SEVEN
Amelia woke to a gentle nudge against her shoulder. She hadn’t realised she had fallen asleep, the slight touch that roused her causing a flood of adrenaline as images of darkness and sleek, spindly claws flashed before her.
Gasping, she abruptly rolled over and shuffled backwards in a haze of panic, stalling when her legs became twisted in her sleeping bag.
“It’s alright,” said a calm, gentle voice, “it’s only me.”
Amelia’s chest heaved as her vision cleared and she saw Halpert kneeling on the ground before her. His hands were raised in a show of meaning no harm, his face cool and collected like always.
She pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “Halpert,” Amelia said shakily, “you startled me.”
“I apologise,” he said, settling into a seated position at the edge of her bedroll. “Silas indicated we’re leaving this morning.”
She swallowed, feeling her fingers tingle with the lingering sense of fear.
“Yes,” Amelia responded as firmly as she could manage.
“After last night, we decided it was safest to abandon the excavation. The instability of midnight seems to be escalating, and with Hank…we shouldn’t risk being here another night. ”
Halpert nodded solemnly. “A wise decision.”
Taken aback, Amelia stared. “Do you think so? You don’t think it cowardly to abandon such an important project?”
He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “There’s nothing cowardly about protecting life. But I do have to ask…has something happened between you and Silas?”
Amelia’s jaw dropped at the abrupt question, and for a moment she struggled to answer.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Halpert watched her calmly, eyes assessing.
Amelia always felt the sense from him that he could see into your innermost sections to discover the source of who you were.
He seemed to see past every wall she built and treated her as someone worthy of attention and praise.
It’s what made him one of the few people who Amelia truly trusted.
“I haven’t heard the two of you argue since you returned from the temple yesterday,” he said with an inquisitive tilt to his head. “It seems as though perhaps you have managed to form a truce?”
“I suppose we’re trying to,” Amelia answered sheepishly. “I’ll actually be travelling south with him before returning to Ivory City.”
That seemed to surprise him. “You are?”
She nodded, twisting a section of her sleeping bag with her fingers. “We have some joint research we want to collaborate on before presenting our findings.”
“Hm,” Halpert mused, his eyes shifting across her face searchingly as though aware she was holding something back. Something monumental. “I look forwards to seeing the outcome of your joint work. The conference in the Spire is set for the eighteenth. You and Silas will be there?”
Amelia forced a smile and stood, kicking her sleeping bag away. “Yes, of course,” she said before turning back to look down at him with a serious expression. “Thank you for joining me. I knew this was a dangerous expedition, and I can’t tell you—”
Halpert held up a hand to stop her, a soft smile on his face.
“No need, Amelia. I’ve told you before, if you need anything from me, all you need to do is ask.
” He stood slowly with a little grunt and then he was walking over to the exit of her tent.
He paused in the doorway, holding it open and letting the blessed sunlight into the small space.
He turned back to her. “I’m so proud of you, Amelia.
And not just for what you did last night, but for every journey you choose to take, even though the path is difficult. ”
Emotion sat uncomfortably in her throat.
Halpert was the only person to say such encouraging words to her.
Amelia’s family weren’t the nurturing type, and being an only child with no siblings, she had always felt alone.
Her past was a mystery to most, and she knew that her difficulty revealing her true nature created an aura that she was indifferent, cold.
Halpert was one of the only people to see through it, becoming a father figure and true friend.
“Thanks, Halpert,” she said with a tentative smile, trying to appear grateful even while the compliment slid over her unpleasantly.
First Silas, now Halpert. Amelia wasn’t certain she would ever be at ease with such things being said to her.
She could accept praise in writing without blinking.
When articles or journals published about her advances and discoveries in science, Amelia took it in with excitement.
But words written on paper about her academic career were clinical, not personal.
Sometimes it’s the things you seek the most which are the hardest to accept when laid at your feet.
