Chapter 24 #2
"Pack only what you can carry. We leave at nightfall. Anything left behind stays behind." He scanned each face before him. "This isn't retreat. It's survival. We live to fight another day, or we die here waiting for the flames to find us."
No one argued. No one asked questions.
We moved like ghosts fleeing a grave.
No one spoke above a whisper. Rebels packed what they could carry with jerky, too-fast movements—shoving belongings into sacks, strapping weapons to backs, casting glances over shoulders at shadows that hadn't moved yet.
I rolled my bedroll and strapped it to the bottom of my pack.
Daggers. Waterskin. The last of my jerky wrapped in cloth.
Serenya's hearthsage, crushed nearly to dust now but still potent enough to smell when I tucked it into the top flap.
I left the rest—a chipped cup, a candle stub, and the pot of salve the Crownforged had left me.
They sat in the dirt, turning from belongings to trash the moment I tightened my straps.
I caught fragments of whispered conversations as I passed down the halls.
"—the Crownforged. Had to be. He was never one of us—"
"—and Aaron. The flames knew—"
Eryndor. Aaron. Their names threaded through the ranks like poison—tangled together now, guilt by proximity. Eryndor was nowhere to be seen—hadn't been since the ball—and his absence had become its own kind of evidence. Every unanswered question bent toward him.
I didn't defend him. I couldn't. Not with the memory of his footprints burned into my mind, marching straight into the heart of a massacre.
We slipped out through the eastern passage in groups of three, staggering our exits the way Kaelen had drilled into us. The night air hit like a slap—cold, harsh, reeking of char that the wind hadn't finished carrying away.
We walked for hours. Or maybe it just felt that way—time moved differently in the dark.
Until finally, we descended into the earth.
Kaelen led us through a hidden fissure in the Ruined City's crumbling foundations, Dreadscale bringing up the rear. The passage swallowed us whole—moonlight first, then warmth, then any sense of the world we'd left behind.
Kaelen struck a torch and passed the flame back. One by one, they caught—small, guttering fires that turned us into a chain of amber light against the stone. It wasn't much. Just enough to see the next few feet, and the shadows pressing in from every side.
The passage narrowed until we were single file, shoulders brushing rough stone, the light shrinking to a bobbing smear against the walls.
I could only follow the flame ahead of me and the sound of footsteps.
These weren't just caves. This was a catacomb.
A vast, sprawling network of forgotten vaults beneath the Old Capital, where the dead had been laid to rest centuries before the Crown started burning them instead.
Every sound carried wrong down here. Whispers stretched into echoes. Footsteps multiplied and the skitter of a rat's claws hit the slate.
Serenya grasped my hand. I held on tighter than I meant to.
Eryndor's footprints kept replaying behind my eyes. The way he'd vanished without a word, without a warning, without even the decency of a goodbye I could rage against.
Was he hunting us now? Leading the Crown straight to our new hiding place?
Or was he already gone—swallowed back into the King's machine, his brief rebellion ground to dust?
We finally emerged into a vast chamber.
The tunnel spat us out and the walls fell away.
After hours of stone scraping my shoulders, the sudden void made my ears pop.
Our footsteps, which had been rhythmic thuds a second ago, now shattered into hollow echoes that never seemed to hit a far wall.
The air tasted like chalk and dry rot—the dead, recycled breath of a tomb.
Kaelen moved first, wedging his torch into a rusted sconce on the nearest pillar. The others followed—one by one, flames slotted into brackets along the walls, each one pushing the darkness back another few feet. The chamber revealed itself in pieces.
The ceiling climbed into darkness above us, so high the torchlight could only graze its lowest edges.
Rotting archways lined the perimeter, their mouths gaping into even darker veins of rock.
Bones were everywhere—wedged into alcoves, spilling off ledges, stacked in waist-high drifts.
Socketless skulls stared upward, their grins fixed and mocking.
Our new refuge. A city of corpses.
Sleep came in shallow, restless pulls. The stone behind my back never warmed—every time I shifted, a new cold spot pressed into me. Serenya had draped her cloak over both our laps, but the chill still crept in. I'd been dozing on and off, head on her shoulder, when a shadow fell over us.
Kaelen.
He crouched in front of me, pale eyes catching the flickering torchlight. No preamble. That wasn't his way.
"The Codex," he said. "It's time."
I blinked the sleep from my eyes, forcing myself upright. "Now?"
"The King's noose is tightening. After tonight, conditions will only worsen—stricter curfews, more patrols, harsher punishments for anyone caught outside sanctioned zones." His eyes darkened. "Every day we wait is a day he gets stronger and we get weaker. We need that ledger."
Fantastic.
"Are you ready?" Kaelen asked.
Ten heartbeats. That's what I'd held with Dreadscale. Ten, with my marks humming together instead of tearing apart. Real progress. Thirty was a leap—but I'd made leaps before.
"Two days," I said. "Give me two days to practice with Dreadscale. I'll be ready."
Kaelen studied me for a long moment. Weighing. Calculating. Then he nodded once.
"Two days." He rose to his feet. "Rest while you can. Then train like everyone’s life depends on it." A pause. "Because it does."
He disappeared back into the shadows of the chamber, leaving me with nothing but the dark and thirty heartbeats I hadn't earned yet.
Serenya's hand found mine.
"You'll be ready," she said quietly.
I wished I believed her.