Chapter 48
LYKOR
Lykor surrendered breath and stepped into the dark.
No illumination rose to face him, only stagnant air, thick with the sour exhale of earth left to rot. Intimate and unwelcome, it crawled over his skin, carrying the memory of screams that burrowed into bone.
Vesryn slipped in next through the portal, flaring orbs of light above his palm.
The chamber hadn’t changed.
Of course it hadn’t.
The glow struck Galaeryn’s altar, crouched at the room’s center like a beast starved between offerings. Marble glinted dully beneath the pallid light, its surface filmed by decades of blood. Chains sagged against the walls, each link scabbed with rust, every stain a record of pain carved in flesh.
Lykor sensed Aesar going death-still. He’d never allowed him this sight, having buried every echo behind the obsidian doors in his mind that Aesar had never dared to open.
The hush devoured Lykor’s footfalls as he strode forward, stone swallowing sound the way it once had swallowed his screams. Behind him, the others filtered in through his portal—rangers, wraith, druids, Daeryn and his warriors.
Hardened though they were, he tracked the falter. Eyes narrowing against the dim light. Essence wavering around white-knuckled hands. A cough caught and died half formed. Leather creaked, more than one grip sliding instinctively to a hilt.
When the last of their number crossed through, Lykor snapped the rift shut, sealing them inside stone that knew his name and had never forgiven him for surviving.
His gaze snagged on the altar again before he tore his eyes away. The taste of iron flooded his mouth, though no blood had been drawn.
Not this time.
“There are four holding chambers,” Lykor said, the words clipped as he pivoted toward the looming obsidian doors. “Each cavern is bound to the next by a web of tunnels.”
He pressed his palm against the smooth stone. The unyielding weight pushed back, as if the mountain had no intention of letting him go. For one fractured breath, fear hooked into him—that he might be buried inside this room for an eternity.
Lykor crushed the pulse rising in his throat and reached into his Well instead, yanking Essence until it burned hot beneath his skin. The blue glow of force raced along his forearm as he drove the magic into the keyless slabs.
The doors groaned beneath his power, then split with reluctant weight. A lightless tunnel gaped beyond.
“Stay close,” Lykor muttered. He didn’t wait for a reply before stepping forward, claiming the darkness on his own terms.
The air thickened, cooler and closer, sending a prickle of warning along his spine. Stone bit into his boots, slick where no water should have reached. Cracks veined the ceiling like old scars, and the walls seemed to pulse faintly, as though something buried deep within had learned to breathe.
Vesryn drifted to his side, casting the globes of illumination ahead. Lykor’s gaze stayed fixed on nothing, legs moving through routes he’d traveled so often they lived beneath thought.
Then the slope shifted. His balance caught, muscles adjusting for a turn that never came.
The tunnel should’ve curved right. That certainty lodged deep in his marrow.
The drag of his body through these corridors lived in him still—limp, half-conscious, Essence flayed raw.
Every surface that had feasted on him remained imprinted in his mind, each step tallied by heels streaking blood across stone.
But the way forward veered left instead, a gradual descent that felt deliberate. Wrong.
Either time had distorted his memory, or the mountain had rearranged its bones. The thought clawed cold beneath his skin, absurd but unshakable. Impossible.
And yet the deeper Lykor led the others, the sensation sharpened, gnawing along his senses. He’d known these tunnels as stone, carved by mortals who’d been obliterated by shadows after their labor.
Now the passages wound through the earth, as though another will had pressed through the rock and reshaped the terrain entirely.
Lykor glanced over his shoulder, catching Kal’s gaze. The question lodged in his throat as he fought the urge to ask if Kal felt the difference.
“He does,” Aesar whispered from the depths of their mind.
Lykor shoved the thought aside. Perhaps Galaeryn had expanded the prisons. Carved new hollows. Whatever had changed here didn’t matter. He’d feign certainty, refusing to bleed doubt where others could scent it. Not when they were this close.
Vesryn’s illumination spun restlessly around them, the spheres flaring brighter. Shadows cleaved the walls at angles that belonged to none of their bodies. The air constricted as the mountain closed in, funneling them into the first chamber.
Lykor ducked through the stone entry with the prince at his side and Kal close behind, the rest of their force trailing after. All moved quietly, Essence held as taut as arrows straining against bowstrings.
