18. Chapter 18 - Theron
Theron did not trust the vehicle.
That became obvious less than three minutes after they left the mountain.
“It moves too quickly,” he said flatly from the passenger seat while staring rigidly through the windshield at the dark highway rushing beneath them.
Matt glanced sideways from behind the wheel. “It’s a truck.”
“It should not move this fast.”
“We’re doing fifty.”
Theron’s expression tightened further. “That does not improve my confidence.”
From the back seat, Vale made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh. “You fought an ancient nightmare king inside a collapsing mountain.”
Theron never looked away from the road ahead. “Correct.”
“And this is what concerns you?”
“The mountain was at least attached to the ground.”
Matt laughed hard enough that the truck drifted briefly toward the shoulder before he corrected it again.
Theron grabbed the dashboard with enough force to crack part of the plastic beneath his fingers.
Matt noticed. “Oh my God.”
“This machine feels unstable.”
“It’s a Ford.”
“That explanation means nothing to me.”
Vale finally gave up and laughed openly behind them.
The sound startled Theron almost as much as the passing headlights outside.
He had spent so long inside the mountain that even simple things seemed wrong now. The steady stream of lights moving across the distant highway. The hum of electrical lines stretching beside the road. The glow of entire towns scattered across the valley below them.
Nothing stayed dark anymore.
The realization unsettled him more than he expected.
For centuries, night inside the mountain had meant silence, stone, and isolation broken only by whispers moving through the walls. Now the world outside felt endlessly alive. Bright. Loud. Moving too fast in every direction at once.
And every few minutes, Matt glanced toward him like he was checking to make sure Theron was still there. The bond carried the reason clearly enough. Matt still did not fully believe he had survived. Theron understood that feeling better than he wanted to.
Matt glanced toward him again, but this time he did not look away quite as quickly. “How did you get out?”
The road curved through the dark mountains beyond the windows while the quiet hum of the vehicle filled the space between them. For several seconds, Theron watched the broken peaks disappearing behind them before answering.
“When the seal ruptured, the King tried to pull me into it with him.”
Matt’s entire body tightened beside him.
Theron continued before he could interrupt. “His blood was inside me. His corruption had been rooted there for centuries. Once the heart seal opened, it recognized me as part of him.”
“But you got out.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Theron turned toward him.
The bond stirred between them, warm and steady beneath the exhaustion.
“You,” Theron said.
Matt looked at him, then forced his attention back to the road.
“The King’s blood gave the seal something to claim,” Theron continued. “But the bond gave me something stronger to follow.”
Understanding moved across Matt’s face.
Theron looked down at their hands resting close together between them. “When the chamber collapsed, I could no longer feel the passageways or the surface. I could not hear Vale or the others.” His voice roughened. “I could only feel you.”
Matt swallowed.
“So I followed the bond,” Theron said. “I followed you back.”
For a moment Matt said nothing.
Then his hand moved across the seat and closed around Theron’s. Theron let him hold on.
Matt looked toward the road again, but his grip remained tight. “Good.”
The single word carried more emotion than Theron expected.
He turned his hand beneath Matt’s and threaded their fingers together.
“Yes,” Theron said. “It was.”
By the time they reached the temporary Valker safehouse shortly before dawn, exhaustion dragged heavily through every inch of Theron’s body. He barely remembered walking inside until bright overhead lights reflected sharply across polished floors and pale walls.
He slowed automatically, though the lights themselves did not surprise him. The mountain had possessed illumination in deeper sections long before modern civilizations existed above it.
Ancient seal rooms had glowed with silver-blue fire threaded directly through the stone.
But those lights had always carried purpose rooted in magic, power, or ritual.
These felt casual and almost thoughtless by comparison.
Theron looked across the ceiling fixtures glowing overhead. “You trapped lightning inside glass and decided to use it for hallways.”
Vale closed her eyes briefly. “I am too tired for this conversation.”
Matt looked far too pleased with himself. “Wait until someone explains microwaves.”
Theron narrowed his eyes. “I dislike that word instinctively.”
Theron continued studying the lights as they walked deeper into the building. It unsettled him in ways he struggled to explain. Entire civilizations had once viewed illumination after dark as wealth, status, or protection against death itself.
