Chapter 11
SERENNA
Serenna now understood why Cinderax had refused to join them underground.
Time slipped unmeasured beneath the earth’s depths, vanishing into the dark. The den carried no stench of damp decay, only a faint metallic whisper that prickled her skin—like the breath of something once alive, lingering long past its time.
The satchel Vesryn had brought sagged heavier with every chamber they cleared. Thirty Starshards gathered, and still they pressed on.
Ten shards ago, the path had begun to spiral. The floor tilted inward as fossilized roots streaked with gold arched overhead and coiled down the walls.
Serenna spoke low as Vesryn walked beside her, unwilling to disturb the hush. “Do you think we should go back?”
Silence stretched so long she thought he hadn’t heard. His globes of illumination whirled ahead, catching on a glint of metal at the next curve.
“One more chamber,” he said at last, distracted, already hurrying forward.
Legs growing heavy, Serenna exhaled a weary sigh and adjusted the Starshard at her throat. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked. Or the second.
His answer never changed, as if time no longer counted in the dark. For him, it was always the next shard, the next hidden chamber, spoken with the quiet conviction that some ancient truth waited just one step deeper. That one more discovery might unveil what the Aelfyn had failed to reach.
Serenna wasn’t so easily lured. She didn’t need illusions to see the hollow-eyed corpses. They lived behind her eyes now, their whispers still scraping her skull. None had stirred since that first chamber, yet she felt the surrounding stone watching.
Vesryn’s voice broke suddenly against the walls. “What do you make of what the Aelfyn said? About the Starpath? Ascension?”
Serenna blinked, suppressing a shiver. He’d asked before, but something in his tone had shifted, less curiosity this time. The bond carried the same edge, telling her that he wasn’t only chasing answers, but brushing against something he already knew.
“Maybe it was a plea,” she said carefully. “Or a warning. Or maybe they were driven mad.”
“It sounded like they were denied something they expected.”
Serenna scoffed, tugging at the gem at her throat. “Power, probably. Or something they thought was theirs by right.”
Vesryn glanced sidelong, the glow catching the jade in his eyes.
Serenna didn’t say anything further. The gleam in his gaze unfocused as the globes of light swept ahead, shadows lengthening across the tunnel. His pace quickened as the path widened before them, chasing a revelation the stone had buried for a reason.
“Unable to ascend,” Vesryn murmured, still fixated. “They tried to flee through the Starpath—whatever that is—but their magic failed.”
“There’s gold laced through everything,” Serenna said, waving a hand toward the roots and walls. “Maybe that’s when they realized the druids had cursed their magic.”
Vesryn shrugged. “What if they weren’t trying to escape the curse…but reaching for something else entirely?”
Irritation spiked—that he could wander into speculation when the dark seemed to crawl against her skin. Serenna opened her mouth to say it was time to return to Asharyn, but the words withered in her throat.
The tunnel fell away into a hollow descending into shadow, the ceiling vaulting beyond their light. The walls swept outward, a vast chamber unfurling in every direction.
“Do you think there’s anything at the bottom?” Vesryn asked.
Stillness pressed against Serenna’s ears until it seemed the cavern was listening. Her ribs cinched with every breath as she squinted into the void.
“I have a feeling we’re about to find out,” she mumbled.
With a flick of his wrist, Vesryn cast his illumination downward, light catching on gold carved into the chamber. The orbs drifted almost out of sight before striking packed earth far below.
Essence spiraled from his hand, threading through open air where no gold ran. The metal barred escape to the surface, but not movement within its bounds.
A portal tore wide beside them, its twin gaping on the basin’s floor. Serenna lingered at the tunnel’s lip before following him through.
Her boots scraped earth, landing in the cavity. The basin rose in symmetry, walls curved like a ribcage without a heart.
A dragon’s secluded nest, or the remnant of one. That was her first thought, though no shells remained. Still, she felt something massive had once curled here.
Serenna stood motionless, pulse hammering in her ears. No tunnels branched outward. No way forward or back. Only the walls pressing closer.
“I don’t think the Aelfyn made it this far,” she whispered, her voice almost smothered by the weight of earth.
Vesryn gave a faint nod as the rift collapsed behind them. He drifted to one of the sloped walls, tilting his head as he studied the metallic seams spidering upward.
“I wonder if the gold began here,” he murmured. “Maybe that Bramblemaw—or the druids, whoever—drew the veins up from the earth. If such a thing is possible.”
