39. Riven
RIVEN
The scent of blood and incense still clings to the back of my throat as I march from the chamber where chaos rained.
Dawn hasn’t broken, but the city already glows—hundreds of torches burn along the causeways in a desperate imitation of sunrise. Auria hates the dark so much it will set itself on fire to keep it away.
Six guards fall into step behind me, their armour hissing with the rhythm of prayer. I lead them down through the under-levels, where the marble gives way to limestone and the hymn of the city turns into the hiss of steam.
“Knowing the girl, they’ve gone to the lower levels,” I bark at my obedient pets. “Keep your wits about you. You know what she is.”
We descend until the limestone gives way to grey rock. The path of destruction is easy to follow; a trail of fine, black ash marks the walls where her shadows slithered. The blackness is absolute, looking as if it has been cauterised into the stone itself.
My nostrils sting. A sickly, sweet scent of lavender overwhelms the tunnel, thick enough to gag on. I grip the rough granite, my fingers scraping the walls as I try to push past the suffocating perfume.
Behind me, the guards break rank. Their breathing comes in choppy, haggard bursts as they bend double, retching hard against the cloying air.
Pathetic.
“Get up,” I snap. “We have a job to do, and we aren’t going to do it with our heads between our backsides!”
They jolt upright, the glassy look in their eyes replaced by a sharp, sudden clarity. Their features pinch in unison—a row of predators fixed on their prey. My lip curls until my teeth are bared.
“That’s better. Now move!”
The Guild’s tunnels are scarred; the quake from the girl’s awakening has cracked the masonry and flooded the lower chambers.
Our footsteps slap against the stone as we follow the black marks to a cramped room where the walls are slick with damp and the air is thick with heat.
As my eyes adjust, I make out the faint violet lines of runes scattered across the stone. They were here. I can feel it.
“Search the walls.” I growl, my voice sending a shockwave through the enclosure. “Find a doorway! They must have gotten out somehow.”
A sea of soft lights appears as the guards illuminate the space with their palms.
“Here, sir!” one of them cries.
I barge through, reaching the guard who stands with his palm outstretched to the floor. The yellow glow emanating from the hole in his glove catches a golden twinkle on the ground.
I snatch the coin. My fingers grasping the cold, heavy metal as I force the guards hand over mine, using his light to inspect the detail. My thumb traces the pattern—Solan’s light crest engraved on both sides, a circle encrusted with the triangular rays of a rising sun.
It tingles through my gloves. The hair on my arms rises as if jolted by an electric current. The coin doesn’t just shine; it simply is. It radiates an aura of absolute stillness—gelid and old, like the memory of an ancient star.
My jaw is locked tight. I can’t look away; the sight of something so ancient, so rare, in the hands of a mere scholar—someone who exists only in the shadows of Solan’s light. How is he worthy of this, when I have given everything?
I have only ever seen such a token in the hands of Uri, and he never let anyone forget its weight.
What does it do? And why was I never given one?
The feeling coiling inside of me illuminates everything I’m starved of: acceptance, power, control. I stare at the stone wall, contemplating how they used this to vanish.
“You—” I point to a guard. “—put your light on this wall. I need a better look.”
As he obeys, I run my fingertips over the cracks in the rock, searching for the entry point. The guards huddle close, watching with furious intensity. I snap my eyes shut to block them out, until their breathing is the only sound in the room.
I feel for the runes like braille, scanning section by section for a divot. Sweat slicks my brow. My lips pinch. There.
A coin-sized groove appears beneath my fingertips. I touch it, feeling a thread of cool air squeeze through the seam. My cheeks tighten into a wide, fractured grin.
“Got you.”
I slide the coin into the crack. A muffled, grinding thud vibrates through the stone, and the runes catch fire, blazing with a violet light.
Ancient locks responding only to ancient loyalty.
A deep, resonant thrum fills the space as the antique lock yields, a thin doorway parting slowly. Dust plumes into the air and settles as the wall splits, opening into a waiting blackness.
I snort, rolling my eyes at the guards’ cowardice. They simply stare back at me, frozen.
“Fine. I swear the gods wasted their breath on you,” I say, taking a tentative step into the void.
My boots thud against the stone as I cross the threshold into a cavernous vault. Warmth spreads down my arm as I force my energy to pool, my palm igniting to reveal the contents of the space. I pocket the gold coin and stare at the hole in the floor.
“Sir—” someone calls from the threshold. “Everything alright?”
“Follow me.”
They gather around me as I stop at the edge of the unnatural circle carved into the stone.
The dark pit hums with a vibration that seeps into my very skin.
I cover my nose; the scent of lavender has grown intense, but it's laced with something older—a musk I have never smelled in all my years in the Guild.
“What’s down there?” someone whispers.
“There’s only one way to find out.” I reach out, grabbing the nearest guard by the scruff of his neck, and hurl him into the dark.
Seconds pass before he lands with a muffled thud and a groan.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles from the depths, as if I had cared to ask.
“No one cares for your welfare. Is the drop short?”
“Yes, sir.”
One by one, we descend into the abyss.
* * *
The cavern yawns before us, a wound in our gilded earth. Black dust clings to the air, tainted with lavender, burnt smoke and a sharp, acidic bite. Coughs echo, bouncing off walls that weep slow, heavy beads of brackish water into the silence.
My focus narrows to water. No ripples mar the glassy surface; it stretches into the dark like a vast, silent mirror. No rocks penetrate the exterior; no stalactites protrude from its depths. It reflects the carnage of the room in perfect, unbroken clarity.
“Spread out,” I order. “Look for signs of passage. They can’t have gone far.”
My voice carries too well; even the echoes sound uncertain. The men obey, wading through debris, kicking over shards of rock and the fragments of broken rods.
I crouch beside the pool, dipping a gloved finger into the mirrored surface. It’s like plunging into glacial water. Numbness spreads instantly—a razor-sharp jolt that has me snatching my hand back, rubbing my finger with fierce intensity.
Warmth spreads down my arm as I ignite my energy, the heat forcing life back into the extremity. I extend my arm over the water; the light protrudes but is swallowed by an absolute, hungry blackness—the ever-present divide between light and dark.
Nothing travels through this. Not light. Not men.
“They went through here, sir.” A guard points to a scabrous hole at the base of the wall where the stone has sheared away. Imprinted on the rock is a smear of blackness—a snake of ash.
Down. Always down.
Uri’s voice cuts clean through my thoughts: Bring her to me. Alive.
“We follow the trail. If anyone asks, we are securing the catacombs after the tremor.”
“And if we find her?” one of them says.
A slow, welcome twitch pulls at the corner of my mouth. The thought of her capture at my own hands is a tonic. “We do as the High Luminary of Mercy wishes.” I run my tongue over my bottom lip. “We bring her back.”
The guard hesitates. “Do you think we can…contain her this time?”
My chin tilts. I meet his gaze with a look that should have been a death sentence. “Your little brain doesn’t need to worry about that. Your job is to find her. Leave the rest to me.”
He nods, glancing at the others who have stopped to listen. “And the scholar?” he asks nervously.
“He’s a symptom. The Light will excise him when the time comes.”
I scan the faces of the men surrounding me—pathetic excuses for soldiers. “Now summon your lights. We’re going deeper.”
Warmth trickles down my arms, cascading into my fingers until my own light radiates from my palms in a blinding blaze. We move through the tunnels like cold suns, weaving our way through the very shadows we were taught to fear.
If obedience is the price of power, I will pay it—and I will collect exactly what the gods owe me.