape, seeing nothing but endless grassland stretching beyond.
The grass around me was a single, endless sheet, bearing no trees, hedgerow, nor a trace of horizon to tell me where the world ended and the sky began.
The cave was the only anomaly—a mouth of shadow yawning against a sky so beautifully blue it made my eyes ache.
I hauled myself up, the cold grit of earth and damp grass clinging to my clothes, and brushed at my palms over myself to discard the dirt. I spun around.
Did Amelia and her brother drop me here?
Where were they? I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen this coming.
How could I suspect anything when the only thing she’d done so far was help me and smile at me?
I should have known from how overly nice she was being, but I didn’t.
Because no one with ill intent was supposed to survive Nimorran’s cold.
I thought everyone here had pure intentions since the cold killed anyone with the opposite. Thrax was the only one affected by the cold since his case was different.
Unless…Nimorran made an exception for them? Hold on. Were they part of the monsters that attacked me that night? Only this time, wearing human form? Were they sent by the same thing that sent the messenger?
Were they after my life?
My chest rattled as I flung my gaze around, half expecting them to pop out of nowhere and peekaboo the fuck out of my life.
But the land was bare, clear as day with nothing to hide behind. Just endless grass...and me.
Where did they go? Did they leave me here on purpose—
A painful, echoed groan cut through the soft breeze, startling me so badly I jumped back, whipping my head towards the sound. It came from inside the cave.
Were both of them inside?
The groan came again—deeper and painfully gut-wrenching this time. It made me clutch at my chest, as though I could feel the pain radiating from within.
I looked around desperately, searching for anything else to fixate on—anything but the darkness of the cave yawning before me.
Could this be the cave Merton spoke of, the one Thrax warned me never to approach? I looked back at it, curiosity flaring.
“...We also heard some twisted sounds even from outside, and it was eventually linked to the Soulless Man’s lore of corrupting minds. They believed it was his home.”
Could this be the twisted sound he meant? I’d expected whispers, not a bloody full-on wail.
I tried to resist, to hold myself back, but when the wailing rose again only to die down completely the next second, my curiosity peaked. The entrance gaped wide and dark, just wide enough for ten people shoulder to shoulder, and the darkness within swallowed the light in a greedy way.
I waited a moment longer, wanting to hear the throat-scraping grunt again. But nothing came. It was human. I was almost sure of it. And yet, the thought struck me—what if it wasn’t human at all? What if it was another form of the messenger?
Still, my legs betrayed me, carrying me closer as though some hidden part of me already knew that was false.
I drew near, inspecting the cave’s mouth, frowning when nothing matched Merton’s description—that the stone shimmered as if diamonds were trapped within. This cave was plain and ordinary.
Either the bastard lied, or this wasn’t the right cave.
Taking in a deep breath, I stepped cautiously into the entrance. Moss carpeted the ground, jagged stones jutting up like teeth.
Thanking the gods for flat shoes, I picked my way forward carefully.
The warmth that found me felt vicious, clinging to my arms and pushing against my chest the way too-close heat from a stove does.
It was dark, and no one seemed to be inside.
But I knew I had heard that sound. Peeling my lips apart, I called out.
“Hello!” My voice bounced back at me, echoing until it became eerie.
I tapped my pocket instinctively, but my phone wasn’t there. I had been holding it before I passed out. I sighed in frustration—it must have fallen when I’d blacked out earlier.
I cursed Amelia and her brother under my breath again, forcing myself onward, though every muscle in my legs begged me to turn back. Where would I even go? Back into the endless grassland? No. If this cave was the only landmark in sight, then I needed to see why.
For the first time since I’d been walking, the cave curved into a corner, and I turned to continue walking, but I stopped when my gaze dropped.
My breath hitched, a gasp tearing from me as I stumbled back.
My eyes stung instantly, tears brimming as I clapped a hand over my mouth, staring in horror at the body sprawled on the ground.
Long hair. Black clothing. A face I knew too well. There was a small light in the space, faint but enough to make me see exactly who it was.
Thrax.
