Chapter 38
Voren
“Well, that’s not ideal,” I say, eyes narrowed at the space where she was standing only a second ago. “Who split us up?”
“Good question,” Dreven mutters. “Nyssa? Are you there?”
No response.
“Okay, well. We need to figure out if she is still here, but we can’t hear her, or we have been separated.”
“I’ll try to track her,” I say, reaching out with my senses. The realm hums with residual death, making it harder to isolate one specific mortal thread, but the anchor helps. I can feel her, faint but present, like a candle flame in a cathedral. “She’s here. Just… elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere is a big fucking place,” Dastian mutters.
The anchor between us pulls taut, a physical ache in my chest. I can sense her confusion, her wariness, but not her location. It’s like trying to grab smoke.
“Well?” Dreven asks.
“A thread. She is here, but she can’t see us or hear us. The same as us with her. We have to find a way to bring us back together.”
“We don’t have fucking time for this!” Dreven’s shadows explode outward. The force of his rage makes the ground tremble beneath my feet.
“Losing your temper won’t help her,” I say, though my control is fraying at the edges. The anchor pulls at me, a constant reminder that she’s out there, alone, in a realm designed to break mortals.
“Then what will?” he snarls, silver eyes blazing with an intensity that would make lesser beings flee.
I close my eyes, focusing on that thread of connection. It’s there, faint but steady, like a heartbeat in the dark. I reach for it with my power, letting the cold seep through the bond. If I can’t see her, maybe I can guide her.
The wraiths here are restless, drawn to the living warmth of her presence. I can feel them circling, curious and hungry. They won’t harm her, but they won’t help her either. The dead are selfish that way.
“She’s moving,” I murmur, tracking the subtle shifts in our connection. “Deeper into the ruins.”
“Towards the crown?” Dastian asks, his chaos magic crackling around his fingertips like trapped lightning.
“Maybe. Or towards something that wants to eat her.” I open my eyes, meeting Dreven’s gaze. “We need to—”
“—am so pissed, I could kill you all!”
Nyssa suddenly pops back into existence, storming away from us, and then she stops. Breathes in and turns around, eyes narrowed. “Is that you or figments of my imagination?”
“Us, I think,” I say, going to her, cupping her face to make sure she is real and then pulling her close to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t do that again.”
“Me? I was minding my own business when you all disappeared.” She clings to me for a moment, letting her fear seep through before she gathers her strength again and steps back. “River of blood, you say?”
Dreven nods.
“I can’t see it. The tables have flipped. It’s up to you now to lead us somewhere.”
The river of blood flows sluggishly across the stone floor, viscous and dark.
“If Nyssa can’t see it, then we’re operating on different wavelengths, split between layers of reality that shouldn’t exist in the same space,” I say to Dreven. “Gods and mortals.”
“We need to cross it,” Dreven says, with a nod, having come to the same conclusion.
“Bridge?” Nyssa asks hopefully.
I shake my head but focus my death magic, creating a shimmering causeway of solidified wraith-light.
Silver mist rises from the bloody current, coalescing under my command, twisting into a solid, spectral path that hovers inches above the flow.
It glimmers with the captured light of a thousand lost souls, silent and cold.
“Now there’s a bridge,” I say, stepping onto the ethereal walkway. “You’ll have to trust me.”
“Just think of it as a leap of faith into a meat grinder,” Dastian adds helpfully.
Nyssa shoots him a venomous look before turning back to me. “Fine. But if I end up swimming in divine haemoglobin, I’m haunting you for eternity.”
She takes a hesitant step, her boot landing on the invisible bridge. A shiver runs through her. “Gods, it’s cold.”
“That’s just my winning personality,” I say, offering my hand.
She takes it, gripping it tightly as I lead her across, Dastian and Dreven following close behind.
We cross over and arrive unscathed on the other side.
“Now what?” she asks. “What do you see?”
“A doorway carved from a single piece of obsidian. The frame is covered in runes.”
“What kind of runes?” Nyssa asks, her hand still gripping mine.
“Wraith runes,” I say, studying the intricate patterns. “Can I see your blade?”
She holds it up without arguing, which is refreshing.
“Yes, they are the same.”
“What does that mean?”
“That your blade can pass.”
“Just the blade? That doesn’t sound helpful.”
“Probably also the one holding the blade.” I stare at her expectantly.
She chews her bottom lip as she absorbs my meaning. “Fine. Hold on, let’s test this mad theory because we’ve got fuck all else.”
I step closer to the doorway, the obsidian sucking in the feeble light like it’s starving. The runes crawl under my gaze, old as sin and twice as petty.
“Blade first,” I tell her. “Then you. I’m going to lace a thread through you so I can pull you back if the door tries to keep you.”
“Like a divine dog lead,” Nyssa mutters, but she hands me her wrist without hesitation.
“Anchor,” I correct, and let a ribbon of wraith-light unfurl from my palm. It sinks beneath her skin like frost finding cracks in a window. She shivers, eyes flaring at the chill, but she grips her blade like it’s a lifeline.
Dastian makes a face. “Safe word?”
“Bacon,” she fires back.
“Figures it would be food,” he sighs.
Dreven’s power tightens, a storm about to break. “If anything touches her—”
“It will touch me first,” I say, and mean it.
She lifts the blade. The runes on the frame flare in recognition, then go dead flat, like a god unimpressed by your magic. Nyssa breathes out, sets her shoulders, and steps.
The door drinks her.
One heartbeat she’s there, the next she’s gone, swallowed without a ripple. My thread jerks taut, biting into me like hooked wire. I brace, planting my feet on cold stone that remembers too many endings.
