Chapter 5
THE GLOAMING WEALD
Seryn
Every part of me felt like mush. A chilled breeze slithered over my skin, and the scent of burned iron filled my nostrils, thick and cloying. My eyelids fluttered, and the sky swam into view—a haze of cerise and peach mottled with flickering specks of darkness and the outline of the full moon.
But it wasn’t the moon. Was it?
It was, but shadowy hues painted it. The stars were void-dark, the brighter ones ringed with sputtering purples. Perhaps the light bled inward, filling the astronomical bodies with their own ichor.
How long had we lain here, passed out? How much time had been wasted? Time I could’ve spent finding Gavrel. My mother.
With effort, I rubbed my eyes, thinking that my eyeballs must have bounced around my skull with my brain through the portal.
“Everything’s arse over tits,” Breena griped. I sat up, turning toward her voice. She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged at the strands. “Are we inside out?”
To our right, a reddish sea thrashed, its splintering peaks capped in ebony. I rose, turning slowly, taking it all in.
The dark flames.
The heaving ocean.
On its fire opal islet, far in the distance, sat the transposed, yet somehow familiar, Gothic palace.
Yes, everything was off. Twisted. Backward.
But the realm spilled over the horizon in a way that felt like a memory.
A dream.
A nightmare.
This realm was eerily beautiful in a cruel way, like every gleaming edge would caress you, or cut you just for looking too long.
“Looks like we made it to the Nether Void.” My tattered whisper flopped onto the soot-covered ground.
Breena groaned as she righted herself, brushing off her crimson leather breeches, eyes sweeping over the landscape. “Wish you were wrong, but I know you aren’t.”
A raspy, swishing sound hummed before a blue-tipped fire burst behind her, and she lurched forward with a squeal, grabbing my hand. “Let’s move. No use waiting around, cooking our arses for the void beasties that come out at night.”
We scurried ahead, dodging the rough pillars and jumping flames. Phobetor’s palace loomed at our backs as we skirted the plateau’s edge and followed a winding path downward. Below, a forest stretched—a sea of pallid branches scratching at the canopy like bony fingers.
The Gloaming Weald.
Magister Barden’s teachings drifted back to me. This woodland was the largest of all the realms—even bigger than Evergryn—sprawling across half the darklands of the Nether Void’s eastern coast. Its shadows teemed with as many beasts.
Every lesson had ended the same: Do not linger.
I swallowed and pushed my shoulders back. To our left, another cliff face rose, a jagged, black wall jutting from the trees. I closed my eyes, mapping the land as I remembered it.
The bends and boundaries unfolded in my mind: a vast plateau cleaved the forest across its middle, placing us on the path into its lower half. Far to the realm’s southern reaches lay the capital. To the northwest, Phobetor’s palace.
A flock of imposing birds flew overhead, their bones, limbs, and beaks ragged and protruding at odd angles.
Please don’t be an omen.
I shivered in the silence. Even that felt sentient, as if the air were listening.
There were bound to be creatures hidden among the ghastly, twisted trees. But we’d clashed with monsters before; we’d endure whatever crept out of their lairs now.
We didn’t have to wait long. An eerie hush crept behind us, skimming its fingers up my spine. Breena drew her blades and pushed her shoulders back as if she felt it, too.
Slowly, I turned my head, expecting to see creeping shadows or unusually gigantic creatures stalking us. I’d read about quite a few Void beasts or knew of the stories we were told as children.
I shuddered as nightmares danced through my mind and scanned our surroundings. “Do you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” Breena muttered.
I glanced at her. “And that’s the prob—”
Breena rammed her body into mine, cutting my sentence short and forcing me to lunge to my right.
“The trees! Run!” she ordered.
I picked myself off the ground in time to see a towering trunk bending, branches clawing at the spot I’d been standing in.
“I’ve never read about the damned trees coming alive!” I yelled, running alongside my friend.
“Probably because the forest fecking clobbered ’em before they wrote anything!”
She had me there.
Roots tore through the soil like serpents, snapping rocks in half as they writhed to reach us.
Not every tree attacked us. But as we sprinted between the pallid trunks, some shuddered to life, their limbs whipping out to seize, smash, or pierce us.
A branch slammed down where Breena had been, splintering the black stone at its roots into a spray of shards. A stray bough grazed her right ankle. With a wince, she rolled, sprang to her feet, and kept running.
Another lashed at my ribs; I twisted aside, felt the wind whiz past, and nearly lost my footing on the slick ground.
We leaped over a tangle of roots as thick as our torsos. The earth trembled with every impact, branches cracking around us like falling axes.
Ahead, a wooden monolith groaned and bent low, blocking the path. Breena shouted, a sphere of sparking heat waves bursting from her palms and slicing through the bark.
I slid beneath the falling spray of splintered wood, the rough timber grazing my back, and pushed off the ground before the rest of the tree collapsed.
Another branch shot out and snagged my ankle. I pitched forward, teeth rattling, but Breena was there, her dagger flashing. She severed the grasping limb, yanked me up, and we staggered onward.
Every step was a gamble. One trunk leaned in to crush us; another split open with a shriek, jagged wood stabbing like a spear. The forest roared as if the trees shared a single, furious will.
My lungs burned, and my calves screamed. But none of that mattered. We would make it out of this. We had to.
Gavrel’s face flickered across my mind. Not a memory, but a promise. I would not fail him.
Not again.
So, we ran.
We ducked and weaved, blades flashing when the branches came too close. The forest wasn’t just alive—it was hunting us, and it would not stop until we broke.
But we wouldn’t give it the satisfaction.
Shifting glimmers caught my attention. I blinked quickly, hoping it wasn’t a trick.
There, up ahead, water was flowing.
Breena saw the river, too, and whooped, something between glee and a battle cry. She spun out of reach just as another tree swung an arm down.
The grin was almost immediately wiped from my face as a sharp tug pulled at my ribs and a scorching pain sliced over my neck.
Lurching forward, I stumbled out of reach of the attacking trees and fell to my knees at the bank of a narrow, fire-hued river.
Gavrel.
I wasn’t sure how our bond worked exactly, especially with his implanted rune stone, but I knew something was wrong. My khorda was in trouble.
A ripple of desolation vibrated within me, mingling with jolts of energy down my vertebrae.
I clutched my chest, collapsing onto the dusty black pebbles. It was like something was trying to peel my astral form from my flesh.
My eyes clamped shut, and I knew Breena was beside me, screaming my name.
But all that mattered was my fated.
GAVREL!
His name tore through my mind. Or perhaps my throat. I wasn’t sure. Shadows seeped along the backs of my eyelids.
No!
Fight!
In my mind, I imagined grabbing the golden thread that bound us and yanking on it with everything I had.
The bond shuddered—light against darkness, defiant and wild—and when I held my breath, the whole Nether Void seemed to breathe for me.