A subtle pulse thrummed at the threshold, snagging in Lykor’s perception—power from an unseen shield humming low. No bars were needed here. Not when Essence locked tighter than any steel, a prison forged to cage without chains.
He stepped forward and tore a fistful of rending from his Well, shadows lashing down his arm. The air convulsed when his strike collided with the ward, threads of magic sundering in a violent rush.
The reek hit first. Mold. Waste. Cold sweat. The rank press of bodies confined too long, stale air choked with fear.
Only then did he see them.
Children.
A silence lay over them so complete it felt layered into the stone itself, clinging to their small frames like dust to bone. No whispers rose, not even the thin cry of an infant as they blinked against the illumination. But even that movement came muted, as though motion had been forbidden.
Some shrank tighter to the walls, spines curling as if they could vanish into the rock.
A girl no older than eight flinched from the light before reaching for a boy beside her, drawing him close without a sound.
Others huddled in unmoving clusters, heads bowed, breaths shallow like noise might summon punishment.
None dared sit near the center. No one risked being seen first.
Not like him.
He’d placed himself at the front every time the elves came, fangs bared to meet their gazes. Sometimes he’d wait by the shield, bracing for the inevitable portal. Other times he forced his broken body upright after they struck him down, daring them to take him again if it spared someone else.
But these children had already learned survival’s cruelest truth, the safety of being invisible.
They appeared to be half-elves, filth streaking their cheeks, hunger etched in the gaunt lines of their faces. Bruises marred them in patterns too uniform to be chance.
A handful of mothers were present, clutching infants or sheltering the smallest with a stillness that knew it might not matter. Golden shackles bound their wrists, skin chafed raw beneath the metal.
Behind him, Daeryn’s voice cracked. “Stars below.”
Bhreena slipped around Lykor, palms open, lowering herself beside a pair of children. Her voice came softer than he’d ever heard it, a murmur shaped for trust.
Another from their ranks hesitantly followed her lead. Then two more. With their hovering illumination, they spread through the gloom like threads of light, each voice reaching carefully.
Minutes passed before the first child rose. Then another.
Others wouldn’t. Lykor saw the refusal hollowed into their eyes, the distrust set too deep. Some simply couldn’t stand, their limbs too wasted. And some had gone further still, staring with sightless eyes, minds sealed behind doors no comforting words could pry open.
Those were the ones he couldn’t look away from. Lykor’s claws flexed at his sides. He remained silent, counting as time bled by, their numbers burning into him.
Fifty. He stopped keeping track before the damage cut any deeper, though he knew there were more waiting beyond this chamber.
Near his shoulder, Kal conferred quietly with Vesryn, their voices low as they discussed portal jumps back to Asharyn. They’d have to travel slowly, especially with so many.
Their words dissolved in Lykor’s ears as Vesryn opened the first rift. Light folded in on itself, a seam of silence as the extractions began—careful but swift, the children guided or carried through one by one.
All the while, Lykor didn’t move.
Aesar hadn’t spoken either, but Lykor felt his presence—tense and seething—a shared fury smoldering deep between them.
His memory of the mountain’s tunnels might’ve been blurred, but its cruelty had not.
No beds. No partitions. Nothing to divide or soften the space.
Only bare rock strewn with straw and a single foul channel cut into the stone for waste.
When the rot grew so thick no one could breathe, the elves would rotate them into the next chamber.
This had always been a place meant to break.
“Why children?” Aesar rasped at last.
Lykor’s chest constricted, the answer cinched too tight to release. He’d known the families would be stowed somewhere as collateral, a reminder of what defiance would cost. But this was different. Curated silence. Preparation that pointed toward a future purpose.
Those here were half-elves, and that only left one harrowing truth. These children were assets, their bloodlines braided deep with Essence and earth. Kept close. Kept quiet until the king decided to draw their leash taut.
Aside from the mothers, there were no adults or adolescents or any of the age when power began to stir. That alone told Lykor everything. If the adolescents weren’t here, they were somewhere worse. And it wouldn’t be the academy, with its gilded walls and its illusion of choice.
Daeryn and his people were proof enough of that, wherever they’d been trained. Separate bloodlines. Separate purposes. All pieces on the same board.