Halpert smiled once more before leaving, but not before he glanced curiously at the oddly wrapped bundle of cloth sitting on her table.
The journey away from the Ruins of Veilthorne was marked with a heavy silence, the feeling of giving up sitting like a weight. With the threat of another midnight looming along with the freshly forged bond with Silas, she knew leaving was the wisest choice.
The team had packed up the campsite early, each of them moving with relief, smoothing over the lingering alarm on their faces.
There had been a soberness as they readied, Frank standing near the dying embers of the fire, holding Hank’s backpack, the contents within and the sleek chestnut horse now without an owner.
Frank had searched all morning for signs of his counterpart.
He had slunk back empty-handed, a sadness etched on his face that came from losing someone you had worked with and cared for across many years.
Amelia had watched him return alone, the shake of his head telling her all she needed to know, and she had wished to cry.
To tilt her head to the sky and let her sadness out at the unfairness of it all.
Soon after, they said their goodbyes and parted ways, Silas and Amelia steering their horses south, while the rest headed north.
Her horse, Tempest, carried her across the land.
She was a sleek, dark mare with sharp eyes and a temperament that some might say matched her rider.
Tempest, saddled with her belongings, trotted along the plains of the Rift.
Silas sat stiffly atop a chestnut gelding ahead, a tension between his cloak-covered shoulders.
She watched Silas look around them uneasily, glancing often towards the eastern horizon.
He would turn to Amelia every so often, exchanging a silent look with her.
After a few hours of riding, his reason for the attention to the east slowly came into view. Tempest picked her way over the uneven ground, each hoofbeat sending up sand and dust. Her head began to shake, mane flinging about, as though sensing something sinister.
There, sitting in the distance was the Southern Monolith.
A dark, jagged pillar of obsidian-like stone, it stood fractured but unbroken.
It seemed impossibly tall, stretching into the dimming sky.
The air around it seemed darker, shimmering, and shifting unnaturally as if reality struggled to contain it.
Amelia had only seen the Northern Monolith before, its sleekness and proclivity for exuding light was the direct opposite of its counterpart.
This one sent a shudder down her spine, the darkness matching the blade that sat in her saddle bag.
She had spent so much of her life studying to understand the Monoliths and the magic they provided, yet as she stared at it in the distance, Amelia had a sense that it was not meant to be understood. It simply was.
They slowly passed as they journeyed south, but the closer they came, the more Amelia felt off-kilter.
There was a pull towards it, like the tide, or like gravity itself.
She wanted to tug on Tempest’s reins to move towards it, while simultaneously having the urge to kick at her sides to beg her onwards with haste.
Silas turned in his saddle. “I’ve seen this Monolith so many times before, but,” he said, his voice carrying back to her on the light wind, “…it feels different today.”
She swallowed, unease growing. “I feel it too, like I’m being…called to it?”
Silas nodded, brows pressed together with apprehension before he turned away. His heels kicked softly at the sides of his horse, moving quicker across the desert-like landscape, Amelia’s own horse keeping pace instinctually.
It took another two hours’ worth of riding to reach the edges of the Rift.
The border was marked by an invisible threshold, a long line where the blighted, sandy terrain softened into dirt, rocks, and lush green grass.
As they approached, Amelia felt it, the magic softening, the humming she felt in her blood dimming into something quieter.
She hadn’t even realised how loud it had been inside of her until it began to ebb away.
Tempest and Silas’ horse, Ember, seemed to sense it, too. Stepping with more confidence and shaking their heads as if shedding some unseen heaviness they had been carrying on the journey. The air began to feel different, lighter, and fresher, carrying the scent of rain on distant rolling fields.
Then they crossed.
There was nothing subtle about the feeling of moving from the Rift and into the Shadowlands.
The sky seemed clearer, and the sun felt warmer.
The ground felt firmer yet looked softer and more welcoming.
The feeling of the magic that had coated her felt like a mere memory of a dream she could hardly recall.
