Chapter 31 #2
“Damn,” Ridge breathes. “I think her Ide really took her down here.”
It could’ve been possible to breach the door with the ancient knowledge and mojo of an Ide.
“The blood-lock's been bypassed completely.” Ridge notices suddenly.
I stare at the broken seal—a complex sigil that should require a senior warden's blood to unlock.
“Nyv couldn't have done this on her own,” he whispers. “She's good, but not that good.”
“Careful,” my father warns inside my head.
I push the door open wider, and a gust of stale, cold air rushes out to meet us. The darkness beyond the threshold is absolute.
“Nyv?” Ridge hisses into the darkness.
No answer.
Ridge pulls out a small flashlight from his jacket pocket. It casts a pale glow that barely penetrates the oppressive darkness.
“Stay close,” I mutter as we descend a short set of worn stone steps.
At the bottom, the crypts unfold before us like a maze—narrow corridors branching off in all directions, lined with sealed alcoves and heavy doors marked with warning glyphs.
I grab Ridge’s wrist and direct the flashlight directly at the ground.
The floor is thick with dust and I see what I’d hoped—or not hoped—to see: footprints.
Probably a woman’s, judging by the size.
I inhale a shallow breath. They head straight and then…
right. I glance down the new passageway she apparently turned down.
We follow the footprints, the beam of Ridge's flashlight bobbing ahead of us. The air feels like it grows colder the deeper we go, carrying a metallic tang that makes my throat tighten. Each step echoes unnervingly loud against the stone.
I glance at each of the iron doors carved into the walls around us as we pass, looking for markings about what each one contains. I’ve never been here before, but we were taught enough.
The flashlight beam skips over a rusted metal plate bolted to a door on our left.
The Ossuary of the Silent. I remember the lecture from first year: it supposedly holds the calcified remains of darkbloods who attempted to merge with demonic essences during a clearblood purge and failed, their bones vibrating with a permanent, subsonic scream that can liquefy a living brain if the seal is broken.
Yeah. Hope she stayed out of that one.
We pass another door, this one strapped with heavy silver chains that look like they’re straining against an invisible internal pressure. The Reliquary of the Blighted Sun.
At least we got creative with names.
If memory serves correctly, that one contains the shattered shards of a clearblood “purification lens”—a weapon designed to magically channel solar energy into a beam so hot it could, when correctly angled, burn darkbloods to a crisp.
It was a brutal piece of engineering from the Great Purge of 1746, and even in pieces, the shards supposedly hum with a scorching heat that can blister skin from ten feet away.
Next, the light hits a door etched with The Lament of the Marrow.
It’s reinforced with lead but the vibration coming from it is still impossible to ignore.
I know the history of this one too: it contains a “war-breed.” A modified feral shadow-hound, the kind of beast that naturally prowls the ley lines of the world, but the coven’s ancestors took it and twisted it for the Blood Wars.
They turned it into a living weapon, magnifying its ability to phase through armor and track magical signatures.
Now it’s just… stuck in here, because we didn’t know what else to do with it. Letting it loose risks causing havoc. Without careful control, it’s lethal.
Poor mutt. I should try persuading Corvin to at least let a beast master take it out for a daily walk.
“Wait, Jax.” Ridge stops suddenly.
I follow his gaze down the hallway, where I see it: a door standing partially open, a thin sliver of pale light spilling out into the corridor.
“Great,” I whisper, breaking into a jog. The Vault of Sundered Blades. I think this one houses weapons from the Blood Wars, each one imbued with magic designed to destroy dragons. They were failed weapons, artifacts deemed too dangerous for a darkblood to use due to faulty design or otherwise.
“Careful, Jax,” my father cautions again, more tense this time.
We don’t really have time to be careful.
Ridge and I approach the open door. I push it wider, the ancient hinges groaning in protest, and we step inside.
The chamber is larger than I expected, a circular room with a domed ceiling covered in fading runes. Glass cases line the walls, each containing a weapon suspended in a field of protective magic. But my attention immediately fixes on the center of the room.
There's Nyv, standing before a pedestal where a slender obsidian dagger hovers, rotating slowly in a containment field.
The blade is unnaturally thin, almost translucent at its edges, with veins of crimson that pulse slightly.
The hilt is wrapped in what looks like scaled leather, blackened with age.