Serenna held her breath, but the den didn’t stir as the first chamber had.
Until the prince ran his hand over a band of gold.
A low hum bled through the walls. Fossilized roots flared brighter, like coals fanned to life.
He jerked his arm back.
Too late.
Soil erupted around them, a trap sprung. Golden tendrils burst in a blur of petrified bark.
They lashed past Serenna’s shoulders, ignoring her completely. Not like in the druid jungle, when every vine had marked her as prey the moment the prince had claimed the Heart.
The roots struck low, snaring Vesryn’s ankles. They raced up his waist, yanking him backward toward an earthen wall.
He shouted as his spine slammed against it, shadows bursting around him—only to shatter the instant they touched the surrounding gold.
“Vesryn!”
Dropping to one knee, Serenna drove her palm to the dirt, grasping desperately. She’d spoken to roots before, felt their rage pound like a drumbeat in her bones.
But this time, nothing stirred.
She scraped deeper for a pulse, but the earth gave nothing back. The roots were too old, calcified to stone.
Dead. Beyond her reach.
And Essence would be even more useless. Sunfire whispered at the edges of her thoughts, but—too volatile to summon alone—Serenna shoved it away.
Only fire remained, the ember burning in her chest begging for release. Deep down, she knew it couldn’t sear the golden veins, but she refused to stand idle. Instinct dragged her hands forward, flames surging to her palms.
The roots climbed higher, binding Vesryn’s torso, locking his arms. The wall behind him trembled, a low groan rumbling through the cavern.
Serenna’s breath hitched when the earth began to fracture. Debris rained down as fissures raced outward, seams widening as the den shuddered awake as if it intended to swallow him whole. Vesryn’s eyes caught hers as the whispers began, rising from everywhere and nowhere.
“Starborn child, of traitors’ seed,
The debt remains. Your blood must bleed.
Ours to claim, for balance torn—
Ascension ends in root and scorn.”
The echo folded in until the chamber rang with a single voice. The chant looped and layered, rage swelling with every repetition. A rite fulfilling itself, punishing Vesryn for sharing the pure blood of his ancestors. Claiming him to repay a debt, barring him from the stars.
The cracks behind him widened, gold-laced roots dragging him into the depths.
Serenna’s heart caught high in her throat as fire flared in her palms. Even as the flames gathered, she knew it would be futile. Their first assault on the den had already proved as much.
Perhaps a grown Emberhart or a druid tempered by years of discipline could have scorched through it. But she was neither, and needed another way.
Vesryn thrashed against the earth. Or tried to. Every pulse of Essence he summoned disintegrated, devoured by the same gold that had silenced the Aelfyn before him.
“Serenna—” His voice cracked, raw with panic. Not for himself. For her. And that was worse.
The fire sputtered from her hands as her breath locked tight. Her wings tore free, scales cascading in plates to shield her skin. She stepped forward, eyes locked on Vesryn.
Lifting her trembling hands, she summoned an orb of illumination between her palms.
“Shift!” Serenna shrieked as the earth consumed him inch by inch, his shoulders vanishing into the wall.
The prince’s pupils slashed into slits as scales erupted in an obsidian rush. Wings didn’t form—he was pinned too tightly—but the rest of him glinted with an iridescent sheen, refracting her light.
Serenna’s heart battered her chest as she stared at the quivering glow. She worried it would slip beyond her control and destroy them both.
No more hesitation.
Vesryn had hurled her into danger, driving her past fear until she’d learned to stand without faltering. He’d prepared her. Now it was her time to prove it.
Serenna plunged past the shape of her doubts, heaving open the floodgates of her Well. Essence slammed through her like a storm surging against stone.
The orb in her hands bloomed whiter.
Then detonated.
A cataclysm of sunfire burst from her palms. Essence cracked across the floor in silver veins, raced through her ribs, clawed up her spine. Heat thundered outward, warping breath, scalding earth. Vesryn’s shouts dissolved beneath the roar in her ears.
Serenna’s awareness of the chamber wavered, nearly lost as white-gold radiance overwhelmed her sight. She blinked hard, but Vesryn’s silhouette was already dimming, drowned in the tidal shimmer fountaining from her hands. Her chest clenched, refusing to let the earth claim him.
She gathered the sunfire, but the blaze turned inward before she could hurl it, tearing through her first. She no longer stood in the eye of the eruption.
She became it.