Amelia’s body seemed lighter, and her next breath felt like the first in hours, her lungs expanding with the clean air.
She looked back over her shoulder, the desolate Rift stretching out behind her like a dark, open wound.
Amelia hadn’t even noticed it, but there was a darkness to the air that she could openly see now that she wasn’t amongst it.
She blinked and turned away, wondering at all the years she had spent dreaming of venturing into those lands.
Now, Amelia could hardly comprehend ever wanting to return after only a handful of days.
Ahead of her, rolling green hills rose and dipped, the grasses looking golden in the dipping sunlight. It exuded a sense of safety and comfort.
Silas pulled up his horse until she caught up to him just beyond the border. He looked sideways at her. “Do you feel the difference?”
Her eyes fell shut and her chest rose on another wondrous inhale. “I feel a million times better.” Amelia basked in it, smiling softly. She opened her eyes to find Silas watching her. “Is it always like that, or is it because of the cuts that it felt so immensely horrible?”
He took a moment to answer, his eyes wandering across her face and pausing on the slight smile still sitting there. “I’ve been into the Rift a few times, and it’s never felt like that. We’ve triggered something, I think.”
Amelia was quiet after that, smile fading away. Silas looked past her, towards the Rift and his face changed quickly, a frown pulling his mouth downwards.
She followed his gaze but didn’t understand what was causing the line between his brows. “What is it?”
Silas didn’t answer, swiftly dismounting from Ember and only wincing slightly as he landed on his injured leg. He strode the distance back towards the edges of the Rift.
She saw it, then, the breath stalling in her chest.
Amelia slid from Tempest and hurried closer.
They stood at the border, the toes of their boots brushing where firm, grassy dirt met the blighted sections of the Rift.
And several paces ahead of them was the marker. A worn, weathered stake sunk into the ground, now surrounded by the uneven terrains of the Rift.
Silas let out a rough exhale. She looked sideways at him.
His eyes were fixed on the marker as he spoke.
“I passed through here only a few days ago,” Silas murmured.
Amelia looked back into the Rift, seeing the darkness move and ripple, an entity of its own within the cursed space of land.
She didn’t know how it seemed so invisible when you stood amongst it, while being clear as day outside of it.
The ripples, almost a dark purple, were ominous, deadly.
And it was growing.
“That marker was…” He shook his head and turned to her. “Well, that section of land was still land. Now it’s been…consumed.”
She shifted uneasily at the words, something weighing down on her chest. Words, written in an unmarked journal belonging to Silas floated back to her. The bond is not simply connection; it is consumption.
“Is it the Monoliths?” Amelia asked. “Are they causing it to expand?”
Silas shook his head again. “I don’t know. No one does. Yet.”
He turned abruptly, striding back to his horse. Amelia followed him and they both remounted their steeds and wasted no time in getting them moving, each of them wanting distance from the Rift as fast as possible.
They were silent for a while before he spoke again.
“The darkness of the Rift has been growing for centuries.” His voice was quiet, contemplative.
She barely heard it over the gentle breeze and sounds of their horses as they trotted across grassy plains.
“But the rate has been slow, steady. That…in a few days? Unheard of.”
She gripped her reins tightly. “We didn’t do that, did we?”
He looked across at her, an expressionless mask on his face, before turning away, jaw flexing.
“I don’t know,” was all he said.
They rode on as Silas led them onto a path. A creaking signpost indicated that a lodge lay ahead.
The quiet between them was thick, pressing against her in the wake of the Rift’s growth. She didn’t know what to make of it, what it meant for the future of magic. For the future of Aethrial.
With the weight of the Rift lifted away from her, Amelia quietly assessed herself. She realised the feeling of it wasn’t gone, only muted. She could feel the slight buzzing under her skin, the sliver of unease in her bones, no matter how much distance they put between themselves and the Rift.
Amelia wondered if the safety of the Shadowlands was an illusion, and while the magic felt less prominent, she knew that it had followed them across the border.