Chapter Fourteen
KAEL
The home of the Black Heart Belt mines rises on the horizon like a scar of the gods—a colossal mountain cleft split clean through the middle, as if the earth itself has been torn apart in some ancient fury.
Sheer black cliffs loom on either side of the pass, their jagged faces jutting like the fangs of a buried beast. Once, this place was sacred.
But now? It’s nothing but a scar. Some say the gods created it in a fit of rage during the Endless War.
Rowan was right—there is no missing this place. The shadowed path weaves through the cleft, abundant fissures catching the faint glow of the moon that now hangs overhead steal my gaze.
“It’s clear,” Therion confirms, his Aetherstride magic thick in the air. “At least up here.”
He stills again, his senses feeling the energy that travels on the black night like mist. “But below? That’s a different story.”
Fucking great.
“I feel it, too,” Seren murmurs, looking unnerved by whatever she can sense.
“Well, good luck,” Rubi groans, as she throws off her belt of tonics and tinctures, whips out her flask, and flops to a seat on the ground with an unceremonious thud. “I’ll be here if you make it out. Ronyn, fancy a swig of Tvira’s brask?” She wags her eyebrows, enticing him.
Ronyn looks torn, his face grimacing with the decision. “I can’t, Rubes. There’s a conversation I need to have with Death,” he points his thumb over his shoulder towards his bow and arrow.
“Yes, yes. The first god metal archer in the history of Aevryn,” she mocks dismissively.
“That’s the one,” he says with a click of his tongue and a wink.
“I don’t know how I know,” Seren interrupts, “but there are no living beings here.” She closes her eyes, focusing on whatever remains hidden or beyond sight. “Only… spirits. Noncorporeal beings of a sort. They seem restless.”
“I’ve done this whole ghost thing before, you know? Just because they’re not human doesn’t stop them from being violent creatures. Lyssar Temple, remember? Yeah, not the biggest fan,” Ronyn says, a chill rippling through his body.
“That doesn’t sound like something the first god metal archer in the history of Aevryn would say,” Jax taunts, patting him on the shoulder condescendingly.
She struts away with an exaggerated sway of her hips and throws a wink over her shoulder to Ronyn.
Merrik pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
“Let’s find this godsdamned fissure and be done with it. El needs us,” Merrik grumbles.
I unsheathe my twin blades and drop into a predator’s crouch—I’ve been fucked by Shadowweave cloaks and lillath chains before and I’m not about to let it happen again, even with Therion and Seren confirming we’re clear.
Therion’s axe is already in his hand and Seren tucks in behind him. Ronyn, despite his theatrics, always has an arrow ready to loose. Jax has her chakram gripped, and Merrik is nothing but predictable—broadsword at the ready. And Rubi? She’s already snoring, Daelen on watch next to her.
We move as a unit—attuned to the way we each move, our individual strengths and weaknesses, any signs that something isn’t right within each other. We move the way any military operation should—unified, sharp, attuned.
Seren jerks sharply, cocking her head as if to listen. Her breath hitches.
“What is it?” Therion says with lethal calm, though I can hear his concern.
“A spirit calls upon us,” she whispers. “We’re close.”
“Close to what, exactly?” Ronyn murmurs. “To our ultimate demise? Or to a lovely spirit who would like to help us?”
Through her small smile, Seren says, “I don’t know but… it knows I’m Veilborn, and it can feel Kael’s presence.”
It can feel my presence? What the fuck does that mean?
“How do you know?” Therion stops abruptly.
“It— It told me,” she says, and quickly begins moving again.
It told her?
We continue to search for the fissure, alert and sharp along the path through the mountain’s cleft.
“Well, it’ll feel me a lot more if we can just find this fucking fissure Rowan spoke of,” I say, trying to keep the impatience from my tone.
We take a few more paces, and Jax holds up her hand to stop the group.
“Do you feel that? That breeze?” She moves her hand through the air, feeling for something. “It’s a draft.”
The starless sky blankets us in a darkness that borders on pitch-black, the only light coming from a sliver of moon just visible above the mountain’s edge. I move toward her, straining my eyes to see if there’s anything visible.
Then, I feel it.
A gentle breath of wind blows like a steady stream of air through the pass. A draft. Coming from an opening. A fissure.
“Feel the walls,” I command, and the group spreads across the pass, seeking a break in the cliffs.
I run my hands across jagged rock, searching for concealed openings, perhaps a fissure that has shifted with time, maybe even caved in.
“Here!” Ronyn shouts. “It’s fucking tiny. We’ll all have to turn on our sides. Lucky I spent years starving or I wouldn’t be able to go on an adventure to the warrior spirits,” Ronyn quips, face full of cheek.