The pull tries to rip my arm off. I dig in and let the wraith-light spool out of me in a white-hot line. The obsidian frame hums, hungry. It wants to keep what it’s taken.
Dreven’s power closes in at my shoulder. “Voren—”
“I’ve got her.” I don’t, not yet. But I won’t let go. I shove more of myself through the tether, cold threading into her like a second spine. “Nyssa,” I say, pitching my voice along the line. “Tell me what you see.”
A crackle, like frost fracturing glass. Then her voice, thin and far away. “Doors. Hundreds. All mine.”
Of course. A memory ward. I grit my teeth. “Don’t open anything.”
“That’s… not how doors work, Voren.”
Dastian huffs behind me. “If she says bacon, I’m yanking.”
“You’ll yank nothing.” I take a breath I don’t need and step into the obsidian.
It swallows. Cold punches through me, complete and clean, followed by that old familiar dread that comes when new dead realise what’s happened to them. Voices brush past my ears, a tide of whispers trying to burrow under my skin. The tether jerks again. I follow it.
Light bleeds in. Not light—memory. The corridor around me is a spine of shadow with doors like vertebrae, each carved with scenes that twitch when I look at them too long.
Her first blade. The Order’s training hall.
A broken tooth and a grin. Rynna’s hand, small and sticky with jam, holding hers. They crowd me, greedy.
She stands halfway down the hall, blade up, jaw set, eyes on a door with a sigil I recognise: the Firsts’ mark. The ward wants a tithe.
“Don’t touch it,” I say, closing the distance. My hand finds her shoulder. She shudders at the chill and leans into it for a heartbeat she’ll deny later.
“It wants something,” she says. “It won’t let me through unless I pay.”
“Memories,” I confirm. “It feeds to shape you to its liking.”
“Great. And by great, I mean I hate it.” Her gaze flicks to another door. The smell of sea-salt and panic rolls off it. “If I give it something I don’t want, will that work?”
“It will take whatever you offer,” I say, lowering my voice. “But it prefers what hurts.”
“Of course it does,” she mutters. “Sick little crown foreplay.”
“It’s getting impatient,” I murmur. The sigil pulses, drinking in the heat of her indecision. “Pick carefully. Give it something you don’t want used against you later.”
Her jaw ticks. “Helpful as ever.”
“The first blade,” I nod at a door where a child’s hand grips steel too big for it. “That made you. Don’t touch it. The jam-sticky hand? That anchors you. Don’t touch that either. The training hall…” I tilt my head, listening to the quiet grief humming behind the wood. “That one is poison.”
She snorts. “Which narrows it down to everything hurts.”
“It wants leverage, slayer. So hand it the leash.” I gesture to a narrow door half-hidden in shadow. Her parents.
“Don’t,” she grits out before I can say anything. “Don’t even think of them.”
“It’s not me who has to. I didn’t know them. I don’t know why they left.”
“Who says they left?” she spits.
“They aren’t dead. That would be a big flashing sign.”
“Damn you,” she mutters.
I take the hit and back off the door with the weight of her parents behind it. Pushing there will only make her dig in and bleed on the wrong altar.
“Fine,” I say, scanning the vertebrae of doors again, listening for the one that hums with the Order’s stink. There. A narrow plank of a thing, plain as a lie, inscribed with a circle of thorns. The oath chamber. “Give it the night you swore yourself to them.”
She goes very still. “That’s not a night. That’s my spine.”
“It’s a leash,” I counter, quietly. “And it’s strangling you. Keep your blade, your skill, your rage. Trade the obedience. Let the realm take what the Order used to own.”
Her throat moves. She hates that I’m right. She hates that it will hurt. Good. The ward wants pain. Let it choke on something useful.
“How?” she asks, the word ground out between her teeth.
“Bleed a memory into steel. Yours knows the way.” I touch two fingers to the back of her wrist, letting the cold settle her pulse. “Hold the blade. Speak it. Don’t look away.”
She steps to the thorn-door. The runes crawl under the surface like brambles shifting in a hedge. She raises her knife and lays the edge along her palm where the cut has already knitted. It opens obediently. The steel drinks.
“My name is Nyssa Vale,” she says, voice hoarse and steady, eyes fixed on that mean little door.
“I swore to the Order in a damp room that stank of incense and mildew. Cormac watched like he was measuring me for a coffin. Taye touched my forehead and told me I belonged. Finnian said ‘we will keep you safe’ and I believed him because I was a child pretending not to be.”
The blade hums. The door listens.
“I gave you everything,” she breathes. “I give you nothing else. Not my name. Not my spine. Not anymore.”
The door shivers. The thorns flex like a creature waking, then sink back into the wood with a wet sigh. The sigil flares once and goes dull, as if I starved it mid-meal.
The ward takes its price.
She sways. I’m already there, catching her wrist before she folds. Cold pours through the tether from me to her, bolstering the part I just made her carve out and offer. She inhales sharply, eyes wide.
“What did it take?” I ask quietly.
“The bit that flinched when Cormac frowned,” she says, grimacing. “The bit that said ‘yes, sir’ even when I wanted to say go fuck yourself. It’s gone.”
“Good.” I shouldn’t be pleased. I am anyway.
The obsidian frame unhooks itself from its own shadow. A seam splits down the centre with a crisp crack, and blackness yawns beyond, not absence but depth.
Dastian and Dreven are behind us then, and the air around us snaps back to the grim reality.
Nyssa shoots me a look that warns of my death if I breathe a word of any of this to them. Her secrets are safe with me. I nod, and she averts her gaze in acknowledgement.
Then, all hell breaks loose.