43. Seren
SEREN
Dusk has finally claimed this side of Auria.
The storehouse crouches at the city’s edge like a forgotten tooth, its windows boarded and rafters sagging under the weight of dust. We have hidden here at the water’s edge for what feels like an age, waiting for patrols to finish their rounds.
Bells chime incessantly in the distance—it seems the city is in a fever of mourning for its fallen Triarch.
Kael paces near the far wall. The glow from his palm sputters, a mere thread of light in the gloom.
His movements are quiet, but the agitation in them makes my skin itch.
He hasn’t spoken since we left the last warehouse.
The silence between us is thicker than the air—it isn’t fear anymore, but grief. And something harder. Decision.
Beams of light scan the boarded windows.
We duck lower as the mumbled voices grow closer to the door.
The pounding in my veins beats louder with every thud their boots make.
Sweat trickles down my brow, carving trails through the grit on my face.
Eira presses tight against me, her warmth suddenly overwhelming as a low growl forms deep in her throat.
“This place hasn’t been touched in years—there’s nothing in here,” a guard shouts.
“I dunno—Commander Riven wants everything gone over with a fine-tooth comb,” a distant voice retorts.
“We’ve got a whole city to search. What’s one abandoned building in a sea of many?” Boots scuff against the cobbles, the voices fading into the night. “Let’s check the next one.”
Kael peers over the window ledge, his gaze lingering on the street a moment longer than necessary. Finally, he nods toward the metal hatch at the back of the room.
Crouching low, we move with a frantic, silent speed. Metal scrapes softly as I drag the staff across the floorboards, keeping its amethyst eye shielded from the windows.
The shadows get there first, pacing at the seam where the hatch resides.
Kael raises a finger to his lips, his eyes finding mine.
That unseen thread stretches between us, an instinctual pull like gravity remembering its source.
A muscle feathers in his jaw, ticking like a clock on the verge of running out of time.
Go as quietly as you can. His voice echoes in the empty chamber of my mind.
I nod, letting the connection hang between us like a web in the rafters. I kneel beside the hatch as Kael places a palm over the rusted bolts. His light burns into the metal until it liquifies, the smell of copper tanging the air. He droops, as if spent by the force.
This will take us beneath the city, he continues through the link. To the first tier of the maintenance shafts. If we move fast, we can reach the junction by nightfall.
That far? I murmur into the void.
We have to move.
He crouches beside me, his face half-lost to shadow, the gold rims of his glasses twinkling. There’s an abandoned checkpoint at the end of the aqueduct. I can’t imagine it’s occupied, but we must be prepared in case it is.
And what do you suggest we do? I ask, focused on the violet flecks now tinting the silver of his eyes.
I’d rather not make them die for a faith I’m no longer sure I believe in.
The admission feels like a fracture—quiet, but irreversible.
His hand rests on the hatch, his knuckles white.
There’s another way through where we can avoid the checkpoint—a drainage sluice below the main pipe.
It’s narrow, and half-collapsed, but it should be unguarded.
The deepness of his voice rattles through my skin.
“And flooded?” I whisper aloud, the sound of my own voice odd in the quiet.
“Likely.”
“Wonderful.” I tug the pendant from beneath my collar. It warms against my palm, a heartbeat answering my own.
You were born into the dark, Nyx whispers. Water remembers darkness, too.
I look back at Kael. “We’ll take your sluice. And if it’s flooded, or manned, I’ll make the shadows find a way through.”
He doesn’t argue. He only watches as my hands find the handles of the hatch. It yawns open—black air rising from below, cool and smelling of iron and musk.
I move to the ledge, and he stops me. His hand lingers on mine, a heat radiating from his skin that spreads to the cracks of my mind where the shadows reside.
It’s a warmth I’ve never known—dangerously steady in its gentleness.
My eyelids flicker closed as I curve toward him, welcoming the sensation as it travels up my arm.
He clears his throat, breaking the spell. My eyes snap open, heat flushing my cheeks.
Slaughter is the last resort—remember? His words caress my mind. I force them away with a shake of my head.
“Yes.”
I lower myself into the shaft. The ladder rungs are slick, each step sounding like the toll of a funeral bell. My shadows follow, carrying the staff and guiding Eira. Kael descends behind us, and the world shrinks into the narrow circle of his light and the rhythmic drip of water.
Coldness prickles my ankles as we reach the bottom. Descending back toward the Hollow. Back toward my old life.
But the girl who returns will never fit inside it again.