My heart kicked against my ribs, words jamming in my throat as I stumbled forward and dropped to my knees beside him. I pressed my hands to his chest, desperate to shake him awake—
And fell right through.
My heart stopped beating when my palms landed on cold stone, passing through him as though I were nothing.
My hand had just vanished into him like mist.
Tears pricked and spilled as I tried again, slower this time, my trembling fingers hovering over his body before pressing down. But again, there was no resistance. My hands slipped through his solid form, as if my body was air and I was the ghost haunting his past.
“No,” I choked, shaking my head. “No, no, no.”
Sobs clawed up my chest as I tried again and again—shoving, pressing, anything—but I couldn’t touch him.
He was whole and real, but I couldn’t feel him because I was the one who didn’t belong here.
I tried again and again, but my hands only kept disappearing inside.
I’d seen this scene before, too many times in movies.
I knew what it meant, where I was. Yet still I refused to believe Thrax had ever been this helpless in the past.
After too many fruitless attempts, I finally staggered back to my feet, nearly tripping on loose stones as I wiped at the hot tears streaking my cheeks.
I had to find her.
Where was she?
I thought they were always together.
Stumbling out of the cave, the outside light hit me like a slap. I spun around, chest heaving, panic clawing up my throat as if this wasn’t all something that had already happened a millennium ago. As if I didn’t know he was going to survive.
But even with that knowledge—even knowing this was just a reality-dream I’d been dragged into again—I couldn’t stop the fear.
When I caught sight of white garments and silver hair to the left, my heart kicked hard, and I ran.
Her expression of horror was a mirror of mine.
“Hey—” I called, but she didn’t even pause.
She walked straight through me.
Biting my lip, I turned and followed her. She rushed into the cave where Thrax lay, but instead of collapsing at his side as I had, she stepped over him, bent, picked up a stone, and started dragging it across the wall.
I stared, torn between watching Thrax’s lifeless body, and her, the moon’s offspring, drawing strange lines instead of helping him.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t hear me. Couldn’t. I wasn’t meant to be here. Thrax had said it was only because he was around me and that was why I was dreaming of his past. But I couldn’t shake the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything.
I wanted to shout, to shake her until she noticed me, but the cavern pressed in harder with the impossible knowledge that I was an intruder in a recollection not meant for me. I could not touch. I could not be heard.
When she finished, I leaned closer, squinting at the wall, and all I could see that she had drawn was...nothing. I couldn’t see a single trace. Either the light was too dim to show her markings, or I wasn’t meant to see them.
“Yes, just do it!”
I recoiled at the scream that ripped out of her throat, stumbling back a step as my gaze darted around the cave, searching for anyone she might be shouting at. But there was no one. Just her, the wall, and the body lying unconsciously on the ground.
She still hadn’t looked at Thrax, hadn’t looked at anything but the wall.
The words she had shouted were in a language I didn’t recognise. Yet, somehow, impossibly, I understood them. My mind seized on the meaning instantly, as if it had been translated inside me before I even had the chance to question it.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said next, quieter, but her voice shook with impatience.
And again, the meaning slid into me with ease. The language itself was foreign, something I was certain I had never heard in my life. But it settled into my ears like they were the words I grew up with.
It terrified me.
If I tried to answer her now, I knew without a doubt the same words would fall from my own mouth in that exact tongue, shaped by lips and lungs that had never spoken it before.
“I said I’ll handle it!” she screamed, slamming her fury into the wall.
As if on cue, the stone wall began to fracture, cracking and spreading in concentric circles, following the exact path she had drawn.
“Block her,” she commanded. For a moment I thought she meant me—until she added, “She must not find out about my ritual.”
My brow furrowed. Was she talking about her mother? Selvanyra?
Before I could process it, the cracked space in the wall erupted with light, white and blinding. I screamed, stumbling back as I covered my eyes. The brilliance seared my retinas, going straight to my brain with a ring. But she hadn’t flinched. Of course she hadn’t. She was light.
I turned, backing the light and shielding my face.
But then reality started bleeding into me, tugging me out of the dream. I felt my real body heavy and turning on the ground.
Horror struck me.
No. No. Not now. Don’t wake up now, Sanora. Not like this.