But it's Nyv herself that makes my blood run cold.
She's completely still, her eyes solid black without any whites showing.
Her hands are raised toward the dagger, fingers spread wide, and shadows are flowing from her palms toward the weapon.
The air around her crackles with energy that feels ancient and wrong.
“Nyv!” Ridge calls out, rushing forward.
She doesn't respond. Doesn't even twitch. It's like she's in a trance, completely disconnected from reality.
“That's the Shadowfang,” my father says, his voice urgent. “It was forged to pierce draconic scales and poison the blood beneath.” I hear the confusion beneath his tone: why has Nyv gone for it?
I approach carefully, circling around. Nyv’s expression is blank, but there's something unsettling about the slight curve of her lips—almost like satisfaction, but not her satisfaction.
“Nyv,” I try, keeping my voice calm. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Not even a blink.
“It's not Nyv anymore,” Ridge mutters, his voice tight. “Her Ide's taken over completely. Shit, I never knew she was having this much trouble controlling it.”
“Neither did I. I thought she was doing okay in training.”
I reach out to touch her shoulder, and the moment my fingers make contact, a jolt of magical feedback hits me like a punch to the chest. I stagger back, gasping.
“Don't touch her directly,” my father warns. “Her Ide is… channeling something through her.”
The containment field around the dagger flickers, weakening. The weapon begins to vibrate, the crimson veins pulsing faster.
“Why this dagger?” I murmur. “What does her Ide want with it?”
There's a pause, and I can feel my father searching through memories, trying to piece something together. “The Shadowfang… it was designed to adapt. To learn from the blood it shed. Each dragon it killed was supposed to make it more effective against the next.”
“So it's just a really good dragon-killer?” I whisper, not seeing any connection.
“No,” he says grimly. “I think the Ide wants it for what it can do to Nyv.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a faulty weapon. Which means instead of only impacting the dragon, it also has the power to impact or alter the darkblood—negatively. That’s why it was put in here.”
A chill runs down my spine as I understand. “The Ide is trying to use the dagger to alter Nyv?”
“Likely. The weapon could act as a conductor, to change something in the wielder's blood, their body, their magic... I can’t think of another explanation.”
My mind races. “Why?”
“To make her a better host. Strengthen the Ide's hold on her. Make their connection… unbreakable.”
“What are you talking about, man?” Ridge asks, sweat beading on his brow. He moves toward the pedestal from the other side. “We need to stop this, now!”
The containment field gives one last flicker before collapsing entirely.
The dagger drops into Nyv's waiting palm, and the moment it touches her skin, she gasps—the first sound she's made since we found her.
Dark veins immediately begin spreading from where her fingers grip the hilt, crawling up her wrist, her forearms.
I lunge forward, but Ridge is closer.
He grabs her arm, trying to force her to drop the dagger. The moment he touches her, black energy arcs between them, and Ridge is thrown backward, slamming into one of the glass cases. The case shatters, and he hits the floor, stunned.
“Jax,” my father says, his voice taking on that commanding tone I still remember from childhood. “You need to disrupt the connection. But not with physical force. With blood magic.”
“I'm not exactly a master at that,” I remind him, watching in horror as the dark veins continue creeping up Nyv's arm, past her elbow now.
“But I am,” he says. “Let me guide you.”
I hesitate for only a second before nodding. “Do it.”
The sensation feels slightly different this time.
Instead of simply stepping aside and letting him take control, I feel like we're merging, his knowledge and skill flowing into me without pushing my consciousness aside.
My hands begin to move with a precision I've never possessed, tracing complex sigils in the air.
“We need to create a barrier between Nyv and the dagger's essence,” he explains as our fingers dance through the complicated pattern. “Think of it as a lock that will temporarily freeze the transfer.”
I bite into my thumb hard enough to draw blood, then flick it outward. The droplets hang suspended in the air before us, glowing with a faint inner light I've never witnessed before. They arrange themselves into a complex pattern that shifts and pulses.
“Now,” my father directs, “push it between them.”
With a thrust of both hands, I send the glowing blood-sigil forward. It expands as it moves, the blood-infused magic forming a thin barrier that slides between Nyv's skin and the dagger. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the black veins stop spreading.
Nyv's body goes rigid, caught between the dagger's influence and my father's blood magic.