Chapter 9
SERENNA
Serenna slipped into the tunnel ahead of the prince. The air shifted at once, growing colder and heavier, closing around her ribs as the passage narrowed into petrified root and darkened stone.
She reached out with her senses, but nothing stirred. No hidden vein of water or pulse of life thrummed in the earth. The stillness slid beneath her skin, lifting the fine hairs along her arms, until it felt like the stone itself was listening.
The tunnel sloped downward, dragging them farther underground. Gold streaked the walls in endless threads, thin as spider silk, gleaming against Vesryn’s orbs of light.
“Cinderax said Bramblemaws shape their dens like mazes,” Serenna whispered, her voice trespassing into the silence. “If the Starshards are buried farther below…”
“Something must have lured them down,” Vesryn finished. “And they couldn’t portal out.”
Uneasy at the thought of being hauled deeper into a snare, her shoulders tightened. She sparked a globe of illumination and left it hovering behind them.
The prince arched a brow.
Serenna forced a shrug. “Just in case we need to find our way back.”
The silence thickened as they walked, clinging as close as a shroud. By the time the tunnel forked, the weight pressed against her throat.
To the right, the path stretched smooth and dark, vanishing into shadow. To the left, broken slabs wedged into a barricade, sealing with purpose.
Serenna didn’t bother glancing at Vesryn, already knowing which direction would tempt him.
She stepped to the left and braced her palm against the wall of splintered stone. Channeling Essence, she cast out a thin stream, lacing power through the seams. It slipped along the cracks but met no resistance, no gold to unravel against. Only dead weight, heaped to bury the passage.
“How do you want to open it?” she asked quietly when the prince moved to her side. “You could shove the rocks with force.”
“You could shove the rocks with force,” he echoed, gaze flicking to the Starshard at her throat. “You can access that talent now.” His mouth twisted, scowl fixed on the stone instead of her. “Or perhaps I should say again.”
Serenna’s fingers closed around the gem. The crystal pulsed faintly, its eerie familiarity unsettling, making her chest hum. Vesryn had placed this gift of power into her hands—just as she’d once offered her force talent to Fenn at a frozen waterfall beneath the moons.
Mirroring the way Kaedryn had taught Vesryn to draw on his shard, Serenna closed her eyes and reached through the gem.
Essence ignited and a single facet flared in her mind—the force talent, honed for impact.
She traced its edge, unsealed its shape, and power surged through her like a disused muscle sparking back to life.
Serenna inhaled a grounding breath and lifted her palms. Blue light coiled between them before lancing forward.
The burst struck. The air shivered, dust pluming around her boots as a tremor crawled through the tunnel. A groan rumbled, cavernous, like the mountain exhaling after holding its breath too long. One slab shifted.
Bracing her stance, she pressed harder, hauling Essence through the shard. Grinding loose, the stones obeyed, hovering in heavy arcs. She wrestled them outward, dragging collapse into order until, at last, the barricade broke open.
The stones stacked where her fingers directed, fitting along the tunnel’s edge as though they’d never fallen. The final slab dropped into place with a resonant thud that carried down the passage. Silence followed, thick as the dark that tried to erase even the memory of their light.
Glancing back at the tunnel’s fork, Serenna anchored a globe of illumination while Vesryn sent his spheres whirling ahead. Their radiance faltered, barely piercing the way forward.
Each footfall rang too loud, lost inside a hush older than stone. The walls pressed close until even her breath felt intrusive.
Vesryn’s hand shot out, seizing her arm just as a glimmer flared ahead. Serenna froze, every sense straining. Even her shadow recoiled, bracing for an impact her body already feared.
Turquoise light shimmered low in the dark. Too steady to be anything but Essence, though it moved unlike any illusion she’d seen before.
The light wavered like a burning turquoise flame, collapsing and reforming, unable to hold its shape. Then it lunged, snapping forward in the space of a breath.
A figure burst from the false light, looming before them.
Serenna’s heart bolted. With a screech, she lurched to flee, but Vesryn’s hand clamped tighter, preventing her retreat.
“It isn’t real,” Vesryn hissed under his breath, his grip like iron on her arm.
