Chapter 40 Beneath the Endless Dark
Beneath the Endless Dark
Iam Resh’Agar, and in twelve centuries I have never retreated from a battle. I have never known defeat. Have never turned my back on my men.
Until now.
Light recedes behind the crystalline door with a final hiss, plunging us into velvet dark.
Only my runes light the surroundings—dim lines of blue crawling up my skin like slumbering lightning.
To my eyes, the path ahead is clear, every ancient carving and fissure in the stone stark with clarity. I can see everything.
But Auryn cannot see a thing, and the blindness worsens her fury.
I run through narrow passages of stone and emerald crystal with the varkhounds’ snarls and shrieks echoing through air and memory. Their monstrous chanting of my name pulses and throbs in my ears like rhythmic beats of muffled voices.
“Resh…Reshh…Reshhhh…Reshhhhh…”
I can't tell if it is real. But I feel no fear. No regret. Not in this moment.
War is my lifeblood. But now, so is she.
My starlight.
My Auryn.
The one I carry in my arms even as she screams for the sacrifice of our comrades. I’ve never heard her scream. Never seen tears like these. But I have no time to soften. No time to think of the men still dying far behind us.
No time at all.
Her nails dig into my arms. She thrashes and squirms. Demands that we go back.
And her voice—Void help me—some of it is hers, and some not.
The screams—those are my Auryn’s. But the commands, the words that spit curses at me in a tongue I’ve never known, those belong to that voice. That thing inside her.
“Release me! I must return. Seal the rift. Those abominations cannot be allowed to roam free!”
I run, not daring to answer.
“Silari, you will release me now! The consequences of this night will echo in the Garden for centuries to come!”
Every time that voice gives an order, something pulls at my very core.
A compulsion to obey, muffled only by the Vargrún at my nape.
It burns and itches, as though a scalding brand is pressed against that place.
But if it interferes with her will somehow, if it allows me to maintain my agency, then—for once in my unnatural life—I will not curse it.
I keep moving. Run harder. Crush her to my chest so she doesn’t slip from my grasp.
When I can no longer hear the chanting, when the air turns cold and the markings on the walls take a certain shape, I pause.
Auryn hasn’t moved. Not in moments.
Her screams have stopped.
Her limbs have gone still.
“Auryn?”
She flinches at my voice. Completely blind, shivering now not from anger but from trepidation. Her fingers curl tighter around Thessia's braid—tense, uncertain, afraid. The floor tilts beneath my feet.
“It’s all right,” I promise, though I have no confidence in that. I adjust my hold around her. “I was forged to see in darkness. I will not let us fall.”
Her only reply is a slight nod against my shoulder. But the tension in her limbs doesn’t ease.
I move us through the Veinroads, the blood vessels of Elendria, long dead and abandoned by its gods.
They are carved from stone and earthflesh, yet devoid of any life.
Only sorrow lingers here, swallowing sound, water, even breath—anything that dares its desolation.
The passages are wide and swollen, as though entire oceans had once passed through here.
Now, only barren soil remains, twisted from the rifts and all that lingers in the Shadowfold.
Ancient paths. Not Krystopolitan in design. Older than the Flaeme which powers my city. Older, perhaps, than my brother. Magic clings to the stones like a lingering scent, thick and cloying. Vibrates in the marrow, as though the world’s heartbeat is trapped inside these walls.
They glimmer with veins of crystallized mana, pale as bone, running in tangled cords that vanished into the black above. Some drip liquid light—beads falling like slow rain, dissolving before they touch the floor. Others dance to a rhythm long forgotten.
As I carry Auryn through caverns shaped like the hollow bones of titans, the tension in her body eases. Bridges arch across bottomless chasms, where only the faintest glow traces the depths. Somewhere far ahead, sounds echo—eerie and distant. The kind that linger too long in memory.
Reading the markings on the walls, I veer toward a narrow alcove nestled in a curve of the tunnel.
A forgotten rest station, carved by travelers long since lost to time.
The air is colder here. I cannot feel the drop in temperature, but Auryn shivers in my arms. Crystalline moss blooms from the ceiling in soft pulses of blue-green light.
I kneel and set Auryn down, slipping my cloak off and covering her trembling frame. Then I sit beside her, back pressed to the stone wall.
She says nothing for a long time.
Then, tentatively, her hand reaches for mine in the half-light.
I catch it with both of mine, relief slamming into me. I hadn’t realized how tense I was. How I hinged on her every breath. Counting them. Wondering if she would curse me still…or perhaps forgive me.