“I fuckin’ hate small spaces,” Merrik grumbles, turning on his side to go first. “I better not die in a godsforsaken tunnel, Kael Thorne or I’ll have your balls in the afterlife,” he threatens, but his fondness is evident.
“Let me die on the battlefield with a blade in my hand, and nothing less. You hear me?” He points to the skies, threatening the Stars and the gods themselves.
“Get in the tunnel, old man,” Jax grouses, but I know she loves him.
Merrik’s been like a father to her ever since Maldrak purged the castle—culled every loyalist, her parents among them.
He’s been like a father to me, too. Where I go, he goes.
My will is his will. My pain is his pain.
My command is his to fulfill, even when he doesn’t agree.
“Get between me and Kael, Seren,” Therion orders protectively, and I don’t miss the way she stares up at him through a curtain of dark lashes.
With every affection I witness, the chasm in my heart widens.
I fucking miss Elyssara.
We need to move fast. I need her back with me, even if she won’t be able to look at me.
The group moves through the opening save for me and Ronyn.
“I’ve got your back, Kael,” Ronyn says stoically, all soldier, not a trace of mischief to be found. “You go.”
I nod tightly, and turn on my side. With my armor in place, I have to breathe in to get my chest and shoulders through.
The jagged fissures catch on my leather, dragging across it like a final warning that we shouldn’t be here.
I push through, edging myself along the narrow stretch before the tunnel opens into a wider path I can actually walk through. Barely, though.
The gravitas of this sacred burial ground hits me in the chest. This place is one of legends. One of kings, warriors and gods, and it calls to my Zerynthian blood like a beacon.
“The tunnels split off. A few are caved in,” Therion says, and I hear Merrik curse the gods.
“Pair off. I’ll take Seren—if she can hear them, I’ll need her to lead me to them,” I say, and Therion’s lips press into a thin line. He doesn’t like this.
“I’ll protect her,” I say intently, and I fucking mean it. Not only is she someone to Therion, she’s the best friend of my Starbound.
He nods, reluctant, and gestures to Ronyn to go with him. Jax and Merrik take off down a tunnel, and Seren looks at me, eyes defiant and ready.
“I believe it’s Death that calls to me,” she says confidently. “And he wants you.”
I don’t know why he wants me, but I relish the chance to look upon his face.
“And I want him,” I say with conviction.
“This way,” she says, leading me down a tunnel to the right.
The old mining tunnel smells of a forgotten place—dust, mildew, decaying vermin, and memories that hang in the air, refusing to vanish.
Zerynthian children are raised on stories of Black Heart Belt. Stories of reverence, honor and holy rites of passage, and I feel the weight of walking these sacred tunnels, a lump in my throat forming for the Old Zerynthian ways we’ve lost to time and the curse.
I pick up an old plank of wood and light the end with my flint. It illuminates the narrow path, and cobwebs catch the light of the flame. Seren swats at the webs with her crossbow, unfazed by the filth.
We descend the mines, the air growing more humid with each step we take. Seren navigates the mines as if she’s worked here all her life. Confident, knowing and unafraid.
Every step feels like walking deeper into the marrow of the world.
She stops, turning to me with a penetrating stare. “He warns you—no magic,” she relays sternly. She turns and walks on without another word.
We walk for what feels like hours, but finally, Seren stops.
A cavernous tomb carved from black stone unfurls, filled with the hushed weight of ages.
Along its walls, vessels of every kind stand—gilded urns for kings, gem-studded reliquaries for fallen gods, ironbound caskets for warriors whose names have long since turned to dust. And at the center, dominating the chamber, rests an obsidian sarcophagus.
And I know with absolute certainty; it’s Morrathys.
I’ve heard of obsidian sarcophagi only in legend. Made of a single block of volcanic glass, its surface veined with threads of zarethite that glimmer faintly in the dark, as though lit by a pulse deep within. Runes etched into the stone crawl like scars across their lids.
I look to Seren, but she’s already speaking. “The runes bind the spirit within—they’ve trapped him in eternal unrest.” Seren’s face twists into one of horror. “It’s sacrilege,” she breathes.
Unlike the honored dead around him, this coffin does not bless or protect—it imprisons, ensuring the soul of Morrathys can never roam free.
“They dishonor our culture,” I spit, rage rushing through me sharp and hot at the disrespect to our traditional customs.
Seren moves to the sarcophagi, her hands pressing into the runes, as if she’s pained by his trapped soul. Then—
Her head throws back at an unnatural angle.
A strangled scream rasps from her throat—possessed, distorted.
“Morrathys,” she chokes out.
“Seren!” I scream, rushing to her.
Her eyes roll back in her head, whites exposed.
They spin back, and this time, she’s different. Changed.
Because her eyes are pure, bottomless, unadulterated black.