34. Kael
KAEL
She disappears beneath the surface.
One heartbeat she’s there—the next, only the ripples remain.
“Seren!” My voice bounces off the cavern walls and dies. I’m moving before I can think—boots skidding on slick stone, hands clawing at my tunic as I lunge for the water. The chill of the room sends goosebumps crawling over my skin.
My foot finds water, not solid ground. The cold shock gives way to white-hot agony that shoots up my leg. I recoil, a choked curse escaping my lips as I stumble backward and collapse to the floor.
My flame flickers as if touched by a phantom breath. As I clutch my foot, a sickly plume of steam rises from the surface, but the skin—red and slick—shows no blister. It just burns.
It isn’t heat. It’s a warning. Light-etched into the water itself, designed to reject anything that isn’t hers.
I stare at the spot where I last saw her. No ripples break the surface. No bubbles burst. It’s just still. Quiet. A cold dread in my stomach mirrors the chill of the water.
Eira stalks behind me, pacing frantically. Her eyes, wide and filled with a fearful intelligence, lock onto the surface. She dips her head, sniffing the edges, before letting out a cry that echoes through the vault.
But her whines are met by only silence.
Behind my eyes, snapshots of the past burn and dissolve, one into the next, in a silent, blinding sequence.
Three sisters, wearing a different crown. The sound of their giggles ring in the distance. Then, the blinding light. The piercing screams. Wisps of black torn apart.
Then, nothing.
What’s happening to me?
I shake the vision free, my focus snapping back to the pool. A single, perfectly round bubble rises from the depths, bursts soundlessly, and vanishes.
Above, the shadows swirl in a grotesque dance against the cavern ceiling. The tendrils suddenly freeze, locking into a single, sharp point that slices headfirst into the violet light. The water parts like a curtain to receive it.
A pounding drumbeat fills my ears—a roar that blots out the world. My eyes stay fixed on the spot where they vanished. Time stretches into a sickening slow-motion, turning every movement of my head into a monumental, sluggish effort.
No matter the power that lives inside me, I feel utterly useless.
The darkness stirs, and a voice from another life rises to meet it. Daren’s voice, echoing through the gloom.
* * *
Listen to the light, my friend. It’s there to guide you.
We were perched on the bar stools at the Lighthouse Tavern, sipping ale and trading stories of our days in the trenches.
Around us, guards laughed, boasting of the Triarch’s ‘victory over darkness’—the test they had just performed on Seren.
Lately, our bond had become a strained thing, a political wedge driving us further apart.
Daren stared at me over the rim of his glass, a moustache of pale foam coating his lip. He was waiting for my response.
I lifted that anchor years ago. My ship has been sailing dark waters ever since.
“Sometimes I feel the darkness is too hard to avoid.” I said.
Heat bloomed in my cheeks at the error of giving my thoughts a voice.
Daren isn’t just a friend; he’s a devout follower of Solan.
I should have been careful, especially as his allegiance has shifted as of late—a consequence of favouring prestige over friendship.
I shifted my gaze to the ale, not wanting to see my words land like a slap.
I watched the bubbles rise to the top like a miniature universe: whites were the privileged, born into the creamy, cushioned head, destined to sit at the top of the world for as long as the foam lasted.
Then there were the endless hopefuls churning in the depths, convinced their hard work would earn them a place in the glorious, effervescent crown.
“Be careful what you say, my friend. The walls are always listening.” Daren’s voice had been a warning, low and sharp. “I’ve given too much to be where I am, and I intend to keep it that way—friends or not. Spend too much time in the darkness, and you’ll forget what the light looks like.”
* * *
The memory dissolves, leaving only stone and shadows.
An inverted splash of pure blackness erupts from the pool. The shadows peel away from the liquid, a seamless black mass with Seren held inside like something stolen from the world.
They place her gracefully on the edge. Her hair hangs limp; her skin is a ghostly, unmoving white. Her lips are blue. Her chest is still.
Solan blind me. Think Kael, think.
I scramble toward her, my body no longer feeling the cold as adrenaline runs hot in my veins. The rocky ground bites into my palms as fragments of my medical training blur through my mind. With shaking hands, I brush the wet hair from her face and tilt her chin. Her skin feels like marble.
I find the centre of her chest and I begin to push—a desperate, rabid mantra against the silence. My mouth crashes over hers as I blow hard, once, twice. I push past the thought of her cold, soft lips pressed against my own as I desperately wait for the flicker of a response.
Nothing.
Eira whines, licking Seren’s frozen cheek in a desperate attempt to wake her.
The water drips from her tongue onto that pale, still face. I repeat the cycle again and again, the rhythm of my compressions more frantic.
Then, a wet, gurgling sound. She coughs, a stream of black water rushing from her lips onto the stony ground. Relief hits me so hard it feels like grief.
“It’s okay—it’s okay,” I rasp, gulping down air.
Eira licks her cheek once more, and Seren stifles a moan. I roll her onto her side, helping the fluid spill out. It does—thick and inky, slow as tar.
I sit back on my knees to give her space, only realising then that I’m shaking hard enough to rattle my teeth. I drag my tunic back on with numb fingers, as if cloth could make any of this feel real.
The shadows circle beside us, and it’s only then that I notice what they’ve set on the stone.
A spire of blackened metal, its surface scarred with forgotten sigils.
It’s longer than Seren herself—the shaft like the spine of some shadowed world.
The amethyst eye at its tip catches the light, and I swear it adjusts to me.
It isn’t reflecting; it’s seeing. It feels less like an object and more like a captured ghost, watching with a quiet, malicious intent.