Blurred around the edges, the body flickered in and out of focus—an illusion of flesh draped in remembrance of skin, suspended somewhere between past and present.
An Aelfyn female. Or the shadow of one.
At first, her face seemed young and timeless. But as the figure turned, her features fractured. Subtle at first, then all at once.
Eyes hollowed to voids, glinting like ice trapped in crystal. Her mouth opened, and words scraped out, bone grating against stone. “Ascension was promised,” she rasped. “But the stars turned their gaze.”
Then she shattered. Light burst apart, scattering in jagged arcs across the walls.
And from the fragments…more rose.
Turquoise halos seeped from the stone as dozens of Aelfyn shimmered into view. Warped and distorted, some hovered in the air or sagged in collapse, their bodies bent at impossible angles. A few stood too still, statues in the dark, while others wavered—snared in time’s unbroken loop.
Faces blurred, eyes dead yet burning. Some fixed on Serenna, the rest turned to Vesryn. Mouths stretched in silent screams. But the voices came in a broken chant—layered, clawing, each whisper raking through her skull until even the stone seemed to speak.
“We bore the fire of suns, but it guttered in gold.
The Starpath was sealed. Denied.
We reached for the light, but the way stayed dark.
Buried us beneath roots. Left us to rot.
Ascension…revoked.
The stars never answered—
—never answered—
—never answered our call.”
Serenna turned, half stumbled—still caught in Vesryn’s grip—and gasped as he flung out a hand. A burst of Essence flared down the tunnel. Shadows braided with light as he lashed the radiance outward to chase back the dark. The apparitions disintegrated, dissolving like smoke.
Stone gleamed bare in the wake of the light, and Vesryn’s hold tensed against her.
Corpses.
Scores of them, embalmed by time. Flesh shriveled to bark, roots winding up limbs, claiming what skin no longer held. Empty sockets seemed to stare, locked forever in terror of their final moments.
One corpse clutched a Starshard, fingers fused around the crystal. Another had been half consumed by the tunnel itself, its mouth forced open around a root that jutted through teeth like a spike.
The walls carried evidence of their struggle—blood dried in narrow rivulets, grooves clawed into rock, nails torn free. A body slumped beside the markings, fingers ground to knuckles, stilled mid-scrape.
Others had simply died reaching, hands raised toward a sky offering freedom too far above.
Serenna’s lungs locked. For an instant she thought she felt something in the earth spreading across her skin, rooting her in place.
Beside her, Vesryn’s breath came shallow and uneven. “Still holding them,” he whispered, gaze fixed on a corpse gripping a Starshard.
Drawn by quiet reflex, Serenna’s fingers found the gem at her throat, unable to believe that those here had trusted the magic of starlight to carry them home. Perhaps once that faith had held power. But not in this prison.
She knew the Aelfyn hadn’t all been innocent. They’d hunted dragons in their hunger for magic, paving the path the king still walked.
But this… She wasn’t sure justice lived in a tomb devoid of hope. Or if anyone deserved to die grasping for a light that was forever out of reach.
Vesryn’s hold eased down her arm, fingers threading tightly into hers.
Behind them, the air exhaled. Serenna tensed, but no illusion followed as a final whisper curled through the stone.
“Starlight should have opened the path. But ascension was denied. Why does it still burn?”
Serenna turned toward Vesryn as the words dissolved, her pulse stammering against her throat. “Do you think the illusions were tied to the Starshards? Are they still active?”
“There’s no clear record of what they could do,” Vesryn said, fingers flexing around hers.
“We only have the scraps Kaedryn’s ancestors passed down.
But these…” His jaw drew tight as his gaze swept over the corpses and the gems they clutched like brittle stars.
“I have to believe they’re inert now without a life force—or something else—to anchor them. ”
A breath slipped free from Serenna’s lungs, ragged but more steady than before. Relief drifted through her, enough to let her loosen her grip on the prince’s hand and stand straighter.
Until Vesryn spoke again.
“We should gather the shards,” he said, voice even but too quiet. “There may be more chambers below.”
The silence pressed close once more, heavier than before. And Serenna feared that somewhere, deeper in the earth, more dead were still waiting to be answered.