“I thought I could be strong,” she whispers, her voice hoarse from shouting. “But I’m always the one who falls.”
“You’re still here,” I tell her, even more relieved to hear her voice. “You stand up every time.”
She turns her head toward me, her eyes staring at nothing. “Except now. Zarrek and Thessia fell for me. For us. And I left them there.”
I shut my eyes against the truth. Shame bites deep and unrelenting into the hollows of my ribs.
“Zarrek is stronger than you know,” I tell her, my hand steady against her spine.
“He will not fall so easily. He’s walked with me through war and ruin for over a century now.
And Thessia…” I pause. “She’s the Lioness.
Commander of the Riven Blades. Legend, in her own way. ”
The Veinroads around us are too quiet. Too dark. As we press on, Auryn walks beside me, holding my arm for guidance. Silence surrounds us like deep water, unnatural and endless, broken only by our halting footsteps and the echo of moisture dripping from unseen heights.
Auryn flinches with every new sound. She bites her lip. Says nothing. Doesn’t need to. Her fear slithers through my skin. Her voice finally emerges—fragile, wounded.
“Kail…I still can’t see.”
I slow our pace, shifting her closer as my gaze sweeps the endless dark ahead.
“I know,” I reassure her. “But I can.”
She swallows. “That doesn’t help me.”
“It helps us,” I say, brushing my cheek against her temple. Needing to feel her warmth. “Trust me. Lean on me.”
Another long silence passes. Her body, though exhausted, tenses anew—this time not from weakness but from guilt.
“You should’ve let me help them,” she says. “I could have done something…anything…”
I continue walking with her. No words I can shape in this moment will ease her pain. So, I focus on the priority at hand. To keep her warm, to keep her safe.
A flicker of light draws my attention—a symbol etched into the wall just ahead. A mile marker. I trace it with my fingers and shift direction, taking a narrow turn.
“You’d already given everything,” I say at last. “More than you had left. Don’t ask me to let you die for one more cause. Not again.”
“But he’s Zarrek. He’s—he’s part of us. I felt it when he stayed behind. I felt the goodbye. It didn’t come from me. It came from him.” Auryn trembles. “And Thessia…”
I stop. Turn to face her fully. “Then carry that. Carry their faith in you. In us. Let it guide your steps.”
Her lips part as if to argue. Then close again. She cannot find words enough to describe her grief. She gives a soft nod instead. Then, as if she were made of paper, she leans into me again. Fully now. Without a trace of pride or hesitation.
I catch her—always—my arms folding around her slight frame, pressing her close.
Her breath stutters, fragile and uneven, every exhale scraping against my chest like it costs her too much.
For a moment, neither one of us moves, suspended in silence so deep I can hardly feel my own skin.
I hadn’t missed this absence of sound in nineteen years of Campaigning. Hadn’t missed this eerie nothingness.
Yet we move deeper into it with every step.
Closer to the Shields and home.
“You’re burning yourself out,” I say. “I can feel it.”
She shivers again, and the motion is like a splinter placed against a break in glass.
Her body shifts, the motion tilting that splinter just right.
Widening the crack in my armor. All at once, I cannot breathe.
Not without her. So, I reach out. I tilt her chin and press my mouth to hers. Desperate. Heated.
A plea for shore within a storm.
An anchor for her grief.
A promise sealed within the dark.
Auryn gasps, then clings to me, answering my prayers, grasping at the anchor of my shoulders, and giving a promise of her own in turn.
Our Bond shudders then shifts. Her faltering rhythm spills into me, and instinct—not thought, not training—shows me how to draw it in, match it, give it back.
I inhale her ragged breath and exhale life.
Mana surges hot through my veins, rushes into my chest, and I pour it across the seam of our mouths, reckless and raw.
Her body jerks against mine as light spreads beneath her skin—silver answering my azure. Her pulse twines with mine, weaving, sighing. The black veins crawling up her throat retreat, slow at first, then enough to bring a ghost of color back to her cheeks.
She breaks the kiss with a gasp, her hand flying to her chest, eyes wide in the glow of my runes. Her breathing comes easier now, steadier, though her body still trembles.
“Kail…” Her voice shakes. “What—did you just—”
“I don’t know,” I admit. Still holding my shore. A lost ship reluctant to unmoor. “I did it before. At Stonewake.”
“After the Sight…” she says.
“I don’t understand it, but if it keeps you alive, I’ll do it again.”