A deep, ancient energy hums around it, drawing me in. The mark on my wrist flares with an urgent, burning pulse. The metal dares me to touch its cool, corroded surface, but a moan tears my focus away as Seren begins to stir.
Eira nudges her back, forcing her body to rock as she expels the last of the black fluid. The air in the cavern shifts—the sharp scent of wet earth replaced by the sweet, heavy bloom of lavender.
She gasps, her eyes snapping open as her body claws for air. The sclera is no longer white, it’s tainted with tiny, dark veins. The thin violet ring around her pupils has sharpened, claiming more space than before.
Her gaze darts around, reassembling the world around her. “Wh—Wha—” she rasps.
“It’s okay. Don’t talk. Your throat will be raw—you’ve coughed up a lot.”
Her stare pierces me. A connection fuses between us like an electric current. It isn’t loud; it’s a thought brushing against my own inside my skull.
What happened?
I flinch, the sensation jarring as I jerk back on my hands and knees until the grit from the floor buries itself beneath my finger nails. She doesn’t stir, as if this bridge between our minds is something that we’ve always used.
I clear my throat, wiping my palms on my trousers as I try to regain my composure. “You submerged. I tried to reach you, but I couldn’t. The water…it burned me.”
I wait for a response. Nothing. She stares at the space where the phantom blister burns on my skin, her expression vacant, as if she knew the exact shape of the wound.
“What happened down there?” I ask.
Violet eyes track slowly up my body, burning a trail in their wake until they find my face. Her lips are still blue, her cheeks only just beginning to tint with pink, but her gaze is magnetic. She tilts her head, watching me as if I’m speaking a language she can no longer comprehend.
Nothing happened. I didn’t see anything, she says through that invisible bond.
Without thinking, I reach out and tuck a loose strand of wet hair behind her ear. She winces at the touch.
I…I think I…died.
The words echo in the silent space between us.
Questions flood my mind, but I deny them a voice. I let the quiet envelop us like a shroud.
“I’m not sure how I’m here,” she says aloud, her voice gravelly and raw. Her shadows wrap around her, hoisting her into a seated position. She coughs hard, spitting thick, black saliva onto the stone.
A shaky hand strokes a snake-like tendril coiling around her shoulders. She leans into the shadows touch as Eira rests her large, furry head in her lap.
The Seren I first saw in the Hollow is gone.
Her features are no longer tainted by fear or doubt.
She exudes a power unlike anything I have ever experienced in all my years of hunting.
I find myself captivated, and deeply alarmed.
She is dangerous now, and I am beginning to question my role by her side.
“I don’t know,” I finally say, answering a gaze that seems to demand a truth I don’t possess. “But you brought something up with you.” I nod toward the staff lying behind her.
She stares at it for a long time. Finally, she strokes the silver crescent, her fingertip finding the sharp point. Blood trickles down, but she doesn’t wince. She doesn’t even gasp. Instead, she licks the life from her finger and smiles.
I swallow the fear rising in my throat.
“Nyx’s staff,” I whisper. “How…why?”
“I don’t know why it’s here,” she rasps. “I wasn’t shown.”
I remove my spectacles and wipe away the dust before settling them back onto the bridge of my nose.
I rub the bristles on my chin, searching my memory for the years of scripture I’ve devoured.
In every text depicting Nyx, she is never without her staff.
No one knows its true function, only that its power is reserved for the gods.
“Maybe when Nyx was destroyed, the Triarch hid it here, thinking no one would ever find it. The magical wards in the water are likely why I couldn’t enter. Maybe it’s been waiting for the right person to retrieve it.”
The Lightborne speaks the truth.
The voice isn’t Seren’s. It sounds older, a relic of a time long passed. Heat prickles my scar. Seren doesn’t respond; she simply sits there, those violet eyes burning through me as if she heard the words, too.
“I think—” My voice is shaky, nervous. “I think we should rest. We should be safe here.”
A silent nod.
Her eyes flutter shut, and I find myself staring. She is a sight to behold. Leaning against the jagged rock with shadows draped around her neck, Eira’s head on her lap, and her staff by her side, she looks regal. Powerful. A true goddess, not the scared girl I followed in the Hollow.
Soft hands trace idle lines inside my skull as the ancient voice returns: She has been reborn, Lightborne. You must guide her on her journey to freedom.
I roll up my sleeve, exposing my mark to the stagnant air. The scar is wrong—darker, sharper, spreading like ink beneath skin. My stomach drops. Pain erupts behind my ears, as her voice echoes.
You are marked, son of the Light. A time will come when you must choose which side you reside; in the light of day, or the depths of night.
“What is happening to me?” I whisper.
Only time will tell who you will become.
Silence follows. I stare at the mark, pondering the inevitable. A furious beat thrums within me, knots forming in my gut. My palms are slick with sweat as I roll my sleeve back down and remove my spectacles, rubbing the bridge of my nose where the weight of my old life still sits.
My thoughts race, clawing for any record of the Marked from my studies, but my mind is blank. A black emptiness as if the thoughts have been surgically removed from my memory.
Seren is a picture of preternatural calm, while my own insides churn into a storm.
My inquisitive mind—and the magnetic pull I feel towards her—is the only thing driving me to seek the answers I crave. I shouldn’t care for her. I shouldn’t care what happens. But I do. And the why of it is a knot I cannot untie.
To free us both from these shadows, I must journey with her—into an unknown that will force me to question every brick of my foundation.
What scares me the most isn’t where this path leads. It is who I will be when I reach the end.