Now humans flooded entire buildings with artificial daylight without even noticing it.
And there were so many unfamiliar objects.
Security monitors flickered with camera feeds from outside, and someone handed Vale a tablet halfway through the hallway. Theron watched the images shift beneath her fingers but kept walking. There were too many unfamiliar things to stop for all of them.
Matt noticed. “You’ve never seen one.”
Theron studied the moving images carefully. “The glass changed.”
“It’s a tablet.”
“That explanation continues to mean nothing.”
Matt failed completely at hiding the smile this time.
Something warm moved through the bond beneath it. Not amusement alone. Relief.
The realization settled inside Theron as they reached a recovery area near the rear of the safehouse. Matt had spent the entire drive watching him carefully, tracking every reaction, every moment of confusion, every sign that Theron might be overwhelmed by the world waiting outside the mountain.
Matt watched because he genuinely cared whether Theron could handle it, never treating his confusion as ridiculous.
That realization unsettled him more than the trapped lightning glowing overhead.
The room itself was small but quiet. A couch stretched along one wall beside a narrow table covered in medical supplies while rain tapped softly against the windows overlooking the dark valley outside.
Windows.
Theron stopped there too.
Glass stretched from nearly floor to ceiling across the far wall. Beyond it, distant city lights glowed beneath the fading night while headlights moved steadily along roads far below the safehouse.
The world stretched farther than anything he had allowed himself to imagine beneath the mountain.
Matt stepped beside him. “You’ve never seen it like this before.”
Theron shook his head once.
The last true city he remembered had been lit by torchlight and open flame. Everything afterward blurred into isolated decades spent surviving inside the mountain while the world beyond it evolved without him.
Empires had likely risen and vanished while he remained buried underground listening to whispers in the stone.
“I do not recognize any of it,” Theron admitted.
Matt leaned one shoulder against the wall beside him. “Honestly? Most days I barely recognize it either.”
Theron looked toward him.
Matt looked exhausted beneath the harsh safehouse lighting. Bruises darkened portions of his face while healing cuts still crossed his hands and throat from the battle beneath the mountain, and fatigue dragged heavily at the edges of his expression now that adrenaline had finally begun fading.
Theron still found himself checking the bond almost constantly, as though some part of him expected the connection to suddenly vanish again if he stopped paying attention for too long.
Every steady pulse of Matt’s heartbeat through the bond grounded him in a way he did not fully know how to explain yet.
Matt noticed the direction of his thoughts. “I’m not dead.”
“I am aware.”
“You keep checking anyway.”
Theron looked back toward the city lights outside the window, but the bond betrayed the truth before he could bury it completely.
After centuries spent watching everyone he cared for disappear while he remained trapped beneath the mountain, some part of him still struggled to trust survival when it was finally standing directly in front of him.
“I know,” Matt said softly.
The gentleness in his voice hit harder than reassurance would have.
Theron kept his attention on the valley because looking at Matt felt more dangerous than the confession itself. “I spent centuries expecting to lose everyone eventually.”
The honesty slipped out before he could stop it.
A thoughtful silence settled between them while Matt chose his next words carefully. “You didn’t lose me.”
The bond tightened sharply beneath the quiet certainty in Matt’s voice.
Theron closed his eyes briefly because some part of him still did not fully understand how to survive hearing things like that without expecting them to be taken away.
And somewhere beneath that realization came another thought, quieter but no less terrifying.
For the first time since leaving the mountain, Theron felt time moving inside his body.
The sensation was subtle, little more than an awareness that the stillness holding him unchanged for centuries had finally released him.
The seal no longer sustained him, and although he could not yet know what that meant for the years ahead, one truth settled inside him with strange weight.
His life was finally his own.
Time would move again. Not beneath stone or according to the needs of the prison, but forward, carrying him toward something he had never expected to possess.
A future.
Matt stepped closer then, close enough that warmth moved clearly through the bond between them again. “You know,” he said carefully, “at some point I’m going to have to explain cell phones to you.”
Theron grimaced. “I already dislike the name.”
Matt laughed softly.